He dressed carefully, wearing for the first time a new black silk cravat that he had bought. It was a handsome piece of silk, the sort of thing that a Rajah might put round himself. And into it he thrust a single-pearl tie-pin. His frock coat was new too. He had bought it specially from a tailor in Jeremyn Street instead of from the man in Westbourne Terrace who had always made his clothes. The fit was exemplary. When he had put on his patent leather boots with the suède tops, and stuffed a silk handkerchief into his pocket he stood for a while in front of the cheval glass admiring himself. His hair, which was now grey at the temples, gave an air of authority to him; he might have been an ambassador at the court of St. James, instead of only a draper.
The morning’s post was ready for him when he went through for breakfast; it was standing there propped up against the coffee pot. And amid the little huddle of envelopes there was one missive—a postcard—that at once caught his eye. The message on it was printed: in jagged angular letters it ran right across the card. “BEHOLD THESE ARE THE UNGODLY WHO PROSPER IN THE WORLD,” it ran. “THEY INCREASE IN RICHES.” There was no address and no signature—though no signature of course was needed. He turned it over and looked at the postmark. But the Postmaster-General might have been in league with the sender. There was only a black, half-obliterated smudge.
John Marco stared at it for a moment and then tearing it into tiny fragments threw it into the open grate behind him. But the room did not seem quite the same afterwards. It was as though Hesther herself had been there. He felt himself being watched again. For the rest of the day he would feel that her eyes were on him.
It was four o’clock. The Mayor had blundered through his carefully typewritten speech using the words as if they were great mouthfuls of suet, and the hired mannequin had paraded past the assembled ladies with her hips swaying from side to side in the cultivated manner of her profession. As John Marco looked at her he reflected that it was strange that women who habitually walked like governesses should prefer to select their dresses from someone who glided about like a houri. But there was a convention in such things; and as the girl made her last exit with one hand on her waist and the other held stiffly up into the air at a right angle from the elbow as if she were picking a spray of something, everyone who was present felt that Bayswater owed something to John Marco for having brought this breath of the rue de la Paix blowing into it.
Then the Mayor, accompanied by the Lady Mayoress, cut the white ribbon that Mr. Hackbridge had fastened across the principal doorway; and John Marco Ltd. was open. The crowd was there all right. The windows, full of special and unrepeatable bargains, had attracted them. It had been John Marco’s idea that they should lead off with a sale; and every article in the shop was marked down to half-price as though values had crashed overnight. The uninvited, the ordinary rank and file of the district, had been waiting since two o’clock ready to pounce as soon as the doors had opened. But it was actually two women who had been rather annoyed at having to wait for all this formality who came in first. They sauntered self-consciously into the building where all the assistants were standing ready and between them bought a pair of gloves and a fancy handkerchief. Just as they were taking-out their purses, John Marco bore down on them.
“There will be no charge, madam,” he said, “for the first purchase made in the new store.”
And taking out his gold pencil he initialed the counter book himself. . . .
By five o’clock the store was full. There were eager, acquisitive women in every department, and Mr. Hack-bridge, who had been awarded the honorary title of Shop Manager, was walking up and down among them like a general on field day. He had got himself up very handsomely for the occasion, and his trousers had the immaculate side crease of King Edward’s. His two-inch moustaches were waxed until the ends were like needles, and in his button-hole was a gardenia in a metal holder.
Half-way up the big curved staircase John Marco had found a new pulpit from which he could look down on this bright world of his own invention. With his hand on the polished rail in front of him he stood alone, speaking to no one. In the gangway below him he could see the broad brims and sweeping feathers of the ladies’ hats. Their figures of course were square and fore-shortened like an opera singer’s seen from the gallery; and the strains of music were there to complete the illusion. Upstairs in the Old English tea-room where the waitresses wore Puritan aprons and the china on the tables was of cheap willow-pattern, an orchestra of three was fiddling madly away above the clatter of the tea-cups. And down below, the scene of carnival was completed: there were balloons. Two girls stood at the door holding great bunches of them, all printed staringly with his name. Every child who came in was given one. And as they carried them round, held high above their heads for protection, they bobbed up and down in the midst of the crowd like huge soap bubbles.
John Marco did not want to move away from his position. The lights had come on by now and the chandeliers in the ceiling glittered like tiaras, catching the edges of the mirrors, the bright metal balustrades that ran round the galleries, the polished surfaces beneath. The whole place danced and dazzled. “All these were of costly stones, according to the measure of hewed stones” he began saying to himself. “And the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits and stones of eight cubits.” Perhaps, for all his wisdom, Solomon himself had felt just a little like this when he had first looked upon his rising Temple.
But John Marco was dissatisfied: he wanted to be in all the departments at once so that he could watch every purchase being made, be present at every penny that his assistants were taking. There was so much going on around him of which he could never know: that was the trouble. And, for a moment, as he stood there he wondered if he would ever really be able to control this gigantic machine that he had started. The doubt was short-lived, however; this machine had been designed so carefully that it would run itself; if the people came in to feed it, it would run for ever. But the windows! Had Mr. Hackbridge remembered the coloured lights which he had said were to be put on as soon as it grew dusk? Frowning a little he went down the broad staircase and through the busy gangway to inspect the windows.
After the noise and clamour of the shop, it seemed strangely quiet and placid outside on the pavement. The windows, of course, lit up the street. The coloured lights were diving in and out like fishes, and a battery of half-watt lamps was throwing up its glare into people’s faces. For a few minutes John Marco walked up and down the frontage pausing one by one in front of the displays, admiring them. Then, just as he was about to go inside again he saw Mary and the child standing there.
It was the toy window, a kind of pre-Christmas bazaar of dolls and stuffed animals and rocking horses that they were looking at; and the child was pointing at something. He could see the faces of both of them as brightly lit as if a photographer had trained his flood lights on them. And at the sight of Mary a sudden weakness, something that had no place in this world of business, ran through him.
For a moment he stood helpless, in the doorway. Then a new feeling of excitement came over him; he went up and stood beside her. This was the nearest that he had been to her since the last night when he had visited Mr. Petter in the little flat in Harrow Street. It was the opportunity for which he had been waiting.
“Mary,” he said.
At the sound of his voice, she started. She drew back a little. But he came closer.
“Mary,” he said. “It’s been so long. ...”
She turned on him and he found himself looking into those deep eyes again. But they were angry now; there was no tenderness anywhere within them. Without speaking to him she began to move away.
“Don’t . . . don’t look at me like that, Mary,” he began.
But already she was two paces away from him. She was clasping the child by the hand, leading it. Forgetting everything, forgetting even the way in which the other people at the window had turned and were staring at him, he began to follow.
<
br /> It was because of the little girl who was with her, that he was able to catch them up. She dragged behind, still craning her neck to look at the windows. And an idea came to him.
“Give her anything she wants,” he said. “Anything in the whole store. I’ll pay for it.”
It was as Mary moved away again—though the child by now was staring up at him—that he saw one of the shop-girls standing at the doorway with the last balloons of her bunch in her hand. He took them from her and put them into the child’s hand instead. The child took hold of them instinctively.
As soon as he had given them to her, he stopped. It was no use going further; he could not go on forever following someone who would not speak to him. Instead, he stood and watched. Already he was conspicuous; a whole group of people was observing him. But the long street might have been empty, except for the two of them, the mother and the child: they were all he saw. The three balloons with his name on them were swinging out behind and the hand that held them was jerking at the strings, playing with them.
Then at the end of the street, Mary paused: she bent down and said something to the child. He saw her take the balloons away from her and drop them into the gutter. The balloons bounced lightly for a moment and then began to blow gaily back towards him. But Mary, with the child still looking over her shoulder at the bright new present that had been snatched from her, was hurrying on again.
John Marco turned and went back to the shop.
ii
The directors’ room when he got there was loud with voices and the chink of glasses. On a table by the window the empty bottles were standing. John Marco opened the door and stood for a moment looking in.
The first person to catch his eye was Mrs. Hackbridge. Her husband had dressed her up for the part of a director’s wife, and across the wide brim of her Gainsborough hat a curling ostrich feather now wound like a coiled serpent. Beneath the hat, however, her face showed thin, peaky and unmistakably Hammersmith. She had rolled back her long gloves to the wrist and was over by the buffet eating earnestly. Mrs. Skewin was there beside her. But neither she nor Mr. Skewin had dressed themselves up in the least; there in the midst of affluence they remained as living tokens of unsuccess; unchanged, unnoticed and themselves.
John Marco, however, was not allowed to remain long in the doorway unattended. It was Mr. Bulmer who greeted him. He was sitting on the board table itself with his feet in their elastic-sided boots up on a chair in front of him. He held his cigar jutting out of the corner of his mouth and raised his glass in John Marco’s direction.
“The conquering hero,” he said, not very distinctly. “Come in and join us.”
The Mayor was still there; and the Lady Mayoress. She was still holding the enormous bunch of roses and maiden-hair fern that had been presented to her. They all stopped talking as John Marco entered, and Mr. Hack-bridge, who had slunk upstairs for a moment while the drinks were still going, came forward, a guilty expression on his face, with a glass of champagne for his master.
John Marco took the glass and there, in the midst of all these people who were decently sipping the stuff, he tossed it off. Mr. Bulmer caught his eye approvingly and winked at him. Then Mr. Hackbridge began backing as inconspicuously as possible towards the door to return to his duties, and the Mayor stepped forward.
“Har you satisfied?” he asked blandly. “Ham I right in supposing that to-day has been a great success?”
John Marco told him that he was; and Mr. Bulmer got down from the table and opened another bottle of champagne.
It was after seven when the party broke up. The Mayor, with the Lady Mayoress on his arm, was the first to go; and then Mr. and Mrs. Skewin; the other directors found the gloves and handbags that their wives had mislaid; and last of all Mr. Hackbridge came to collect the uncomely Mrs. Hackbridge.
John Marco was left alone in the room now, the litter of celebration all round him. He went over to the sideboard and found a bottle of champagne, half-full, standing there. He poured himself out one glass and then another and drank them in quick succession as he had drunk the first one. He was alone, wasn’t he? There was no reason why he shouldn’t get drunk if he wanted to. The others had all gone off home with their wives; they weren’t left solitary as he was. Even Mr. Hackbridge would find the creature who had worn the picture hat sitting by the fireside when he reached his house. And John Marco would find no one. His fireside and his bed were as unshared as a hermit’s. But if he so much as raised his little finger, couldn’t he have half the women in London simply for the asking? He could give them everything they wanted, now; they could have their furs and their servants and their town-carriage. At forty, with his hair just silvering a little, he was a catch; he was the most eligible man of his own acquaintance. But he was forgetting; the champagne had blurred things for a moment. He had forgotten the one thing that really mattered. He couldn’t offer them anything: that was the whole irony of it. Somewhere or other behind locked doors, with her tracts and her son for company, his help-mate and bed-fellow was waiting for him: in the eyes of God he was not one of the lonely ones.
He set down his wine glass so clumsily that the stem shattered against the bottle and he was left holding the broken fragment in his hand. When he let the piece fall to the table, and heard the silly tinkle that it made, he knew that he was just a little drunk already. And the thought of women, not of any one woman in particular, but the whole sex of them, now came pressing in on him. He remembered faces that he had seen in a crowd long since, and then forgotten; his mind became full of pictures and he surrendered to them. He recalled the way in which women, respectable, well-groomed women, out in the Park with their husbands, had eyed him as he had passed. And other women—less respectable. Weren’t the streets full of them? Wouldn’t any other man have forgotten his wretchedness that way? At the thought, a wave of coldness and desire ran through him. The evening was still young, and in the darkness outside, the whole Babylon of London lay at his doorstep. For one night at least he could forget everything in life that he had lost.
He looked up and saw Mr. Hackbridge standing there.
“There’s something I ought to report, sir,” he said hesitatingly. “One of the counterfoils from the Hosiery is missing. I’ve spoken very severely to the young lady about it....”
But John Marco was not listening. With his hat tilted on the back of his head and with his gold-knobbed cane in his hand, he had gone out of the doorway without answering. His face was flushed and his step on the stairway outside sounded heavy and uncertain.
iii
Out there in the Park, the women who had suddenly filled his mind, were standing in their numbers; and he went among them. Singly, and in twos and threes, they made a moving pattern of invitation. And some instinct seemed to draw them to him. They came close, leaving their cheap heavy scent hanging over him. But he only peered into their strange pale faces and passed on. Somehow, by their openness, their eagerness, they were destroying the very thing that he was seeking hard to find.
And he remembered suddenly that previous night when he had gone alone into the Park. It had been to decide that night; to decide whether at last to break the cords that were still binding him to Mary and unite his life with Hesther’s instead. He had made his decision; and the reward, a thousand-fold, had come to him. It was because he had decided, that he was a rich man now, rich and growing richer. His mind clung to the thought and tried to embrace it; to be rich, that was the great adventure. There was nothing on earth now, even this brief space of pleasure that he was seeking, that he could not purchase.
Ahead of him, in the yellow saucer of light that one of the lamps made around it, a woman was standing. He looked at her and his step quickened. She was young, little more than a girl, it seemed, and solitary; she evidently did not consort with the others of her kind. His heart began racing and his lips were dry. The evil, the wickedness, of what he was contemplating momentarily overwhelmed him. “For of this such are they which creep in
to houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts:” The words came into his memory and accused him. He hesitated. But already the figure ahead of him had sauntered idly away into the shadows and he pressed on, following her more urgently, more desperately, than before. The rest of the dark parkland, the rest of London, the rest of his own life even, was blotted out; and only the fascination of the dim form in front remained.
As he drew near, she turned slowly and paused. He spoke to her and she came up and walked beside him, taking hold of his arm as she went. At her touch the desire within him mounted and he thrust his own arm about her roughly. Her body was slight and yielded to his weight; the tenderness of youth still seemed to cling to it.
“This is sin,” John Marco told himself. “Sin. But she will help me to forget.”
Then as she came into the glow of the next lamp he saw her face. She was glancing sideways and her eyes met his. But her eyes were grey, the heavy gold of her hair was drawn into a coil on the white neck. He started and drew back. It was no longer her face that he was seeing: it was Mary’s. But this face was smiling, the red mouth was parted; and he remembered Mary’s face as she had turned away from him that afternoon, how cold and bitter it had been. His mind cleared suddenly with the memory, and he saw the woman in front of him as she really was—her loose, stupid lips and the streety simper. “I have lost Mary, to win this,” he reflected. “It is this for which I am giving away my soul.” And, putting out his arm, he thrust her angrily away from him.
He had left her now: he had put a sovereign into the woman’s hand—it had closed over it like a child’s—and had gone away leaving her there in the darkness. He was a sane man again, sane and lonely and exhausted. And as he walked his lips were moving.
I Shall Not Want Page 33
