There was a great effervescence of rumor in Cubitt Town when Ted Munsey
came into money. Ted Munsey, commonly alluded to as Mrs. Munsey's
'usband, was a moulder with a regular job at Moffat's: a large, quiet
man of forty-five, the uncomplaining appurtenance of his wife. This was
fitting, for she had married beneath her, her father having been a dock
timekeeper.
To come into money is an unusual feat in Cubitt Town; a feat,
nevertheless, continually contemplated among possibilities by all Cubitt
Towners; who find nothing else in the Sunday paper so refreshing as the
paragraphs headed "Windfall for a Cabman" and "A Fortune for a Pauper,"
and who cut them out to pin over the mantelpiece. The handsome coloring
of such paragraphs was responsible for many bold flights of fancy in
regard to Ted Munsey's fortune: Cubitt Town, left to itself, being
sterile soil for the imagination. Some said that the Munseys had come in
for chests packed with bank notes, on the decease of one of Mrs.
Munsey's relations, of whom she was wont to hint. Others put it at a
street full of houses, as being the higher ideal of wealth. A few, more
romantically given, imagined vaguely of ancestral lands and halls, which
Mrs. Munsey and her forbears had been "done out of" for many years by
the lawyers. All which Mrs. Munsey, in her hour of triumph, was at
little pains to discount, although, in simple fact, the fortune was no
more than a legacy of a hundred pounds from Ted's uncle, who had kept a
public-house in Deptford.
Of the hundred pounds Mrs. Munsey took immediate custody. There was no
guessing what would have become of it in Ted's hands; probably it would
have been, in chief part, irrecoverably lent; certainly it would have
gone and left Ted a moulder at Moffat's, as before. With Mrs. Munsey
there was neither hesitation nor difficulty. The obvious use of a
hundred pounds was to put its possessors into business--which meant a
shop; to elevate them socially at a single bound beyond the many grades
lying between the moulder and the small tradesman. Wherefore the Munseys
straightway went into business. Being equally ignorant of every sort of
shopkeeping, they were free to choose the sort they pleased; and thus it
was that Mrs. Munsey decided upon drapery and haberdashery, Ted's
contribution to the discussion being limited to a mild hint of
greengrocery and coals, instantly suppressed as low. Nothing could be
more genteel than drapery, and it would suit the girls. General
chandlery, sweetstuff, oil, and firewood--all these were low,
comparatively. Drapery it was, and quickly; for Mrs. Munsey was not wont
to shilly-shally. An empty shop was found in Bromley, was rented, and
was stocked as far as possible. Tickets were hung upon everything,
bearing a very large main figure with a very small three-farthings
beside it, and the thing was done. The stain of moulding was washed from
the scutcheon; the descent thereunto from dock timekeeping was redeemed
fivefold; dock timekeeping itself was left far below, with carpentering,
shipwrighting, and engine-fitting. The Munseys were in business.
Ted Munsey stood about helplessly and stared, irksomely striving not to
put his hands in his pockets, which was low; any lapse being instantly
detected by Mrs. Munsey, who rushed from all sorts of unexpected places
and corrected the fault vigorously.
"I didn't go for to do it, Marier," he explained penitently. "It's
'abit. I'll get out of it soon. It don't look well, I know, in a
business; but it do seem a comfort, somehow."
"O you an' your comfort! A lot you study _my_ comfort, Hedward!"--for he
was Ted no more--"a-toilin' an' a-moilin' with everything to think of
myself while you look on with your 'ands in your pockets. Do try an' not
look like a stuck ninny, do!" And Hedward, whose every attempt at help
or suggestion had been severely repulsed, slouched uneasily to the door,
and strove to look as business-like as possible.
"There you go again, stickin' in the doorway and starin' up an' down the
street, as though there was no business doin'"--there was none, but that
might not be confessed. "D'y' expect people to come in with you
a-fillin' up the door? Do come in, do! You'd be better out o' the shop
altogether."
Hedward thought so too, but said nothing. He had been invested with his
Sunday clothes of lustrous black, and brought into the shop to give such
impression of a shop-walker as he might. He stood uneasily on alternate
feet, and stared at the ceiling, the floor, or the space before him,
with an unhappy sense of being on show and not knowing what was expected
of him. He moved his hands purposelessly, and knocked things down with
his elbows; he rubbed his hair all up behind, and furtively wiped the
resulting oil from his hand on his trousers: never looking in the least
degree like a shop-walker.
The first customer was a very small child who came for a ha'porth of
pins, and on whom Hedward gazed with much interest and respect, while
Mrs. Munsey handed over the purchase: abating not a jot of his
appreciation when the child returned, later, to explain that what she
really wanted was sewing cotton. Other customers were disappointingly
few. Several old neighbors came in from curiosity, to talk and buy
nothing. One woman, who looked at many things without buying, was
discovered after her departure to have stolen a pair of stockings; and
Hedward was duly abused for not keeping a sharp look-out while his
wife's back was turned. Finally, the shutters went up on a day's takings
of three and sevenpence farthing, including a most dubious threepenny
bit. But then, as Mrs. Munsey said, when you are in business you must
expect trade to vary; and of course there would be more customers when
the shop got known; although Hedward certainly might have taken the
trouble to find one in a busier thoroughfare. Hedward (whose opinion in
that matter, as in others, had never been asked) retired to the
back-yard to smoke a pipe--a thing he had been pining for all day; but
was quickly recalled (the pipe being a clay) upon Mrs. Munsey's
discovery that the act could be observed from a neighbor's window. He
was continually bringing the family into disgrace, and Mrs. Munsey
despaired aloud over him far into the night.
The days came and went, and trade varied, as a fact, very little indeed.
Between three and sevenpence farthing and nothing the scope for
fluctuation is small, and for some time the first day's record was never
exceeded. But on the fifth day a customer bought nearly seven shillings'
worth all at once. Her husband had that day returned from sea with
money, and she, after months of stint, indulged in an orgie of
haberdashery at the nearest shop. Mrs. Munsey was reassured. Trade was
increasing; perhaps an assistant would be needed soon, in addition to
the two girls.
Only the younger of the girls, by the bye, had as yet taken any active
interest in the business: Emma, the elder, spending much of her time in
a bedroom, making herself unpresentable by inordinate blubbering. This
was because of Mrs. Munsey's prohibition of more company-keeping with
Jack Page. Jack was a plumber, just out of his time--rather a catch for
a moulder's daughter, but impossible, of course, for the daughter of
people in business, as Emma should have had the proper feeling to see
for herself. This Emma had not: she wallowed in a luxury of woe,
exacerbated on occasions to poignancy by the scoldings and sometimes by
the thumpings of her mar; and neglected even the select weekly quadrille
class, membership whereof was part of the novel splendor.
But there was never again a seven-shilling customer. The state of trade
perplexed Mrs. Munsey beyond telling. Being in business, one must, by
the circumstance, have a genteel competence: this was an elementary
axiom in Cubitt Town. But where was the money? What was the difference
between this and other shops? Was a screw loose anywhere? In that case
it certainly could not be her fault; wherefore she nagged Hedward.
One day a polite young man called in a large pony-trap and explained the
whole mystery. Nobody could reasonably expect to succeed in a business
of this sort who did not keep a good stock of the fancy aprons and lace
bows made by the firm he was charged to represent. Of course he knew
what business was, and that cash was not always free, but that need
never hinder transactions with him: three months' credit was the regular
thing with any respectable, well-established business concern, and in
three months one would certainly sell all the fancy aprons and lace bows
of this especial kind and price that one had room for. And he need
scarcely remind a lady of Mrs. Munsey's business experience that fancy
aprons and lace bows--of the right sort--were by far the most profitable
goods known to the trade. Everybody knew _that_. Should they say a gross
of each, just to go on with? No? Well, then half a gross. These prices
were cut so near that it really did not pay to split the gross, but this
time, to secure a good customer, he would stretch a point. Mrs. Munsey
was enlightened. Plainly the secret of success in business was to buy
advantageously, in the way the polite young man suggested, sell at a
good price, and live on the profits: merely paying over the remainder at
the end of three months. Nothing could be simpler. So she began the
system forthwith. Other polite young men called, and further certain
profits were arranged for on similar terms.
The weak spot in the plan was the absence of any binding arrangement
with the general public; and this was not long in discovering itself.
Nobody came to buy the fancy aprons and the lace bows, tempting as they
might seem. Moreover, after they had hung a week or more, Alice reported
that a large shop in the Commercial Road was offering, by retail, aprons
and bows of precisely the same sort at a less price than the polite
young man had charged for a wholesale purchase. Mrs. Munsey grew
desperate, and Hedward's life became a horror unto him. He was set to
stand at the door with a fancy apron in one hand and a lace bow in the
other, and capture customers as they passed: a function wherein he
achieved detestable failure; alarming passing women (who considered him
dangerously drunk) as greatly as his situation distressed himself.
Mrs. Munsey grew more desperate, and drove Hedward to the rear of the
house, with bitter revilings. Money must be got out of the stock
somehow. That a shop could in any circumstances be unremunerative
puzzled as much as it dismayed her. The goods were marked down to low
prices--often lower than cost. Still Mrs. Munsey had the abiding
conviction that the affair must pay, as others did, if only she might
hold out long enough. Hedward's suggestion that he should return to the
moulding, coming and going as little in sight as possible, she repelled
savagely. "A nice notion you've got o' keepin' up a proper position. You
ain't content with disgracin' me and yourself too, playin' the fool in
the shop till trade's ruined an' nobody won't come near the place--an' I
don't wonder at it.... You're a nice sort of 'usband, I must say. What
are you goin' to do now, with the business in this pretty mess, an' your
wife an' children ready to starve? What are you goin' to do? Where are
you goin' to turn? That's what I want to know."
"Well, I'm a-thinkin' it out, Marier, in a legal point. P'r'aps, you
know, my dear--"
"Oh, don't dear me! I 'ate a fool."
Marked as low as they might be, none of the aprons nor the bows nor the
towels nor the stockings nor any other of the goods were bought--never a
thing beyond a ha'porth of thread or a farthing bodkin. Rent had to be
paid, and even food cost money. There was a flavor of blank
disappointment about Saturday--the pay day of less anxious times; and
quarter day, when all these polite young men would demand the money that
was not--that day was coming, black and soon. Mrs. Munsey grew more
desperate than ever, sharp of feature, and aged. Alone, she would
probably have wept. Having Hedward at hand, she poured forth her
bitterness of spirit upon him; till at last he was nagged out of his
normal stolidity, and there came upon his face the look of a bullock
that is harried on all hands through unfamiliar streets.
On a night when, from sheer weariness of soul, she fell from clatter
toward sleep, of a sudden Hedward spoke. "Marier--" he said.
"Well?"
"You ain't give me a kiss lately. Kiss me now."
"Don't be a fool. I'm sick an' tired. Go to sleep, if you can sleep,
with everything--"
"Kiss me, I tell you!" He had never commanded like that before. She
marvelled, feared a little, and obeyed.
In the morning, when she awoke, he had already gone downstairs. This was
as usual. When she followed, however, he was not to be found in the
house. The shop shutters had been taken down, and the windows carefully
cleaned, although it was not the regular window-cleaning day; but the
door was shut. On the sitting-room table were two papers, one within the
other. The first was written with many faults and smudges, and this was
how it ran:--
"the deed and testiment of Ed. Munsey this is to cirtiffy that i
make over all my property to my belov^d wife stock bisness and
furnitur so help me god all detts i keep to pay myself and my wife
is not ansrable for them and certiffy that I O U Minchin and co 9
pound 4/7½ Jones and son 6 pound 13/2 and settrer all other detts
me and not my wife I O U