III
THE MESSAGE TO VIOLET
"I'm raging in my heart! I'm raging in my heart!" Elsie said to herself. "It makes me gnash my teeth!" And she did gnash her teeth all alone in the steadily darkening shop. "I'm that ashamed!" she said out loud.
The origin of her expostulation was Mr. Earlforward's obstinacy. She was humiliated on his behalf by his stupidity, and on her own behalf by her failure to get him to the hospital. The incident would certainly become common knowledge, and ignominy would fall upon T. T. Riceyman's. What preoccupied her was less the danger to her employer's health, and perhaps life, than the moral and social aspects of the matter. She would have liked to give her master a good shaking. She was losing her fear of the dread Mr. Earlforward; she was freely criticizing and condemning him, and, indeed, was almost ready to execute him—she who, under the continuous suggestion of Mrs. Earlforward, had hitherto fatalistically and uncritically accepted his decrees and decisions as the decrees and decisions of Almighty God. He had argued with her; he had defended himself against her; he had shown tiny glimpses of an apprehension that she might somehow be capable of forcing him to go to the hospital against his will. He had lifted her to be nearly equal with him. The relations between them could never be the same again. Elsie had a kind of intoxication.
"Well, anyway, something's got to be done," she said, with a violent gesture.
She rushed for her tools and utensils, she found a rough apron and tied it tightly with a hard, viciously-drawn knot over her white one, and began to clean the shop. If seen by nobody else the shop was seen by her, and she could no longer stand the sight of its filth. She ranged about like a beast of prey. She picked up the letters from the floor and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk. And at that moment a postman outside inconsiderately dropped several more letters through the flap. "Of course you would!" Elsie angrily protested, and picked them up and ran with them into the office and dashed them on to the desk.
"Oh! This is no use!" she muttered, after a minute or so of sweeping in the gloom, and she turned on the electric lights. Only two sound lamps were now left in the shop, and one in the office. She turned them all on—the one in the office from sheer naughtiness. "I'll see about his electric light!" she said to herself. "I'll burn his electric light for him—see if I don't!" She was punishing him as she cleaned the shop with an energy and a thoroughness unexampled in the annals of charing. This was the same woman who a short while ago had trembled because she had eaten a bit of raw bacon without authority. And when, having finished the shop, she assaulted the office, she drowned the floor in dust-laying water, and she rubbed his desk and especially his safe with a ferocity calculated to flay them. For there was not only his obstinacy and his stupidity—there was his brutality. "Then more fool her!" he had exclaimed about his wife, soon to be martyrized by an "operation." And he had said nothing else.
Then Elsie began to think of Dr. Raste. Of course, she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. On the pavement in front of his house he had been very harsh, with his rules about what he ought to do and what he ought not to do. And before that, long before that, when he had given a careless look at her in the house in Riceyman Square upon the occasion of Joe's attack on her—well, he hadn't seemed very human. A finicking sort of man—that was what she called him—stand-offish, stony. And yet he had got out of bed in the middle of the night for the old miser, and he must have known he could never screw much money out of him. And fancy the doctor coming with a taxi himself to take away the master! Elsie had never heard of such a thing. And him taking the mistress instead! It was wonderful. And still more wonderful was the arrival of his little girl—a little queen she was, and knew her way about. And he'd arranged things at the hospital, too. (Oh! As she reflected, her humiliation at the failure to "manage" Mr. Earlforward was intensified. She could scarcely bear to think of it.) No doubt at all she had been mistaken about Dr. Raste. Joe had always praised Dr. Raste, and she had been putting Joe down for a simpleton, as indeed he was; but in this matter Joe had been right and she wrong. In repentance, or in penance, she extinguished the two lights in the shop, which she was not using; her mind worked in odd ways, but it had practical logic. The cleaning done, she doffed the rough apron.
She was somewhat out of breath, and she seated herself in the master's chair at his desk. An audacious proceeding, but who could say her nay? She looked startlingly out of place in the sacred chair as she gazed absently at the sacred desk. The mere fact that nobody could say her nay filled her with sadness. Tragedy pressed down upon her. Life was incomprehensible, and she saw no relief anywhere in the world. That man upstairs might be dying, probably was dying. And no one knew what was his disease, and no one could help him without his permission. He lay over the shop-ceiling there, and there was nothing to be done. As for mistress, the case of her mistress touched her even more closely. Mistress was a woman, and she was a woman. She had known a dozen such cases. Women fought their invisible enemy for a time. Then they dropped, and they were swept off to a hospital, and the next thing you heard they were dead.... Mrs. Earlforward alone in a hospital—all rules and regulations! And her husband very ill in bed at home here! Nobody to say a word to Mrs. Earlforward about home, and she fretting her heart away because of master, and the operation to-morrow morning and all! He was very ill, and people were often queer while they were ill. They weren't rightly responsible; you couldn't really blame them, could you? He must be terribly worried about everything. It was a pity he was obstinate, but there you were. Elsie was overwhelmed with affliction, misery, anguish. Her features were most painfully decomposed under the lamp.
But when Mr. Earlforward, answering her tap at the bedroom-door, roused himself to make a fresh and more desperate defence against a powerful antagonist who was determined to force him to act contrary to his inclination and his judgment, he saw, as soon as his eyes had recovered from the dazzle of the sudden light, a smiling, kind and acquiescent face. His relief was intense, and it flowered into gratitude. He thought: "She promised she would never desert me, and she won't." He was weak from his malady and from lack of nourishment; he was in pain; he had convinced himself that he was better, but he could not deny that he was still very ill—and Elsie was all he had. She could make his existence heaven or hell; he perceived that she meant to make it as nearly heaven as she could. She was not going to bully him. She had no intention of disputing his decision about the hospital business. She had accepted her moral defeat, and accepted it without reserve and without ill will. She was bringing liquid food for him, in an attractive white basin. He had, as usual, little desire for food, but the sight of the basin and the gleaming spoon on the old lacquer tray tempted him, and he reflected that even an abortive attempt at a meal would provide a change in the awful monotony of his day. Moreover, he wanted to oblige her.