“You haven’t inquired, Elsie, but I’m much better,” he said.
“Oh! I can see you are, sir!” she responded brightly.
But whether she really thought so, or whether she was just humouring him, he could not tell.
“Yes. And I’m going to get up.”
“Not today you aren’t, sir,” she burst out.
He said placidly:
“No. Tomorrow morning. And I think I shall put on one of my new suits and a new shirt. I think it’s about time. I don’t want to get shabby. Just show them to me.”
Elsie was evidently amazed at the suggestion. And he himself did not know why he had made it. But, at any rate, it was not a bad idea. He fancied that he might feel better in a brand new suit. He indicated the right drawers to her, and one by one she had to display on the bed the carefully preserved garments which he had bought for a song years ago and never persuaded himself into the extravagance of wearing. The bed was covered with new merchandise. He thought that he would have to wear the clothes some time, and might as well begin at once. It would be uneconomic to waste them, and worn or unworn they would go for far less than a song after his death. He must be sensible; he must keep his perspective in order. He regarded this decision to have out a new suit as a truly great feat of considered sagacity on the part of a sick man.
Elsie with extreme care restored all the virgin clothes to their drawers except one suit and one shirt, which for convenience she put separately into Mrs. Earlforward’s wardrobe. As all the suits were the same and all the shirts were the same, it did not matter which suit and which shirt were selected. But this did not prevent him from choosing, and hesitating in his choice.
Elsie seemed to be alarmed by the scene—he could not understand why.
“Of course,” he said, “being new they’ll hang a bit looser on me than my old suit; that’s all wrinkled up. I’m not quite so stout as I was, am I?”
Elsie turned round to him from the wardrobe with a nervous movement, and then quickly back again. The fading light glinted for a second on a teardrop that ran down her cheek. This teardrop annoyed Mr. Earlforward; he resented it, and was not in the least touched by it. He had not perceived the extraordinary pathos in the phrase “not quite so stout,” coming from a man who had never been stout (or slim either), and who was now a stick, a skeleton; he thought she was merely crying because he had lost flesh. As if people weren’t always either putting on flesh or losing it! As a fact, Elsie had not felt the pathos of the phrase either, and her tears had no connection whatever with Mr. Earlforward’s wasting away. Nor had they sprung from the still more tragic pathos of his caprice about a new suit. In depositing the chosen suit in Mrs. Earlforward’s wardrobe Elsie had caught sight of the satin shoe which on the bridal night she had tied to the very bedstead whereon the husband was now lying alone. She thought of the husband lying alone and desperately ill and desperately determined not to be ill, and the wife far off in the hospital, and of her own helplessness, and she simply could not bear to look at the shabby old shoe—which some unknown girl had once worn in flashing pride. All the enigma of the universe was in that shoe, with its curved high heel perched lifeless on a mahogany tray of the everlasting wardrobe. Elsie had never heard of the enigma of the universe, but it was present with her in many hours of her existence.
Mr. Earlforward said suddenly:
“Was the operation going to be done this morning or this afternoon?” He knew that the operation had been fixed for the morning, but he had to account to Elsie for his apparent lack of curiosity.
“This morning, sir.”
“We ought to be getting some news soon, then.”
“Well, sir. That’s just what I was wondering. I don’t hardly think as they’ll send up—not unless it was urgent. So I suppose it’s gone off all right.” A pause. “But we ought to know for certain, sir. I was thinking I could run out and get someone to go down and find out—I mean someone who would find out and tell us all about it—not a child. I dare say a shilling or two—”
With her experience Elsie ought not to have mentioned money, but she was rather distraught. The patient reacted instantly. It was evident to him that Elsie had old friends in the Square, or near by, upon whom she wanted to confer benefits through the medium of her employer’s misfortunes. They were always bent on lining their pockets, those people were. He was not going to let them pick up shillings and florins as easily as all that. His shop was perforce closed; his business was decaying; his customers would transfer their custom to other shops; not a penny was coming in; communism was rife; the political and trade outlook was menacing in the extreme; there was no clear hope anywhere; he saw himself as an old man begging his bread. And the girl proposed gaily to scatter shillings over Riceyman Square for a perfectly unnecessary object! She had not reflected at all. They never did. They were always eager to spend other people’s money. Not their own! Oh, no! He alone had kept a true perspective, and he would act according to his true perspective. He was as anxious as anybody for news of the result of the operation and Violet’s condition; but he did not see the need to engage an army of special messengers
