And then he realised that Mr. Hackbridge was still there. His face had gone blotchy from crying and the colour had drained away from it. The corners of his mouth were working as if he were preparing to say something.
But John Marco anticipated him.
“You can stay,” he said wearily. “It doesn’t matter. You can stay.”
Mr. Hackbridge let out a little cry and coming forward tried to shake John Marco by the hand with his cold, damp one.
ii
The change of proprietorship was discernible from the start. Even the windows looked different. The oldest of the dummies, the dowager one—was removed and a new one bought. She was a simpering little cocotte, the new one, with slanting eyes and a wealth of bright, gold hair, that Mr. Hackbridge had to dress with a pocket comb when the blinds were down. From her pedestal in the centre she delicately accosted people, and John Marco would allow only the smartest hats and the latest kind of veil to be shown on her. When fully dressed, she was the sort of thing that the Old Gentleman would never have allowed anywhere near him; and in her various stages of undress when they were arranging her, she looked positively disgraceful.
There was actually less in the windows nowadays. The stocking display, for instance, which hitherto had consisted of great dangling masses of them like jungle vegetation, was completely done away with. And in its place was left one pair of thin silk stockings on a couple of shapely papier mâché legs. People who wanted ordinary wool or cashmere had to come in and ask for them.
And there were Special Weeks and Offers and Opportunities. On one Monday, Millinery Week would start and there would be hats even in the Fancy Goods. On the following Monday there would be scarcely a hat to been seen and the shop would be devoted to blouses and shirt waists. Then in remorseless succession would occur Dress Week, Glove Week and Spring Outfitting—the labels continually being pasted onto the windows and scraped off again.
Like all revolutions, of course, the new régime produced its reactionaries. The two oldest assistants got together and complained: it was, they said, the changing about that upset them. To have graduated in Gloves and then be transferred at twenty-four hours’ notice to Hosiery was something that tended to unhinge the mind. But John Marco over-ruled them, brutally and callously talked them down. And, for the simple reason that they could not afford to throw up their jobs, they allowed themselves to be persuaded; they emerged from his room, these two respectable maiden-ladies, ready to steel themselves for whatever madness the following Monday morning might bring forth. And then quite suddenly the middle-aged Miss Junip who was in charge of the corsets resigned. It was undoubtedly a loss to the firm; Miss Junip had grown up in the business and knew the busts of half Bayswater by heart. But John Marco did not hesitate. It was all over in a moment. At three-thirty one Friday afternoon Miss Junip, very red in the face and with a shaking voice, said that Mr. Morgan would never have allowed her to be put upon in that way—there was now an under-vest and combination exhibition in what had hitherto been exclusively the corset salon—and that she was going to keep house for a brother in Bexhill. And at nine o’clock on the following Monday morning Miss Junip was only a memory and in her place was a dark, handsome assistant, a Madame Simone, with beautiful hands and shining, brilliantined hair. It was a startling demonstration of speed and ruthlessness; and it had its effect. There were no more complaints.
As for Mr. Hackbridge, he now worked in a frenzy of nervous energy. When shop-walking he moved with the ceaseless everlasting tread of a soldier on sentry-go and there were no more of the dartings-out for refreshers. He was even in terror lest, while actually patrolling, he should not appear to be doing anything. In consequence whenever John Marco saw him, he was unnecessarily re-arranging a price ticket, or opening the door for an unimportant customer, or picking up a bill which someone else had dropped. Under the strain of it all and without the constant inflow of refreshment, he was beginning to lose weight; his waistcoat sagged on him. And whenever he did pause for a moment to pass a handkerchief across his forehead he would look up only to see John Marco gazing down on him from the little landing half-way up the staircase.
It was from this landing that John Marco saw Hesther upon her first official visit. Her arrival was unexpected: she had said nothing about coming when he had left the house that morning. It was simply that the door opened and she was there. For a moment as he saw her his old feeling of uneasiness, of fear almost, returned: he gripped the balustrade and stood staring at her. The last time she had visited the shop was when she had come to deliver her ultimatum; and her entry then had been just as sudden, as startling.
But she looked strangely different now. Before, she had been pale and tense. Now she was confident and at her ease. She stood there, gazing round her with a half-smile upon her face.
Mr. Hackbridge himself did not recognise her; he selected instead another customer, an old lady in a heavy fur, for his special attention and for a moment he turned his back on Hesther. Then, when he found that she was still waiting, he came forward a second time, bowing and smiling, and asked what he could do for her. As soon as he learned the truth, Mr. Hackbridge snatched up a chair, like an acrobat arranging a stage, swept it through the air and placed it at Hesther’s feet. Then he clapped his hands together.
“Tell Mr. Marco that Mrs. Marco has arrived,” he said.
As he spoke he kept pulling down the waxed ends of his moustache and letting them fly up again: it was an old trick of his when he was being professionally fascinating.
But Hesther would have none of him.
“Thank you,” she said. “But if you would show me the way I would rather go up myself.”
“Certainly, certainly,” he replied; and, removing the chair with a flourish, he led her down the aisle as though she were a bride and he conducting her to the altar. At the foot of the stairs John Marco was standing ready for them. Mr. Hackbridge withdrew backwards as from Royalty.
John Marco looked at Hesther questioningly. Inside the shop, she did not belong at all; the shop was his world.
But she was smiling again, almost as though to reassure him, and she took hold of his arm. There was something open and defiant about the geslare: it was as though in front of all the shop assistants and the customers she wanted to show that she was his wife, that his arm was there to be taken when she was in need of it. And the gesture did not pass unnoticed. The young ladies stopped selling for a moment and looked, fascinated; it was not often that salesmanship was tinged even so slightly by the disturbing element of sex. John Marco turned his back on them all and began to lead Hesther up the stairs towards his room.
When they had reached it, John Marco stepped back and let her enter. He was watching her closely now. Here, more than ever, she did not belong; it was the very centre of his separate life, this room. It expressed him. The desk was as orderly as a magistrate’s; and even the little pigeon holes were labelled. The rest of the room, too, had the same unremitting air of system. The sample boxes were piled neatly by the empty fireplace and the next weeks’ window cards were all set out upon a table.
He closed the door behind him and came over to her.
“Well?” he asked.
But Hesther ignored him; it was as though she had not heard him speak. She was looking round her in a critical, appraising manner, rather as a new tenant might inspect a room. Then she went over and sat down in his chair; sat down in his chair at his desk.
“So this is where you work?” she said.
John Marco paused, still eyeing her.
“You wanted to see me about something?” he asked.
She smiled at him again in that quiet, re-assuring way.
“Not you alone,” she said. “I wanted to see the shop.”
His heart gave a great leap at the words. For the first time in his life he found himself within an ace of loving her.
“You wanted to see the shop?” he repeated.
“That’s what I came for,” she answered.
There was something eager about him now; something that she had never been able to rouse before. He led her back onto the little landing on the stairs and threw out his hand.
“There it is,” he said. “My shop.”
She put her arm through his again.
“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you look happy,” she said.
Chapter XVIII
It was Mr. Tuke who broke the actual date of Mary Kent’s marriage. And he was quite deliberate about it. He wanted to test John Marco’s guilt or innocence, to establish by his manner whether it had merely been a trick of the lamp-light or, whether on the evening after the sacred lecture, he had really seen his own chosen Elder in the arms of another woman.
They were drinking tea one Sunday afternoon in the drawing-room at Clarence Gardens when Mr. Tuke referred to it. He put down his cup and observed John Marco closely out of the corner of his eye.
“Dear Mary Kent is getting married on Tuesday,” he remarked quietly.
There was a pause and, because no one added anything to the remark, he spoke again.
“At twelve o’clock,” he said, not removing his gaze from John Marco’s face, “Mary Kent will become Mrs. Petter.”
But Mr. Tuke was defeated in his strategem. It is true that John Marco got up when he began speaking. He even put down his own cup and faced Mr. Tuke, but what he said was social and non-committal.
“You’re eating nothing,” he complained.
And picking up the plate of soda-cakes he passed them for the fourth time to Mr. Tuke. In his disappointment, Mr. Tuke took one; and then, because he was eating again, he had to have more tea as well. Mrs. Tuke looked at him reprovingly. Of recent months his indigestion and attacks of heartburn had been such that they were interfering seriously with his efficiency as a minister: she wished that in this direction at least his appetite could have been just a little more chastened.
It was Hesther who took up the original topic.
“Where are they going to live?” she asked.
“Still close beside us,” Mr. Tuke replied. “Still in our midst. Mr. Petter is opening a business in Harrow Street.”
“What sort of business?” old Mrs. Marco enquired sharply. It was her habit in conversation to fix abruptly on some minor, irrelevant detail.
“Mr. Petter is a dispenser,” Mr. Tuke replied. “An apothecary.”
“He means a chemist,” Mrs. Tuke explained. “He’s opening a chemist’s shop.”
“That ought to be useful to her when the baby arrives,” old Mrs. Marco observed. “I used to be always round at the chemist’s.”
“But there’s no talk of a baby,” Mr. Tuke said hurriedly. “Not yet.”
Old Mrs. Marco gave a little titter.
“Not yet,” she observed. “But you wait.”
She regarded Hesther affectionately as she spoke, running her eyes up and down her. As she grew older, Mrs. Marco was becoming appreciably more interested in babies. She referred to them as a kind of dark secret that was shared only by others of her sex; at the mere mention of an engagement her mind irresistibly fled onwards towards the accouchement. And she could not bear to let the subject drop so simply. Her mouth began working again at the corners as it always did before she spoke, and she suddenly uttered the sum of her wisdom.
“Any man that’s worth his salt gives his wife a baby,” she observed.
There was silence for a moment and then Mrs. Tuke coughed. But Hesther had had enough of her mother-in-law for the afternoon.
“It’s your rest time,” she said.
“It’s always my rest time,” Mrs. Marco grumbled. “It’s time I was dead.”
She began gathering her things obediently together, however, and waited for the visitors to come over to her chair to say good-bye to her; she had at that moment the extreme dignity which invests old age. But the dignity vanished alarmingly when she reached the door. She swung round suddenly and addressed the whole room.
“Of course there’ll be a baby,” she said. “That is if he loves her”
With that, she closed the door behind her. There was silence again in the room she had left, just as she had guessed there would be. And alone in the emptiness of the hall, old Mrs. Marco chuckled. She had never liked Mr. Tuke and she enjoyed making him uncomfortable. In her day Amosite ministers had been big, hairy men like Mr. Sturger with a whole quiverfull.
ii
On the morning of Mary Kent’s wedding John Marco shut himself in his room seeing no one. Time now seemed endless as it approached this moment which he had hoped would never come. He got up and began walking backwards and forwards with short uneasy steps. It was the final betrayal, this wedding: his own marriage had destroyed half the pattern of his life and now this one was shattering what remained. Henceforth John Marco and Mary Kent would merely be two tiny points of humanity, tracing a course that led them farther and farther apart. “Some day,” he told himself, “the two points of the curve will come together again: I feel it inside me.” But as the idea came to him he laughed at it. The plan of his own life was simple enough now: he saw it stretching away into the future, the steadily rising arc of a merchant’s destiny. It pointed upwards towards heights that Mary Kent would never know. She, too, had chosen; but she had chosen more humbly.
He paused for a moment in his stride and looked at his watch: it showed fifteen minutes past eleven. For an instant his heart missed its beat. At this moment Mary Kent would be putting on her wedding dress in that high bedroom in Abernethy Terrace; she would be sleeking her pale gold hair ready for the veil. (There was a knock on the door and Mr. Hackbridge’s thick voice reported that Messrs. Fawcett’s traveller was there with a special line of taffetas; John Marco replied through the closed door that he could not be disturbed and went over and stood by the window looking out into the street.) She would be wearing white and there would be a sheaf of lilies in her hand; the heads of the lilies would be resting against her bosom. He picked up a letter from his desk and began to read it: it was a letter of complaint from an important customer—the sort of thing that he usually answered the same morning in his own hand—but to-day he threw it down again unfinished. And orange blossom too; she would be wearing a wreath of orange blossom across her forehead.
He could not bear to look at his watch again: the hour was too near now. But there was a clock which stood on the mantelshelf; it was impossible to work while that was accusing him. Without looking at the hands he went and turned its face to the wall. Then, in that room that was devoid of time and cut off completely from the world, he began to work. At eleven-thirty he was bent over his desk engrossed in a pile of invoices and statements, bills of delivery and credit notes, offers of settlement-discount and manufacturers’ specifications, and the whole miscellaneous jumble of paper which comprises the mad world of business. At eleven-forty-five he was still working, carefully ticking through each item as he attended to it.
But at ten minutes to twelve the room was empty: John Marco was striding down Paddington Grove towards the Tabernacle.
His mind cleared as he walked. To see it happen, actually to be there when the ring was placed on her finger: that was the only way of resolving this conflict. Then, having lost everything, having watched himself lose it, he would be able to walk out of the Tabernacle again, a free man, with only the future, and not the past as well, to contend with.
At the end of Chapel Walk he held back for a moment, fearful suddenly that he might been seen. But it was twelve o’clock already and the guests had all passed inside. The road looked empty and ordinary as though nothing were happening there; even the crowd that collects to see every bride had dispersed.
Squaring his shoulders he walked boldly up to the Chapel and mounted the high flight of steps. In the porch, however, the verger met him; he seemed excited and agitated.
“Come on in, Mr. Marco,” he said. “You’re missing i
t. I was just closing the doors.”
He put his arm behind John Marco as he spoke and tried to force him inside. But John Marco shook his head.
“I’m going up into the gallery,” he said.
“But you’ll never see the bride from there,” the verger replied hoarsely. “Not right from the gallery.”
“I shall see all that I want to see,” John Marco answered, and he began to climb the dark flight that twisted upwards into the ceiling.
The Amosite Chapel was the tallest in Paddington and John Marco was out of breath when he reached the narrow landing and pushed open the baize door of the gallery. The gallery itself was in darkness but the body of the Chapel was lighted: it shone up at him like a stage. Groping his way down the tiers, he slid into the front pew and, gripping the rail in front of him, stared down into the arena.
But now that he was there, the scene before him no longer seemed real. It was an actor playing the part of Mr. Tuke who was standing before the plain wooden altar; and it was a toy bridegroom that he had beside him. Even Mr. Kent, smothered in an unaccustomed frock-coat, looked imaginary; and Mrs. Kent, passing a lace handkerchief across her eyes, was a figure in a play.
There was one person, however, who was still real; and for a moment John Marco could not bear to look at her. She was sitting very upright on the high stool that was reserved for the bride. But even across the width of the Tabernacle he could see that she was pale, just as she had been on the evening of her Baptism. The whiteness of her dress and the sheaf of lilies that she was carrying filled the air around her with light. She was the one bright, living thing in that looming Chapel. Across her forehead and over her golden hair was a wreath of orange blossom.
Mr. Tuke was praying now. There was a shuffling among the scattered rows of congregation and they all got down onto their knees. Instinctively, John Marco covered his face with his hands.
But it was not in Mr. Tuke’s prayer that he was sharing. “Oh God, God,” he was beseeching, “rid my heart of all sinful lusts and vain longings. Let me forget this woman. Make me not wanton, sensual, having not the spirit. Give me strength to crucify the flesh in Thy name. . . . ”Mr. Tuke, however, had stopped. His hands were raised in benediction over Mary Kent and Thomas Petter. John Marco closed his eyes. And when he opened them again, the ring was on her finger and the little company of players were going through into the vestry to sign the register.
I Shall Not Want Page 20
