“But yer master, Joe?”
“It was an old woman.”
“Wouldn’t she—?”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Joe roughly. “And another thing, I didn’t go back there either, afterwards.”
“Did ye leave yer things there?”
“Yes. A bag and some things. And I shan’t fetch it either.”
“I shall!” said Elsie resolutely. “I won’t let ’er have ’em. I shall tell her you was taken ill, and I shall bring ’em away.”
Joe offered no remark.
“But why did ye sell yer papers, Joe?”
“He give me four-and-six for ’em. I was on me uppers; he give me four-and-six, and then we went and had a meal after all that skilly and cocoa and dry bread. No good me going back. I’d left without notice, I had.”
“But why didn’t ye come to me straight, Joey?”
Joe didn’t answer. After all this inordinate loquacity of his, he had resumed his great silence.
Elsie still gazed at him. The candle light went down and up. A burst of heavy traffic shook the bed. And now Elsie had a desire to tell Joe all about her own story, all about Mr. Earlforward and the death of Mrs. Earlforward, and the troubles awaiting her in the morning. She wanted to be confidential, and she wanted to discuss with him a plan for putting him on his feet again after he was better—for she was sure she could restore his self-respect to him, and him to his proper position in the world. But he did not seem interested in anything, not even in herself. He was absorbed in his aches and pains and fever. And she was very tired. So, without moving her arms, she just laid her head on his breast, and was indignant against the whole of mankind on his behalf, and regarded her harsh, pitiless self as the author of all his misfortunes and loved him.
XII
Asleep
Mr. and Mrs. Belrose occupied a small bedroom at the top of their house. As for her sister and his sister, they fitted their amplitudes into some vague “somewhere else,” and those of the curious who in the way of business or otherwise knew how nearly the entire house was devoted to “wholesale,” wondered where the two sisters-in-law did in fact stow themselves. The servant slept out.
In the middle of the night Mrs. Belrose raised her magnificent form out of the overburdened bed and went to the window to look forth on the Steps.
“Charlie,” said she, coming back to the bed and shaking her husband. He awoke unwillingly and grunted, and muttered that she was taking cold; an absurd suggestion, as he knew well, for she never took cold, and it was inconceivable that she should take cold.
“That light’s still burning at T. T.’s—in the shop. I don’t like the look of it.”
She lit the room, and the fancies of night seemed to be dispelled by an onrush of realism, dailiness and sagacity. Mr. and Mrs. Belrose considered themselves to be two of the most sagacious and imperturbable persons that ever lived, and they probably were.
No circumstances were too much for their sagacity and their presence of mind. Each had complete confidence in the kindly but unsentimental horse sense of the other. Mrs. Belrose, despite her youngishness, was the more impressive. She it was who usually said the final word in shaping a policy; yet in her utterances there was an implication that Charles had a super-wisdom which she alone could inspire, and also that he, being a man, could do certain things that she, being a woman, was ever so slightly incapable of.
“I don’t like the look of it at all,” she said.
“Well, I don’t see we can do anything till morning,” said Charles. Not that he was allowing his judgment to be warped by the desire to sleep. No; he was being quite impartial.
“That girl’s got too much on her hands, looking after that funny old man all by herself, day and night. She isn’t a fool, far from it; but it’s too much for one girl.”
“You’d better go over, perhaps, and have a look at things.”
“I was thinking you’d go, Charlie.”
“But I can’t do anything if I do go. I can’t help the girl.”
“I’m afraid,” said the authoritative and sagacious wife simply.
“What of?” asked the wizened slip of a husband.
“Well, I don’t know; but I am. It’ll be better for you to go—anyway first. I could come afterwards. We can’t leave the girl in the lurch.”
Nevertheless Mrs. Belrose did know what she was afraid of and so did Mr. Belrose. She helped him to put on some clothes; it was a gesture of sympathy rather than of aid. And she exhorted him not to waken “those girls,” meaning her sister and his.
He went out, shivering. A fine night with a harsh wind moving dust from one part of the Steps to another. Nobody about. The church clock struck three. Mr. Belrose peered through the slit between the edge of the door-blind and the doorframe, but could see nothing except that a light was burning somewhere in the background. He rapped quietly and then loudly on the glass. No response. The explanation of the scene doubtless was that Elsie had come down into the shop on some errand and returned upstairs, having forgotten to extinguish the light. Mr. Belrose was very cold. He was about to leave the place and report to his wife when his hand discovered that the door was not fastened. (Elsie, in the perturbation caused by doing a kindness to the boy Jerry, had forgotten to secure it.) Mr. Belrose entered and saw Mr. Earlforward, wearing a smart new suit, moveless in a peculiar posture in his office-chair. He now knew more surely than before what his wife had been afraid of. But he had a very stout and stolid heart, and he advanced firmly into the office. A faint glow of red showed in the ash-strewn grate. The electric light descended in almost
