Part 23

"Yes. It always made me uncomfortable when she spoke like that--though I just laughed it off. Anyhow, it seemed to show how clear she saw through one."

"Yes, nothing escaped her."

"So I thought I knew what she was--but I never did really know what she was, till we came to fair handy grips over this.... Mr. Prentice, I flattered her--no go. I tried to bluff her--ditto. Then I sued to her for mercy. I said, 'Madam, I'm like a wounded man on a field of battle asking for a cup of water.' But she said, 'If I understand the position correctly, Mr. Bence, you are more like a dead man; and you ask to be brought to life again.'... And it was true. I was dead--down--done for....

"It was my brothers--God forgive them--who had frustrated me--not bad luck--or any faults of mine. Take, take, take--whatever my work produced, out it went.... Well then, I was what she described--lying at her feet, and praying for life. So I said I'd take it--on her own terms....

"But when it was over, oh, Mr. Prentice the relief! I had lit'rally come to life again. I was _safe_--with money behind me,--with _driving_ power behind me. I went home that night to Mrs. Bence and cried as if I'd been a baby--and after I'd had my cry, I _slept_. What's that proverb? Sleep, it is a blessed thing! I hadn't slept sound for years. Don't you see? I was certain we should go on all right now--now that the burden was on _her_ shoulders."

And then Bence had his idiosyncratic touch of self-pity.

"I don't know whether you were aware of it, Mr. Prentice--these things get about when one is more or less a public man,--but the incessant worry had given me kidney disease. Well,--will you believe it?--from that hour I got better. The doctors reported less,--less again,--and at last, not a trace of it. I was simply another man."

"But, Bence, my dear fellow, what fills me with such amazement and admiration is the rapidity of your success from that point. You seemed to be on the crest of the wave instantaneously."

"Ah! That was the magician's wand. Instead of having our earnings snatched out the moment they reached the till, the profits were being put back into the concern. I was working on a salary--a very handsome one--with my commission; and she never took out a penny more than was absolutely necessary. There was the whole difference--and it's magic in trade. I was given scope, capital, an easy road--with no blind turnings."

"But I suppose you did it all under her direction?"

"Well, I don't know how to answer that;" and Bence grinned, and twirled his moustache. "No. I suppose I ought to say no. I had full scope--and was never interfered with.... We used to meet at Hyde & Collins's; and I reported things--just reported them. She used to look at me in that inscrutable way of hers, and say, 'I can't advise. I have nothing to do with your business--beyond having my money in it: just as I might have it in any other form of investment. But speaking merely as an outsider, I think you are going on very nice. Go on just the same, Mr. Bence.' Sometimes she did drop a word. It was always light.... Oh, she's unique, Mr. Prentice--quite unique."

Bence grinned more broadly as he went on.

"Of course it was by her orders--or I ought to say, it was acting on a hint she let fall, that I made myself so popular with the authorities. You never came to one of my dinner-parties?... No, I did ask you; but you wouldn't come.... Well, you're acquainted with Mallingbridge oratory. After dinner, when the speeches began, they used to butter me up to the skies; and I used to tell them straight--though of course they couldn't see it--that I was only a figure-head, a dummy. 'Don't praise _me_,' I told 'em, 'I'm nobody--just the outward sign of the enterprise and spirit that lays behind me.' Yes, and I put it straighter than that sometimes--it tickled me to give 'em the truth almost in the plainest words.... And I knew there was no risk. _They_'d never tumble to it."

After this delightful conversation, Mr. Prentice went across the road again. He felt that he could not any longer refrain from calling upon Mrs. Marsden; and, as the afternoon was now well advanced, he thought that she might perhaps invite him to drink a cup of tea with her.

In St. Saviour's Court the house door stood open; men from Bence's Furniture department were busily delivering chairs and sofas; and the narrow passage was obstructed by further goods. Mr. Prentice heard a familiar voice issuing instructions with a sharp tone of command.

"This is for the top floor. Front bedroom. Take this up too--same room.... Who's that out there? Oh, is it you, Mr. Prentice?"

"What, Yates, you are soon on duty again."

Old Yates laughed and tossed her head. "Yes, sir, here I am.... That's for the top floor--back. Take it up steady, now."

"You seem to be refurnishing--and on a large scale."

"Oh, no," said Yates. "We're only putting things straight. We're expecting Mrs. Kenion and the young lady up from Eastbourne to-night--and it's a job to get the house ready in the time."

"Ah, then I am afraid visitors will hardly be welcome just now."

"No, sir, not ordinary visitors--but Mrs. Thompson never counted you as an ordinary visitor--did she, sir? I'll take on me to say _you_'ll be welcome to Mrs. Thompson. Please go upstairs, sir. She's in the dining-room."

And truly this visitor was welcomed most cordially.

"My _dear_ Mr. Prentice. How kind of you--how very kind of you to come! I have been wishing so to see you."

Yates without delay disengaged herself from the furniture men, and brought in tea. Then the hostess seated herself at the table, and insisted that the visitor should occupy the easiest of the new armchairs--and she smiled at him, she waited upon him, she made much of him; she lulled and soothed and charmed him, until he felt as if twenty years had rolled away, and he and she were back again in the happiest of the happy old days.

"I trust that dear Mrs. Prentice is well.... Ah, yes, it _is_ headachy weather, isn't it. I have ventured to send her a few flowers--and some peaches and grapes."

It seemed incredible. But she _looked_ younger--many years younger than when he had seen her in the shadow cast by his office wall less than a week ago. Her voice had something of the old resonance; she sat more upright; she carried her head better. She was still dressed in black; but this new costume was of fine material, fashionable cut, very becoming pattern; and it gave to its wearer a quiet importance and a sedate but opulent pomp. Very curious! It was as if all that impression of shabbiness, insignificance, and poverty had been caused merely by the shadow; and that as soon as she came out of the shadow into the sunlight, one saw her as she really was, and not as one had foolishly imagined her to be.

This thought was in the mind of Mr. Prentice while he listened to her pleasantly firm voice, and watched the play of light and life about her kind and friendly eyes. The shadow that had lain so heavy upon her was mercifully lifted. She had been a prisoner to the powers of darkness, and now the sunshine had set her free. This was really all that had happened.

"I am so particularly glad," she was saying, "that you came to-day, because I want your advice badly."

"It is very much at your service."

"Then do you think there would be any objection--would you consider it might seem bad taste if henceforth I were to resume my old name? I have an affection for the name of Thompson--though it isn't a very high-sounding one."

"I noticed that Yates called you Mrs. Thompson."

"Yes, I mentioned my idea to Yates; but I told her I shouldn't do it without consulting you. I did not think of dropping my real name altogether, but I thought I might perhaps call myself Mrs. Marsden-Thompson--with or without a hyphen."

And she went on to explain that she was doubtful as to the legal aspects of the case. She did not wish to advertise the change of name, or to make it a formal and binding change. She just wished to call herself Mrs. Marsden-Thompson.

"Very well, Mrs. Marsden-Thompson, consider it done. For there's nothing to prevent your doing it. Your friends will call you by any name you tell them to use--with or without a hyphen."

"Oh, I'm so glad you say that. I was afraid you might not approve.... And now I want your advice about something else. It is a house with a little land that I am most anxious to buy, if I can possibly manage it--and I want you to find out if the owners would be inclined to sell."

Mr. Prentice advised her on this and several other little matters. Indeed, before his third cup of tea was finished, he had made enlightening replies to questions that related to half a dozen different subjects.

"Thank you. A thousand thanks. Some more tea, Mr. Prentice?"

But Mr. Prentice did not answer this last question. He put down his empty cup, and began to laugh heartily.

"Why are you laughing like that?"

"Mrs. Marsden-Thompson," he said jovially. "For once I have seen through you. All things are permissible to your sex; but if you were a man, I should be tempted to say you are an impostor--an arch-impostor."

"Oh, Mr. Prentice! Why?"

"Because you don't really think my advice worth a straw. You don't want my advice, or anybody else's. No one is capable of advising you. You just do things in your own way--and a very remarkable way it is."

"But really and truly I--"

"No. Not a bit of it. You fancied that my feathers might have been rubbed the wrong way by recent surprises; and ever since I came into this room, you have been most delicately smoothing my ruffled plumage."

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Marsden-Thompson demurely, "I assure you--"

"Yes, yes. But, my dear, it wasn't in the least necessary. I am just as pleased as Punch, and I have quite forgiven you for keeping me so long in the dark."

"On my honour," she said earnestly, "I wouldn't have kept you in the dark for _one_ day, if I could have avoided doing so. It was most painful to me, dear Mr. Prentice, to practice--or rather, to allow of any deception where _you_ were concerned.... But my course was so difficult to steer."

"You steered it splendidly."

"But I do want you to understand. I shall be miserable if I think that you could ever harbour the slightest feeling of resentment."

"Of course I shan't."

"Or if you don't believe that I trust you absolutely, and have the greatest possible regard for your professional skill.... You may remember how I _almost_ told you about it."

"No, I'll be hanged if I remember that."

"Well, I tried to explain--indirectly--that the whole affair was so complicated.... There were so many things to be thought of. There was Enid. I had to think of _her_ all the time.... Honestly, I put her before myself. Until Enid could get rid of Kenion, it didn't seem much use for me to get rid of poor Richard.... And if either of them had guessed, everything might have gone wrong--I mean, might have worked out differently. And of course it made _secrecy_ of such vital importance. You do understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Prentice, laughing contentedly, "I do understand. But now I wonder--would you mind telling me when it was that you first thought of the Bence coup?"

"Well, I fancy that the germ of the idea came to me in church;" and Mrs. Marsden-Thompson folded her hands, and looked reflectively at the tea-cups. "I was thinking of Richard, and of Mr. Bence--and then some verses in a psalm struck me most forcibly. One verse especially--I shall never forget it. 'Let his days be few; and let another take his office.'"

"How did that apply?"

"Well, I suppose I thought vaguely--quite vaguely--that if Richard was bad at managing a business, Mr. Bence was rather good at it.... Then, that very evening, you so kindly came in to supper, and told me as a positive fact that Bence was nearly done for. And then it struck me at once that, in the long run, Bence's failure could prove of advantage to nobody, and that it ought to be prevented;" and she looked up brightly, and smiled at Mr. Prentice. "So really and truly, it is _you_ that I have to thank. You brought me that _invaluable_ information. _You_ inspired me to do it."

Mr. Prentice got up from the easy chair, and playfully shook a forefinger at his hostess.

"Now--now. Don't drag _me_ into it. I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff."

"But I am truly forgiven?" And she stretched out her hand towards him. "Not the smallest soreness left? You will still be what you have always been--my best and kindest friend?"

Mr. Prentice took her hand; and, with a graceful old-world air of gallantry that perhaps the headachy lady at home had never seen, he raised it to his lips.

"I shall be what I have always been--your humble, admiring slave."

XXX

One of the oldest of her dreams had become partially true. She had bought that pretty country-house, and was living in it with Enid. Not the total fulfilment of the dream, because she had not retired from business. She was busier than ever.

Many things foretold by her had now come to pass. The military camp on the downs, with its twenty thousand armed men and half as many thousand followers, had brought increased prosperity to the neighbourhood; the carriage and locomotive works established by the railway company had added to the old town another town that by itself would have been big enough to sustain a mayor and corporation; builders could not build fast enough to house the rapidly swelling population; the well-filled suburbs stretched for two long miles in all directions from the ancient town boundaries; and by platform lecturers, by members of parliament, by writers of statistical reviews, the growth of Mallingbridge was cited as one of the most remarkable and gratifying achievements of the last decade.

In a word--the cant word--Mallingbridge had boomed. And right at the top of the boom, rolling on to glory, was Bence's.

The prodigious success of Bence's made the world gasp. Nothing could hinder it. People fancied that the rebuilding might prove a dangerous, if not a fatal crisis in its affairs; but the proprietress accomplished the colossal operation without even a temporary set-back. She moved Bence's bodily across the road, squashed it into the confines of old Thompson's, and left it there for eighteen months while the new Bence palace was being erected. The magnificence of these modern up-to-date premises surpassed belief--facade of pure white stone; gigantic caryatids, bearing on their heads the projected ledge of the second floor, and holding in their hands the sculptured brackets of the monstrous arc lamps; fluted columns from the second floor to the fourth; and above the deep cornice, just visible from the street, the cupola on top of the vast dome that was the crowning splendour of the whole.

Then directly the shop had been moved back into this ornate frame, down went the old red-brick block of Thompson's; and on the site still another palace for Bence began to rise. It seemed no less magnificent than the other; and it was finished off--by way of balance to the dome--with a stupendous clock-tower. The local press, in a series of articles describing this useful monument, said that the four-faced time-piece was an exact replica of Big Ben at Westminster; the base of the numeral twelve was one hundred and thirty-two feet above the pavement; the small hand was as long as a short man, and the long hand was longer than an excessively tall man;--and so on. The author of the articles also stated that the architectural effect of Bence on both sides of the street was very similar to the _coup d'oeil_ offered by the dome and tower of the cathedral at Florence.

Customers scarcely knew on which side of the street they were doing their shopping: they went into one of the two palaces, and surprised themselves by emerging from the other. You entered a lift, and, as it swooped, the crowded floors flashed upward. "Which department, madam? Parisian Jewellery?... Boots and Shoes! Step this way." You passed through a long, narrow and brilliantly illuminated department, such as Sham Diamonds or Opera Cloaks, where artificial light is a necessity for correct selection; you went up a broad flight of shallow stairs; and there you were, in Boots and Shoes. But the thing you didn't know, the funny thing, was that all unconsciously you had been through a sub-way under the road. Just when you stood to gape at the sparkling ear-rings or to finger the rich soft cloaks, the heavy traffic of High Street was bang over your head.

And truly there was nothing that you could not buy now at Bence's--on one side of the road or the other. Ball dresses for as much as fifty guineas, tailor-made walking costumes for as little as eighteen shillings, a thousand pound coat of Russian sable, or a farthing packet of pins, palm trees for the conservatory or Brussels sprouts for the kitchen--whatever the varied wants of the universe, it was Bence's proud boast that they could be supplied here without failure or delay.

Sometimes when business had taken Mrs. Marsden to London and she and Yates were driving through the streets in a four-wheeled cab, she studied the appearance of the great metropolitan shops, and mentally compared them with what she had left behind her at Mallingbridge. Once, when the dusk of an autumn day was falling and she chanced to pass the most world-famous of all emporiums, she told the cabman to let his horse walk; then, as they crawled by the endless frontage, she measured the glare of the electric lamps, counted the big commissionaires, estimated the volume of the crowd outside the glittering windows; and, critically examining the thing in its entirety, she felt a supreme satisfaction. To her eye and judgment it was no bigger, brighter, or more impressive than Bence's. In all respects Bence's was every bit as good.

Each morning, fair or foul, at nine-thirty sharp, she left her charming and luxurious home, and came spinning in her small motor-car down the three-mile slope that now divided house from shop. The car, avoiding High Street, wheeled round through Trinity Square, worked its swift way to the back of Bence's, swept into a quiet, stately court-yard, and delivered her at the perron of a noble architraved doorway. This was the private or business entrance to the domed palace.

A porter in sombre livery was waiting on the marble steps to receive her, to carry her shawl or reticule, to usher her to the golden gates of the private lift.

In a minute she had majestically soared to an upper floor.

This managerial side of the building would not unworthily have formed a portion of a public department, such as the Treasury or India Office: it was all spacious, silent, grand. She passed through a wide and lofty corridor, with mahogany doors on either hand--the closed doors of the managers' rooms; and no sound of the shop was audible, no sign of it visible.

Her own room, at the end of the corridor, was very large, very high, very plainly decorated. Mahogany book-cases, with a few busts on top of them; one table with newspapers of all countries, another table with four or five telephonic instruments--but absolutely no office equipment of any sort: not so much as a writing desk, Yankee or British. She scarcely ever writes a letter now; even marginal notes are dictated. Time is too precious to be wasted on manual labour, however rapid. Time is capital; and it must be invested in the way that will yield the highest interest.

"What is the time?" and she glanced at the clock on the carved stone mantelpiece.

"It wants seven minutes of ten."

All clocks are correct, because they are carefully synchronized with the clock in the tower; and that _must_ be correct, because time-signals from Greenwich are continually instructing it--and the whole town works by Bence time.

"Good. Then I am not late."

"No, madam."

She came earlier now than she used to do a little while ago. But since Mr. Archibald finally withdrew from affairs, she has been in sole charge of the mighty organization. She could not refuse to let Archibald enjoy his well-earned rest. Though still under fifty years of age, he was a tired man, worn out by the battle, needing repose. And why should he go on working? Thanks to the liberality of his patron, he possessed ample means--almost one might say he was opulent.

"I am ready."

"Yes, madam."

Then the day's toil begins.

First it is the solemn entry of the managers, one after another succinctly presenting his report. Then it is the turn of head clerks and secretaries, who have gathered and are silently waiting outside the door. After that, audience is given to buyers who have returned from or are about to leave for the marts of the world.

And with the fewest possible words she issues her commands. She sits with folded hands, or paces to and fro with hands clasped behind her back, or stands and knits her brows; but not a word, not a moment is squandered. She says, Do this; but very rarely explains how it is to be done. It is their duty to know how. If they don't know, they are inefficient. It is for her to give orders: it is for subordinates to carry them into effect. The general of an army must be something more than a good regimental officer; the admiral of the fleet cannot teach common sailors the best way to polish the brass on the binnacle.

With surprising rapidity these opening labours are completed. Well before noon the last of the clerks has gone, and Mrs. Marsden-Thompson stands in an empty room--may take a breathing-pause, or, if she pleases, fill it with tasks of light weight.

Perhaps now an old friend is announced. It is Miss Woolfrey from China and Glass. May she come in? Or shall she call again? No, ask Miss Woolfrey to come in.

And then time is flagrantly wasted. Miss Woolfrey has nothing to say, can put forward no valid reason for bothering the commander-in-chief. Miss Woolfrey giggles foolishly, gossips inanely, meanders with a stream of senseless twaddle; but she is gratified by smiles and nods and handshakings.

"Well, now, really--my dear Miss Woolfrey--you cheer me with your excellent account of this little storm in a tea-cup.... Yes, I'll remember all you say.... How kind of you to ask! Yes, my daughter is very well."

And Miss Woolfrey goes away happy. She is a licensed offender--has been accorded unlimited privilege to waste time. Incompetent as ever, and totally unable to adapt herself to modern conditions, she enjoys a splendid sinecure in the new China and Glass. She has clever people over her to keep her straight, and will never be deprived of her salary until she accepts a pension in exchange.

Sooner or later during the forenoon, Mrs. Marsden-Thompson rings her bell and asks for Mr. Mears.

"Is Mr. Mears in his room?"

"I believe so, madam."

"Then give Mr. Mears my compliments, and say I shall be glad to see him if it is convenient to him--only if convenient, not if he is occupied."

It was always convenient to Mr. Mears. His convenience is her convenience. Almost immediately the door opens, and he appears--and very grand he looks, bowing on the threshold; massive and strong again; no shaky dotard, but a vigorous elderly man, who might be mistaken for a partner in a bank, a president of a chamber of commerce, a member of the Privy Council, or anybody eminently prosperous and respectable.

"Good morning, Mr. Mears. Please be seated."

And then she discusses with him all those matters of which she can speak to no one else. Mears is never a time-waster; he, too, makes few words suffice; long practice has given him quickness in catching her thought.

"Mr. Mears, what are we to do about Mr. Greig? Frankly, he is getting past his work."

"I admit it," says Mears.

"It will be better for all parties if he retires."

"He won't like the idea."