Arnold Bennett

“ Make a tragedy because a man preferred not to eat a bit of steak for his tea! Absurd! Childish! Surely he had the right to refuse steak without being insulted, without being threatened with the destruction of his happiness! It was not as if he had forbidden his wife to eat steak. Thus did Violet try to nullify to herself the effect of her wild words in the dining-room and to create that which they had destroyed. Fortunately, Henry did not know that she had retired to bed, and so she could rise again without loss of dignity. ”

“ A lengthy perspective of the back yards of the houses in King's Cross Road stretched out before her; a pattern of dark walls—wall, yard, wall, yard, wall, yard—and the joint masonries of every pair of dwellings jutting out at regular intervals in back-rooms additional to the oblongs of the houses. The sky was clear, a full moon had dimmed the stars; and fine weather, which would have been a boon to the day, was being wasted on the unconscious night. The moonlight glinted here and there on window-glass. Every upper window marked a bedroom. And in every bedroom were souls awake or asleep. ”

“ Placidly he continued with his bread-and-margarine.
"Henry!" she admonished him.
"I've got indigestion already," said he.
Strange that such a simple remark should have achieved the crisis; but it did.
"Yes. That's right!" Violet exclaimed sharply, in rasping tones. "That's right! Tell me you've got indigestion. You never have indigestion. You never have had indigestion. And you know perfectly well it's only an excuse. And you think any excuse is good enough for your wife. She's only a blind fool. Believe anything, your wife will—if you say it! God Almighty to your wife, aren't you!" ”

“ Earlforward was still dealing with customers in the office; his voice, rather enfeebled, seemed blander than ever.
"I hope it will be fine for you," Violet called after Elsie at the shop-door. Wonderful, the implications in the tone of that briefly-expressed amiability! It was as if Violet had said: "I know you're up to something out of the ordinary. I don't know what it is, and I don't seek to inquire. I believe in people minding their own business. ”

“ Elsie heard a footfall on the stairs, and Mrs. Earlforward came with deliberation down to such light as there was, her fixed eyes glinting and blazing on the sinner submissive in disgrace. Elsie stood tremulous before those formidable eyes. She could scarcely believe that they were the same eyes which had melted in confidences to her on the previous morning. And they were not the same eyes. They were the eyes of an old woman with harsh, implacable features, petrified and incapable of mobility. ”

“ Her glance fell. She experienced a sensuous pleasure in the passionate resolution to be his disciple and lieutenant. When Elsie, celestially benevolent, appeared with a tray on the stairs, Violet seized her husband's arm to lead him to the back-room. And as she did so she bridled and slightly swayed her body, and gave a sidelong glance at Elsie as if saying: "I am his slave, but I own him, and he belongs to no woman but me."
"Elsie," she said sternly. "You'd better bring that last lot of books down again. Mr. Earlforward thinks they should stay where they were." ”

“ But Violet had humanized the long, narrow cubicle a little by means of polished utensils and white wood, and she had hung a tiny wire-cage larder outside the window, where it was the exasperation of foiled cats. The gas-ring remained, solitary cooker. She had not dared to suggest a small gas-stove or even an oil-stove, and two mere rings would not, in her opinion, have been much better than one. There were things she could dare and things she could not dare. For another example, she could not dare to bring in a plumber to cure the water-tap, which still ceaselessly dripped on to the sink. ”

“ The doctor looked at her, startled. It seemed to him that in some magic way she had vanquished the difficulties of a most formidable situation by merely accepting and facing them. She did not argue about them, complain about them, nor expatiate upon their enormity. She was ready to go on living and working without any fuss from one almost impossible moment to the next. During his career in Clerkenwell Dr. Raste had become a connoisseur of choice examples of practical philosophy, and none better than he could appreciate Elsie's attitude. ”

“ Elsie had completed her task and gone upstairs. Total darkness—for a few moments! Mrs. Arb felt Henry's rich lips on hers. She was sensible of the mystery of the overcrowded shop stretching from bay to bay in front of her to the gradually appearing yellow twilight from the gas- [Pg 85] lamp of Riceyman Steps. She abandoned herself, in an ecstasy that was perhaps less, perhaps more, than what is called happiness, to the agitating uncertainties of their joint future. Useless for her to recall to herself her mature years, her experience, her force, her sagacity. ”

“ Gently rubbing his little beard, he stood and gazed rather absently at a shelf of small paper-protected volumes, while Elsie waited with submission.
Silence within, but the dulled and still hard rumble of ceaseless motion beyond the book-screened windows! A spell! An enchantment upon these two human beings, both commonplace and both marvellous, bound together and yet incurious each of the other and incurious of the mysteries in which they and all their fellows lived! Mr. Earlforward never asked the meaning of life, for he had a lifelong ruling passion. ”

“ Raste, or anybody else, looking at the couple lying beneath Violet's splendid eiderdown (which still by contrast intensified the dowdiness and shabbiness of the rest of the room) would have seen merely a middle-aged man and a middle-aged woman with haggard faces worn by illness, fatigue, privations and fear. But Henry did not picture himself and Violet thus; nor Violet herself and Henry. Henry did not feel middle-aged. He did not feel himself to be any particular age. ”

“ At a quarter to twelve he had tried to fight Elsie. At twelve-thirty the meat-salesman had come home to sleep, and had had to listen to a loud sermon on the manners of the first-floor and his own wife's manners delivered from the top of the second-floor stairs. Subsequently he had had to listen to moans from the mistress of the first floor and the eternal coughing of the master of the first floor.... And all about nothing! Yet every one of the adults was well acquainted with the admirable text which exhorted Christians to bear one another's burdens. ”

“ Earlforward had been under the delusion of having driven a unique bargain with Elsie in the matter of wages. For he knew that the recognized monstrous rate was five shillings a day and food. And here this miraculous creature, so gentle, submissive and girlish, had beaten him by sixpence a half-day. What a woman! What a wife! She had every quality. He gloated over her.... He sat on the desk by her chair, boyishly to watch her girlishness. ”

“ The spinster on the second floor saw a magnificent opportunity for preaching from a point of vantage her views on the state of modern society. Two fathers, desperate with exasperation, but drawn by the mighty attraction of a good row, jumped murderous from their warm and fetid beds. Two half-clad figures appeared in the doorways of the ground-floor rooms and three on the stairs.
Elsie sat up, dazed, and then stood up, then sank limply down again. One mother smacked her child and a child which was not hers. The other mother protested furiously from the stairs. ”

“ So long as you do everything you want, and I do everything you want, it's all right. But if I suggest anything—look at you! I have to have my meals in my mantle because you grudge me a bit of fire! It isn't as if I didn't pay my share of everything. I pay my share right enough, and more—you see to that, trust you! But I have to catch my death of cold every day, because we're so poor, I suppose! Oh, yes! We haven't a penny in the world to bless ourselves with!"
Henry felt in his pockets, and then left the room in silence. Alone, Violet busily fed her angry resentment. ”