The tea was a lavish, rather splendid meal—very different from the hasty, improvised snack that Mrs. Kent had knocked together last time. They all sat round the table for it. And they sat there for some time. It was not the sort of thing that could be hurried through; it opened with sardines and it closed with meringues and sweet biscuits. To John Marco, used to the close catering of old Mrs. Marco, there seemed an eye-opening extravagance about such a spread. He kept imagining a successful future in which there would be whole vistas of such meals, only with Mary Kent instead of her mother, seated at the head of the table, with one white finger engagingly cocked as she poured from the silver tea-pot.
But a sudden misgiving came to him and he wondered whether he could ever give her this security, this sense of a heaped fire in the winter and plenty to eat in the larder, that she had always known. He wondered even whether he had any right to ask her father to let her share the thin days of a linen-draper who was still only an assistant. Then he caught her eyes, grey and quiet and smiling, and knew that he would have to ask.
When tea was over, Mrs. Kent and Mary cleared away. They left with trays loaded with the spoiled dishes and did not return immediately. John Marco found himself alone with Mr. Kent. Mr. Kent took out his meerschaum pipe, the bowl of which with careful devoted smoking had become mellowed into a deep honeyed, coffee-colour, and told John Marco that Mrs. Kent did not object to the gentlemen smoking once tea was over. When John Marco told him that he did not smoke at all, Mr. Kent seemed surprised, and also, for some obscure reason, rather pleased. He stood himself in front of the fireplace and smoked on in silence. But he did not seem somehow to be altogether at his ease. It was as though he were waiting all the time to say something—or hoping that John Marco would say it for him. John Marco could not help noticing that Mr. Kent was not looking in his direction at all: he was staring with a fixed, self-conscious expression at the door. John Marco turned: Mrs. Kent was standing there behind him, making little signalling gestures to her husband. When she saw that she was observed she withdrew hurriedly, and the two men were left together again.
Mr. Kent took the pipe from his mouth and gave a dry, nervous cough.
“That was my wife,” he said. “She wants me to ask you something.”
John Marco drew himself up. But Mr. Kent was not at first able to express himself.
“Mrs. Kent and I . . .” he began, and stopped. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he began again, “we wondered, Mrs. Kent and me, whether . . . “he was in difficulties once more, however: the words would not shape themselves. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose loudly as though to give himself confidence.
But John Marco interrupted him.
“I love Mary,” he said simply. “I want your permission to marry her.”
The words seemed at first to reassure Mr. Kent: it was all that he wanted to know. He liked the look of the young man, and he was ready to trust him. But there was Mrs. Kent as well. She had prepared a long catechism for him to memorise. He started to go through with it.
“Are your . . . your prospects good enough to marry on?” he asked.
The question as he put it sounded strangely different from the version that Mrs. Kent had dinned into him. As he said it, it was shy and diffident; there was a note of implied apology in his voice for having asked the question at all.
“I shan’t ask her to marry me,” John Marco replied, surprised at the moment at his own calmness in the face of Mr. Kent’s perturbation, “until I can give her everything she needs. It may mean one year or it may even mean two. I can only say that in Morgan and Roberts’ I’m well thought of. I have reason to believe that I shall be made manager one day.”
“Have . . . have you saved any capital?” Mr. Kent enquired.
John Marco paused; he drew in his lips for a moment. The image of his trivial savings transformed last week at a single stroke into something solid and substantial rose before him.
“I have nearly two hundred pounds,” he said quietly.
“So,” said Mr. Kent respectfully. “So.”
They were model answers. Mr. Kent let out a deep sigh at the relief of them. There was good money there already; and even so he was to be spared at least another twelve months, possibly another twenty-four, of his daughter’s company. And only the proprietor of a one-man shop everlastingly struggling to keep a good face to the world on an income of sixpences for new watch glasses and five shillingses for as many hours’ work, could know how desirable the managership of a flourishing draper’s business sounded. Mr. Kent allowed himself to sit down and relax.
“You see,” he said, “Mary’s only twenty. It’s nothing of an age. I don’t hold with young marriages; the girl hasn’t had time to know her own mind yet. We shouldn’t want anything to happen until she’s twenty-one. And then only if those prospects of yours have turned out all right. She’s still a child remember.”
He was smoking peacefully again when Mrs. Kent and Mary came back into the room. The two men rose and the group reassembled itself round the fire. But Mrs. Kent was restless: she wanted to learn the result of Mr. Kent’s cross-examination. And she knew that she would have to ask him for it. It was the greatest of her grievances against him that in the twenty-four years in which they had been married that he had never been known to do anything until she had badgered him to do so; and even then she had to bully him still further to get his assurance that the thing had been done. At this very moment, he was sitting back complacently pulling at his pipe as though what had transpired was not of the slightest importance to either of them.
But she caught his eye eventually and Mr. Kent rose obediently.
“Come along, Alexander,” she said. “It’s your medicine time.”
John Marco waited for the door to be shut upon them and then he went over and took Mary’s two hands in his.
“I’ve spoken to your father,” he said. “He understands.”
“He’s given his consent then?”
John Marco did not reply. He pulled her towards him until she was facing him and her pure, grey eyes were on the level with his dark ones.
“Kiss me, Mary,” he said.
They kissed lip to lip like lovers, with his arms round her. When he released her, her colour had mounted and she was breathing fast. She went up to the mirror on the over mantel and began re-arranging her hair.
John Marco stood regarding her. His eyes ran up and down her longingly, lingering on the slim waist, the small feet under the hem of her plain dress, the white hands raised to her hair. He could afford to watch; one day he would be possessed of all that beauty. She would be his entirely.
When she came away from the mirror, he put his arm round her shoulders, but gently this time as though to comfort her.
“We shall have to wait,” he said. “We shall have to be patient. But every day now will bring it nearer.”
“I shall wait,” she said, “as long as you ask me to.”
“But we shall see each other every day,” he went on. “There won’t ever be those weeks again when I used to see you only on Sundays.”
“Did you mind so much?” she asked.
“Oh, Mary.”
They were interrupted at this point by the return of the parents. They entered tactfully, leaving a pause between turning the handle of the door and actually stepping into the room. As for Mrs. Kent, she seemed to have been crying; she kept dabbing at her eyes and her nose with a screwed-up handkerchief which she held stuffed in her hand. But even so, Mrs. Kent was not a Woman to surrender her only daughter quietly and without a struggle.
“Alexander’s just told me,” she said. “It’s come as a great shock.”
“Mother ...” Mary Kent began. But Mrs. Kent stopped her.
“I don’t say I’m not pleased,” she went on, “but I can’t quite get used to the idea. I still think of Mary as such a little girl.” She paused. “And I don’t want to think of her making herself unhappy by doing anything silly just on the
spur of the moment.”
John Marco turned to her.
“I’ve told Mr. Kent that we shall wait,” he said in the same calm voice of authority that had impressed Mr. Kent. “We shall wait until I can give Mary everything she’s been used to. I was telling her just now that no matter how much we want it for all our sakes it can’t be at once.”
Mrs. Kent opened her eyes a little wider. He seemed to be such a reliable, level-headed young man; and the fears that she had been suffering, subsided a little. When he came to say good-bye Mrs. Kent did the most astonishing thing: she kissed him. He kissed her obediently in return.
Then Mr. Kent took Mrs. Kent by the hand because she had suddenly started crying again, and they thoughtfully allowed Mary to see him off alone. The two lovers stood out in the dim, narrow landing together.
“May I see you to-morrow night?” he asked.
“We’ll see,” she said.
They kissed again, and he held her there so that the gas-light fell on her face; her hair shone.
“We’ll go together and buy a ring,” he said. “We’ll buy it on Thursday.”
“I shall be so proud,” she told him.
“I’ll give you this now,” he said suddenly.
He felt in his pocket and produced a thin gold ring which had once been Mrs. Marco’s.
“We’ll break it and each keep half,” he added.
“You won’t be able to break it,” she said.
He smiled and, pressing the tiny circle of metal between his thumb and forefinger, he destroyed it.
“There,” he said proudly.
“I’ll keep it always,” she said.
She came right down to the bottom of the stairs and they kissed again, foolishly in the manner of lovers afraid of separation. Then he opened the front door and stepped into the windy emptiness of the street.
But the street was not empty. Standing opposite, under the solitary street-lamp was a woman. She was motionless, gazing up at the window of the room in which he and Mary had been sitting. He did not need the light of the lamp to show him who it was. She was dressed all in black and he had seen her face. At the sight of her a wave of coldness ran over him.
Then, noticing that the front door had opened and that there were people on the doorstep, the figure under the lamp turned and began to walk rapidly away.
Chapter VII
The January sale at Morgan and Roberts’ was not a trifling affair; every department was affected, and old Mr. Morgan, who became agitated at such times, kept going out onto the pavement (a thing which in the ordinary way he never did) to see that in this annual Spring-time clearance, when the mistakes of the past twelve months were being remaindered at a fraction of their usual price, dignity was nevertheless still being observed. For, during that desperate week of cut-throat selling, the whole appearance of the shop was changed. Instead of two or three elegant china hands delicately displaying the latest fashions in kid and suède gloves, whole boxes full of gloves were piled into the window, marked “Very Special: 8/11 reduced to 5/11,” or “Cannot be repeated 5/11 now 3/6.” And in place of the unsmiling wax ladies who for upwards of a generation had worn the new models in millinery on their heads, the hats were simply crammed into the available space, stuck onto pegs or even left dangling on clips from a cord suspended from the ceiling.
Not that the wax ladies were altogether a loss; they were due for interment anyhow. They had aged. Their glassy eyes lacked their original lustre and somehow their very features seemed unnatural and out-of-date. Their hair, too, was thinner than it had been. With every change of hairdressing fashion, Mr. Hackbridge, who supervised the window-dressing, had been forced to let down those false chignons and comb them carefully into the mode of the day. In the result the two ladies now had bare, elderly-looking patches on their crowns that contrasted strangely with the vivid gold of their hair itself, and one of them had gone completely bald at the temples and could be exhibited only when heavily veiled like a Dowager.
But the windows were, after all, only an indication of the disturbance that was going on within. There were three temporary assistants; two extra tables heaped with oddments; and four fewer chairs—Mr. Morgan did not encourage sitting down at sale-time. The principal cash-desk, a gilded, imposing cage that held the unlovely prisoner, Miss Rawkins, was moved right up into the centre of the shop, and additional cash-desks were erected in the various departments. During the seven days of the sale the customary decorum of the house went all to pieces; assistants called out to each other instead of going across and speaking softly; wrong change was given and not detected; thirty-eight inches went as a yard; cups of tea, hastily snatched, were drunk almost within sight of the customers; and the will to sell supplanted the will to please.
It was the opening day of the sale that John Marco now faced. He was early as befitted a man with four female assistants, one a stranger, under his control, and the church clock at the corner was striking eight-fifteen as he went in through the front entrance. Mr. Morgan was there already. He lived over the shop in a suite of rooms as large and lofty as those of an Embassy, and could afford to be early. He was now pottering about, re-arranging the price tickets; taking away more chairs; pushing the dud lines to the back where they would be discovered later by some desperate bargain hunter delighted by the chance of being able to buy anything; seeing that all the assistants had a pencil ready in their books; enjoying himself. He gave Mr. Marco a friendly good-morning: he had grown to rely on the punctuality of this young man who never varied.
By five minutes past nine the day’s business had begun; they had sold a pair of outsize gloves. Between then and ten-thirty, there were forty people in the shop, and at ten-thirty the real morning rush began. Paddington suddenly descended upon them. Women with shopping-baskets, women with children, women from the wrong side of the Harrow Road—they poured in. In the depths of winter they bought sprays of false flowers for summer hats and light weight cotton combinations. Anything that was for sale was snatched up and examined and hungered for. Even the corset department in the cream and gold room up the stairs was crowded; it was as though the whole of Bayswater had been going about unsupported for weeks waiting for this moment of relief to arrive. And this was only a foretaste of the afternoon. At half-past-three the shop was so crowded that Mr. Hackbridge, the shop-manager was swept entirely to one side: he could only stand on the bottom step of the staircase helplessly looking on while a sea of women swirled at his feet, eddying now into the Blouses and Shirt-waists, now in the Millinery, and now into the Underwear. And every few moments one or other of the assistants was crying out “Cash, please, Mr. Hackbridge,” which meant that he had to wade in up to his neck (he was a tall man) and make a magical symbol of his initials to denote that the sum presented to him was right down even to the farthings. At sale time, Morgan and Roberts’ had to send over specially to the bank for a whole bagful of farthings.
There was a lull round about tea-time; and during this lull Hesther Croome came in.
John Marco saw her as she entered; she was different at a glance from the other shoppers—intent on something more serious and more important. She paused for a moment, studying the scene before her; then, having located what she wanted, she came straight towards him.
John Marco felt a wave of coldness again. But he remained the perfect shop-assistant. He placed his two hands on the counter and leant forward, ready to serve her with whatever it was she wanted.
“Can I speak to you, Mr. Marco?” she said.
Her eyes met his and remained there, boldly; John Marco returned her gaze just as steadily.
“What is it you want?” he asked.
“I have something private to discuss with you,” she replied.
John Marco’s heart missed its beat; the words frightened him. But his manner did not reveal it. He stood there, fixed and impersonal, like any other shop-assistant. Even Mr. Morgan, who was regarding them from the other end of the shop, did not notice anything untoward i
n the situation.
“Will you tell me what it is?” he said.
Miss Croome glanced round her.
“I can’t speak here,” she said.
“There’s no where else,” John Marco answered abruptly.
“Then you must come to my house. You can come this evening.”
John Marco’s eyes contracted; he thrust out his lower lip, as he always did when he was angry, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Miss Croome, but that isn’t possible.”
“You mean not this evening?”
He bent forward over the counter till his face was close to hers.
“I mean,” he said, “that my evenings are engaged.”
Miss Croome might have been expecting the words; she did not waver.
“It would be better for you if you came,” she said quietly.
It was Mr. Morgan who interrupted them. He had been watching them all the time and he now came importantly in their direction. As the lady had made no attempt to buy anything, and as his star assistant was frowning, he could only assume that she had come in to complain about something; and Mr. Morgan did not encourage complaints at sale time.
He gave a stiff little bow.
“Can I assist you, madam?” he asked.
Miss Croome turned towards him.
“I am being attended to thank you,” she said. “It was only that I couldn’t get what I wanted.” She paused and looked at John Marco as she said it. Then, as calmly as before, she went over to the glove counter and picked up a pair of light grey ones that looked out of place beside the funereal black of her dress.
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