Riceyman Steps

Arnold Bennett

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783748144304
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Narrativa storica

Riceyman Steps is a novel by British novelist Arnold Bennett, first published in 1923 and winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It follows a year in the life of Henry Earlforward, a miserly second-hand bookshop owner in the Clerkenwell area of London. (from wikipedia.org)

XLIV.

Mr. Earlforward woke up after what seemed to him a very long sleep, feeling appreciably better. He had less pain; at moments he had no pain. And his mind, he thought, was surprisingly clear and vigorous. He had ideas on all sorts of things. Most invalids got their perspective awry—he knew that—but his own perspective had remained absolutely true. Rising out of bed for a moment he found that he could stand without difficulty, which was yet another proof of his theory that people ate a vast deal too much. The doctor had been utterly wrong about him. The doctor had made a mystery about ordinary chronic indigestion. The present attack was passing, as the sufferer had always been convinced it would. A nice old mess of a complication they would have made of it at the hospital! Or more probably he would have been bundled out of the place with contumely as a malingering fraud! He straightened the bed a little, and then, slipping back into it with a certain eagerness, he began to concert plans, to reorganize and resume his existence.

The day was darkening. Four o'clock, perhaps. Elsie? Where was that girl? She ought to be coming. Had she got a bit above herself? Thought she was the boss of the whole place, no doubt, and could do as she chose! An excellent creature, trustworthy, devoted.... And yet—in some things they were all alike. Give them an inch and they'd take an ell. He must be after her. Now what was it he had noticed, or thought he had noticed, when he was last awake? Oh, yes! That was it. His keys. He had missed them from the top of the chest of drawers. He peered in the gloom. They were there right enough. Perhaps hidden before by something else. The room had been tidied, dusted, while he slept. He didn't quite care for that, but he supposed it couldn't be helped. Anyhow, it showed that she was not being utterly idle. Of course the girl was not going to bed properly, but she had ample opportunity to sleep. With the shop closed she had practically nothing to do....

"Fibroid growth." Fibroid—like fibre, of course. He scarcely understood how a growth could be like fibre; but it was a name, a definition, and therefore reassuring. Much better than "cancerous," at the worst! An entirely different thing from cancer! But he was dreadfully concerned, frightened, for Violet. If she died—not that it was conceivable—but if she died, what a blank! Sickening! No! He could not contemplate it. Yet simultaneously in his mind was a little elusive thought: as a widower, freed from the necessity of adapting himself to another, and of revealing to another to some extent his ideas, intentions, schemes—what freedom! The old freedom! And he would plunge into it as into an exquisite, warm bath, voluptuously. He would be more secretive, more self-centred, more prudent, more fixed in habit than ever! A great practical philosopher, yes! In no matter what event he would discover compensations. And there were still deeper depths in the fathomless pit of his busy mind, depths into which he himself would do no more than glance—rather scared.

Elsie came in and saw a sinister sick man, pale as the dying, shrunk by starvation, with glittering, suspicious little eyes.

"Oh! So you've come, miss!" He wished that he had not said "miss." It was a tiny pleasantry of reproof, but too familiar. Another inch, another ell!

"Why! You've been making your bed again!" she exclaimed.

But she exclaimed so nicely, so benevolently, that he could not take offence. And yet—might she not be condescending to him? Withal, he enjoyed her presence in the bedroom. Her youth, her reliability, her prettiness (he thought she was growing prettier and prettier every day—such dark eyes, such dark hair, such a curve of the lips), and her physical power and health! Her mere health seemed miraculous to him. Oh! She was a god-send. ... She had said nothing about Violet. Well, if she had had news she would have told him. He hesitated to mention Violet. He could wait till she began.

"I'll run and make you some food," she said.

"Here! Not so fast! Not so fast!" he stopped her.

He was about to give an order when, for the second time, he noticed that her apron was wet in several places.

"Why is your apron all wet?" he demanded sharply.

"Is it?" she faltered, looking down at it. "So it is! I've been doing things." (She appeared to have dropped the "sir" completely.)

The fact was that she had been sponging Joe.

Mr. Earlforward became suspicious. He suspected that she was wasting warm water.

"Why are you always running upstairs?" he asked in a curious tone.

"Running upstairs, sir?"

(Ha! "Sir." He was recovering his grip on her.)

She blushed red. She had something to hide. Hordes of suspicions thronged through his mind.

"Well, sir, I have to go to the kitchen."

"I don't hear you so often in the kitchen," said he drily.

It was true. And all footsteps in the kitchen could be heard overhead in the bedroom. He suspected that she was carrying on conversations from her own bedroom window with new-made friends in the yard of the next house or the next house but one, and giving away the secrets of the house. But he did not utter the suspicion; he kept it to himself for the present. Yes, they were all alike.

"You haven't inquired, Elsie, but I'm much better," he said.

"Oh! I can see you are, sir!" she responded brightly.

But whether she really thought so, or whether she was just humouring him, he could not tell.

"Yes. And I'm going to get up."

"Not to-day you aren't, sir," she burst out.

He said placidly:

"No. To-morrow morning. And I think I shall put on one of my new suits and a new shirt. I think it's about time. I don't want to get shabby. Just show them to me."

Elsie was evidently amazed at the suggestion. And he himself did not know why he had made it. But, at any rate, it was not a bad idea. He fancied that he might feel better in a brand new suit. He indicated the right drawers to her, and one by one she had to display on the bed the carefully preserved garments which he had bought for a song years ago and never persuaded himself into the extravagance of wearing. The bed was covered with new merchandise. He thought that he would have to wear the clothes some time, and might as well begin at once. It would be uneconomic to waste them, and worn or unworn they would go for far less than a song after his death. He must be sensible; he must keep his perspective in order. He regarded this decision to have out a new suit as a truly great feat of considered sagacity on the part of a sick man.

Elsie with extreme care restored all the virgin clothes to their drawers except one suit and one shirt, which for convenience she put separately into Mrs. Earlforward's wardrobe. As all the suits were the same and all the shirts were the same, it did not matter which suit and which shirt were selected. But this did not prevent him from choosing, and hesitating in his choice.

Elsie seemed to be alarmed by the scene—he could not understand why.

"Of course," he said, "being new they'll hang a bit looser on me than my old suit; that's all wrinkled up. I'm not quite so stout as I was, am I?"

Elsie turned round to him from the wardrobe with a nervous movement, and then quickly back again. The fading light glinted for a second on a tear-drop that ran down her cheek. This tear-drop annoyed Mr. Earlforward; he resented it, and was not in the least touched by it. He had not perceived the extraordinary pathos in the phrase "not quite so stout," coming from a man who had never been stout (or slim either), and who was now a stick, a skeleton; he thought she was merely crying because he had lost flesh. As if people weren't always either putting on flesh or losing it! As a fact, Elsie had not felt the pathos of the phrase either, and her tears had no connexion whatever with Mr. Earlforward's wasting away. Nor had they sprung from the still more tragic pathos of his caprice about a new suit. In depositing the chosen suit in Mrs. Earlforward's wardrobe Elsie had caught sight of the satin shoe which on the bridal night she had tied to the very bedstead whereon the husband was now lying alone. She thought of the husband lying alone and desperately ill and desperately determined not to be ill, and the wife far off in the hospital, and of her own helplessness, and she simply could not bear to look at the shabby old shoe—which some unknown girl had once worn in flashing pride. All the enigma of the universe was in that shoe, with its curved high heel perched lifeless on a mahogany tray of the everlasting wardrobe. Elsie had never heard of the enigma of the universe, but it was present with her in many hours of her existence.

Mr. Earlforward said suddenly:

"Was the operation going to be done this morning or this afternoon?" He knew that the operation had been fixed for the morning, but he had to account to Elsie for his apparent lack of curiosity.

"This morning, sir."

"We ought to be getting some news soon, then."

"Well, sir. That's just what I was wondering. I don't hardly think as they'll send up—not unless it was urgent. So I suppose it's gone off all right." A pause. "But we ought to know for certain, sir. I was thinking I could run out and get someone to go down and find out—I mean someone who would find out and tell us all about it—not a child. I dare say a shilling or two——"

With her experience Elsie ought not to have mentioned money, but she was rather distraught. The patient reacted instantly. It was evident to him that Elsie had old friends in the Square, or near by, upon whom she wanted to confer benefits through the medium of her employer's misfortunes. They were always bent on lining their pockets, those people were. He was not going to let them pick up shillings and florins as easily as all that. His shop was perforce closed; his business was decaying; his customers would transfer their custom to other shops; not a penny was coming in; communism was rife; the political and trade outlook was menacing in the extreme; there was no clear hope anywhere; he saw himself as an old man begging his bread. And the girl proposed gaily to scatter shillings over Riceyman Square for a perfectly unnecessary object! She had not reflected at all. They never did. They were always eager to spend other people's money. Not their own! Oh, no! He alone had kept a true perspective, and he would act according to his true perspective. He was as anxious as anybody for news of the result of the operation and Violet's condition; but he did not see the need to engage an army of special messengers for the collecting of news. An hour sooner or an hour later—what difference could it make? He would know soon enough, too soon if it was to be bad news; and if it was to be good news a little delay would only increase joy.... And, moreover, you would have thought that even the poorest and most rapacious persons would not expect money for services rendered in a great crisis to the sick and the bedridden.

"I see no reason for doing that," he said placidly and firmly. "Let me think now——"

"Shall I run down there myself? It won't take me long."

She was ready in the emergency, and in deference to his astounding whims, to take the fearful risks of leaving the two men alone together in the house. Suppose Joe should rise up violent? Suppose Mr. Earlforward should begin in his weakness to explore the house? He was already suspecting something; and she knew him for the most inquisitive being ever born. She trembled. Still, she was ready to go, and to run all the way there and all the way back.

"Oh, no!" he forbade positively. "That won't do at all." He was afraid to lose her. He, so seriously ill (he was now seriously ill again!), to be left by himself in the house! It was unthinkable. "Look here. Step across to Belrose's" (Belrose—the man who had purchased Violet's confectionery business). "I hear he's got the telephone now. Ask him to telephone for us to the hospital. Then we shall know at once."

"We don't do much with them," Elsie objected, diffident. The truth was that the Earlforward household bought practically nothing at Belrose's, Belrose's not being quite Violet's "sort of shop" under its new ownership.

Mr. Earlforward almost sat up in his protest against the horrible suggestion contained in Elsie's remark. What! Would Belrose say: "'No, you don't deal with me, and therefore I won't oblige you by telephoning to the hospital to find out whether Mrs. Earlforward is alive or dead"? A monstrous notion!

"Don't be silly," he chid her gravely. "Do as I tell you and run down at once."

"And would you like me to ask them to telephone for another doctor for you while I'm about it? There's Dr. Adhams, he's in Myddelton Square too. They do say he's very good."

"When I want another doctor I'll let you know, Elsie," said Mr. Earlforward with frigid calm. "There's a great deal too many doctors. What has Raste done for me, I should like to know?"

"You wouldn't let him do anything," said Elsie sharply.

He had never heard her speak with less benevolence. Of course he was entitled to give her a good dressing-down, and it might even be his duty to do so. But he lacked confidence in himself. Strange, but he was now in the last resort afraid of Elsie! She was like an amiable and tractable animal which astonishingly shows its teeth and growls.

"Leave the door open," he muttered.

As Elsie descended to the shop there was a peremptory and loud rat-tat, and then a tattoo on the glass of the shop door. It frightened her. She thought naturally of the possibility of bad news by special messenger or telegraph from the hospital. But Mrs. Perkins's boy Jerry was at the door. He wore his uniform, of which the dist...