Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/71

Rh “Come,” said Mr. Paine. “Let me help you in with the luggage; then I must leave you. People are taking a greater interest in the proceedings than is altogether desirable. You may find them a nuisance if you don’t look out.”

The crowd was being reinforced by children of an older growth. Loiterers were stopping to stare. People were coming out of their houses. As Mr. Paine said, their interest was becoming too demonstrative. He helped the cabman to get our boxes into the passage. Then he went. We shut the door after him in the faces of the crowd. Emily and I were left alone.

It was an odd sensation which I felt during those first few moments in which I realised that she and I were alone in my Uncle Benjamin’s old house. I was conscious of a foolish desire to call the crowd to keep us company. Emily Purvis was hardly the kind of girl I should myself have chosen to be my sole companion in a tight place; and I had a kind of feeling that before very long it might turn out that I was in a tight place now.

It had all come on me so suddenly. More things had happened in a few hours than in all my life before. Yesterday I had thought myself a fixture at Cardew & Slaughter’s; with marriage with Tom in the far-off distance; when the skies had fallen; or he had become a shopwalker and I a buyer; or we had saved up enough to start a small shop of our own. Now, Cardew & Slaughter’s had gone from me for ever. So far as money went I was free to marry Tom next week. But there was this horrid house—already I was calling it horrid—and my uncle’s absurd conditions. If I was to observe them during the rest of my life I might as well write myself a nun at once, and worse. Better Cardew & Slaughter’s—or anything.

We could hear the sound of traffic and voices in the street. Within the house all was still. There was no window over the door. In the passage it was so dark