The state of apathetic indifference continued; the slow months dragged
by, and still she could not shake off her invincible weariness and spur
herself to resume activity.
Once or twice Enid invited her to pay the long-postponed visit of
inspection; and, when these invitations were refused, she offered to
come to see her mother. But she was put off with vague excuses. The
weather seemed so doubtful this week; later in the year Mrs. Marsden
would certainly make the eight-mile journey, and examine the charming
home of her daughter and her son-in-law.
It was an effort even to write a letter; nothing really interested her;
her highest wish was to be left alone.
She heard and occasionally saw what was happening in the shop; but the
old keen delight in business had faded with all other delights. She was
not wanted down there behind the glass. Her husband was master there
now, and he did not require her assistance. He was pushing on with his
programme of change and innovation; he brought her architects' drawings
and builders' plans to sign, and she signed them without questioning; he
jauntily told her about his new Japanese department, his new agency
trade, his revolutionised carpet store, and she listened meekly to
everything, appeared willing to concur in anything.
He was inordinately pleased with himself, and his boastful
self-confidence brimmed over in noisy chatter. He had declared war
against Bence; henceforth, he vowed, the tit-for-tat policy should be
pursued with implacable thoroughness.
"Look out for yourself, Mr. Bence," he said vaingloriously. "It has
been very nice for you up to now. Because you saw a naked face, you
smacked it. But now you're smacked back--as you'll jolly well find. I
expect my new fascia has opened your eyes to what's coming."
The new fascia had been erected. It was made of chestnut wood--a most
artistic up-to-date piece of work, with the names Thompson & Marsden
alternating in carved lozenges over all the windows, with linked
festoons of flowers, with high relief and intaglio cutting--with what
not decorative and grand. It ran the whole length of the street frontage
and round the corner up St. Saviour's Court, and it cost L750.
But that expense was a fleabite when compared with the cost of the
structural alterations that were now fairly in hand.
The yard was being completely covered. The carts would drive into what
would be the ground floor; and above this there would be three floors of
packing rooms, with every imaginable convenience of lifts, slides, and
shoots, for manipulating the goods and discharging them at the public.
Meanwhile, the old packing rooms had been huddled into unused cellars,
and the space that they had occupied in the basement, indeed the entire
basement, was being excavated to an astounding depth. Soon an immense
subterranean area would be scooped out; vast halls with wide staircases
would be constructed; a shop below a shop would be ready for Mr.
Marsden's use.
But what he proposed to do with it he had not as yet disclosed. He was
feverishly anxious to get all the work finished, but the new basement
especially occupied his ambitious dreams.
"Mears, old buck," he said often, "I'm itching to get down there. And
how damn slow they are, aren't they?"
Having had his fling as a gentleman at large, he seemed to enjoy for a
little while the quieter but more massive importance derived from his
position as the proprietor of a successful business, the employer of
labour, the patron of art and manufacture. He paid handsomely for the
insertion of his portrait in the local newspaper, and arranged with the
editor that paragraphs about himself and his operations should appear
amongst news items without the objectionable word Advertisement. On
early closing day he swaggered about the town, feeling that he was one
of its most prominent citizens, and proving himself always ready to
stand a drink to anyone who would say so.
When his architect came down from London to go over the works with the
contractor, he carried them off to the Dolphin, before anything had been
done, and gave them a sumptuous luncheon--sat bragging and drinking with
them for hours. When at dusk they returned to the shop, Marsden was red
and noisy, the architect was in a fuddled state, and the contractor
frankly hiccoughed.
"Down with you, old boy," said Marsden jovially. "And buck 'em up--the
lazy bounders. Get a move on. I want this job finished; and it seems to
me you're all playing with it."
After the governor had been lunching he lost that sense of decorum which
from long habit should make it almost as impossible to speak loudly in a
shop as in a church. All the assistants and several customers were
scandalized by the noisy tongues of Mr. Marsden and his architect.
"And you jolly well remember that everything's to be done without
interference to my business. It's in the contract--and don't you forget
it. Start to finish--that was the bargain--business to be carried on as
usual."
"Oh, we don't forget, Mist' Marsd---- No interferens. Bizniz muz go on
zactly as usual."
But did it? Mears was appalled by the disturbance and confusion.
Outside in the street a long line of builders' carts blocked the
approach of carriage-folk; from beneath the windows, through the opened
gratings, earth and gravel and lumps of broken concrete were being
painfully hauled out; the pavement was covered with mud, obstructed with
debris, so that foot-people could not pass in comfort, and the Borough
Surveyor had sent three notices urgently requesting the abatement of
what was a public as well as a private nuisance. Inside the shop one
heard growling thunders from the depths below one's feet, and sudden
explosions as if one were walking over a volcano, while from every
entrance to the dark vaults there issued clouds of destructive lime
dust. Sometimes a department was shut up for an hour while a steel
girder was rolled along the floor by twenty perspiring men; processions
of bucket-bearers emerged unexpectedly; and one saw in every mirror a
grimy face or a plaster-stained back.
What was the use of asking ladies to step upstairs and view our Oriental
novelties, when the nearest staircase was temporarily converted into a
slide for roped planks?
Ladies said No, thank you; they would call again.
"This is going to hit us, sir," said Mr. Mears gloomily. "It is going to
hit us hard if it continues much longer."
"But it won't continue," said Marsden irritably. "They're bound by
contract to finish before the twentieth of next month. Besides, you
can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
There could be no doubt, thought Mears, as to the broken eggs; but the
question was, Would Mr. Marsden's omelette ever come to table, or would
it get tossed into the fire with so much else that seemed finding an end
there?
Towards the completion of the contract time, Marsden more than once
forced his wife to come through the door of communication, and have a
look round the altered shop. She was admittedly convalescent now. She
had not demurred when the master of the house gave Dr. Eldridge what he
called "a straight tip" to cease paying professional visits. She had not
protested when, in her presence, an almost straighter tip was given to
Yates that the boring fuss about a malady of the imagination must cease.
In fact she herself had said that there was nothing the matter with her.
She could not therefore refuse to show herself when he explicitly
commanded her to do so.
Many changes--as she passed by Woollens and China and Glass, it was like
walking in a dream, among the distorted shadows of familiar objects.
Miss Woolfrey ran out of China and Glass to welcome her; but the other
assistants, male and female, seemed shy of attracting her attention.
Changes on all sides, which she looked at with indifferent eyes--but one
change that slowly compelled a more careful observation. Perhaps
downstairs this, the greatest of the changes, would not be observable?
But no, it was noticed as plainly downstairs as upstairs.
There were fewer customers.
She glanced at the clock outside the counting-house. Three-twenty! In
the middle of the afternoon, at this season of the year, the shop should
be thronged with customers; and it appeared to be, comparatively
speaking, empty.
Marsden was waiting to receive her behind the glass, in her old sanctum.
"Come in, Jane. Here I am--hard at it."
Her bureau had disappeared. Where it used to stand there was a large but
compact American desk; and in front of this Mr. Marsden sat enthroned.
She glanced round the room, and saw a small new writing-table in the
space between the second safe and the wall.
"I thought you could sit over there, Jane," said Marsden, pointing with
his patent self-feeding pen. "You'd be out of the draught--for one
thing."
She was to be pushed into a corner, to be made to understand her
insignificant position under the new order of things,--but she did not
protest.
"Now then. Come along."
He took her first of all through the Furniture, and showed her his
sub-department for the sale of desks and all other office requisites
similar to those which he had purchased for his own use. This was what
he called agency work.
"No risk, don't you see, old girl! Doing the trick with other people's
capital." And he explained how the German firm that supplied England
with these American goods had given him most advantageous terms. "A
splendid agreement for _us_! If the things don't go off quick, we just
shovel the lot back at them--and try something else. That's _trade_.
Keep a move on--don't go to sleep."
Then presently he took her upstairs, to what he called his Japan
Exhibition.
The Cretonne Department had been compressed and curtailed to make room
for this new feature, and she passed through the archway of an ornate
partition in order to admire and wonder at the Oriental novelties.
"Now, Jane, this is what I'm really proud of."
There was plenty to see and to think about--Marsden made her handle
carved and tinted ivory warriors with glittering swords and tiny
burnished helmets, dragons with jewelled eyes and enamelled jaws,
exquisite little cloisonne boxes; made her stoop to look at the
malachite plinths of huge squat vases; and made her stretch her neck to
look at gold-embossed friezes of great tall screens.
All these goods were very expensive; and she asked if any of them had
been introduced, like the Yankee furniture, on sale or return.
"No, these are our own racket--and tip-top stuff, the best of its kind,
never brought to Europe till last summer.... The stock stands us in
close on four thousand pounds. You wouldn't think it, would you? But
it's _art_. It's an education to possess such things."
She hazarded another question. Did he think Mallingbridge would consent
to pay for such high-class education?
"It'll be a great disappointment to me if they don't clear us out in
three months from now. Of course they haven't discovered yet what we're
offering them. But they _will_. I go on the double policy--play down to
your public in one department, but try to lift your public in another.
That's the way to keep alive."
And, as they left the Japanese treasures and strolled about the upper
floor, he rattled off his glib catch-words.
"These are hustling times. Get a move on somehow. That's what I tell
them--They'll soon tumble to it."
He parted from her near the door of communication.
"Ta-ta, old girl.... Oh, by the way, I shan't be in to dinner
to-night--or to-morrow either. I'm off to London. I'm wanted there about
my Christmas Baz----" And he checked himself. "But I'll ask old Mears to
tell you all about that."
Then he ran downstairs, two steps at a time, and swaggered here and
there between the counters to impress the assistants with his hustlingly
Napoleonic air.
Occasionally he loved to step forward, wave aside the assistant, and
himself serve a customer. He thoroughly enjoyed the awe-struck
admiration of the shop when he thus granted it a display of his skill.
It was his only real gift--the salesman art; and it never failed him.
But it was something that he could not impart. Assistants who imitated
his method--trying to catch the smiling, almost chaffing manner that
could immediately convert a grumpy lethargic critic into a prompt and
cheerful buyer--were merely familiar and impudent, and ended by huffing
the customer.
And the governor, when he happened to detect want of success in one of
his young gentlemen or young ladies, came down like a hundred of bricks.
He treated the two sexes quite impartially, and the women could not say
that he bullied the men worse than he bullied them. But he had a deadly
sort of satire that the younger girls dreaded more than the angriest
storm of abuse. Thus if he saw one of them sitting down, he would
address her with apparently amiable solicitude.
"Is that ledge hard, Miss Vincent? Couldn't someone get her a cushion?
Make yourself at home. Why don't you come round the counter and sit on
the customers' laps?... We must find you a comfortable seat
_somewhere_--and change of air, too. Mallingbridge isn't agreeing with
your constitution, if you feel as slack as all this."
Like the people of his house, these people of his shop feared him, and,
perhaps without putting the thoughts into words, or troubling to quote
adages, understood that beggars on horseback always ride with reckless
disregard of the safety and comfort of the humble companions with whom
they were recently tramping along the hard road, and that no master is
so tyrannical as a promoted servant. In the opinion of the
shop-assistants, he could not go to London too often or stay there too
long.
While he was away this time, Mears came to Mrs. Marsden with a long face
and a gloomy voice, and gave her the delayed information as to her
husband's Christmas programme.
The new underground floor was to be used for a grand Bazaar, and Mears
had been told to win her round to the idea.
Mears himself hated the idea. He thought the bazaar a brainless
plagiarism of Bence's, and altogether unworthy of Thompson's. It would
be exactly like Bence's, but on a much larger scale--beneath the good
respectable shop, a cheap and nasty shop, in which catchpenny travesties
of decent articles would be the only wares; fancy stationery, sham
jewellery, spurious metals; horrid little clocks that won't go, knives
and scissors that won't cut, collar-boxes more flimsy than the collars
they are intended to hold--everything beastly that crumples, bends, or
breaks before you can get home with it.
"But he won't abandon the idea," said Mears. "That's a certainty. He's
mad keen on it. The only thing is for you to use your influence--and
I'll back you up solid--to persuade him to modify it."
And Mears strongly advocated modification on these lines: make the
bazaar a fitting annex,--substitute boots and shoes for the sixpenny
toys, good leather trunks for the paper boxes, nice engravings for the
coloured photographs,--offer the public genuine stuff and not trash.
Accordingly, Mr. Marsden, as soon as he returned, was begged by his
partner and his manager to grant their joint petition for a slightly
modified Christmas carnival. But he said it was too late. They ought to
have gone into the matter earlier.
He had bought the trash,--had engaged his London girls,--was ready; and
like a general on the eve of campaign, he could not be bothered with
advice from subordinate officers.
When discussing this horrible innovation, Mears had extracted from Mrs.
Marsden a distinct show of interest; several times afterwards he had
endeavoured to stimulate and increase the interest; and now, just before
Christmas, he earnestly implored her to rouse herself.
"We miss you, ma'am, worse every day. It isn't _safe_ to let things
drift. We can't get on without you."
Then one morning she had an early breakfast, dressed herself in her shop
black, came down behind the glass, took her seat at the little corner
table of her old room, and unobtrusively began working.
Marsden, when he came in two or three hours later, was surprised to see
her.
"Hullo, Jane, what do you think you are doing?"
"Well, Dick," she said submissively, "I should like to help in the
shop--as I used to, you know."
"Bravo. Excellent! I want all the help that anyone can give me;" and he
seated himself in the chair of honour. "But look here. Don't mess about
with the papers on this desk. I work after a system--and if my papers
are muddled, it simply upsets me and wastes my time."