But for the last eighteen months or so, John Marco had left the ordinary, everyday supervision of the shop, the poking about into corners to see that the dust hadn’t been allowed to settle there, more and more to Mr. Hackbridge; and Mr. Hackbridge, exhausted and frayed by years of working for John Marco, had left it more and more to itself. Mr. Hackbridge still made the same morning tour in the place of his master, visiting the same departments in the same order; but the old spirit was missing. The assistants scarcely even looked in his direction as he passed.
John Marco himself was seen less than ever. He shut himself away in his room, guarding his soul and Mr. Lyman’s financial statements in solitude. On the rare occasions when he did emerge, it was usually to make trouble. There were sudden furious sallies when he would stamp through the shop at his old speed, his face dark and angry, on his way to annihilate some employee or other who had displeased him. The pretext for these excursions were sometimes slight—a mistake in cutting, a colour that did not match the rolls that were already in stock, or a letter of complaint from a customer. But at those moments it was the original John Marco who was there again, the man whom his assistants were afraid of; and Mr. Hackbridge, hearing John Marco’s voice raised, even though it was someone else that he was shouting at, used to feel the pit of his stomach grow cold on these occasions and the tips of his fingers begin to tremble.
There were some people who said that John Marco’s temper was shorter than it had been because he was drinking too much—the fact that he kept spirits in his room had not passed without comment in the house. And others, the very knowing ones, said that it was because the lady in Hyde Park Square, their own mysterious ex-colleague, was unfaithful and extravagant. And though both these reasons were perhaps true they were only a part, a small part, of it all.
The real trouble lay outside the business, somewhere five or six miles away down in the heart of London. It was there that the ugliest of rumours of all were circulating; it was in the offices of brokers and half-commission men that people shook their heads and said that the business of John Marco Ltd. itself was shaky.
They were right too: that was the grim point. John Marco knew perfectly well that they were right; and he knew why. That enormous palace of Portland stone and plate glass was too expensive to be lived in. It wasn’t that the public didn’t come there: he could still fill the shop by one of his advertisements whenever he had been able to buy at the right place. But even when the gangways were blocked, and the stuff was passing in waves over the counters, there was still that marble court with the Pompeian pillars to be paid for, still the cost of that building that he had dreamed about, to be snatched back somehow out of thin air above his head.
Alone in his room, he had grown to hate the splendour that he had insisted upon; the fact that he was surrounded by it, oppressed him. He had only to go outside and look at the majestic sweep of the staircase to know that you can’t pay for that sort of thing out of a yard or so of ribbon and stray reels of cotton; it was a lifetime’s work for one man to recover what he had paid for his crystal chandeliers. And it all meant that the whole time, without daring to pause even for a single moment, he had to be just that bit cleverer than every other draper in London over everything he bought and over every price that he charged. “Without it all,” he had said to himself a hundred times—and the yellow uniforms of the page boys, and the floristry department stocked with lilac out of season, and the fancy dresses for the assistants at Christmas time, had long since disappeared and had even ceased to be talked about—“I should be making my profit: the gold would have piled itself up inside the bank by now. But with it all, it means that I must spend my whole day from eight-thirty in the morning until I go to bed at night juggling about with fractions of halfpennies and decimals of farthings, and I can’t even pay a dividend.”
And on those occasions as he sat alone in his room with the reports of the various departments spread out on the desk in front of him, like a bewildering patch-work table-cloth, there was a strange, recurrent nightmare, a kind of inner panic, that infected him: it seemed at those moments as though, if he stopped thinking about the business even for a single instant, he would see the whole carefully-oiled mechanism of buying and selling go to pieces before his eyes, as though his brain were the dynamo that was driving everything, and if that stopped, everything else in the shop would have to stop at exactly the same moment. And the nightmare, the panic, always developed along exactly the same lines until finally it had enveloped him. First of all, there was the terrible fear of what would happen if he did stop; and then there was the even more terrible fear that he would have to stop.
“I can’t go on,” he had heard himself saying aloud when the panic was at its worst and he had been there alone, working late. “I can’t go on.” And then he would go over to the cupboard and place the decanter on the table beside him, and run his fingers through his hair and start working again, with every bit in his brain red hot and the figures, huge, silly piles of them, forming and reforming themselves before his eyes.
For some time now Mr. Skewin and Mr. Hackbridge had both been keeping a very careful eye on John Marco: they had been observing him. And they had been talking him over together pretty thoroughly, dissecting him coldly and dispassionately like a specimen under the glass.
“He’ll be dead inside a year if he isn’t careful,” Mr. Hackbridge volunteered with a kind of sagacious cheerfulness.
Mr. Hackbridge was a man who set great store on taking care; his whole life was one of mufflers and throat-pastilles and judicious night-caps.
“But the business” Mr. Lyman’s thinner voice put in. “Think of what’s happening to the business.”
And as they both had a plan—it was Mr. Lyman’s plan—and as they needed support for it, they went and lobbied Mr. Skewin. He was dim and adaptable as usual. He expressed himself entirely captured by the whole idea, and even went so far as to say that he thought that John Marco would appreciate it to know that they were thinking about him.
So the three of them went up to John Marco’s office on the following evening. It was just as they had expected. In answer to the bark from within that greeted Mr. Hack-bridge’s somewhat timid knock on the door, they filed in and found John Marco working there—the sheets of figures stretched out around him, and the decanter standing in the middle with the half empty glass beside it. The rest of the room was in darkness and the lamp in front of him spread a bright pool of light over the papers like sunshine. When he looked up and the rays caught his face, sharpening every feature and etching in the shadows under his eyes more deeply, they saw how grey and lined he was. He was like a general in the thick of a campaign, poring over maps that seemed set against him.
“We were wondering if we might see you for a moment?” Mr. Lyman began.
John Marco started: he moved abruptly with the jerki-ness of a man whose nerves are unprotected.
“What is it?” he asked. “Has anything gone wrong?”
“No, no,” Mr. Lyman assured him. “It isn’t that. It’s simply something that we wanted to discuss with you.”
“Now?” John Marco asked.
The figures on the desk were staring up at him accusingly; they seemed to have a hundred small eyes which were regarding him.
“We thought it might be the best time,” Mr. Lyman went on. It was noticeable, now that they were actually in John Marco’s presence, that the others did not appear to be at all eager to say anything. “No interruptions you know,” Mr. Lyman added.
John Marco had half risen from his chair and had then sat down again. He passed his hand across his eyes and told Mr. Lyman to continue.
The room was silent, quite silent, as Mr. Lyman started to speak.
“We’ve been rather anxious about you for some time, sir,” he began in a modest, diffident kind of manner. “We know the great strain the business imposes on you and we can’t help feeling worried about your health.”
“You’ve been worried abou
t my health,” John Marco repeated. The corners of his mouth were drawn down and the vein in his forehead was standing out, throbbing. “You interrupted me to tell me that?”
“We did, sir,” Mr. Lyman explained, “because we thought we’d found the solution.”
He was being very careful, very tactful; a great deal depended on the right inflexion and intonation of every word he was uttering.
“And might I ask what it is?” John Marco demanded. He was drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk as he spoke to them. “Might I ask why I should be bothered in this way?”
“What we had thought,” Mr. Lyman continued, feeling his way daintily step by step, like a cat, as he went along, “was that perhaps you might care to take a holiday. We know how little rest you give yourself and we thought that if we suggested it you might consider the idea.”
John Marco started.
“Whose idea was this?” he demanded. His voice was coarse and rough as he said it; he was almost shouting.
He was breathing heavily by now.
Mr. Lyman rather shame-facedly took the lead again.
“We often feel the strain ourselves, sir,” he said tactfully. “We often get a bit under the weather. And with everything that you have to think about, it’s too much without a holiday.”
“That’s right, sir,” Mr. Hackbridge put in, as though to show that his word in conference counted for something. “We often get tired ourselves, sir. Very tired.”
John Marco did not reply immediately. The blood was hammering inside his head and his heart was pounding. They wanted to get rid of him for a time—that much was obvious. They had been plotting, and he would have to destroy their designs. But he would have to be careful: exceedingly careful. He had been drinking—a lot to drink in fact: the whiskey had disappeared from the decanter faster even than usual—and he could not afford to make any mistake just now. He got up and walked slowly over to the mantelpiece and set his shoulders against it.
“You were saying, Mr. Hackbridge, I believe,” he replied, his voice deliberately kept level and under control, “that you find your work very tiring. I’m not surprised. It’s usual to get a little tired if you work. But I can do nothing for you. If you find it’s too much for you, you have your remedy, you know: you can resign.” He turned slowly away from Mr. Hackbridge and addressed Mr. Lyman again. “And so can you, Mr. Lyman. If you wish to resign I shan’t hinder you; there’s only one person in this firm whom I regard as indispensable.” He paused long enough for it to become apparent whom he meant, and then approached his desk again. “If that is all, gentlemen, I will say good-night. I have work to do.”
He had taken up the ruler that lay on his desk and sat there gripping it after they had gone, staring across the width of the room in front of him. His hands were clasped so tightly round the ruler that the bones of the knuckles showed; the ruler itself was bent into a steep arc like a bow.
“I’ll show them that they can’t treat me like this,” he said, speaking aloud to the empty room: this speaking aloud had now become a habit. “I’ll show them their mistake. I’ll make them sorry.”
There was a report so loud and near that it made him jump, and the heavy ruler that he had been holding broke in two in his face. He threw the pieces into the basket beside him and reached out for the decanter again.
But his hand was trembling so much that the whiskey went spilling everywhere.
ii
“You’re very quiet to-night, my dear,” Louise said to him.
John Marco looked up at her as though her words had surprised him, as though he had not known that she was there. He shook his head.
“It’s nothing,” he answered. “Nothing at all.”
The corners of his mouth twisted downwards again as he said it. Those three men whom he had raised up from street level to be directors of a great firm had been conspiring together to get rid of him; and he called it nothing. But it would be nothing, after he had done with them; they could have no picture as yet of the trouble they had brought down upon themselves, no hint at all of what was coming.
Louise had got up and crossed over to him. She sat herself down on the arm of his chair.
“Don’t go and make yourself ill,” she said.
“I’m not ill,” he answered.
But did he look ill? he wondered. Could other people really see in his face what state his mind was inside him?
“Remember, you’re not so young as you were,” she went on; she was stroking the side of his face with her hand as she said it.
He shook her hand clear of him, however, and got up and moved away from her. His feet seemed to drag a little across the carpet as he walked.
“So you don’t find me so young as you did,” he said bitterly. “Is that what you came over to tell me?”
But Louise only laughed at him.
“You’re young enough for me,” she answered. “That’s what I came over to say.”
She was smiling and holding out her hand towards him again. From where he was standing he noticed how perfect she looked, how beautiful, and elegant. With that beauty and elegance belonging to him, it seemed foolish to quarrel with it. The lines in his face softened.
“Come over here,” he said.
He put his arms round her and, as he breathed in the perfume that she was using, all his senses seemed to come alive again. Her body was soft and warm, and he could feel her hair against his cheek.
“You’re worth everything,” he said.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I’m so happy, my dear.” She gave a little tremor as she spoke. “I almost thought you’d given up loving me in this kind of way.”
“You did?”
“I often lie awake for you,” she answered, “but you’re always working.”
“Not always,” he said, putting his face down to hers again. “Not to-night.”
Chapter XL
The night was still early when he left her. He drew the coverlet up round her shoulders so that she should not stir and closed the door behind him softly. Then he went down to his study and put on the lights. It was strange sitting down at his desk when the rest of London was sleeping. But he had work to do. He took out a piece of paper and began covering it with figures—the same grim accusing figures that had been surrounding him at the shop: he knew them by heart by now and knew what was wrong with them. He knew also how to put them right. He heard three o’clock strike from St. Mary’s clock and then four; and still he went on working. Towards five o’clock his hand had grown heavy on the paper and his eyes began to close. Finally, he folded his arms on the desk and rested his head on it. He slept.
Scarcely more than two hours afterwards he woke again, woke suddenly and sat up. His back was rigid and his shoulders ached. Inside his head the pulses were drumming and as he straightened himself a cloud of blackness passed for a moment in front of his eyes. But once he was on his feet again he was wide-awake; wideawake and ready for the day that was in front of him. At eight-thirty his carriage drew up in front of the shop and he went inside.
It was in this flushed, sleepless state, with his eyes still hot and burning inside his head, that he started his campaign of terror and economy. It was ruthless and unrelenting. There was not a department or an employee which escaped. By the time the campaign was over and the victims, both those who had been dismissed and those who remained, had recovered themselves, John Marco’s name was one of the unprettiest and least esteemed in the cut-throat annals of retail shopkeeping.
It began with a conference. John Marco called the three plotters, the men who had betrayed him, into his office. He began speaking before the last of them had had time to sit down, and spoke rapidly in the manner of a man whose mind is ready set like a gun.
“We employ too many people,” he said abruptly. “We must get rid of half of them.”
“Half!” Mr. Hackbridge exclaimed in astonishment. “Half!”
“That’s what I said,” John Marco re
plied. “Half. And I shall leave it to you, Mr. Hackbridge, to arrange for the dismissals. It had better be the older ones who. go: we don’t have to pay the young ones so much.”
“But do you think we can carry on the business with half the staff? “Mr. Skewin asked in the slow, half apologetic way of his. “Don’t you think it may be too much for them?”
“Then if it’s too much they must go too,” John Marco answered. “You must find people, Mr. Hackbridge, who are prepared to work a little harder.”
“Quite so,” said Mr. Lyman approvingly. “They’re certainly very well paid.”
“I was coming to that,” John Marco interrupted. “They won’t be so well paid in future. I want you to inform the staff, Mr. Hackbridge, that all salaries are being reduced. The larger salaries are being reduced most. I’ve got the scale here.”
He passed over a sheet of paper covered with his handwriting as he said it.
“It’ll be very discouraging,” said Mr. Hackbridge bravely. “It’ll make it all the more difficult to get the best out of them.”
“I’ve told you before,” John Marco answered, “that if they’re not satisfactory they must be replaced.”
“I quite approve,” volunteered Mr. Lyman.
His voice as he said it seemed thinner and more knife-like than ever.
John Marco turned to him. He eyed him steadily for a moment and then addressed him very slowly.
“I’m glad you do, Mr. Lyman,” he said. “Because this affects all of us. I’m proposing that directors’ salaries should be cut by half.”
There was silence after he had spoken and then Mr. Lyman replied for them all.
“I hardly think that the Board would agree to that,” he said.
John Marco smiled; it was a cold, unhumorous smile that drew in the corners of his mouth and left the eyes steady and unchanged.
“The Board will have no alternative,” he replied. “At the next General Meeting I myself will propose it. I do not imagine that any director who opposes it will be re-elected.”
I Shall Not Want Page 44
