"What did you expect--that I should welcome your proposal and thank you for it?"

"Well, Enid and I had made up our minds that you wouldn't thwart her wishes."

"But, Mr. Kenion, even if I had agreed and made everything easy and pleasant for you, surely you would not be content to live as a pensioner for the rest of your days?"

She was thinking of what d.i.c.k Marsden had said to her in the dusk by the river. "I could not pose as the pensioner of a rich wife." It seemed to her a natural and yet a n.o.ble sentiment; and she contrasted the proper manly frame of mind that found expression in such an utterance with the mean-spirited readiness to depend on others that Mr. Kenion confessed so shamelessly. Marsden was perhaps not a gentleman in the sn.o.bbish, conventional sense, but how much more a man than this Kenion!

"Don't you know," he was saying feebly; and, as he said it, he stifled another yawn; "I should certainly try to do something myself."

"What?"

"Well, perhaps a little farming. I think I could help to keep the pot on the boil by making and selling hunters--and a good deal can be done with poultry, if you set to work in the right way.... Enid seemed to like the notion of living in the country."

Mrs. Thompson turned the revolving chair round a few inches towards the desk, and politely told Mr. Kenion that she need not detain him any further.

He had come in loungingly, and he went out loungingly; but he was limper after the interview than before it. He probably felt that the stuffing had been more or less knocked out of him; for he presently turned into a saloon bar, and sought to brace himself again with strong stimulants.

No doubt he complained bitterly enough to Enid of the severely chilling reception that he had met with in the queer back room behind the shop.

Anyhow Enid complained with bitterness to her mother. Indeed at this crisis of her life Enid was horrid. Yates begged her to be more considerate, and committed a breach of confidence by telling her of how her unkind tone had twice made the mistress weep; but Enid could attend only to one thing at a time. She wanted her sweetheart, and she thought it very hard that anybody should attempt to deprive her of him.

"And it will all be no use, mother--because I never, never can give him up."

Thus the days pa.s.sed miserably; and a sort of stalemate seemed to have occurred. Kenion had not retired, but he was not coming on; and Enid was horrid.

In her perplexity and distress Mrs. Thompson went to Mr. Prentice, and asked him for advice and aid.

Mr. Prentice, delighted to be restored to favour after his recent disgrace, was jovial and cheering. He pooh-poohed the notion that Enid had in the smallest degree compromised herself; he talked of the wide lat.i.tude given to modern girls, of their independence, their capacity to take care of themselves in all circ.u.mstances; and stoutly declared his belief that among fashionable people the chaperon had ceased to exist.

"Don't you worry about that, my dear. No one is going to think any the worse of her for being seen with a cavalier dangling at her heels."

Nevertheless he heartily applauded Mrs. Thompson for her firm tackling of the indigent suitor; he offered to find out everything about Kenion and his family, and promised that he would render staunch aid in sending him "to the right-abouts."

When Mrs. Thompson called again Mr. Prentice had collected a formidable dossier, and he read out the damaging details of Mr. Kenion's history with triumphant relish.

"Now this is private detective work, not solicitors' work--and I expect a compliment for the quick way I've got the information.... Well then, there's only one word for Mr. Kenion--he's a thorough rotter."

And Mr. Prentice began to read his notes.

"Our friend," as he called the subject of the memoir, was sent down from Cambridge in dire disgrace. He had attempted an intricately dangerous transaction, with a credit-giving jeweller and three diamond rings at one end of it, and a p.a.w.nbroker at the other. The college authorities heard of it--from whom do you suppose? _The police!_ Old Kenion paid the bill, to avoid something worse than the curtailment of the university curriculum. Since then "our friend" had been mixed up with horsedealers of ill repute--riding their horses, taking commissions when he could sell them.

"He gambles," said Mr. Prentice with gusto; "he drinks; he womani--I should say, his morals with the other s.e.x are a minus quant.i.ty.... And last of all, I can tell you this. I've seen the fellow--got a man to point him out to me; and there's _blackguard_ written all over him."

"Then how _can_ respectable people like the Salters entertain him?"

"Ah," said Mr. Prentice philosophically, "that's the way we live nowadays. The home is no longer sacred. People don't seem to care who they let into their houses. If a fellow can ride and can show a few decent relations, hunting folk forgive him a good deal. And the Salters very likely hadn't heard--or at any rate didn't _know_ anything against him."

At his own suggestion, jumped at by his client, Mr. Prentice returned with Mrs. Thompson to St. Saviour's Court, and told Miss Enid that it would be madness for her any longer to encourage the attentions of such a ne'er-do-well.

"If you were my own daughter," said Mr. Prentice solemnly, "I should forbid your ever seeing him again. And I give you my word of honour I believe that before a year has past you'll thank Mrs. Thompson for standing firm now."

But Enid was still horrid. She seemed infatuated; she would not credit, she would not listen to, anything of detriment to her sweetheart's character. She spoke almost rudely to her mother; and when Mr. Prentice took it on himself to reprove her, she spoke quite rudely to him. Then she marched out of the room.

"I am afraid," said Mr. Prentice, "there'll be a certain amount of wretchedness before you bring her to reason."

There was wretchedness in the little house--Enid pining and moping, a.s.suming the airs of a victim; her mother trying to soften the disappointment, arguing, consoling, promising better fish in the sea than as yet had come out of it. Enid refused to go away from Mallingbridge. Mrs. Thompson herself longed for change, and the chance of forgetting all troubles; there was nothing to keep her here now, although her presence would be required in September; but Enid seemed tied by invisible strings to the home she was making so very uncomfortable.

She would not go away, and she would not undertake to refrain from seeing or writing to Mr. Kenion. She did give her word that she would not slink out and marry him on the sly. But she could safely promise that, because, under the existing conditions of stalemate, it was very doubtful if Mr. Kenion would abet her in so bold a measure. Probably she was aware that Mr. Kenion's courtship had been successfully checked; and the knowledge made her all the more difficult to deal with. Mr. Kenion was neither retiring, nor coming forward: he was just beating time; and perhaps Enid felt humiliated as well as angry when she observed his stationary position.

A pitiful state of affairs--mother and daughter separated in heart and mind; on one side increasing coldness, on the other lessening hope; an estrangement that widened every day.

Then at last Enid consented to start with her mother for a rapid tour in Switzerland. Mr. Kenion, it appeared, had crossed the Irish Channel on some kind of horse-business; and so Lucerne and Mallingbridge had become all one to Enid.

They stayed in many hotels, visited many new scenes; and Mrs. Thompson, looking at high mountains and broad lakes, was still vainly trying to recover her lost child. Enid was calm again, polite again, even conversational; but between herself and her mother she had made a wall as high as the loftiest mountain and a chasm as wide as the biggest of the lakes.

X

The books of Thompson's were made up and audited at the end of each summer season, and in accordance with an unbroken custom the proprietress immediately afterwards gave a dinner to the heads of departments. Printed invitations were invariably issued for this small annual banquet; the scene of the entertainment was the private house; and the highly glazed cards, with which Mrs. Thompson requested the honour of the company of Mr. Mears and the others in St. Saviour's Court at 6:45 for 7 o'clock, used to be boastfully shown along the counters by the eight or ten happy gentlemen who had received them.

During the course of the dinner--the very best that the Dolphin could send in--Mrs. Thompson would thank her loyal servants, give her views as to where the shop had failed to achieve the highest possible results, and discuss the plan of campaign for the next twelve months. The heads of departments, warmed with the generous food, cheered with the sparkling wine, charmed and almost overwhelmed by Mrs. Thompson's gracious condescension, said the same things every year, made the same suggestions, never by any chance contributed an original idea. But the dinner was doing them good; they would think better and work harder when it was only a memory. At the moment it was sufficient for them to realize that they were here, sitting at the same luxurious table with their venerated employer, revelling in her smiles, seeing her evening robe of splendour instead of the shop black; admiring her bare shoulders and her white gloves, her costly satin and lace, her glittering sequins or shimmering beads; and most of all admiring her herself, the n.o.ble presiding spirit of Thompson's.

Jolly Mr. Prentice was always present--acting as a deputy-host; and at the end of dinner he always gave the traditional toast.

"Gentlemen, raise your gla.s.ses with me, and drink to the best man of business in Mallingbridge. That is, to Mrs. Thompson.... Mrs.

Thompson.... Mrs. Thompson!"

Then little Mr. Ridgway of Silks used to start singing.

"'For she's a jolly good fellow'"....

"Please, please," said Mrs. Thompson, picking up her fan, and rising.

"_Without_ musical honours, please;" and the chorus immediately stopped.

"Gentlemen, I thank you;" and she sailed out of the room, always turning at the door for a last word. "Mr. Prentice, the cigars are on the side table. Don't let my guests want for anything."

Now once again the night of this annual feast had come round, the champagne corks were popping, the Dolphin waiters were carrying their dainty dishes; and Mrs. Thompson sat at the top of her table, like a kindly queen beaming on her devoted courtiers.

Yates, standing idle as a major-domo while the hirelings bustled to and fro, was ravished by the elegant appearance of the queen. Yates had braced her into some new tremendous fashionable stays from Paris, and she thought the effect of slimness was astonishing. Truly Mrs. Thompson had provided herself with a magnificent dress--a Paris model, of grey satin with lace and seed pearls all over the bodice; and her opulent shoulders, almost bursting from the pretty shoulder-straps, gleamed finely and whitely in the lamp-light. Her hair made a grand full coronet, low across the brow; her face seemed unusually pale; and there were dark shadows about her glowing eyes.

"Yes, Mr. Mears--as you say, travelling opens the mind. But I fear I have brought home no new information."

"What you have brought home," said Mr. Ridgway, gallantly, "is a pleasure to see--and that is, if I may say so"-- The little man had intended to pay a courageously direct compliment, by saying that Mrs.

Thompson had never looked so attractive as she did now after the brief Continental tour; but suddenly his courage failed him, nervousness overcame him, and, floundering, he tailed off weakly. "You have, I hope, ma'am, brought home replenished health and renewed vigour."

"Thank you, Mr. Ridgway;" and the nervousness seemed to have communicated itself to Mrs. Thompson's voice. "A change of scene is certainly stimulating."