"Could you let me have sixpence, sir?" Elsie meekly asked, coming to the point of her remark concerning money.
"Sixpence? What do you want sixpence for? You surely aren't thinking of buying food to-night!" Mr. Earlforward, who had been lying on his right side, turned with a nervous movement on to his back and frowned at Elsie.
"I wanted it to give to Mrs. Perkins's boy in the Square to take your letter down to missis at the hospital." In spite of herself she felt guilty of a betrayal of Mr. Earlforward's financial interests.
"What next?" he said firmly. "You must run down with it yourself. Won't take you long. I shall be all right."
"I don't like leaving you, sir. That's all."
"You get off with it at once, my girl."
She was reduced to the servant again, she who had just been at the high level of a confidante. The invalid turned again to his right side and pushed his nose into the pillow, shutting his eyes to indicate that he had had enough of words and desired to sleep. His keys were on the chest of drawers and several other things, including three toothpicks, but not money. He seldom went to bed with money in his pockets.
Elsie, with a swift gesture, silently picked up the bunch of keys and left the room, a criminal; she had no intention of taking the letter to the hospital herself. She went downstairs quite cheerful; she still felt happier because she had been smiling and benevolent and yielding after her mood of revolt, and because the letter to Mrs. Earlforward was her own idea. In the office she knelt in front of Mr. Earlforward's safe. No fear accompanied the sense of power which she felt. There was nobody to spy upon her, to order her to do one thing, to forbid her to do another. Her omnipotence outside the bedroom could not be disputed.
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.