Part 20

"My dear Mrs. Prentice," said the guest, calmly and philosophically, "the town that you and I loved has gone. It was inevitable--one can't put back the clock. Time won't stand still for us."

"No, but they're making the new town so ugly, so vulgar. Whenever they pull down one of the dear old houses, they do build such gimcrack monstrosities."

"I fancy," said Mrs. Marsden, "that the distance from London decided our destiny. It was just far enough off to reproduce and copy the metropolis. Nowadays, the little places that remain unchanged are all close to the suburban boundary."

When she talked in this style, Prentice thought how effectually she gave the lie to people who said of her, that she had failed because she lacked the faculty of appreciating altered conditions.

"Did you happen," she asked him, "to read the report of the general meeting of the railway company?"

"No--I don't think I did."

"The chairman mentioned Mallingbridge."

"What did he say about it?"

"He said that they might before long have to consider the propriety of building a new station, and putting it on another site."

"Why should they do that?"

"Why?" And again Mrs. Marsden smiled. "Why indeed? It set me thinking--and I read the speech carefully. Later on, the chairman spoke of the scheme for moving their carriage and engine works out of the London area. Well, I put those two hints together; and this is what I made of them. I believe that the company intend at last to develop all that land of theirs--the fields by the river,--and I prophesy that within three years they'll have built the new carriage works there."

She said this exactly as she used to say those luminously clever things that he remembered in the past. He listened wonderingly and admiringly.

But when the ladies left him alone to smoke his cigar or finish the wine that the guest had neglected, he sighed. She could give these flashes of the old logic and insight; she could talk so wisely about matters that in no way concerned her; but in the one great matter of her own life, where common sense was most desperately required, she had behaved like a lunatic.

He let his cigar go out, and he could not drink any more wine. Rain was pattering on the windows, and the wind moaned round the house--a sad dark night. He rang the bell, and told the servant to order a fly for Mrs. Marsden at a quarter to ten.

The fly took her home comfortably; and when she alighted at the bottom of St. Saviour's Court and offered the driver something more than his fare, he refused it.

"Mr. Prentice paid me, ma'am."

"Oh!... Then you must accept this shilling for yourself."

"No, ma'am. Mr. Prentice tipped me. Good-night, ma'am."

XXVI

Enid was free. The farmhouse stood empty, with the ivy hanging in festoons and long streamers about the windows, the grass growing rank and strong over the carriage drive, and a board at the gate offering this eligible modernised residence to be let on lease. Its sometime mistress had gone with her little daughter to the seaside for eight or ten months. After her stay at Eastbourne she would return to Mallingbridge, and take furnished apartments--or perhaps rent one of the tiny new villas on the Linkfield Road. She wished to be near her mother, and she apologized now for leaving Mrs. Marsden quite alone during so many months; but, as she explained, Jane needed sea air.

"Never mind about me," said Mrs. Marsden. "Only the child matters. Build up her health. Make her strong. I shall do very well--though of course I shall miss you both."

She was getting accustomed to solitude and silence. Truly she had never been so entirely isolated and lonely as now. In the far-off days when Enid used by her absence to produce a wide-spreading sense of loss, there had been the work and bustle of the thriving shop to counteract the void and quiet of the house. And there had been Yates. Now there was nobody but the plain-faced grim-mannered Eliza, who had become the one general-servant of the broken home.

Mr. Marsden still lunched and dined at the house, but he was never there for breakfast. He did not go upstairs to his bedroom and dressing-room once in a week. Sometimes for a fortnight he and his wife did not meet at meals. His voracious appetite manifested itself intermittently; there were days on which he gorged like a boa-constrictor, and others on which he felt disinclined to eat at all. Then he required Eliza to tempt him with savoury highly-spiced food, or to devise some dainty surprise which would stimulate his jaded fancy and woo him to a condescending patronage. He would toy with a bird--or a couple of dozen oysters--or a bit of pickled mackerel. Now and then, after he had been drinking more heavily than usual, he would himself inspire Eliza.

"Eliza, I can't touch all that muck;" and he pointed with a slightly tremulous hand at the dinner table. "But I believe I could do with just a simple hunk of bread and cheese, and a quart of stout. Run out and get some stout--get two or three bottles, with the screw tops. You know, the large bottles."

Then perhaps he would find eventually that this queer dinner-menu was a false inspiration. The bread and cheese were more than he could grapple with--and he asked for something else to assist the stout.

In a word, he was rather troublesome about his meals; and Mrs. Marsden fell into the habit of taking her scanty refreshment at irregular hours. He did not upbraid her for keeping out of his way. Eliza looked after him in a satisfactory manner; and he never upset or frightened Eliza. Grim Eliza ran no risk of receiving undesired attentions.

Everybody knew that Mr. Marsden often drank too much. One night when he failed to appear at dinner time, he was found--not by Eliza but by the Borough constabulary--in a state of total intoxication on the pavement outside the Dolphin.

After this regrettable incident the Dolphin dismissed him and his barmaid together. The attendance at the saloon had been dropping off. A siren cannot draw custom, when you have a great hulking bully who sits in the corner and threatens to punch the head of every inoffensive moderate-sized gentleman upon whom the siren begins to exert her spell. The Dolphin was very glad to see the backs of Miss Ingram and her friend.

Miss Ingram secured an engagement at the bar of the Red Cow, and Mr. Marsden faithfully followed her thither. The Red Cow was the disreputable betting public-house of which the town council were so much ashamed; people went there to bet, and it was likely to lose its license; but Marsden was content to make it his temporary club, and indeed seemed to settle down there comfortably enough.

He still occasionally came to the shop. All eyes were averted when he swung one of the street doors and slouched in. He seemed to know and almost to admit that he was a disgrace and an eyesore, and though he scowled at the shop-walker swiftly dodging away and diving into the next department, he did not bellow a reprimand. He hurried up the shop; and it was only when he got behind the glass that he attempted to display anything like the old swagger and bluster.

"Well, Mears, what's the best news with you?... You all look as if you were starting for a funeral--as black as a lot of mutes. How's business?" And he began to whistle, or to rattle the bunch of duplicate shop-keys that he carried in his trousers pocket. "I say, Mears, old pal--I'm run dry. Can't you and the missus do an advance--something on account--however small--to keep me going?"

A few shillings were generally produced, and the advance was solemnly entered in the books, to the governor's name.

Then he nearly always announced that he had come to the shop for the purpose of keeping a business appointment.

"Look here. I'm expecting a gentleman. Show him straight in."

These gentlemen were more dreadful to look at than the governor himself. He gave appointments to most terrific blacklegs--the unwashed rabble of the Red Cow, book-makers and their clerks, race-course touts,--inviting them to the shop in order to establish his credit, and prove to these seedy wretches that he was veritably the Marsden of Thompson & Marsden's.

For such interviews he used to turn his wife out of the room. At a word she meekly left the American desk and walked out.

"That you, Rooney? Come into my office. Here I am, you see. Sit down."

The Red Cow gentlemen were overcome by the grandeur of Mr. Marsden in his own office; the size and magnificence of the establishment filled them with awe and envy; it surpassed belief.

"Blow me, but it's true," they said afterwards. "Every word what he told us is the Gospel truth. He's the boss of the whole show. I witnessed it with my own eyes."

Yet if his visitors had possessed real business acumen, the shop would have impressed them with anything but confidence.

To a trade expert one glance would have sufficed. The forlorn aspect of the ruined shop told the gloomy facts with unmistakable clearness. So few assistants, so pitiably few customers, such a beggarly array of goods! Those shelves have all been dressed with dummies; those rolls of rich silk are composed of a wooden block, some paper, and half a yard of soiled material; within those huge presses you will find only darkness. Emptiness, desolation, death!

And what could not be seen could readily be guessed. Behind the glass only two people--a man laboriously muddling with unfilled ledgers, a girl at a type-writing machine--only one type-writer, a sadly feeble clicking in the midst of vast unoccupied space; not a sound in the covered yard; no horses, no carts; no purchased goods to be handled in the immense packing rooms; no stock, no cash, no credit, no nothing!

When a customer appeared, the shop seemed to stir uneasily in the sleep that was so like death; a faint vibration disturbed the heavy atmosphere; shop-walkers flitted to and fro; assistants yawned and stretched themselves. What is it? Yes, it _is_ another customer.

"What can we show madam?"

"Well, I wanted--but really I think I've made a mistake--" and the stranger looked about her, and seemed perplexed. "My friends said it was in High Street--but I see this isn't it. Yes, I've made a mistake. Good morning."

"_Good_ morning, madam."

The bright spring sunshine pouring in at the windows lit up the threadbare, colourless matting, showed the dust that danced above the parquet after each footfall; but it could not reach the great mirror on the stairs. The mirrors were growing dimmer and dimmer. As the black figure passed and repassed, the first reflected Mrs. Marsden was scarcely less vague and unsubstantial than the line of Mrs. Marsdens walking by her side.

Mr. Mears and Miss Woolfrey, disconsolately pacing the lower and the upper floor, seemed like captains of a ship becalmed--like honest captains of a water-logged ship, feeling it tremble and shiver as it settled down beneath their feet, knowing that it was soon to sink, and thinking that they were ready to go down with it. When they paused in their rounds of inspection, it was because really there was nothing to inspect. They turned their heads and looked, from behind the dusty piles of carpets or the trays of fly-blown china, at the establishment over the way--looked from death to life; and for a few minutes watched the jostling crowd and the brilliant range of colours on the other side of the road.

No dust there. Here, it was impossible to prevent the dust. The dust-sheets were in tatters; the brooms and sprinklers were worn out; there were not enough hands to sweep and rub. Mears himself looked dusty.

And when the sunlight fell upon him, he looked very old, very grey, and rather shaky. He never blew out his cheeks or swished his coat-tails now. The voluminous frock-coat seemed several sizes too large for him; it was greasy at the elbows, and frayed at the cuffs. The salary of Mears was hopelessly in arrear. For a long time Mears, like the governor, had found himself obliged to crave for something on account--just to keep going with.

One sunny April day Marsden entered the shop about noon, went into the office; and, not discovering his wife there, ordered the type-writing girl to fetch her immediately.

"What is it, Richard?" said Mrs. Marsden, presently appearing.

"Oh, there you are--at last. You never seem to be in your right place when you're wanted. I've been waiting here five minutes--and not a soul on the lookout to receive people."

"I am sorry."

"Anybody could walk in from the street and march slap into this room, without being asked who he was and what his business was. And a nice idea it would give a stranger of our management."

"I am sorry. But was that all you had to say to me?"

"No. Look here," he went on grumblingly. "Bence, if you please, has asked me for an appointment."

"Will you see him?"

"Yes--I think so."

"Very good."

"Yes, I've told the little bounder I'll see him."

"Do you wish me to be present at the interview?"

"No--better not."

A quarter of an hour afterwards Mr. Archibald Bence was coming up the empty shop. It was years since he had crossed the threshold; and certainly his eyes were expert enough to see now, if he cared to look about him, the dire results of his implacable rivalry. But he showed nothing in his face: smugly self-possessed, smilingly imperturbable, he followed the shop-walker straight to the counting-house.

The shop-walker announced him at the door of the inner room, and he marched in. He bowed low, as Mrs. Marsden, with a slight inclination of the head, passed out. Then Marsden shut the door.

But upstairs and downstairs the dull air vibrated as if electric discharges were passing through it in all directions; the whole shop stirred and throbbed; the whispering assistants quivered. "Did you see him?" "I couldn't get a peep at him." "I just saw the top of his hat." Bence had come to call upon the governor. Bence was in the shop. That great man was behind their glass.

Soon they heard sounds of the noisy interview--at least, Marsden was making a lot of noise. The minutes seemed long; but there were only five or six of them before the counting-house doors opened and Bence reappeared. He was perfectly calm, talking quietly and politely, though the governor bellowed.

"All right, Mr. Marsden, don't excite yourself. I only asked a question."

"Yes, a blasted impertinent one."

"Well, no bones broken, anyhow," and Bence smiled.

"If you should ever change your mind--come over the road, and let me know."

"I'll see you damned first."

Nothing, however, could ruffle Bence.

"Just so. But, as I was saying, if you ever _should_ care to do business--well, I'm not far off. Good morning to you."

Mrs. Marsden, when she returned to the inner room, found her husband standing near the desk, sullenly scowling at the floor.

"I was a fool to swear at him. I ought to have kicked him down the shop.... Can you guess what he came about?"

"I'm not clever at guessing. I'll wait till you tell me."

"He wanted us to close more than half the shop, and sublet it to him for the remainder of the lease." And Marsden sullenly and growlingly described the details of this impudent proposal. Bence suggested that the yard and the new packing rooms could be used by him as a warehouse; that all departments to the west of the silk counter might be transferred to the eastern side; that he would build a party wall at his own expense, and use all this western block "for one thing or another." Bence's question in plain words therefore was, Would they now confess to the universe that their premises were about four times too big for their trade?

"Not to be thought of," said Mrs. Marsden.

"No. I suppose not;" and Marsden glanced at her furtively, and then rattled the keys in his pocket. "We won't think of it."

XXVII

Another month had gone, and the end of all things was approaching.

"Jane," said Marsden, "we're beat. We'd better own it. We are beat to the world. It's no good going on."

"What do you mean?"

It was a dull and depressing afternoon--the sky obscured by heavy clouds, a little rain falling at intervals,--so dark in the room behind the glass that Mrs. Marsden was compelled to switch on the electric light above the American desk. She had turned in her chair, and was watching her husband's face intently; and the light from the lamp showed that her own face had become extraordinarily pale.

"It's no good, Jane. You must see it just the same as I do. We're done--and the only thing is to consider how we are to escape a smash."

Then he told her that Bence had offered to buy them out. Bence was ready to swallow them whole. Bence was prepared to give them a fair price for their entire property--long lease of the premises, stock, fittings, assets, the complete bag of tricks. He would take it over as a still going concern, with all its debts and liabilities. If they accepted Bence's offer, they would merely have to put the money in their pockets, and could wash their hands of a bitterly bad job.

"Don't talk so loud. Someone may hear you."

"No," he said, "there's no one outside, except Miss O'Donnell; and you can hear her machine--so she can't be eavesdropping.... I'll give you my reasons for saying it's a fair price."

"Yes, please do.... You haven't mentioned the amount yet."

"I'm coming to it. I want to prepare your mind. Of course I don't know how it will strike you."...

"Go on, please."

"First of all, I'll say I'm certain it's more than we should get from anyone else. I've gone to the root of everything. I have worked it out with plain figures.... Well, then--Bence will give six thousand pounds."

"No, I won't accept the offer."

"It would be three thousand apiece."

"I refuse to agree to the sale."

"It will be ready money, you know--paid on the nail."

"Richard, I can't agree to it."

"Why not? Of course I know I can't jump you into it. I don't want to do so. I simply want to persuade you that it's our only course."

Then he began to argue and plead with her. He said that he considered it would be madness obstinately to decline such an opportunity, and she ought really to be grateful to him for cutting the knot of their difficulties. He explained that only two days after Bence's memorable visit, he had gone across the road and reopened negotiations on a wider scale. He owned that he had at first resented the approach of Bence as a gross insult; he had felt disposed to kick Bence; but _afterwards_, calmly thinking it over, he had come to the conclusion that Bence--"if properly, handled"--might eventually prove their best friend. In this softer, calmer mood, he had made a return call on Bence--had handled him magnificently, had bluffed him and jollied him, had slowly but surely screwed him up to make a splendid and a firm offer.

"But, Richard, supposing that we were to sell the business, what would happen to you?"

"I should go away--to California. I'm sick of this stinking town. It's played out for me. At Mallingbridge I'm a dead-beat--people don't believe in me--I've no real friends. But I should do all right out West--and I want a decent climate. Between you and me and the post, I funk another English winter."

"Do you mean that you want to desert me altogether?"

"Jane, what's the use of asking me that? You and I have got to the end of our tether, haven't we? What good can I do sticking here any longer? I can't help you--I can't help myself. We're done. You'd far wiser divide what we can grab from Bence, and let me go."

"But to a person of your tastes and habits, three thousand pounds is not an inexhaustible sum. Do you think that, as your entire capital, it would be enough for you?"

"Yes, I do," he said eagerly. "Life is cheaper out there. In that lovely climate one doesn't want to binge up. There aren't the same temptations. I should turn over a new leaf--put the brake on--make a fresh start."

"And should I never see you again?"

"Oh, I don't say that. No--of course I should come back. I don't see what real difference it would make to you. We're a semi-detached couple, as it is."

"Yes, but not quite detached."

"Well, you'd let me go on a little longer string. That's all about it;" and he laughed good-humouredly. He believed that he would soon overcome her opposition. "I never meant any total severance, you know. We should be like the swells--Mrs. Marsden is residing at Mallingbridge; Mr. Marsden has gone to the Pacific Coast for the winter. We'd put it in the paper, if you liked."

"I see that you are very keen to close with--with Mr. Bence's proposal."

"Yes, I am--and I honestly believe you ought to be just as keen."

And again he extolled his personal merit in screwing up the proposer. Bence had pointed out that if he quietly waited until Thompson & Marsden were forced as bankrupts to put up their shutters, he would buy all he wanted at a much lower price. The premises, and the premises only, were what Bence wanted. After a bankruptcy he could buy the lease at the market price, and not have to give a penny for anything else. Bence said his offer was extravagantly liberal; but he frankly admitted that he felt in a hurry to clear up the street, and make it neat and tidy. He would therefore fork out thus handsomely to avoid delay.

"He said we were doing the street _harm_, Jane. And, upon my word, I couldn't deny that. I've often told Mears we have got to look more like a funeral than anything else."

"And you wish us to be decently buried?"

He laughed and shrugged his shoulders in the utmost good-humour. He felt sure now that she would yield; and with increasing eagerness he urged her to adopt his views.

"Very well," she said at last. "It is your wish?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then on one condition," and she spoke in a hard, matter-of-fact voice,--"on _one_ condition, I'll consent."

"What's your condition?"

"When we wind up our business relations, we must wind up all our other relations.... It must be a total severance--I am using your own word--and no half measures. When you leave Mallingbridge you must leave it forever. You must undertake--bind yourself never to set foot in it again."

"Oh, I say."

"You must execute a deed of separation."

He seemed greatly surprised; and for a little while hesitated, as if unable to express his thoughts.

"Look here, Jane.... You're talking big, old lady. What next?... Deed of separation! That's a very large order."

"You are taking freedom for yourself. You must give me freedom."

"Oh, no, you overdo that line," he said slowly. "I told you I would come back--some day or other. Yet now you take up this high and mighty tone--as though I had given you the right to cut me adrift altogether."

"Ah! I understand. You thought you'd have _your_ three thousand to spend, and _my_ three thousand to fall back upon. Then again I refuse the offer."

"Don't be hasty--and don't impute bad motives where none exist. No, you have struck me all of a heap by what you demand. I wasn't prepared for it--and it wants a bit of thought, before I can say yes or no."

And he began to bargain about the deed of separation. He had seen an unexpected chance, and he meant to make the most of it.

"Let's be business-like, Jane. If I renounce all claims on you forever--if I agree to make a formal renunciation,--well, surely that's worth _something_ to you?"

"Do you mean, worth money? Are you asking me to pay you?"

"I want to start a new life out there--and I shall need all the money I can get. You told me so, yourself--three thou. is devilish little to face the world on."

"Yes," she said quietly, "and with another person dependent on you."

"What do you say?"

"I say, you are not going alone.... We must think of your companion, as well as of yourself."

"Jane, you're hard on me."

"Am I?"

And the bargaining went on.

Finally they came to terms. She was to give him half her share, in exchange for absolute freedom. He would thus have four thousand five hundred pounds as initial impetus for his new career.