“No.”
Violet rose up and slipped out of bed. Henry heard the sound of her crying. She seemed to rush at the fire. She poked it furiously, not because it needed poking, but because she needed relief.
“Come back to bed, Vi,” said Henry kindly.
She dropped the poker with a clatter on the fender, and Henry saw her, a white creature, moving towards him round by his side of the bed. She bent over him.
“Why should I come back to bed?” she asked angrily, her voice thickened and obscured by sobs. “Why should I come back to bed? You’re ill. You’ve got no strength, and haven’t had for weeks. What do you want me to come back to bed for?”
He felt her fingers digging into the softness of his armpits. He felt her face nearer his. She mastered herself.
“Listen to me, Henry Earlforward,” she said in a low, restrained, trembling voice: “You’ll go into that hospital tomorrow morning. You’ll go into that hospital. You’ll go into it when the doctor comes to fetch you. Or, if you don’t, I’ll—I’ll—I’ll—”
He felt her lips on his in a savage, embittered and passionate kiss. She was heroical; he a pygmy—crushed by her might. He was afraid and enchanted.
“No,” he thought, “there never was another like her.”
“Will you, will you, will you, will you?” she insisted ruthlessly, and her voice was smothered in his lips.
“Very well. I’ll go.”
Her body fell limp upon his. She was not sobbing now, but feebly and softly weeping. With a sudden movement she stood upright, then ran to the door, just as she was, fumbled for the knob in the darkness, and rushed out of the room, banging the door after her with a noise that formidably resounded through the whole house. Her victory was more than she could bear.
X
Departure
In the morning Dr. Raste, unusually interested in the psychological aspect of the Earlforward affair, arrived at about ten o’clock in a taxicab, prepared and well-braced to make good his word to Violet. He remembered vividly his own rather cocksure phrase: “We’ll get him away all right tomorrow.” He was tired and overstrung, and therefore inclined to be violent and hasty in endeavour. He had his private apprehensions. He asked the driver to wait, meaning to have Henry captive and downstairs in quite a few minutes. His tactic was to take the patient by storm. He had disorganized his day’s work in order to deal with the matter, and for the maintenance of self-respect he was bound to deal with it effectively. Further, he had arranged by telephone for a bed at the hospital.
The front of the shop dashed him. The shop had not been opened. The milk-can had not been brought within. There it stood, shockingly out of place at ten a.m., proof enough that something very strange had happened or was happening at T. T. Riceyman’s. He tried to open the door; it was locked. Then he noisily shook the door, and he decided to adopt the more customary course of knocking. He knocked and knocked. Little Mr. Belrose, the proprietor of the confectioner’s opposite, emerged to watch the proceedings with interest, and two other people from the houses farther along the steps also observed. Evidently Riceyman Steps was agog for strange and thrilling events. Dr. Raste grew self-conscious under the gaze of Clerkenwell. No view of the interior of the shop could be had through the book-filled windows, and only a narrow slit of a view between the door-blind and the frame of the door. Dr. Raste peered through this and swore in a whisper. At length he saw Elsie approaching.
“Isn’t it about time you took your milk in?” he greeted her calmly, presenting her with the can when she opened the door. Elsie accepted the can in silence; the doctor entered the shop; Elsie shut and bolted the door. The morning’s letters lay unheeded on the unswept floor at her feet. The doctor had the sensation of being imprisoned with her in the sombre and chilly shop. A feeling of calamity weighed upon him. The stairs in the thick gloom at the back of the shop seemed to be leading upwards to terrible affairs. He thought of the taximeter ticking away threepences.
“Well?” he inquired impatiently of the still silent Elsie. “Well? How’s he getting on?”
Elsie answered:
“Missis must have been took bad in the night, sir. When I came down this morning, she was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and I thought she was dead. Yes, I did, sir. She was that cold you wouldn’t believe. Not a stitch on her but her night-things. And she was in a state, too!”
“I hope you got her back to bed at once,” said the doctor.
“I got her up to my bed, sir, and I half-carried her. She wouldn’t go to their bedroom for fear of frightening master, and him so bad, too!”
“Of course, you couldn’t send for me because you’d no one to send, had you?” The doctor began to move towards the stairs.
“Oh, I could have sent someone, sir. There’s several about here could have gone. But I understood you were coming, and I said to myself half an hour more or less, like, that can’t make much difference. And missis didn’t want me to send anyone else, either; she didn’t want it to get about too much, sir. Not that that would have stopped me, sir. Soon as I see her really ill, I says I’m responsible now, I says—of course, under you, sir, and I shouldn’t have listened to her. No, sir.”
The doctor was very considerably impressed, and relieved, by Elsie’s dignity, calm
