Marsden was the first to go. His wife watched him as he went slouching down the street. When he disappeared she did not immediately turn from the window. She had furtively produced her pocket handkerchief, and the gentlemen heard her blow her nose loudly and strenuously; but no one saw her wipe the tears from her eyes.

Mr. Collins, on the threshold of the room, was dismissing the policemen with pompous thanks, and promising to drop in upon their superintendent shortly.

"By the way," he said, looking round; "shall we let them escort Mrs.

Marsden home?"

"No," said Mr. Archibald gallantly. "That shall be my honour and pleasure. And there's no danger of his molesting her now."

"I agree with you," said Collins. "We've fairly knocked the bounce out of _him_." And he spoke to Mrs. Marsden with sentimental solicitude.

"There will be a plain-clothes constable in St. Saviour's Court, watching your door till the evening. But you needn't be afraid. Our friend won't venture to go there."

Mr. Prentice sat at the head of his table, looking dazed and confused.

He and his whole house were taken possession of by Collins; policemen walked in and out; astounding things happened--the morning's work had been almost too much for him.

With an effort he got upon his legs to bow and smile at Mrs. Marsden, as she and Bence went out.

"Well now," said Collins; and he shut his black bag. "I don't think that, under the peculiar conditions of the case, anything could have been more satisfactory--do you?"

"Of course," said Mr. Prentice, sitting down again "you know, as well as I do, that what Marsden said was true. He could make her account to the firm for all her profits in Bence's. Such an investment isn't allowed--it isn't lawful."

"I'll tell you what it is," said Collins, enthusiastically blinking behind his spectacles. "It's _great_--that's what it is; and I'm proud to have carried it through for her."

Mr. Prentice really did not know what to say.

"And I'll tell you something more. If it isn't law, it's _justice_. I've never been such a stickler as you for mere outward form. Here were two people in terrible difficulty--Bence and Mrs. Marsden. She saw the way to save them both, and had the grit to take all risks and do it. That was good enough for me. As I say, I'm not so formal as you. I don't let a string of red tape trip up a brave woman when she's running for her life--that is, if I can prevent it.... Good morning, Prentice. Good morning to you."

XXIX

However he might demur at first, Mr. Prentice soon came to the conclusion that it was truly great.

Perhaps at first he was so completely flabbergasted by the surprise of the thing that he could not really take it all in; his numbed brain, only partially working, fixed upon technical objections to the conduct of affairs by Hyde & Collins; and then, with awakening comprehension of a masterly coup, the sense of having been left out in the cold diminished his delight. But this soon pa.s.sed, and he began to glow joyously.

Yes, _great_! No other word for it! Magnificent justification of all that he had ever said and thought of her!

_Not_ weak, but strong--as strong as she used to be; no, stronger than at any time. And he thought of her, overwhelmed with misfortunes, hemmed round by insurmountable difficulties, brought lower and lower, until she was apparently so impotent and negligible a unit in the town's life that she had become an object of contemptuous pity to the very crossing-sweepers. He thought of what the scientists say about the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. Great natural forces cannot be wiped out. Just when they seem gone, you get a fresh manifestation--the same force in another form. And so it was here.

Mrs. Marsden, seemingly abolished, bursts out in another place, explodes the debris of ruin that was holding her down, changes direction, and rises in blazing triumph on the other side of the street.

Wonderful! "Not now; but perhaps later, when the time comes"--he remembered her words. "I must do things my own way." Yes, her own way was right--because her way is the way of genius. A veritable stroke of genius--no lesser term will do,--seeming so simple to look back at, although so impenetrable till it was explained! She had seen the only means by which she could successfully extricate herself from an impossible situation. Only she could have escaped the imminent disaster.

Only she could have turned an overwhelming defeat into a transcendent victory.

"Talk about giving women the vote," cried Mr. Prentice noisily. "That woman ought to be prime minister."

Mrs. Prentice, rejoicing at the good news, wished that her husband could have told it less vociferously. It happened that this evening she was the victim of a bilious headache, and she lay supine on a sofa, unable to sit up for dinner. The slightest noise made her headache worse, and the mere smell of food was distressing.

Mr. Prentice, banging in and out of the room, let savoury odours reach her; and his exultant voice set up a painful throbbing. "I told you so all along.... What did I say from the beginning?... Colossal brain power! No one like her!"

This really was the substance of all that he had to say, and he had already said it; yet he kept running in from the dinner table to say it again.

A bottle of the very best champagne was opened; and he brought the invalid a gla.s.s of it, to drink Mrs. Marsden's health. Mrs. Prentice, staunchly obeying, drank the old, still wine, and immediately felt as if she had stepped from an ocean-going liner into a dancing row-boat.

In the exuberance of his rapture, Mr. Prentice also invited the parlourmaid to drink Mrs. Marsden's health.

"There, toss that off--to the most remarkable lady _you_'ve ever seen."

"Yes, sir. She _is_ a nice lady, sir--and always speaks so sensible."

"_Sensible!_ Why, bless my soul, there's no one in the length and breadth of England that can hold a candle to her for sheer--" But he could not of course talk freely of these high matters to a parlourmaid.

So he trotted off to the other room, to tell Mrs. Prentice once again.

As he walked to the office next morning, he hummed one of the comic songs that he had not sung for years, and snapped his fingers by way of castanet accompaniment. He felt so light-hearted and joyous that he would have willingly thrown his square hat in the air, and cut capers on the pavement.

He could not work. For two or three days he was quite unable to attend to ordinary business. When clients came to talk about themselves, he scarcely listened; but, giving the conversation a violent wrench, began talking to them about Mrs. Marsden.

Then one afternoon he was taken with a burning desire for a quiet chat with Archibald Bence. If he could get hold of little Archibald and ply him with questions, he would obtain all sorts of delightful explanatory details concerning Mrs. Marsden's splendid mystery.

He hurried down High Street, and, approaching the old shop, was puzzled by a strange phenomenon.

The pavement in front of Marsden & Thompson's seemed to be blocked by a dense crowd. The blinds were drawn on the upper floor; the iron shutters masked the windows and doors on the ground floor: the whole shop was closed--and yet there were infinitely more people lingering outside it than when it had been open.

White bills on all the shutters showed the cause of the phenomenon.

"Astonishing Bargains"--these two portentous words headed each white placard in monstrous red capitals;--"Bence Brothers, having acquired this old-established business, will clear the entire stock, together with surplus and slightly soiled goods from their own house, at heart-breaking reductions on cost;"--"Opening 9 A.M. Monday next. Come early. This is not an ordinary bargain sale, but a forced sacrifice by which only the public can benefit." And the public, eager for the benefit, wishing that it was already Monday, pressed and strove to read and reread the white and red notices on the iron shutters.

"Don't push," said one nursemaid to another. "Take your turn. I've just as much right to see as you have."

Mr. Prentice laughed heartily and happily. He thought as he crossed the road and entered Bence's, "What a dog this Archibald is--to be sure!"

He found the grand little man in his private room, and was affably received by him.

"Oh, yes," said Archibald, sn.i.g.g.e.ring modestly. "We hope to make rather a big thing of our clearance sale.... How long shall we keep it going?

Well, that depends. It wouldn't last long, if we'd nothing to dispose of beyond what's left over there; but we shall clear this side at the same time."

And Bence rattled on glibly, as though Mr. Prentice had come to interview him for an article in an important newspaper.

"The ancient notion was that this kind of special selling took the cream off one's ordinary trade. But experience has taught us that such is not the case. We find that trade breeds trade. And you can't _tire_ your public--you can't over-stimulate them. It is the excited public that is your best _buying_ public."

Mr. Prentice listened respectfully; and then, after the manner of a good interviewer, begged the host to pa.s.s from general views to personal reminiscences.

"What is it you wish to know?"

"About you and her," said Prentice. "I should enormously like to know the inward history of it."

"Well, now that the secret's out," said Archibald, rubbing his chin, and wrinkling the flesh round his bright little eyes, "I suppose there's no harm in speaking about it."

"Certainly not to me," said Prentice. "Although I wasn't in her confidence about this, I am a real true friend of hers."