"Ah, well," said Mrs. Thompson, with cheerful briskness, "now you mention hunting, that reminds me. We must get you on horseback again....

You do like your riding, don't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Enid listlessly.

"Mr. Young said you were making such good progress. And," added Mrs.

Thompson gently, "it is a pity to take up things and drop them. It is just wasted effort--if one stops before reaching the goal."

The road, turning and crossing the railway, gave them a well-known view of Mallingbridge--the town quite at its best, four miles away in the middle of the broad plain, smoke and haze hanging over it, but with tempered sunlight glistening on countless roofs, and the square tower of St. Saviour's and the tall spire of Holy Trinity rising proudly above the ma.s.s of lesser buildings. There, stretched at her feet, was Mrs.

Thompson's world, the world that she had conquered.

In another mile they pa.s.sed a residence that to her mind formed a pleasant contrast with the oppressive splendour of the n.o.bleman's domain. Here there were white gates between mellow brick walls, easy peeps into a terraced garden, stables and barns as at a farm, pigeons settling on some thatch, friendly English trees guarding but not hiding a dear old English country house.

"Look, Enid," and Mrs. Thompson pointed to the broad eaves, the white windows, and the solid chimney stacks, as they showed here and there between the branches of oak and maple. "There. That's a place I fell in love with the first time I saw it.... I would like a house just like that--for you and me to live in when I am able to give up my work...."

"What were you saying, mother?" Enid, not listening or absorbed by her own thoughts, had not heard.

"I was only saying, that's the sort of house I should like for us two--when I retire."

"Mother, I sometimes wish that you had retired years ago."

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Thompson meekly, "retiring is all very well--but you and I wouldn't be sitting here driving so comfortably if I had been afraid of my work and in a hurry to get done with it."

II

In her marriage she had sacrificed all the natural hopes and inclinations of a healthy young woman. She and her widowed mother were very poor, quite alone in the world; and it seemed a proper and a wise thing to marry Mr. Thompson for his money. No one could guess that the money was already a phantom and no longer a fact. The man was middle-aged, feeble of body and mind, a stupid and a selfish person; but it seemed that he would a.s.sure the future of his wife and provide a comfortable home for his mother-in-law.

Then after five years the man and his money were gone forever; the mother for whom the sacrifice had been made was herself dead; only the wife and her little child remained. Five years of dull submission to an unloved husband; five years spent in the nursing of two invalids, with the vapid meaningless monotony of wasted days broken sharply by the pains of child-birth, the agonized cares of early motherhood, and the shock of death;--and at the end of the years, a sudden call for limitless courage and almost impossible energy.

Quiet un.o.btrusive Mrs. Thompson answered the call fully. Deep-seated fighting instincts arose in her; unsuspected powers were put forth to meet the exigencies of the occasion; the hero-spirit that lies buried in many natures sprang n.o.bly upward.

At first she possessed only one commercial a.s.set, the reputation of Thompson's. For so many years Thompson's had been known as a good shop that here was a legend which might counterbalance debts, exhausted credit, antiquated stock, and incompetent staff.

The town and the country during generations had come to Thompson's for good things--not cheap things, but the things that last: dress fabrics that stand up by themselves, chairs and tables that you can leave intact to your grandchildren, carpets that unborn men will be beating when you yourself are dust.

Mrs. Thompson, in her widow's weeds, went round the big supply houses, telling the great trade chieftains that the legend was still alive, though the man who already owed them so much money was dead; saying in effect to all the people who held her fate in their hands, "Don't let old Thompson's go down. Don't smash me. Help me. Give me time to secure your twenty shillings in the pound, instead of the meagre seven and sixpence which you can get now."

The wholesale trade helped her. Little by little all the world came to her aid. Mr. Prentice the solicitor was a skilful ally. As soon as it could be seen locally that she was keeping her head above water, friends on the bank began to beckon to her. Rich aldermen, advised that there was now small risk, lent her money; and these loans rendered her independent of Trade a.s.sistance. Soon she could get whatever sums she required for the restoration and expansion of the business.

In all her dealings she won respect. The confidence that she inspired was her true commercial a.s.set, her capital, her good-will, her everything; and it was always growing. "Very remarkable," said travellers, reporting at headquarters, "how that Mrs. Thompson has pulled the fat out of the fire at Mallingbridge. What she wants now is some sound business man for partner--and there's no knowing what she mightn't do."

Then some other and more philosophic traveller, impressed by the swift revivification of Thompson's, said enthusiastically, "The best business head in this town is on a woman's shoulders." The saying was quoted, misquoted, echoed and garbled, until it concreted itself into an easy popular formula which the whole town used freely. "The best man of business in Mallingbridge is a woman." Everyone knew who that woman was.

Mrs. Thompson. And the town, speaking on important occasions through the mouth of its mayor, aldermen, and councillors, for the first time said that it was proud of her.

And then the town began to ask her hand in wedlock.

In these days, at the dawn of her success, Mrs. Thompson was not without obvious personal attraction. She was fair and plump, with light wavy hair, kind grey eyes beneath well-marked eyebrows, and good colour warmly brightening a clean white skin;--she "looked nice" in her widow's black, smiling at a hard world and so bravely tackling her life problem.

Quite a large number of well-to-do citizens were smilingly rejected by the buxom widow. Pretenders were slow to believe in the finality of her refusals; as the success became more patent, they tried their luck again, and again, but always with the same emptiness of result. Indeed it was a town joke, as well as an unquestionable fact, that old Chambers the wine-merchant regularly proposed three times a year to nice-looking Mrs. Thompson.

She wanted no second husband. The fight and the child were enough for her. Those deep and unsapped springs of love that might have gushed forth to make a fountain stream of happiness for Alderman Brown or Councillor Jones flowed calmly and steadfastly now in a concentrated channel of motherly affection. To work for the child, to love and tend the child--that was henceforth her destiny. And she felt strong enough to watch in her own face the blurring destructive print of time, if she might watch in her girl's face time's unfolding glories.

For the cruel years took from her irrevocably those physical seductions of neatly rounded form and smooth pinkness and whiteness. The colour that had been sufficient became too much, plumpness changed to stoutness--once, for a year, she was fat. But she tackled this trouble too, bravely and unflinchingly,--went to London for Swedish exercises; banted; brought herself down, down, down, until Dr. Eldridge told her she must stop, or she would kill herself. After that she settled to a steady solidness, a well-maintained amplitude of contour; and the years seemed to leave her untouched as the wide-breasted, rotund-hipped, stalwart Mrs. Thompson of a decade--red-cheeked, bright-eyed, gallant and strong.

Yet still she had suitors. The physical charm was gone, but other charm was present--that blending of kindness and power which wins men's hearts, if it does not stir their pulses, gave her a dominating personality, and made the circle of her influence exactly as large as the circle of her acquaintance. People at the circ.u.mference of the circle seemed to be surely drawn, by a straight or vacillating radius, to its centre. The better you knew her, the more you thought about her.

So that old friends after years of thought now and then surprised her by suggesting that friendship should be exchanged for a closer bond; pointing out the advantages of a common-sense union, the marriage of convenience, sympathy, and mutual regard, that becomes appropriate when the volcano glow of youth has faded; and inviting her to name an early day for going to St. Saviour's Church with them.

In the shop, among all grades of employees, there had ever been a dread of St. Saviour's Church and wedding bells. They got on so well with their mistress that the idea of a master was extraordinarily abhorrent to them. But one day, a day now long past, Mrs. Thompson told Mr. Mears authoritatively that joy bells would never sound for her again; Mr.

Mears, by permission, or in the exercise of his own discretion, pa.s.sed on the glad tidings; and the only dark thought that could worry a contented staff was removed.

"No, Mr. Mears, I don't say that I have never contemplated the possibility of such an event; but I can say emphatically I have decided that in my case it _is_ impossible."

That was sufficient. What Mrs. Thompson said Mrs. Thompson meant. A decision with her was a decision.

Of all her trusty subordinates none had served her so loyally as big Mr.

Mears. His whole life had been spent in Thompson's. Once he had been boy messenger, window-cleaner, boot-blacker; and now, at the age of sixty, he had risen to managerial rank. He was the acknowledged chief of the staff, Mrs. Thompson's right-hand man; and he was as proud of his position and the culminating grandeurs of his career as if he had been a successful general, a prime-minister, or a pope. Mrs. Thompson knew and openly told him that he was invaluable to her. Such words were like wine and music: they intoxicated and enchanted him. Truly he was whole-hearted, faithful, devoted, with a deep veneration for his mistress; with an intense and almost pa.s.sionate esteem for her skill, her comprehension, her vigour, and for her herself--perhaps too with a love that he scarcely himself understood.

Anyhow this heavy grey-haired shopman and his employer were very close allies, generally thinking as one, and always acting as one, able to talk together with a nearly absolute freedom on any question, however intimately private in its character.

"You see, Mr. Mears, if I ever meant to do it, I should have done it ages ago. Now that my daughter is growing up, her claims for attention are becoming stronger every day."

Mr. Mears and the rest of the staff were more than satisfied. Perhaps they blessed the idolized Enid for an increasing capacity to absorb every energy and volition that Mrs. Thompson could spare from the shop.

Whatever Enid wished for her mother provided. She racked her brains in order to forestall the child's wishes. But the difficulty always was this, one could not be quite sure what Enid really wished. She accepted the pretty gifts, the conditions of her life, the plans for her future, with a calm unruffled acquiescence.

When Mrs. Thompson regretfully decided that it would be advisable to dismiss the expensive governesses and send the home pupil to an expensive school, Enid placidly and immediately agreed. Mrs. Thompson thought that school would open Enid's mind, that school would give her an opportunity of making nice girl-friends. Enid at once thought so, too.

"But, oh, my darling, what a gap there will be in this house! You'll leave a sore and a sad heart behind you. I shall miss you woefully."

"And I shall miss you, mamma."

Then, when Enid had gone to the fashionable seminary at Eastbourne, with the faithful Yates as escort, with a wonderful luncheon-basket of delicacies in the first-cla.s.s reserved compartment, with several huge boxes of school trousseau in the luggage van, Mrs. Thompson began to suffer torment. Was it not cruel to send the brave little thing away from her? Might not her darling be now a prey to similar yearnings and longings for a swift reunion? The torment became agony; and after two days Mrs. Thompson rushed down to see for herself if the new scholar was all right.

Enid was entirely all right--playing with the other girls at the bottom of the secluded garden.

"Is that you, mummy?" This was a form of greeting peculiar to Enid from very early days. "I am so glad to see you," and she kissed mamma affectionately.

She was uniformly affectionate, whether at school or at home, but never explosive or demonstrative in the manifestations of her affection. There was more warmth in her letters than in her spoken words. "My own dearest mother," she used to write, "I am so looking forward to being with you again. Do meet me at the station." But when the train arrived and Mrs.

Thompson, who had been pacing the Mallingbridge platform in a fever of expectation, clasped the beloved object to her heart, she experienced something akin to disappointment. It was a sedately composed young lady that offered a cool cheek to the mother's tremulous lips.

Now and then a school-friend came to stay with Enid. A Miss Salter, whose parents proved large-minded enough to overlook the glaring fact of the shop, was a fairly frequent visitor. During the visit one of Mr.

Young's carriages stood at the disposal of the young hostess and her guest all day long; breakfasts were served in bed; a private box at the local theatre might be occupied any evening between the cosy dinner and the dainty little supper; and Mrs. Thompson arranged delightful expeditions to London, where, under the guardianship of Yates, larger sights and more exciting treats could be enjoyed than any attainable in Mallingbridge.

The condescending guest returned to her distinguished circle laden with presents, and frankly owned that she had been given a royal time at the queer shop-house in St. Saviour's Court.

Enid in her turn visited the houses of her friends, and came home to tell Mrs. Thompson of that pleasant gracious world in which people do not work for their living, but derive their ample means from splendidly interred ancestors. With satisfaction, if not with animation, she described how greatly butlers and footmen surpa.s.s the art of parlourmaids in waiting at table; how gay an effect is produced by young men dining in red coats, how baronets often shoot with three guns, how lords never use less than two horses in the hunting field, and so on.

And Mrs. Thompson was happy in the thought that her daughter should be mingling with fine company and deriving pleasure from strange scenes.