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Updated: June 3, 2025
Haim was a different woman for him now that he had carried her upstairs and laid her all limp and girlish on the solemn conjugal bed! He felt quite sure that old Haim was incapable of washing-up.
George saw a new and unsuspected Mr. Haim. He was impressed. And he was glad that he had never broken the office tradition of treating Mr. Haim with a respect not usually accorded to factotums. He saw a, property-owner, a tax-payer, and a human being behind the spectacles of the shuffling, rather shabby, ceremonious familiar that pervaded those rooms daily from before ten till after six.
Haim for the installation of electricity. Fancy oil-lamps in the middle of London in the twentieth century! Shocks were waiting in George's mind for Mr. Haim. He intended, if he could, to get the room on the first floor, empty since the departure of Marguerite, and to use it for a bedroom, while keeping the ground-floor room exclusively for work and society.
He had possessed many such books. But it had never occurred to him that the gay bindings of them were each the result of individual human thought and labour. He pulled at his cigarette. There was a sound of pushing and rattling outside. "What's that?" exclaimed Mr. Haim. "It's the area door. I bolted it. I dare say it's Mrs. Lobley," said the girl indifferently. Mr. Haim moved sharply.
A ground-floor bedroom would have been unthinkable at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat.... Moreover, the idea had piquancy. The bedroom was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe it had a corner curtained off with cretonne. "A good-sized room," said Mr. Haim. "Very," said George. "Two windows, too, like the drawing-room."
"I know it's not a crime," said Agg sharply. "And nobody wants to stop people from falling in love. If Mr. Haim chooses to go mad about a charwoman, when his wife, and such a wife, 's been dead barely three years, that's his concern. It's true the lady isn't much more than half his age, and that the whole business would be screamingly funny if it wasn't disgusting; but still he's a free agent.
The affair would positively cause a sensation. He was about to begin, taking the risks of premature discovery, when he heard a noise above. It was Mr. Haim at last descending the stairs to the ground floor. George started. He had been alone in the lower parts of the house for a period which seemed long. Haim had become for him the abode of mystery.
This view, indeed, was widespread in the arcana of the architectural world. George had gradually grown certain of victory. And yet, at Mr. Haim's words, his hopes sank horribly away. "Have we won?" he asked sharply. "That I can't say, Mr. Cannon," answered Haim. "Well, then, how do you know he's heard? Has he told you?" "No," said the factotum mysteriously. "But I think he's heard."
"You could have your choice of ground floor or first floor," said Mr. Haim confidentially, still on the landing. He moved the lamp about, and the shadows moved accordingly on the stairs. "Oh, I don't mind in the least," George answered. "Whichever would suit you best." "We could give you breakfast, and use of sitting-room," Mr. Haim proceeded in a low tone. "But no other meals."
"And do you mean to say she'd never met you before?" exclaimed Mr. Haim. "Never in this world!" Mr. Prince remarked calmly: "You must have had a very considerable effect on her then." His eyes twinkled. George flushed slightly. The idea had already presented itself to him with great force. "Oh no!" He negligently pooh-poohed it.
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