It was dark in the bedroom. Hesther was lying there, the blinds drawn. She called to him and, when he came over to her, she put her arms round him and pulled him towards her.
“It’s happened,” she said. “I saw the doctor this afternoon. Your mother went with me.”
“You mean that you’re going to have a child?”
She thrust up her arms trying to pull him down closer.
“It’s the third month,” she said. “I didn’t tell you before. I wanted to be certain.”
He looked down at her. There were dark lines under her eyes as though she had been sleepless. Her whole face was drawn and tired looking. In a way she looked older; but she looked happy too. He could see in the shadows that she was smiling up at him.
He paused.
“Do you remember your promise?” he said at last.
“What promise?”
“That if you had a child you’d give me the money?”
She did not answer. Instead, she unfastened her arms and covered her face with her hands. She was crying now.
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked. “Aren’t you happy, too? Don’t you love me at all? Don’t you even want to kiss me?”
She turned her back on him and burying her head on her arm she lay there weeping. When at last he bent over she thrust him away from her.
iii
That same evening John Marco left the house in Clarence Gardens and turned in the direction of Lancaster Gate. He was excited and strode through the streets with his head held high. His whole future seemed to be in his pocket and, as he walked, it jangled like a bunch of keys.
Miss Foxell came down immediately when she heard that there was a gentleman to see her. At the sight of John Marco, however, she paused abruptly.
“Nothing wrong, is there?” she asked. “Nothing’s happened to the shop?”
Her mind was filled with sudden terrors of fire and lapsed insurances; she saw the legacy, the fortune, everything, vanishing in vast clouds of terrifying smoke. And then she remembered that Mr. Hackbridge had assured her that the fire policy was all in order: she had been tormented by that fear before. Perhaps it was Mr. Hack-bridge himself. Had something happened to her one link with everything that Mr. Morgan had left her?
“Not Mr. Hackbridge,” she said, still in the same breath. “Not poor . . .?”
In her present mood of excitement and anxiety she looked very fragile and appealing. Her eyes, bright cornflower blue under their dark lashes, were agitated and shining.
But John Marco came straight to the point of his visit. He ignored her charms.
“I understand that you want an offer for the business,” he said. “I’ve come to make you one.”
“The business. Oh yes, the business.”
Miss Foxell’s white hands fluttered across her bosom. She felt perplexed and confused. Here at last was the offer that she had been waiting for, praying for. But it had come to her in a way in which she had least expected it—from her own shop-walker in fact. And he was so strange in his manner: he didn’t treat her as if she were a woman at all.
“Are you ready to discuss it?” he asked.
Miss Foxell smiled.
“Well, we can’t talk about it down here if that’s what you mean,” she replied: she was recovering herself more and more every moment. “Come upstairs and tell me about yourself.”
They went into the resident’s lounge of the Almeira where the palms drooped sub-tropically out of their bright brass bowls—the Almeira was of the best class—and the light filtered discreetly in through the varnish-papered windows. Miss Foxell led him towards one of the little bamboo and wicker couches with which the place was furnished.
“This is a nice surprise,” she said. “Sit down and tell me all about it, Mr. ...”
“Marco,” he told her.
She caught her breath, and her handkerchief fell unnoticed to the floor.
“How silly of me,” she replied. “I shall be forgetting my own name next. And Mr. Hackbridge was only talking about you the other night.” She paused. “It wasn’t Mr. Hackbridge who sent you was it?”
Was he going to notice her handkerchief? she wondered.
John Marco narrowed his eyes until Miss Foxell looked blurred and distant, not radiant and animated and on the couch beside him.
“You haven’t had many offers, have you?” he began.
She was defensive immediately.
“There were some very good enquiries,” she said.
“But they came to nothing,” he reminded her. “They were withdrawn before you had time to accept them.”
“They weren’t good enough,” she answered. “I wasn’t sorry to see them withdrawn.”
“They were more than you’ll ever get for it now,” he told her brutally.
Miss Foxell folded her hands in her lap. Her small chin was set into a hard, square line and her eyes had lost some of that dewy freshness which the Old Gentleman had noticed when he first saw her.
“Hurry up and tell me what’s on your mind, Mr. Marco,” she said. “Perhaps we’re just wasting each other’s time.”
John Marco smiled. He picked up the handkerchief and put it on the couch beside her.
“I’ve come to offer you three thousand pounds for it, just as it stands,” he said.
“Three thousand pounds.” She showed the whites of her eyes in horror. “Seven thousand is the price.”
“It’s ready money,” he answered.
She shook her head.
“I couldn’t look at it,” she said. “What would the agents think?”
“They’d be glad to get their commission,” he replied. “It’s been on the market a long time now remember.”
She got up and rang the bell.
“Will you join me in a little drink?” she asked. “What about a nice glass of port?”
John Marco shook his head.
“I’m an Amosite,” he said.
Miss Foxell gave her little social smile.
“I remember now,” she said. “So was Mr. Morgan. I’m Church of England myself.” There was a pause while they waited for a maid to come and Miss Foxell went through a brief crisis of indecision. “Some gentlemen don’t like seeing a lady drink if they’re not drinking themselves,” she said.
But John Marco solved the problem for her. When the maid came in he addressed her himself.
“The lady wants a port,” he said. “Just one.”
Miss Foxell smiled.
“You certainly know your own mind, all right,” she said. She moved up a little nearer to him on the couch. “Is three thousand all you’ve got?”
“Three thousand is all I’m offering,” he corrected her.
She remained silent for a moment and then an idea came to her.
“Why not three thousand for a half share?” she asked. “Why not you and me together?”
“I offered you three thousand for the whole business,” John Marco answered. “I’m not interested in half shares.”
But Miss Foxell was crying. The strain of bargaining with a man stronger than herself had been too much for her and her shoulders were shaking. She found herself at a disadvantage, however, with no handkerchief. And despite the fact that she kept indicating it with the toe of her shoe John Marco seemed incapable of noticing it a second time. In the end, she bent down and recovered it herself.
“It’s so difficult for me,” she said in between the sobs. “I’m only an inexperienced woman and you’re a man of the world.”
“I’ll deal through the agents if you’d rather I did,” John Marco answered.
The reply served to rouse her: she began patting at her hair.
“Why did you come here at all?” she asked. “It isn’t regular you know. Did you want to come and see me?”
“I came because I wanted everything fixed up to-night,” he answered.
Miss Foxell disregarded the snub. There was the light of admiration in her eyes.
“If only I’d met you before,” s
he said. “I can see I’ve just been wasting my time with Mr. Hackbridge.”
“Are you going to accept?” he asked.
She allowed her hand to droop until it was resting against his.
“I’ll let you know in the morning,” she promised.
But John Marco had already risen from his seat beside her.
“I’ll give you until ten o’clock,” he said.
Miss Foxell smiled up at him.
“Don’t go for a minute,” she pleaded. “We haven’t finished.” Her eyes were big and abnormally alive; the tiny mouth was quivering. “You can come up to my room,” she added quietly. “We shall be quite alone there.”
John Marco felt a sudden weakness run through him. Now that he was standing over her she seemed surprisingly small, small and pathetically deserted. The back of her neck was white and slender like a girl’s and the hair ran in soft, sweeping waves.
Miss Foxell was holding out her hand to him. “It’s only just up the first flight,” she was saying.
His heart now was faster: he was in the pride of his strength. He met her eyes and saw the invitation that was there. Then he noticed her hand and stopped himself abruptly: one finger—the smallest one—was separate from all the others, raised in a little tantalising arc. Mary’s finger had been raised in just that way on the first day when he had gone back home with her: the raised finger and the silver tea-pot were imprinted on his memory for ever. And with the memory of the finger came the memory of Mary as well. Her features imposed themselves for a moment on the smiling face of Miss Foxell and when they dissolved again Miss Foxell’s face no longer looked as girlish and enticing: it was the eager, greedy face of a middle-aged woman who is snatching at something which every minute of life is taking away from her; the face of someone who keeps dropping her handkerchief and has an empty port-glass on the table at her side.
“Aren’t you coming?”
But he only shook his head.
“You can give me your answer in the morning,” he said. “You can sleep on it and let me know.”
With that he picked up his hat and stick from the chair beside him and went down the broad staircase without even pausing to say good-bye.
The front of the house was in darkness when he got back; it looked cold and lifeless as he approached. But in Hesther’s room the light was still burning; a pale, daffodil-coloured slit shone out across the corridor from beneath the door. He groped his way upstairs towards it.
Hesther started when she saw him. She had not heard him as he came in, and she was evidently unprepared for him. There was something guilty about her. She seemed ashamed to be seen at her own dressing-table. And then he saw how the dressing-table had been arranged. The brushes and the scent-spray and the pin-cushion had been moved to one side and the two tall candles had been lighted. The top of the dressing-table was now covered with a collection of baby-clothes. They lay there, in fleecy, tidy piles; she was gloating over them.
And already she was endeavouring to hide them, to cover them up again before he should see them. She was like a school-girl who has been disturbed playing with her dolls.
She stood there awkwardly in front of him.
“Did you get what you wanted?” she asked.
“I shall get it,” he answered. “At the price I offered.”
She turned away from him as he spoke and went on gathering up the secret hoard. He could see her face in the mirror: she was crying. After a moment he went over and put his arm round her.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “I’ll repay you a thousandfold. We’ll be rich.”
But she avoided his touch and sank down on her stool in front of the dressing-table.
“Doesn’t the child mean anything to you?” she asked. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you at all?”
Chapter XVII
Three weeks later in the lawyer’s office in Marylebone the business of Morgan and Roberts became John Marco’s. The final stages seemed absurdly simple. Miss Foxell—she was still wearing black like a widow and kept pressing a handkerchief to her eyes—signed in one place, John Marco signed in another, the witnesses wrote their names, a banker’s draft was passed over—and four plate glass shop windows, three waxen dummies, the fruits of Mr. Morgan’s lifetime, the crammed stock-rooms, the debts, and the professional lives of twenty lady assistants and three men all magically changed hands.
At the actual moment of completion the most anxious man in London was probably Mr. Hackbridge. For no reason that he could discern, Miss Foxell had suddenly dropped him. She no longer sent for him in the evenings and she ignored his very existence. It was John Marco she asked for; and John Marco himself would say nothing. Mr. Hackbridge was afraid even to go out of the shop for a moment, and sat instead poring over piles of accounts that he could not master.
And by now the whole business was more inexplicable than ever. John Marco had sent a note round to the shop—a casual note as though he owned the place—to say that he would be absent this morning; and Miss Foxell had telephoned very curtly to ask for a pair of brass vases from the Millinery Department, which she said Mr. Morgan had promised her. Mr. Hackbridge put two and two together and did not like the total. He saw himself at fifty-four thrown suddenly onto the street with no assets but his frock coat and his striped trousers and with no living being to give him a testimonial. He sweated.
As soon as John Marco got back from the lawyer’s he went straight to the Old Gentleman’s room—it still seemed difficult to think of it by any other name. It was eleven o’clock, but Mr. Hackbridge was not there. At the last moment he had decided that he could stand the strain no longer without something to buck him up, and at this very minute he was gnawing his nails and drinking something short. John Marco sat himself down at the desk and began going through the papers.
They were a jumbled untidy collection; apparently Mr. Hackbridge simply emptied his pockets when he got there. Among the invoices and statements to the firm was a coal bill made out to Mr. Hackbridge, a final demand for the water-rate at twenty-seven Elzevir Road, Hammersmith, and a piece of paper with a list of football results on the back. There were also two empty bottles of pick-me-up tablets, a whisky-flask drained dry and a number of dirty pipe cleaners that had obviously been straightened out and put away for future use. John Marco was still rummaging about in all this rubbish when Mr. Hackbridge came in.
He stood in the doorway staring. His face was flushed with the high, hectic colour of dyspepsia and his hair was brushed up the wrong way like the feathers of a bird that has been caught with its back to the wind.
“What’s happening here?” he began. “Who gave you permission . . . ”
But John Marco interrupted him.
“Mr. Hackbridge,” he said without rising from the Old Gentleman’s chair, “Mr. Morgan put his business into your hands before he died, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did; and not into yours,” Mr. Hackbridge replied breathing heavily.
“And you’ve been spending your time hanging about public houses ever since.”
Mr. Hackbridge took a step forward and twitched up his sleeves at the elbows: for a moment it looked as if he were going to eject John Marco from his chair by force.
“What the Hell’s that got to do with you?” he shouted.
“Only this,” John Marco answered, still without raising his voice, “that now I’ve bought the business I shan’t be requiring your services.”
“You won’t be requiring ...”
Mr. Hackbridge clutched suddenly at the lapels of his coat.
“That’s what I said,” John Marco replied.
“But you can’t mean it . . . you don’t understand . . . do you realise that I’ve been here for eighteen years?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hackbridge,” John Marco replied, “but it’s my business now and I’ve decided that I can get along without you.”
“Give me another chance,” Mr. Hackbridge pleaded. “You won’t regret it.”
John Marco s
hook his head.
“You had your chance when the Old Gentleman died,” he said.
“But I’ll never get another job; not at my age.”
“That’s no affair of mine.”
“But what about Mrs. Hackbridge? I can’t let her starve.”
“She’s your wife, not mine,” John Marco answered.
There was a pause—a long pause—and then he looked towards Mr. Hackbridge. Now that the blow had fallen Mr. Hackbridge was crying. He had sat down and was weeping. Weeping, quite openly. Large, sticky tears were running down his cheeks and onto his fine moustache. The tyrant of the front shop, the monster who walked through the departments after closing time, shouting at the assistants, was there no longer. It was this shabby, half-sick shop-walker who remained.
Mr. Hackbridge began groping in his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief: he buried his face in it. John Marco turned his back on him and walked over to the window.
What he saw held him there: he forgot all about Mr. Hackbridge. It was bright sunlight on the other side of the street, and in the sunlight two people were standing. The young man, in a raincoat and a black bowler, was pointing at something in a shop-window, and the girl beside him, who had her hand on his arm, was nodding. The shop was a furnisher’s; and it was a drawing-room suite that they were looking at. The suite was very handsome, very elegant, and in the latest Bays water style. For a moment, the couple hesitated and then, still arm in arm, they went into the shop together.
John Marco stood looking after them. It was Mary Kent and her fiancé that he had seen. And his heart had stopped for a moment at the sight. But it was not jealousy that he was suffering: it was loneliness. That was happiness, real happiness, that he had been watching; and he was shut out from it. The young man had seemed so proud and confident as he stood there, and Mary had leant on his arm so trustfully. It was love that he had seen down there, and it made the good-will and the book-debts and the well-filled stock-room of this business that he had schemed and prayed for, seem suddenly empty and unimportant. It no longer appeared the kind of thing that a man might spend his whole life fretting over.
He turned and started to walk back to his desk.
I Shall Not Want Page 19
