It was only John Marco that he left unmolested. He was not sure enough of him; there was something about John Marco that warned Mr. Hackbridge not to interfere. Not that there was anything that could be found fault with. John Marco’s departments, even the subsidiary Fancy Goods one that was difficult to keep tidy, were models of what retail departments should be. Mr. Hackbridge, indeed, was gratified to think that he would have such a key assistant under him. He was also gratified to think that it would soon be in his power to humble the younger man. For nearly four years now it had been of the gall and wormwood of his life to think that while he lived in one of a row of inferior dwellings John Marco should reside in a mansion. He looked forward with delicious anticipation to getting his social superior to run messages for him.
It was one evening just as he was about to slip in for his drink that he saw John Marco. He looked again and saw how drawn his face was; as he walked he was staring down at the pavement in front of him. He’s got something on his mind, something that’s eating him up inside, Mr. Hackbridge said to himself; perhaps he’s quarrelled with that rich wife of his. And he saw in this the opportunity that he had been waiting for. It would be something else on John Marco’s mind to learn that soon he would be serving under Mr. Hackbridge.
He crossed the road and tapped John Marco on the shoulder.
“Just a moment, young man,” he said.
He was quite surprised, however, at the way John Marco turned round on him. He looked so angry, so positively angry. Mr. Hackbridge drew away a little.
“What is it you want?” John Marco asked.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” Mr. Hackbridge said. “Something that may make you sit up a bit.”
John Marco stood where he was.
“Very well, then,” he replied. “Tell me.”
Mr. Hackbridge was taken aback.
“Not here, I can’t,” he said. “Let’s go in somewhere.”
He took John Marco by the arm and began to lead him towards the glass frosted doors of the public house.
“In here,” he said. “I’ll tell you over a drink.”
But on the threshold John Marco stopped.
“You forget I’m an Amosite,” he said.
Mr. Hackbridge looked surprised.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he asked.
“We don’t drink,” John Marco replied.
At that Mr. Hackbridge pursed up his lips.
“I see,” he said. “It’s all right for me to go into a public house, but it’s not good enough for you, is that it?”
John Marco nodded: he did not seem in the least concerned to hear Mr. Hackbridge’s secret.
But Mr. Hackbridge was disappointed.
“Not so hasty,” he said. “It’s very important what I’ve got to tell you.”
“Then why don’t you say it?” John Marco asked.
Mr. Hackbridge put his hand on John Marco’s shoulder.
“Come inside like I asked you to,” he said. “You don’t have to drink just because you’re in a public house.”
They went in together and Mr. Hackbridge ordered whisky. John Marco himself drank something non-intoxicating; it was a sparkling glass full of juvenile rubbish that the barman had put before him.
“I expect you’ve noticed that there’s been something on,” Mr. Hackbridge began.
John Marco nodded: he had no notion of what Mr. Hackbridge was talking about.
“Well, Mr. Morgan’s retiring: that’s what’s on,” Mr. Hackbridge told him.
John Marco’s face did not express any surprise. Mr. Hackbridge looked hard at him to see him lift his eyebrows when he heard the news, but he was cheated.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?” was all John Marco said.
Mr. Hackbridge took a deep drink and sat on in silence for a moment.
“You’re the only other person who knows,” he remarked.
There was another pause.
“What’s going to happen to the shop?” John Marco asked.
Mr. Hackbridge smiled a slow superior smile.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said.
“I thought you were going to tell me,” John Marco answered.
Mr. Hackbridge raised his glass and drained it.
“I’ve been pledged to secrecy,” he said.
“I see,” replied John Marco quietly.
Then he looked towards Mr. Hackbridge’s glass.
“Will you have another drink?” he asked.
“If you do,” Mr. Hackbridge replied.
“Very well,” John Marco answered. “Another whisky and a ginger ale. ...”
“I said a drink,” Mr. Hackbridge interrupted. “A real one. Not that stuff.”
John Marco hesitated. He knew perfectly well what the challenge meant: if he accepted it he would be the first Amosite ever to touch liquor in public, perhaps the first Elder ever to touch liquor anywhere. It would be the betrayal of a vow; the committing of the eighth deadly sin. He had seen men turned out of the Chapel for less. But he had to know Mr. Hackbridge’s secret. And he did not doubt for a moment that Mr. Hackbridge had brought him in simply to break it to him.
“Very well,” he replied. “Two whiskies.”
“Now you’re talking,” Mr. Hackbridge said admiringly.
He sipped the drink that John Marco had brought for him and gazed dreamily into space. “Would it surprise you,” he said at length, “if I told you that Mr. Morgan had appointed me as manager?”
This time Mr. Hackbridge was not disappointed. John Marco drew in the corners of his mouth sharply.
“Is that so?” he said.
Mr. Hackbridge smiled unpleasantly.
“Why do you think I should be telling you if it wasn’t?” he asked.
John Marco did not answer. He sat back and stared at the rows of casks and bottles opposite. So that was it! Mr. Morgan, the elderly Mr. Morgan, who couldn’t even check over his own stock-room accounts without getting him in to help, had passed him over, had passed him right over and given the prize to this fool in a frock-coat, this whisky-drinker. His anger mounted inside him so that he could not trust himself to speak; there was nothing now that remained of his prodigious future.
Mr. Hackbridge, however, did the speaking for him.
“If you mind your p’s and q’s,” he was saying, “I may be able to do something for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes, I may be able to put you in the way of a bit of promotion. How would you like my job? How would you like to be shop-walker instead of me?”
“I’ll think about it,’ John Marco answered.
The answer annoyed Mr. Hackbridge.
“Oh no you won’t,” he said. “You won’t do anything of the kind. If I want you to be a shop-walker you will be. And if I don’t you won’t.”
He finished up his drink and tapped loudly on the counter with a florin.
“Same again,” he said. “And hurry up with it.”
Then he turned to John Marco.
“You don’t seem to realise who you’re talking to. I tell you I’m going to be manager. I’m going to have things done my way in future.”
He sat back as he said it and thrust his thumbs through the arms of his waistcoat. His top hat was tilted a little over one eye and his face was flushed.
“When is this change going to take place?” John Marco asked.
“Whenever I bloody well want it to,” Mr. Hackbridge replied. “Whenever I choose to go to Mr. Morgan and raise my little finger.”
John Marco left him. It was still evening outside. A pale yellow light filled the sky and the chimney-pots were like gold. He walked away rapidly; walked at random without any destination. Even the streets were better than going back to Hesther. And no doubt she had already told Mrs. Marco of her decision—there would be two women now, not one, to face when he got back.
The street which he had taken led him in the direction of the park. It was quiet there, dark and silent under the
trees. The lights of London showed simply as so many fairy lamps set round the boundaries of this open wilderness. In front, away from those lights, a man might lose himself; it was somewhere that did not belong to this world at all. He set his feet towards this mysterious inner darkness and walked on. He was not alone, however. Women spoke to him. He saw their shadowy faces, smelt the cheap reek of their scent. The whole air seemed full of powder and patchouli. He brushed past them and went on. He did not stop until he came to the great sheet of water that lay in front of him. In the gloom it stretched out like a great inland sea, and came lapping lazily at the pavement beneath his feet. It pacified him. He stood there, and his thoughts started to unravel: he began to see the future again. An hour later when he came away, his mind was made up.
The house was quite dark when he got there; the curtains were still drawn and the windows bolted. It was like entering a cold handsome tomb. But he did not pause. He lit the light with fingers that were shaking. And then in the cold bleak hall he stood staring.
There were trunks and boxes all round him. They were labelled and corded, ready.
His heart still hammering, he began to mount the stairs.
And at the top he turned, not towards his room, but towards Hesther’s. It was not, however, until he actually heard her voice in the darkness that he knew whether she was still in the house or not. Then, he closed the door behind him. He was alone with her.
“I’ve come to you,” he said.
There was a sound from the bed that was almost like a sob.
“I’ve been waiting,” she answered. “Waiting so long.”
Chapter XIV
Hesther woke before him in the morning. She lay there filled with a rich happiness. This other body, with a warmth of its own, seemed still to be giving her a share of the life within it. It was strong and satisfying. Even the regular sound of the breathing was reassuring. With him beside her she felt that she could never be lonely again.
The light was already shining through the slats of the Venetian blind when she stirred; it fell across the counterpane in a crumpled design of black and yellow. Very gently so as not to disturb him, she raised herself on one elbow. She had never watched him sleeping before and she bent over him, fascinated. In repose his face seemed strangely different; it was younger. The hard lines beside the mouth had disappeared arid his frown had gone. And as she sat there her face became gentler, too. She watched him for some minutes and her lips began to move. “Oh God,” she was saying, “make him love me. Make him need me more and more.”
Then she drew back. She felt proud as well as happy. It had happened, and the years of her humiliation were over. She was a woman. And because it was her victory, because of all the days of her life this was the greatest, she wanted to share the moment: it was a secret too important to be kept alone.
So slipping from the bed with the same silent, stealthy movement she went over to the dressing-table and stood gazing into the mirror. The face that looked back at her was paler than she liked, paler and more drawn. “I’m getting old,” she thought. “Old”; and she loosened her hair at the temples and drew it forward. Then she searched for something to put round her; the plain linen nightgown that buttoned in at the wrists like a surplice and the faded dressing-gown were not what she wanted this morning. Finally she opened the scent bottle (she had given up using scent again; the bottle had stood there half-full on the dressing-table for years) and sprinkled some on her wrap.
She was ready now. Going over to the fireplace she rang the bell. The sound surprised Emmy. But obediently she put down her dust-pan and brush—she had been about the house cleaning ever since half past six—and began to climb the vast Niagara of stairs that descended in a twisting cascade of woodwork from the roof to the basement: she had toiled up them so many times that she had grown to think of them as being built that way.
She was inside the bedroom before she noticed John Marco’s head on the pillow. Then he stirred and she saw him.
Hesther was saying something about bringing the master’s tea up to this room instead. But Emmy was not listening: she knew perfectly well why she had been sent for. She turned and caught Hesther’s eye. The two women understood each other.
ii
When John Marco returned home that night he found it converted. Hesther and Emmy had brought all his things through into Hesther’s bedroom; his suits were now hanging in the big mahogany wardrobe alongside her dresses. And she had even set out his brushes with hers on the dressing-table. His own bedroom was now simply a box-room again.
The rest of the house, too, had undergone a change. There were flowers in the hall and a rug that he had not seen before covered the cold tiling. Even the Venetian blinds were drawn up higher so that the evening light could get in. And Hesther herself was wearing a brown velvet evening dress with a brooch on it. It was very different from the black satin in which he was used to seeing her. She looked a woman; and when she came to the door to meet him—she had been standing there apparently waiting—he smelt perfume again. Before he had time to remove his coat she had kissed him.
“John,” she said.
And she paused as though hoping that he would utter her name. But he only smiled, smiled pityingly it seemed, and turned away. And then, still as if he were sorry for her, he came back and putting his arms upon her shoulders he kissed her on the forehead.
He felt a kind of relief as he did so. Now that the struggle was resolved, now that at last he had decided to take everything that Hesther had to offer, he was freer. He had waited long enough; no one could deny that. He had tried to remain faithful. But somehow the miracle had not happened. He had lost Mary for ever: he realised that now. And in her place he had got a mansion and a future; the Lord, he supposed, had been a good shepherd to him after all.
And Hesther was another woman to him: she bloomed, like a wife who is cherished. At dinner she kept smiling, caressing him with her eyes from the far end of the table. When he told her that he was going to the lecture at the Tabernacle she only nodded her head and smiled again. She would not come too, she said; she was happy to remain at home now, waiting confidently for his return.
The subject of to-night’s lecture was the transgressions of Moab; the lecturer, the Reverend Samuel Carver, had come all the way over from the Putney Tabernacle to discuss them. He was a poor speaker and of no presence—beside Mr. Tuke he looked no more than an impostor. But his reputation as a wizard in theology had spread before him, and in consequence the pews were crowded to hear his exposition of what the Lord had really meant when He said that because of the three transgressions of Israel and because of four, He was not going to turn away the punishment thereof. But when Mr. Carver came to the Lord’s threat: “I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind,” Mr. Tuke turned in his toes: he wished that his voice instead of Mr. Carver’s thin, piping one could have been given a chance of showing them what the Lord really sounded like when He was angry.
John Marco had been sitting listening for some time before he became aware that there was another power than the lecturer’s in the room. It was a stronger power and it lay somewhere behind him. He began to stir uncomfortably in his seat and, when the speaker was reading verbatim from an apparently endless tract of Mr. Sturger’s on Sin, he turned round. It was not immediately, however, that he could find what he was looking for; at first he saw merely a blank bank of faces. Nevertheless, he was aware at once that the power had increased, that he was now in the full play of it. Then on the far side of the Chapel against the wall he saw one face different from all the others: he saw Mary. She was alone. And she was looking towards him.
When John Marco turned towards the lecturer again he was trembling, and his knees were weak. Mr. Carver was ingeniously proving that when the Lord had said Damascus, Tyre and Edom He had really meant Bayswater, Paddington and Marylebone and the people thereof. But John M
arco was not listening to him. He had seen Mary again, and already the whole of this new life of his was crumbling.
He folded his arms and sank deeper into his seat. This was the very thing that he had told himself he must never do, to let the past come creeping up into the present. But as he sat there, he could still feel this power beating on his back, forcing its message through to him, and he knew that Mary’s eyes were still fixed on him.
But when the lecture was over and he was able to turn round again she was gone. Her place was empty and the whole Chapel seemed suddenly to have gone cold. For a moment he wondered if he had been deceived and if it were someone else with gold hair and slender shoulders whom he had seen sitting there. But he knew in his heart that there had been no mistake.
The warmth had gone from the air by the time he got outside. The last vestiges of daylight had gone with it and the streets were desolate, lamp-lit chasms again. John Marco did not linger. He picked his way through the dispersing crowd on the Chapel steps and walked off rapidly like a man who is not anxious for company. Soon he was alone, except for a few late stragglers returning to their homes, and he slackened his pace a little. His path lay down Chapel Walk where it was dark, very dark, under the plane trees. The walk was short—a mere hundred yards or so—and he was halfway down it before he was aware that there was someone, a woman, standing in the shadows beside him. And this time he knew at once who it was. His heart seemed momentarily to stop altogether and then begin racing furiously as he came up to her.
“Mary,” he said. “It’s you.”
She came towards him and laid her hand upon his arm.
“I had to see you again,” she said. “I’ve been trying to see you ever since I got back.”
“Trying to see me?” he repeated. “Why should you ever want to see me again?”
“I wanted to know if you were happy,” she answered.
She had turned her head a little and the light of the lamp now fell upon her face. For a moment he dared not look at her. Then he raised his eyes and, as he did so, the three years since he had last seen her disappeared. He was back again at the night of the Immersion; his eyes had been fixed on her then. Everything that had happened since that night was a phantasy which only this moment could dissolve.
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