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Riceyman Steps

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<hr />[Pg 227] <h2>X</h2> <h3>DEPARTURE</h3> In the morning Dr. Raste, unusually interested in the psychological aspect of the Earlforward affair, arrived at about ten o'clock in a taxicab, prepared and well-braced to make good his word to Violet. He remembered vividly his own rather cocksure phrase: "We'll get him away all right to-morrow." He was tired and overstrung, and therefore inclined to be violent and hasty in endeavour. He had his private apprehensions. He asked the driver to wait, meaning to have Henry captive and downstairs in quite a few minutes. His tactic was to take the patient by storm. He had disorganized his day's work in order to deal with the matter, and for the maintenance of self-respect he was bound to deal with it effectively. Further, he had arranged by telephone for a bed at the hospital. The front of the shop dashed him. The shop had not been opened. The milk-can had not been brought within. There it stood, shockingly out of place at ten A.M., proof enough that something very strange had happened or was happening at T. T. Riceyman's. He tried to open the door; it was locked. Then he noisily shook the door, and he decided to adopt the more customary course of knocking. He knocked and knocked. Little Mr. Belrose, the proprietor of the confectioner's opposite, emerged to watch the proceedings with interest, and two other people from the houses farther along the steps also observed. Evidently Riceyman Steps was agog for strange and thrilling events. Dr. Raste grew self-conscious under the gaze of Clerkenwell. No view of the interior of the shop could be had through the book-[Pg 228]filled windows, and only a narrow slit of a view between the door-blind and the frame of the door. Dr. Raste peered through this and swore in a whisper. At length he saw Elsie approaching. "Isn't it about time you took your milk in?" he greeted her calmly, presenting her with the can when she opened the door. Elsie accepted the can in silence; the doctor entered the shop; Elsie shut and bolted the door. The morning's letters lay unheeded on the unswept floor at her feet. The doctor had the sensation of being imprisoned with her in the sombre and chilly shop. A feeling of calamity weighed upon him. The stairs in the thick gloom at the back of the shop seemed to be leading upwards to terrible affairs. He thought of the taximeter ticking away threepences. "Well?" he inquired impatiently of the still silent Elsie. "Well? How's he getting on?" Elsie answered: "Missis must have been took bad in the night, sir. When I came down this morning, she was lying on the sofa in the parlour, and I thought she was dead. Yes, I did, sir. She was that cold you wouldn't believe. Not a stitch on her but her night-things. And she was in a state, too!" "I hope you got her back to bed at once," said the doctor. "I got her up to my bed, sir, and I half-carried her. She wouldn't go to their bedroom for fear of frightening master, and him so bad, too!" "Of course, you couldn't send for me because you'd no one to send, had you?" The doctor began to move towards the stairs. "Oh, I could have sent someone, sir. There's several about here could have gone. But I understood you were coming, and I said to myself half an hour more or less, like, that can't make much difference. And missis didn't want me to send anyone else, either; she didn't want it to get about too much, sir. Not that that would have stopped me, sir. Soon as I see her really ill, I says I'm[Pg 229] responsible now, I says—of course, under you, sir, and I shouldn't have listened to her. No, sir." The doctor was very considerably impressed, and relieved, by Elsie's dignity, calm and power. An impassible common sense had come to life in the sealed house. She was tidy, too; no trace on her of a disturbed night and morning, and she was even wearing a clean apron. No wearisome lamentation about the shop having to be closed! Elsie had instinctively put the shop into its place of complete unimportance. As they passed the shut door of the principal bedroom the doctor, raising his eyebrows, gave an inquiring jerk. "I did knock, sir. There was no answer, so I took the liberty of looking in. He seemed to be asleep." "You're sure he was asleep?" "Well, sir," said Elsie, stolidly and yet startlingly, "he wasn't dead. I'll say that." They passed to the second floor. There lay the mistress on the servant's narrow bed, covered with Elsie's half-holiday garments on the top of the bedclothes. That Violet was extremely ill and in pain was obvious from the colours of her complexion and the sharp, defeated, appealing expression on her face. The doctor saw Elsie smile at her; it was a smile beaming out help and pure benevolence, and it actually brought some sort of a transient smiling response into the tragic features of the patient; it was one of the most wonderful things that the doctor had ever seen. Nobody could have guessed that only thirty-six hours before Elsie had been a thief convicted of stealing and eating raw bacon. And, indeed, the memory of the deplorable episode was erased as completely from Elsie's mind as from her mistress's. "I shall take you to the hospital at once, Mrs. Earlforward," the doctor said in his prim, gentle tone, after the briefest examination. He added rather abruptly: "I've got a taxi waiting. I think you've borne up marvellously." In a few moments he had changed his plans to meet the new developments, and he was now wonder[Pg 230]ing whether he might not have difficulty in securing a bed for Mrs. Earlforward. "I shall see properly to master, 'm," Elsie put in. "I mean if he doesn't go to the hospital himself." Violet nodded acquiescence. She did not want to waste her strength in speech, or she might have told them of Henry's promise to her to go into hospital. Moreover she was suffering too acutely to feel any strong interest in either Henry or anybody else. "We'll carry you to the cab," said the doctor, and to Elsie: "She must be dressed, somehow—doesn't matter how." Violet murmured: "I'd sooner walk to the cab, doctor, if you know what I mean. I can." "Well, if you can——" he concurred in order not to upset her. When the summary dressing was done, Elsie having made two journeys to her employer's bedroom to fetch garments and hat, the doctor said to her confidentially: "We shall want some money. Have you any? Where is the money kept?" Experience had taught him never to disburse money for patients; and he had a very clear vision of the threepences ticking up outside in King's Cross Road. "My purse. On chest of drawers," whispered Violet, who had heard. Elsie made a third journey to the state-bedroom. Oblivious of the proprieties, she had not knocked before, and she did not knock now. On the previous occasion Mr. Earlforward had merely watched her with apparently dazed, indifferent eyes. But the instant she picked up the purse from the chest of drawers he exclaimed: "Here! Where are you going with that purse?" "Missis sent me for it," Elsie replied. From prudence she would give him no more news than that of the situation. No knowing what he might attempt to do if he was fully apprised! Violet was carried downstairs and through the shop,[Pg 231] and at the shop door she was set on her insecure feet, and Dr. Raste held her while Elsie unbolted. And she managed to walk, under the curious glances of a few assembled quidnuncs, along the steps to the taxi, Dr. Raste on one side of her and Elsie on the other. She had foretold that the moment the doctor ordered her to the hospital she would go to the hospital. She had foretold true. She was gone. The taxi made a whir and moved. She was gone. "I'll call this afternoon!" the doctor shouted from the departing vehicle. In the shop again, the encouraging smile with which she had speeded her mistress still not yet expired from her round, fat face, Elsie picked up the milk-can. The letters on the floor were disdained. She thought of her presentiment of the previous evening but one: "This will be the last time I shall ever wheel in the bookstand." And she had a firm conviction that in that presentiment she had by some magical power seen acutely into the future. [Pg 232] [Pg 233] [Pg 234] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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