Riceyman Steps: A Novel

by Arnold Bennett

The Reverend Augustus Earlforward, a Wesleyan Methodist missionary, home for a holiday from his labours in the West Indies, and brother of the deceased, found himself in a moment extremely famous. He had nearly missed the boat at Kingston, Jamaica, and he saw the hand of Providence in the fact that he had not missed it. He had not met his younger brother for over thirty years, nor heard from him; did not even know his address; had scarcely thought of trying to hunt him up. And then at tea in the Thackeray Hotel, Bloomsbury, his stern eyes had seen the name of Earlforward written large in a newspaper. The affair was the most marvellous event, the most marvellous coincidence, of his long and honourable career. Wisely he flew to a solicitor. He caused himself to be represented at the inquest. He had reached England in a critical mood, for, like many colonials, he suspected that all was not well with the blundering and decadent old country. And the revelations of life in Clerkenwell richly confirmed his suspicions, which did not surprise him, because much commerce with negroes had firmly established in his mind the conviction that he could never be wrong. From the start he had his ideas about Elsie, the servant-girl asleep with a young man in her bedroom. They were not nice ideas, but it is to be remembered that he was taking a holiday from the preaching and practice of Christian charity. His legal representative put strange questions to Elsie at the inquest (during which it was testified, after post-mortem, that Henry had died of a cancer at the junction of the gullet and the cardiac end of the stomach), and these questions were reinforced by the natural cynicism and incredulity of the coroner. Elsie was saved from opprobrium by Dr. Raste's statement that she had called him in to the young man. Elsie indeed was cheered by her inflamed friends as she left the court. She said never a word about the coroner or the missionary afterwards, and, inexcusably, she never forgave either of them. But the missionary forgave Elsie and permitted her and the sick young man to remain in the house. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Earlforward had made a will, and the missionary was put into a good humour by the proof that the wealthy Violet had left no next-of-kin. Thus the whole of her property, in addition to the whole of Henry's, went to Augustus, whereas if Violet had had next-of-kin Augustus would have got only half of Violet's property.

Clerkenwell expected that the world-glory of the Steps would continue indefinitely; but it withered as quickly as it had flowered, and by the afternoon of the morrow of the inquest it had utterly died. The joint funeral of the Earlforwards did not receive a line in the daily press. Nevertheless it constituted a great spectacle in King's Cross Road—not by reason of its intrinsic grandeur (for it fell short of Henry's conception of the obsequies which he would bestow on his wife), but by reason of the vast multitude of sightseers and followers.

The Reverend Augustus, heir to a very comfortable competency unwittingly amassed for him by the devices of Mr. Arb the clerk of works, the prudent policy of Mr. Earlforward and the imitativeness of Violet, found himself seriously inconvenienced for ready cash, because before he could touch the heritage he had to fulfil all sorts of expensive and tedious formalities and tiresomely to prove certain facts which he deemed to be self-evident—as, for instance, that he himself was legitimate. He saw no end to the business, and he cabled to the Connexional authorities in Jamaica that he should take extra leave. He did not ask for extra leave; in his quality of a rich man he merely took it, and heavenly propaganda had to be postponed. The phrasing of that cable was one of his compensations in a trying ordeal.

He had various other compensations, of which the chief was undoubtedly the status of landlord with unoccupied property at his disposition. Not only all Clerkenwell, but apparently all London, learnt in a few hours that he had this status. Scores of people, rendered desperate by the house-famine, telegraphed to him; many scores of people wrote to him; and some dozens personally called upon him at his hotel, and they all supplicated him to do them the great favour of letting to them the T. T. Riceyman premises on lease at a high rent. A few desired to buy the property. The demand was so intense and widespread as to induce in Augustus the belief that he was a potential benefactor of mankind. Preferring to enjoy the fruits of riches without being troubled by the more irksome responsibilities thereof, he decided to sell and not to let. And he entered into a contract for sale to Mr. Belrose. He chose Mr. Belrose because Mr. Belrose and all his women were Wesleyan Methodists, and also perhaps because Mr. Belrose did not haggle and was ready and anxious to complete the transaction, and, indeed, paid a substantial deposit before the legal formalities of Augustus' title to the property were finished.

Thenceforward event succeeded event with increasing rapidity. The entire stock of books was sold by private treaty to a dealer in Charing Cross Road, who swallowed it up and digested it with gigantic ease. The books went away quietly enough in vans. Then the furniture and the clothes were sold (including Mr. Earlforward's virgin suits and shirts) to another sort of dealer in Islington. And a pantechnicon came for the furniture, etc., including the safe and the satin shoe, and it obtained permission from the highways authorities to pass over the pavement and stand on the flagstones of the Steps at the shop-door. And furniture was swept into it almost like leaves swept by the wind. And on that afternoon Mr. Belrose arrived from "across" with a group of shop-fitting and decorating contractors, and in the emptying interiors of the home and amid the flight of pieces of furniture Mr. Belrose discussed with the experts what he should do, and at what cost, to annihilate the very memory of T. T. Riceyman's by means of improvements, fresh dispositions, and paint.

Idlers sauntered about watching the gorging of the pantechnicon and the erasing of T. T. Riceyman's from the Steps. And what occupied their minds was not the disappearance of every trace of the sojourn on earth of Henry and Violet Earlforward, but the conquering progress of that powerful and prosperous personage, Charles Belrose, who was going to have two shops, and who would without doubt make them both pay handsomely. Henry and Violet might never have lived. They were almost equally strangers to the Reverend Augustus, who, moreover, was lying somewhat ill at his hotel—result of the strain of inheriting. Violet had always been regarded as a foreigner by the district; she had had no roots there. And as for Henry, though he was not a foreigner but of the true ancient blood of Clerkenwell, and though the tale of his riches commanded respect, he had never won affection, and was classed sardonically as an oddity, which designation would have puzzled and annoyed him considerably.

Violet and Henry did, however, survive in one place, Elsie's heart. She arrived now in the Steps, dressed in mourning—new black frock, new black hat, the old black coat, and black gloves. She had bought mourning from a sense of duty and propriety. She had not wished to incur the expense, but conscience forced her to incur the expense. She was carrying a shabby grip-bag, which seemed rather heavy for her, and she was rather flushed and breathless from exercise of an unaccustomed sort. A dowdy, over-plump figure, whom nobody would have looked twice at. A simple, heavy face, common except for the eyes and lips; with a harassed look; fatigued also. She had been out nearly all day. She pretended not to notice it, but the sight of the formidable pantechnicon, squatted in the Steps, brought moisture into her eyes.

She sturdily entered the shop, which, Charles Belrose and his company of renovators having left, was empty save for one or two pieces of furniture waiting their proper niches in the pantechnicon. A man was pulling down the shelves and thus destroying the bays. Dead planks which had once been living, burden-bearing shelves, were stacked in a pile along one wall. She had to wait at the foot of the stairs while a section of Violet's wardrobe awkwardly descended in the hairy arms of two Samsons. Then she went up, and on the first floor peeped into all the rooms one after another; they were scenes of confusion, dirt, dust, higgle-de-piggledyness; difficult to believe that they had ever made part of a home, been regularly cleaned, watched over like helpless children incapable of taking care of themselves. She lugged the grip-bag up the second flight, and went into the spare-room, which was quite empty, stripped to the soiled and damaged walls—even the plant-pots were gone from the window-sills; and she went into the kitchen, where the tap kept guard with its eternal drip-drip over perfect desolation.

At last she went into her bedroom, which by a magic ukase from on high in the Thackeray Hotel had been preserved from the sack. A fire was cheerfully burning; all was as usual to the casual glance, but the shut drawers were empty, and Elsie's box and umbrella had gone back to Riceyman Square, where she had been sleeping since the funeral. Joe was sufficiently recovered to sleep alone in the house, and had had no objection to doing so. Joe, fully dressed for the grand exodus, sat waiting on the sole chair. He smiled. Dropping the bag, she smiled. They kissed. With his limited but imaginative intelligence Joe did not see that Elsie was merely Elsie. He saw within the ill-fitting mourning a saviour, a powerful protectress, a bright angel, a being different from, and superior to, any other being. They were dumb and happy in the island of homeliness around which swirled the tide of dissolution and change. Elsie picked up a piece of bread-and-butter from a plate and began to eat it.

"Didn't yer get any dinner?" Joe asked anxiously. She nodded, and the nod was a lie.