Although she was handling the bunch of keys for the first time, she knew at once which of the keys was the safe-key and how to open the safe, from having seen Mr. Earlforward open and close it. He would have been extremely startled to learn the extent of her knowledge, not only about the safe, but about many other private matters in the life of the household; for Elsie, like most servants, was full of secret domestic information, unused, but ready at any time for use. She unlocked the safe and swung open the monumental door of it and pulled out a drawer—and drew back, alarmed, almost blinded. The drawer was full of gold coins—full! Her domestic information had not comprised this dazzling hoard. In all her life Elsie had scarcely ever seen a sovereign. Years ago, in the early part of the war, she had seen a half-sovereign now and then. She shut the drawer quickly. Then she looked round, scared of possible spies after all. She thought she could hear creepings on the stairs and stirrings in the black corners of the mysterious shop. Not even when caught in the act of eating stolen raw bacon had she had such a terrifying sense of monstrous guilt. Her impulse was to shut the safe, lock it, double-lock it, treble-lock it, and try to erase the golden vision utterly from her memory. She would not on any account have pulled out another drawer.
But, lying on the ledge above the nest of drawers, she saw a canvas bag. This bag was familiar to her; it held silver. She loosened its string and drew forth sixpence. Then she rose, tore the wrapper off a circular among the correspondence on the table, wrote on the inside of the wrapper “6d.,” and put it in the bag. Such was her poor, her one feasible, inadequate precaution against the tremendous wrath to come. She had done a deed unspeakable, and she could perfectly imagine what the consequences of it might be.
She was still breathing rapidly when she unlocked the shop-door. Rain was falling—rather heavy rain. Securing the door again, she ran upstairs to get her umbrella, which lay under her bed wrapped in newspaper. She had to grope for it in the dark. Roughly she tore off the newspaper. Downstairs again she could not immediately find the door-key and decided to risk leaving the door unlocked. She would be back from the Square in a minute, and nobody would dream of breaking in. She ran off and up the Steps towards the Square.
IV
Out of the Rain
Mrs. Perkins’s boy, who lived with Mrs. Perkins in the house next door to Elsie’s old home in Riceyman Square, and who had a chivalric regard for Elsie, fortunately happened to be out in the Square. In the darkness he was engaged in amorous dialectic with a girl of his own age—fourteen or fifteen—and they were both imperfectly sheltering under the eve of an outhouse (church property) at the northeast corner of the churchyard. Their voices were raised from time to time, and Elsie recognized his as she approached the house. Mrs. Perkins’s boy wore over his head a sack which he had irregularly borrowed for the night from the express parcel company in the tails of whose vans he spent about twelve hours a day hanging on to a piece of string suspended from the van roof. That he had energy left in the evening to practise savagely-delicate sentimental backchat in the rain was proof enough of a somewhat remarkable quality of “brightness.”
Elsie had chosen him for her mission because he was hardened to the world and thoroughly accustomed to the enterprise of affronting entrance-halls and claiming the attention of the guardians thereof. She now called to him across the roadway in an assured, commanding tone which indicated that she knew him to be her slave and that, in spite of her advanced years, she could more than hold her own with him against any chit in the Square. There was an aspect of Elsie’s individuality which no living person knew except Mrs. Perkins’s boy. He went hurrying to her.
“I want you to run down to the hospital with this letter and be sure to tell the porter it is to be given to Mrs. Earlforward tonight. She’s in there. And here’s sixpence for you, and I’ll lend you my umbrella and I’ll get it again from your mammy tomorrow morning; but you must just walk to the Steps with me first because I don’t want to get wet.”
“Right-o, Elsie!” he agreed in his rough, breaking voice, and louder: “So long, Nell!”
“Put it in your pocket now,” Elsie said, handing him the letter. “No; don’t take the keys.” She was still carrying Mr. Earlforward’s bunch of keys.
The boy insisted on taking the umbrella, which gave him almost as much happiness as the sixpence. Never before had he had the opportunity to show off with an umbrella. He wished that he could get rid of the sack, which did not at all match the umbrella’s glory.
“Here, hold on!” He stopped her and threw the sack over the railings into his mother’s area. They walked together towards the Steps.
“Your Joe’s been asking for you tonight,” he said suddenly.
“My Joe!” She stood still, then leaned against the railings.
“Here! Come on!” he adjured her, nervously sniggering in a cheeky way
