Twice before she had looked down. It was more than coyness, better than coyness, more genuinely exciting. When she laughed her face crinkled up very pleasantly. She had energy. All the time her body made little movements. Her glance varied, scintillating, darkling. Her tone ceaselessly varied. And she had authority. She was a masterful woman, but masterful in a broad-minded, genial manner. She was experienced, and had learnt from experience. She must be over forty. … And still, somehow girlish! Best of all, she was original; she had a point of view. She could see. Mr. Earlforward hated Clerkenwell to be damned. Yet he liked her to damn it. … And how natural she was, dignified, but not ceremonious, willing to be friends at once! He repeated to himself that from the first sight of her he had known her to be a highly remarkable creature.
“I brought the book along,” he said, prudently avoiding argument. She took it amiably from him, and out of politeness inspected it again.
“You shall have it for ninepence. And you might be needing it after all, you know.”
With her face still bent towards Snacks and Titbits she raised her eyes to his eyes—it seemed roguishly.
“I might! I might!” She shut the book with a smart snap. “But I won’t go beyond sixpence, thank you all the same. And not as I don’t think it’s very kind of you to bring it over.”
What a woman! What a woman! She was rapidly becoming the most brilliant, attractive, competent, and comfortable woman on earth; and Mr. Earlforward was rapidly becoming a hero, a knight, a madman capable of sublime deeds. He felt an heroical impulse such as he had never felt. He fought it, and was beaten.
“See here,” he said quietly, and with unconscious grandeur. “We’re neighbours. I’ll make you a present of the book.”
Did she say, as a silly little creature would have said: “Oh, no! I couldn’t possibly. I really couldn’t”? Not a bit. She said simply:
“It’s most kind of you, Mr. Earlforward. It really is. Of course I accept it with pleasure. Thank you.”
And she looked down, like a girl who has received a necklace and clasped it on her neck. Yes, she looked down. The moment was marvellous to Mr. Earlforward.
“But I do think you’re a little hard on Riceyman Square,” he said, as she unlocked the door for his departure.
She replied gaily and firmly: “Not one house without a broken pane!” She insisted and held out her hand.
“Well, we must see one day,” said he.
She nodded.
“And if there is,” she said, “I shall pay you a shilling for the book. That’s fair.”
She shook hands. Mr. Earlforward crossed the space between her shop and his with perfect calmness, and as he approached his door he took from his pocket with the mechanical movement of regular habit a shining key.
VI
Mrs. Arb’s Case
You would have thought, while Mrs. Arb was talking to Mr. Earlforward, that the enigma of the universe could not exist in her presence. Yet as soon as she was alone it was there, pervading the closed little shop. By letting Mr. Earlforward out she had let the enigma in; she had relocked the door too late. She stood forlorn, apprehensive, and pathetically undecided in the middle of the shop, and gazed round at the miserable contents of the shop with a dismayed disillusion. Brightness had fallen from her. Impossible to see in her now the woman whose abundant attractive vitality had vitalized Mr. Earlforward into a new and exalted frame of mind!
She had married, raising herself somewhat, in her middle twenties, a clerk of works, popular not only with architects, but with contractors. Mr. Arb had been clerk of works to some of the very biggest erections of the century. His vocation carried him here and there—wherever a large building was being put up; it might be a provincial town hall, or a block of offices in London, or a huge hydro on some rural countryside, or an explosives factory in the middle of pasture land. And Mr. Arb’s jobs might last any length of time, from six months to three or four years. Consequently he had had no fixed residence. As there were no children his wife would always go about with him, and they would live in furnished rooms. This arrangement was cheaper than keeping a permanent home in London, and much more cheerful and stimulating. For Mr. Arb it had the advantages (with the disadvantages) of living with a wife whose sole genuine interest, hobby, and solicitude was her husband; all Mrs. Arb’s other social relations were bound to be transitory and lukewarm. When Mr. Arb died he left a sum of money surprisingly large in view of the fact that clerks of works do not receive high salaries. Architects, hearing of the nice comfortable fortune, were more surprised than contractors. A clerk of works has great power. A clerk
