All these goods were very expensive; and she asked if any of them had been introduced, like the Yankee furniture, on sale or return.

"No, these are our own racket--and tip-top stuff, the best of its kind, never brought to Europe till last summer.... The stock stands us in close on four thousand pounds. You wouldn't think it, would you? But it's _art_. It's an education to possess such things."

She hazarded another question. Did he think Mallingbridge would consent to pay for such high-cla.s.s education?

"It'll be a great disappointment to me if they don't clear us out in three months from now. Of course they haven't discovered yet what we're offering them. But they _will_. I go on the double policy--play down to your public in one department, but try to lift your public in another.

That's the way to keep alive."

And, as they left the j.a.panese treasures and strolled about the upper floor, he rattled off his glib catch-words.

"These are hustling times. Get a move on somehow. That's what I tell them--They'll soon tumble to it."

He parted from her near the door of communication.

"Ta-ta, old girl.... Oh, by the way, I shan't be in to dinner to-night--or to-morrow either. I'm off to London. I'm wanted there about my Christmas Baz----" And he checked himself. "But I'll ask old Mears to tell you all about that."

Then he ran downstairs, two steps at a time, and swaggered here and there between the counters to impress the a.s.sistants with his hustlingly Napoleonic air.

Occasionally he loved to step forward, wave aside the a.s.sistant, and himself serve a customer. He thoroughly enjoyed the awe-struck admiration of the shop when he thus granted it a display of his skill.

It was his only real gift--the salesman art; and it never failed him.

But it was something that he could not impart. a.s.sistants who imitated his method--trying to catch the smiling, almost chaffing manner that could immediately convert a grumpy lethargic critic into a prompt and cheerful buyer--were merely familiar and impudent, and ended by huffing the customer.

And the governor, when he happened to detect want of success in one of his young gentlemen or young ladies, came down like a hundred of bricks.

He treated the two s.e.xes quite impartially, and the women could not say that he bullied the men worse than he bullied them. But he had a deadly sort of satire that the younger girls dreaded more than the angriest storm of abuse. Thus if he saw one of them sitting down, he would address her with apparently amiable solicitude.

"Is that ledge hard, Miss Vincent? Couldn't someone get her a cushion?

Make yourself at home. Why don't you come round the counter and sit on the customers' laps?... We must find you a comfortable seat _somewhere_--and change of air, too. Mallingbridge isn't agreeing with your const.i.tution, if you feel as slack as all this."

Like the people of his house, these people of his shop feared him, and, perhaps without putting the thoughts into words, or troubling to quote adages, understood that beggars on horseback always ride with reckless disregard of the safety and comfort of the humble companions with whom they were recently tramping along the hard road, and that no master is so tyrannical as a promoted servant. In the opinion of the shop-a.s.sistants, he could not go to London too often or stay there too long.

While he was away this time, Mears came to Mrs. Marsden with a long face and a gloomy voice, and gave her the delayed information as to her husband's Christmas programme.

The new underground floor was to be used for a grand Bazaar, and Mears had been told to win her round to the idea.

Mears himself hated the idea. He thought the bazaar a brainless plagiarism of Bence's, and altogether unworthy of Thompson's. It would be exactly like Bence's, but on a much larger scale--beneath the good respectable shop, a cheap and nasty shop, in which catchpenny travesties of decent articles would be the only wares; fancy stationery, sham jewellery, spurious metals; horrid little clocks that won't go, knives and scissors that won't cut, collar-boxes more flimsy than the collars they are intended to hold--everything beastly that crumples, bends, or breaks before you can get home with it.

"But he won't abandon the idea," said Mears. "That's a certainty. He's mad keen on it. The only thing is for you to use your influence--and I'll back you up solid--to persuade him to modify it."

And Mears strongly advocated modification on these lines: make the bazaar a fitting annex,--subst.i.tute boots and shoes for the sixpenny toys, good leather trunks for the paper boxes, nice engravings for the coloured photographs,--offer the public genuine stuff and not trash.

Accordingly, Mr. Marsden, as soon as he returned, was begged by his partner and his manager to grant their joint pet.i.tion for a slightly modified Christmas carnival. But he said it was too late. They ought to have gone into the matter earlier.

He had bought the trash,--had engaged his London girls,--was ready; and like a general on the eve of campaign, he could not be bothered with advice from subordinate officers.

When discussing this horrible innovation, Mears had extracted from Mrs.

Marsden a distinct show of interest; several times afterwards he had endeavoured to stimulate and increase the interest; and now, just before Christmas, he earnestly implored her to rouse herself.

"We miss you, ma'am, worse every day. It isn't _safe_ to let things drift. We can't get on without you."

Then one morning she had an early breakfast, dressed herself in her shop black, came down behind the gla.s.s, took her seat at the little corner table of her old room, and un.o.btrusively began working.

Marsden, when he came in two or three hours later, was surprised to see her.

"Hullo, Jane, what do you think you are doing?"

"Well, d.i.c.k," she said submissively, "I should like to help in the shop--as I used to, you know."

"Bravo. Excellent! I want all the help that anyone can give me;" and he seated himself in the chair of honour. "But look here. Don't mess about with the papers on this desk. I work after a system--and if my papers are muddled, it simply upsets me and wastes my time."

XVII

It had been a fearful year for Thompson & Marsden's. From the moment that the grand fascia permanently recorded the new style of the firm, money had flowed out of the business like water--and like big water, like mountain torrents or sea waves; while the feeding-stream of money that flowed into the business was obstructed, deflected, and plainly lessened in volume. And now, when all the immense outlay should begin to prove remunerative, even Marsden himself confessed that results were inadequate and unsatisfactory.

The Bazaar was a disastrous fiasco. The builders had broken their contract; the bas.e.m.e.nt had not been completed on the stipulated date, and a law-suit was pending. Marsden swore that he would recover damages for the loss entailed by his builders' wickedness; but Mr. Prentice advised that he had a weak case.

When, to the strains of a Viennese orchestra, the public were invited to go down and enjoy themselves underground, they flatly declined the invitation. A peep into the brilliantly lighted depths was sufficient for them. Damp exhaled from the plastered walls; the few adventurous customers shivered and the girls sneezed in their faces. An epidemic of sore throat, engendered down there, rose and spread through the upper shop. After three weeks, Marsden's grand Christmas entertainment was withdrawn--like a pantomime that is too stupid to attract the children; the regiment of sneezing girls was disbanded; the ma.s.s of unsold rubbish was sent to London, to be disposed of for what it would fetch. And that, as the whole shop knew, was half nothing.

The j.a.panese department was almost as bad a bargain; the little ivory warriors terrified cautious citizens with their high prices; no one would come to buy and be educated. But Marsden for a long time was obstinate about his Oriental goods. He would not face the loss, and cut it short.

He seemed to have forgotten his American office equipments; but this feature had also failed to fulfil expectations. Only three small articles had been sold. However, as there was no risk here, the want of success did not much matter; but still it must be counted as one more of the governor's false moves. Indeed, as all now saw, everything attempted by the governor during this period of his energetic efforts had gone hopelessly wrong.

But he himself could not brook the disappointment caused by his failures. He was disgusted when he thought of what had happened since his pompous declaration of war. Although he would not admit that so far Bence was beating him, he inveighed against fate, against Mallingbridge, against all the world.

"What the devil can you do when you're buried in a dead and alive hole like this, surrounded by idiotic prejudices, and dependent on a lot of old fossils to carry out your ideas?"

The fitful energy that had occasioned so much trouble was now quite exhausted. He seemed to have entered another phase. He was never jolly now, but always discontented, and generally querulous, morose, or violently angry.

One after another the old shop chieftains succ.u.mbed beneath his bullying attacks. Mr. Ridgway and Mr. Fentiman had gone. Mr. Greig was going.

Mrs. Marsden always recognized the beginning of his onslaught upon anybody to whom in the old days she had been strongly attached. A few sneering words--lightly and carelessly; and then, when he returned to the charge, gross abuse of the doomed thing. She knew that it was doomed. In the wreck of her life this too must go. Then very soon there were insults and violences that rendered the position of the victim untenable, unendurable. Thus he had forced Mr. Ridgway and the others to resign.

Yates, the servant and friend that she loved, was also doomed. She was struggling to avert the stroke of doom, but she knew that sooner or later it must fall.

And during all this time his demands for cash were increasingly frequent. By his colossal outlay he had mortgaged the profits of years, and it was essential that the partners should wait patiently until they came into their own again. But he would not wait, and vowed that he could not further retrench his personal expenses. How was he to live without _some_ ready cash? And if the firm could not furnish it, she must.

"I _am_ trying to sell my big car," he told her. "And I suppose you will ask me to sell the little one next--and paddle about in the mud again.

But, no, thank you, that doesn't suit my book at all."

At last she summoned to her aid something of that old resolution that seemed to have left her forever, and refused to comply with his request.

"No, d.i.c.k, I can't. It isn't fair. I can't."