And now that he was here, now that there was nothing else in his life besides, he could devote more hours to the business. No matter how early the reformed Mr. Hack-bridge arrived, John Marco was already standing behind the plate glass door ready for him. Such punctuality, indeed, became a kind of nightmare to Mr. Hackbridge; it was like working for a time-machine that never stopped. When the nightmare was really bad he used to imagine John Marco at two or three in the morning still standing there in the abandoned shop, impatiently waiting for his shop-walker to arrive.
The business was bigger by now: and it was still growing. It had absorbed more than Mr. Skewin’s primitive establishment. Earlier in the year, when the furrier next door had plunged suddenly and dramatically into liquidation—Special Purchase of Exclusive New Season’s Models, one day: bankrupt, and out of business the next—it was John Marco who had bought up the stock and taken over the lease. It had been a gamble, despite the expert valuation, for John Marco knew nothing about furs. On the day after the transfer had been completed he had stood in his new store room surrounded by the stock of seal and pony skin, fox and sable, squirrel and ermine, and had felt like one of the Elizabethan merchant venturers, bewildered in the courts of Muscovy.
The bank that had financed the purchase had raised objections to the loan on the grounds of the borrower’s lack of experience in the trade. And John Marco had replied that when he had taken over Mr. Skewin’s Gentleman’s Outfitting he had known nothing of that trade either; he had not added that six months after he had taken Mr. Skewin’s shop away from him, he had searched him out in sheer desperation and had appointed him manager to the business.
This appointment had, in the result, been in the nature of a masterstroke. First, the small nucleus of faithful customers who had been driven away by the new shop-front, returned to him and bought up the remnants. And secondly—and far more important—John Marco now had a new departmental head of the utmost allegiance; for Mr. Skewin had been raised up by the very hand that had struck him down. And he was now, like Mr. Hack-bridge, John Marco’s servile slave for life.
These months of violent commercial imperialism, had not gone unnoticed among the other shopkeepers in Paddington and Bayswater. In the Old Gentleman’s day, everything about the shop had been austere and respectable; if he had bought up the entire street he would have done so with an air of Bardic benevolence that could have been forgiven. But with John Marco it was all jumpy and disturbing. One rumour grew up that he was going to establish branches; another that he was in financial difficulties already; a third said that a furnishing department (one that would cripple the business opposite) was on the point of opening. On one point were all the rumours agreed: that the rate of growth was too rapid. They all predicted eventual and spectacular collapse. But John Marco only laughed when he heard them. He knew that the people who had started them were jealous; jealous because they had all remained behind the same plate glass window with which they had started. He alone was enlarging and absorbing; it was he alone who was going forward over the heads of other men on this mission of destiny in the tremendous world of retail drapery. . . .
But it was after six-thirty already, and he had work to do. He put on a hat and coat and, raising the shop blinds himself, walked for some minutes up and down the empty pavement outside: he was studying the windows. With a slight frown he noticed that the coquettish wax figure was wearing her guinea hat square on her head like a schoolmistress. He made a note to speak to Mr. Hackbridge about it.
He had repeatedly pointed out that all the ladies of any fashionable pretensions were tilting their hats slightly.
ii
The unusual circumstance of John Marco’s living above his shop in Tredegar Terrace, while his wife lived alone amid the stucco magnificence of Clarence Gardens, had not failed to excite some comment. Those who knew no more than the bare outlines of the situation and claimed that he had deserted Hesther, were disconcerted by the fact that he visited Clarence Gardens regularly once a week—they did not know, of course, that it was old Mrs. Marco whom he went to see. And others, whose ear was closer to the ground, whispered that he had gone mad, assaulted his minister and turned Atheist: it was Emmy who had spread this story. The weakness of this variant, however, lay in the fact that he still attended Chapel, even though it was no longer Mr. Tuke’s chapel that he attended.
Altogether, the reason for the separate ménage remained a mystery, an outrage and an enigma. But only, of course, among a very tiny circle. In any large town there might be a range of mountains between one street and the next for all the intercourse there is between them. And as Tredegar Terrace was actually just in Bayswater (the line of demarcation was invisible but momentous) it was hardly to be expected that anyone in Paddington should know what was happening in Tredegar Terrace.
Thus Mr. Thomas Petter, Chemist and Druggist, of Harrow Street, in organising his Paddington and Bayswater Master Shopkeepers’ Association did not know of any reason why he should not canvass John Marco for membership. He remembered, of course, Mr. Kent’s outburst on the night of the Election of the Synod; but Mrs. Kent had made it her business to explain that her husband had opposed Mr. Marco purely on business grounds: she had, indeed, gone out of her way to make that clear. Mary herself had not spoken. And Mr. Tuke after debating fiercely with himself as to whether he should denounce Mary as a sinner of equal blackness, had remembered that one home that he had shattered so irremediably and, at the last moment, had drawn back.
And so it was that Thomas Petter met John Marco by appointment in his own office and shook hands with him as one progressive business man with another.
John Marco sat back in his comfortable arm-chair eyeing him quizzically. This was a meeting that he had been looking forward to; it was one that in his bitterest moments he had even felt tempted to arrange. And now the young man, blissful and unsuspecting, had turned up of his own free will as a kind of voluntary sacrifice on the altar of his curiosity.
Or had he heard something? Like Mr. Tuke, had he come along confident that a word from him would put everything all right? John Marco wondered and waited.
The young man seemed pleasant enough. He was pink and spruce. Once or twice he shifted a trifle awkwardly in his place—the chair reserved for visitors was hard and disconcertingly narrow in the seat—but on the whole he was nicely self-possessed. Behind his shiny rimless glasses, his eyes were blue and direct, and there was nothing but candour in the smooth, clean-shaven chin; altogether, he looked a model minor shopkeeper. John Marco studied him hard and realised that, in other circumstances, he might even have been prepared to like him. And then the absurdity, the grotesqueness of it overcame him. It was this little creature that Mary Kent had got in place of him; this twopenny chemist into whose keeping she had confided body, soul, and fortune, too.
John Marco folded his own hands square on the desk and faced his visitor.
“Yes, Mr. Petter,” he said abruptly, “and what can I do for you?”
Now that it was time for him to speak Mr. Petter was eloquent. The Paddington and Bayswater Master Shopkeepers’ Association was his own idea, and he spoke with the exuberant enthusiasm of an inventor. His eyes sparkled and his fingers kept clasping and unclasping with excitement.
“. . . so if we act together,” he wound up, “not only can we safeguard price levels in general but we can pool information about bad debtors. As soon as anyone opens an account with any one of us all the others will know as well and there won’t be any more losses to be written off.” He paused for a moment as though to review his catechism and then added by way of an afterthought: “Of course there would be certain social differences you’d have to allow for. What would be quite large amounts in one district wouldn’t amount to anything very serious in another. For instance your clientele is obviously better class than mine.”
“Obviously,” John Marco replied.
Now that John Marco knew the object of Mr. Petter’s visit, he was simply amused by him. T
he impudence of the little man was astonishing.
“Are you a large employer of labour yourself?” he asked.
He wanted to hear the colossal egoist before him confess the presumptuous folly of his scheme.
“Oh no,” said Mr. Petter engagingly. “I’m just on my own, except for the boy who delivers the medicines. Of course, there’s my wife: she helps me at times.”
At Mr. Petter’s mention of his wife, John Marco felt angry again. For a moment it surprised him to find quite how angry he was. He had tried to put Mary out of his mind, had deliberately suppressed every thought of her as it came to him. He had not even replaced the photograph, and all that remained to remember her by was that half circle of the ring still hanging from his watch-chain. Yet at one mention of her, he found that he had not forgotten her at all; she was the centre of his life again. And he wanted to find out all that he could about her; wanted, if only vicariously, to be beside her once more.
“Does your wife give you much help?” he asked.
“Not now, she doesn’t,” Mr. Petter replied simply. “You see we’ve started a family. We’ve just got a little daughter.”
John Marco’s heart stopped for a moment, and there was a blackness before his eyes. He rose and began to walk about the room. But what was the use of reviving this despair? he asked himself; what purpose could it now serve him? So he turned quietly and faced Mr. Petter.
“You’re a lucky man,” he said. “You should count your blessings while you have them.”
“I do,” Mr. Petter assured him. He paused for a moment and then added, “Mr. Tuke’s god-father to our little daughter. You know him, don’t you? You’re one of us, I believe.”
But John Marco could bear this painful little pantomime no longer. He held out his hand.
“Good day, Mr. Petter,” he said. “I’ve been pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“But the Association?” Mr. Petter exclaimed in dismay. “You haven’t told me what you think about the Association.”
“I’ll consider it,” John Marco answered. “I’ll consider it very carefully.”
“Please do,” Mr. Petter urged. “I’m sure there’s something in it.”
He shook John Marco by the hand as he said it and so far as John Marco was concerned the interview was over. But Mr. Petter still hung about expectantly.
“If I haven’t made myself clear,” he said; “if there’s anything else you’d like to know about the Association I’d be very pleased to explain.”
“Thank you,” John Marco replied. “You made yourself perfectly clear.”
He edged Mr. Petter towards the door as he said it; he had a notion that the little man might prove persistent.
And he was right. The other shopkeepers whom he had approached had been smaller fry altogether. John Marco, the rising prince of drapery in those parts, was on a different level. And now that he had established contact with him it would be only very reluctantly that he would leave go.
“Some evening perhaps if you aren’t too busy,” he said ingratiatingly, “if you’d care to come round and drink a cup of tea with us, I could explain the whole scheme more fully.”
John Marco stood motionless: his heart seemed suddenly to be choking him once more. To see Mary again, to be able to sit there looking at her—that was what Mr. Petter was offering him. In his ignorance this fantastic husband of hers had actually invited him into the house. He paused, his heart still racing.
“Which afternoon do you close?” he asked.
“Thursdays,” said Mr. Petter delightedly. “I’m open again from six to eight, but after that I’m free all the evening. If you could spare the time to come round about eight-thirty we should be all ready for you.”
How nice of Mr. Marco he was thinking; how thoughtful of him. There was this great business that was open all the week and closed at one o’clock on Saturdays but he had gone out of his way to remember early closing and make everything comfortable for smaller people like the Petters.
“I . . . I know my wife will look forward to the meeting,” he exclaimed in a final flutter of politeness. “I know she will.”
“Not more than I shall,” John Marco replied.
It was an immensely gratified Mr. Petter who a minute later descended the broad staircase and passed out homewards into the street: he had scored his first big success.
iii
There were three days to kill until Thursday. John Marco woke on the morning after Mr. Petter’s departure in a state of suspension in time: he wondered now why he had ever imposed such an intolerable interval upon himself. He could himself have suggested Tuesday just as easily, the little man was so painfully eager for his company. But, no. Tuesday was the evening on which he visited his mother: it was the evening on which, in her own house, Hesther kept out of sight.
The shock of his departure had left old Mrs. Marco sadly unbalanced. She could not grasp the fact that he was not coming back to live there. It seemed instead that he was deliberately keeping away from her. Or being kept away—was that it? It was impossible to say; everything was so strange nowadays. The idea of a weekly visit gradually, however, percolated into her intelligence; and she lay in her big double bed hazily striving to disentangle the muddled sequence of days. If only she could have recalled on which side of Wednesday, Tuesday invariably came, she would have made a special effort each week to be ready to entertain him.
Punctually at nine o’clock John Marco walked round to Clarence Gardens. As he mounted the broad, familiar steps he shivered involuntarily for a moment as though the chill of the big house had already entered into him; the house, each time he entered, seemed colder and less friendly than before. But he did not pause. Searching out the large, old-fashioned key on his ring he let himself into the high dark hall still covered with the heavy blood-red paper, and climbed towards old Mrs. Marco’s room.
On these occasions, Emmy spent the entire evening somewhere near the head of the stairs so that she could dart quickly upwards when the time came. It was essential for her peace of mind that she should know how this amazing marriage was prospering. To-night as usual she followed John Marco cautiously up the staircase keeping a flight behind all the time, saw him go into old Mrs. Marco’s room, and seated herself on the bottom step to wait.
Inside the bedroom, John Marco walked over to his mother’s bed. She appeared at first sight to be asleep, but after a moment she opened her eyes and sat up.
“Why don’t you let him come to me?” she asked. “I’ve never done any harm to him.”
He paused.
“Don’t you know me?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” she said irritably. “I’m not a fool. It’s the child I want. They won’t let me have him.” She leant over and caught John Marco by the arm. “You’re out such a lot,” she whispered. “You don’t know what goes on here. They never let me see him nowadays.”
He disengaged the hand that gripped him and laid it gently back on the bed. There seemed to be no real strength in it: it rested limply where he placed it.
“I’ll speak to them,” he promised.
There was silence for a moment and then the worn cogs in Mrs. Marco’s mind began to move again, groping for something for their teeth to catch on.
“Why are you out so much?” she asked, with the air of someone who has stumbled unawares on a solution. “Why don’t you get married?”
As he did not answer, old Mrs. Marco raised herself a little from the pillow and resumed.
“Why don’t you marry Hesther?” she asked. “She’s always talking about you.”
He placed his hand on his mother’s: it felt cold and faintly damp to the touch.
“You’re tired,” he said. “You’re getting confused.”
“Am I?” Mrs. Marco asked wearily. “Perhaps you’re right. It’s time I went to sleep. I could do with a good long sleep.”
She closed her eyes and lay back. But at the same moment one of the cogs started whirring again. Insid
e her brain something or other was happening. Her lips began twitching.
“Have you got married secretly and not told me?” she asked. “You’re not in any kind of trouble are you?”
“No,” he told her, “I’m not in any trouble.”
Mrs. Marco nodded her head dubiously: it was obvious that she was not entirely satisfied with his explanations. Then she beckoned to him in the manner of someone who has a tremendous secret to impart.
“As soon as the child’s grown up,” she said under her breath, “I’m going away from here.”
“You can come away to-night,” he answered. “I’ve told you that before.”
“And leave the boy here?” The voice rose almost to a scream. “It’s not safe, something might happen to him.”
“He’s safe enough,” John Marco assured her. “You needn’t worry.”
Mrs. Marco looked at him reproachfully.
“You wouldn’t say that if he were your son,” she said. “He’s such a dear little boy.”
Having made her point, the old lady was evidently prepared to let the matter drop. She folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes again. John Marco sat there in silence until he judged her to be asleep and then he began to move on tiptoe towards the door.
The departure, however, was premature. Old Mrs. Marco was suspended in sleep by only the slenderest of threads; and the disturbance broke it. She woke with a jerk and sat up.
“Don’t go,” she said. “I was in the middle of telling you something.”
He came back and stood at the foot of the bed.
“What is it?” he asked.
But old Mrs. Marco was coy: up among the pillows she simpered.
“Can you keep a secret?” she asked.
John Marco nodded.
“It’s something Hesther told me,” she said. “She asked me to get you to come back again.”
“She asked you that?” John Marco said.
“That’s right,” old Mrs. Marco answered excitedly. “She wants you back where you belong, same as I do.” She paused. “Only that’s not the secret,” she added.
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