"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 gra.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 appet.i.te 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 a.s.sist 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 gla.s.s that he attempted to display anything like the old swagger and bl.u.s.ter.

"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 surpa.s.sed 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 ac.u.men, 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 a.s.sistants, 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce; 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; a.s.sistants 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 pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, 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."