It was late in the afternoon when the girl took up the last of the papers and left him. And with her departure John Marco Ltd. and all of its million and one affairs deserted him again and he was left once more with the memory of Louise and that locked and desecrated bedroom. He went over to the window and stood gazing down into the street below. The lights were beginning to come on, and the passers-by, as they came for a moment into the circle of each lamp, filled him with a new feeling of his own loneliness; they all seemed so busy, so happy, this race of little people six storeys below him. They had homes to go to, wives or husbands waiting for them. From that high window in the corner of the store, they seemed like contented domestic dolls all hurrying back to their own nurseries.
And what was he going back to? Not to that fine house of his; there would be no meaning in that now. And for all he knew Louise might have left it already. At this very moment she was probably in the infatuated arms of this young man, who had seemed so young, so much younger than herself, when he had glimpsed at him.
John Marco passed his hand across his forehead: it was wet and sticky. He could no longer think clearly. But through the haze of his own mind he saw the bleak pathway of the future. He would sell the house, of course, that is what he would do, sell it as it stood, with everything that he and Louise had bought still in it. And their friends, their new friends, the Carbeths, and the Henriques and the Clyde-Dawkins, would have to find some other table to dine at. This whole chapter in his life, the only chapter he could remember in which the pages had seemed pleasant as he had turned them, had suddenly been closed on him; and the rest of the book did not now seem worth opening.
Then out of the shadows of his mind, unexpected and uninvited, the memory of his son came springing. There was no clear picture, no portrait of him; only the dim image of a boy making a silent pilgrimage through the sunny park. But the image remained; and the curiosity within him deepened. The boy, of course, would be older by now, different; he must be in his middle teens already. Would he even know him? John Marco wondered. If they met in public they might pass unrecognised, sit opposite staring at each other like strangers. But if that were so, those missing years might have worked otherwise as well; they might have freed the boy. Perhaps he was no longer under Hesther’s domination; perhaps already he had begun reaching out towards the world of men that was denied to him. And as the thought came to him John Marco realised that even now he was not left quite alone, that somewhere in the stone forest of London there was another human being who belonged to him.
He stood for a moment longer by the window. But he was impatient by now, drumming on the sill with his fingers. Then he went over to his desk and, sitting down, addressed a letter to Hesther’s solicitors. It was a cold, formal document, one that gave no hint of the feelings that were stirring inside him. It stated merely that as Mr. Marco had never rescinded his rights over the child he now wished to see him, to ascertain whether the boy were being properly cared for and brought up. It also went on to say that if the boy were in need of money for his education, John Marco would be prepared to meet any reasonable demands. When he had finished the letter he signed it with his careful, copper-plate signature, sealed down his envelope and rang for his secretary to collect it.
But when the girl had gone away again, the magic of the idea had departed. He knew that he was still as lonely as he had been before; knew that this unknown schoolboy could do nothing to assist him. And for a moment, because he was tired, miserably tired, he rested his head in his two hands and sat there without moving.
There was a sound behind and he turned round. Over by the door Louise was standing.
Her hand was on the handle; it rested there hesitatingly, as if she expected that she might not be allowed to come any further inside. And the other hand inside the small muff that she was wearing was raised timidly to her chin.
He noticed as she stood there how beautifully made she was, how delicate and distinguished. Her brown eyes seemed even larger than usual; they lit up her whole face.
Then because he did not send her away from him, she came forward.
“My dear,” she said in that soft voice of hers, “need we quarrel? We can’t all be angels.”
Chapter XXXVII
It was the weather, dismal, frozen drenching stuff, that destroyed the Christmas trade. Throughout December, rain alternated with snow so that the streets were always streaming with something; and people who could afford to do so remained indoors; we can wait, they seemed to say to themselves; these blizzards can’t go on forever. And then when Christmas week itself arrived, and they realised that they would have to go shopping as usual and make the best of it, the fog came down.
It began quite innocently as an evening mist, pale and gauze-like that wrapped itself around the trees of the Park and made a coloured halo round every lamp post. But the mist thickened and grew darker. The smoke from the chimneys could no longer penetrate it and fell back down into the streets blackening them; and next morning—only three days now to Christmas Eve itself—the fog was so thick that it rose in people’s faces like waves of muddy water and circled about them. The Borough Councils produced braziers which they placed at street corners to mitigate the gloom, and businesses tried to carry on as usual with every gas-mantle in the place blazing. But fashionable women do not go shopping by the light of half-a-hundredweight of coke and a little coal gas. And so the shops, especially the big ones, remained empty. People saved their money, and shop-keepers lost theirs.
On the Tuesday before Christmas, John Marco Ltd. had fewer than one hundred customers in at three o’clock in the afternoon. And for all the assistants in their special Christmas uniform attracted people they might have been invisible. Mr. Hackbridge, walking endlessly backwards and forwards through the empty departments, was like a captain who has lost his bearings; through the fog which had penetrated even inside the building and now filled the big central hall he was always expecting to see a crowd and never finding it.
There had been numerous special conferences of directors during those last few days, little meetings of the board without the formality of notice and agenda. And on the second day of the week before Christmas, when the fog had drawn in closer even than before and seemed to be threatening never to lift again, John Marco called them all together and declared that he was going to advertise.
The declaration in itself was sufficiently startling: advertisements of drapery shops in the daily papers were limited as strictly as if by decree to the handful of big shops, the real mammoths of the trade, in Oxford Street and to the one or two in Regent Street and Knightsbridge. The other shops, even quite large ones, confined themselves to their local papers, or did not advertise at all.
But John Marco as he spoke of advertising had that same light in his eye as when he had first spoken of roof-gardens and electric vans: and the others knew that there would be no dissuading him. When he actually mentioned the sum of a thousand pounds, Mr. Lyman swallowed hard for a moment and tried to expostulate: to him a thousand pounds was something sacred. But to John Marco it had suddenly become no more than a piece of bait to be dangled before the noses of the public. He talked Mr. Lyman down as Mr. Tuke might have scourged a back-slider.
And so John Marco Ltd. appeared in print, each line of type having been sifted through the skilful filter of a copy-writer’s mind. There was a little block of the shop itself at the head of each advertisement, a small cameo of prosperity. The frontage of the building was drawn in that kind of perspective which is known only to advertiser’s block-makers, and the roof sloped away into the background at an angle that suggested something as high as the Monument and as long as Whitehall. The whole two-column spread of the thing, even Mr. Lyman admitted when he saw it, conveyed very temptingly that Bays-water, and Tredegar Terrace in particular, was the home of marvels. And from the moment the first advertisement appeared, everything was set and ready. The assistants had been drilled until a mistake was impossible; the counters were loaded;
and all London had been informed; but the fog remained.
At half-past ten on the Wednesday, when the shop was as empty as ever and the streets outside were like midnight, the four directors met again in John Marco’s room. They were a hushed and apprehensive body of men by now. Mr. Hackbridge kept shaking his head like a refuted prophet, saying that he had never known such a thing; and Mr. Skewin sat without speaking. He was thinking of bad Christmases which he remembered in the past and was mutely contrasting the kind of ruin with which all his life he had been familiar, with ruin on this new scale of things; and on the whole he had decided that he preferred the old.
Mr. Lyman was silent, too; but his was a gloating, triumphant kind of silence. He had his charts and his day-book with him, and he kept on passing his small hand across the covers as if stroking them. Deep inside him, not entirely smothered by alarm about the business, a little fire of gratification was burning. He had always been timid about John Marco’s colossal speculation in the Christmas market; and now this fog had come along just in time to vindicate him. The charts which he now had ready to present to John Marco were like a testimonial to his rejected sagacity.
As for John Marco himself he did not seem worried, only restless. He kept walking about the room, or standing at the window staring up at the sky to see if it were lightening. When he finally came over and took his place at the head of the table he gave a little laugh as though the whole thing did not matter very much either way.
“We might as well give up bothering about the weather,” he said. “It’s too late now anyway. We’ve lost.”
With that he re-lit the cigar which had gone out between his lips, and settled himself back comfortably, idly almost, in his chair for the conference.
It was only when the others had left him that he called for Mr. Lyman’s books and sat there poring over them. It did not need any Mr. Lyman pulling at his elbow to tell him what figures like those in front of him meant.
ii
There was, however, one person whom the advertisements attracted; there was Hesther. They reminded her suddenly of the meeting which John Marco had asked for; reminded her of the letter from his solicitors that she had read and put away and read again, and finally had hidden in the secret drawer of her writing cabinet. The name of Marco, set in staring letters in the columns of the newspaper, awakened her and filled her with fresh resolve. It seemed to her now, after the first terrors that it might be all a plot to steal her child from her had abated, that she was losing a precious opportunity, throwing away something golden that the Lord had provided. Unlocking the writing cabinet she took out the letter and went to her minister for counsel.
It was no longer Mr. Tuke who advised her. Since she had left Paddington and settled down in Stoke Newington—Stoke Newington was where Mr. Sturger’s original Tabernacle had been, and was in consequence the Eternal Borough to all good Amosites—it was the Rev. Simon Weelch whom she consulted. A younger man than Mr. Tuke, he was every bit as much God’s captain in the earthly fight. In appearance and in elocution he was admittedly a lesser piece of creation, but he had character. He was short, almost squat, and above his tangled, jutting eyebrows (they were the one really terrific feature about him) his hair was thin and sleek; and his voice if raised even ever so slightly became reedy and tremulous. He was recognised everywhere, however, as having a wonderfully clear head for figures. It was this latter quality that had promoted him to his present position in the High Synod; and it was this same quality again that made Mr. Tuke regard him with so much disfavour; he saw in him the one jeopardous thing to his own advancement in the fluctuating hierarchy of the Sect. But for Mr. Weelch, Mr. Tuke still did not doubt that he would be one day himself Moderator.
Mr. Weelch, as always, was patient and painstaking. He heard Hesther’s long story with interest and dismay. And when it was over, when her long, disjointed catalogue of sorrows was finished, he clasped his hands together and leant forward.
“And exactly how, Sister,” he asked, “can I be of service?”
“You can come with us,” Hesther answered. “You can be there to give strength.”
“Over to Bayswater? In this fog?” Mr. Weelch asked in dismay.
“Yes,” Hesther answered. “To Bayswater. To save a soul.”
To save a soul! The summons was irresistible: if it had been Buenos Aires instead of Bayswater his minister’s vows would not have allowed him to refuse.
“Very well,” he replied unenthusiastically. “I’ll accompany you.”
He got up and held out his hand.
“Send the boy round here first,” he added. “It might be as well if I said a few words to him before we go.”
They made a conspicuously striking trio—Mr. Weelch, Hesther and the boy—as they set out together, muddling their way through the gloom across the whole width of London, by first one horse bus and then another. Mr. Weelch was wearing his flat, shovel-hat (he wore his tall hat only on Sundays and kept it stored away for the rest of the week for reasons of the strictest economy) and his high-necked frock-coat; and with that sweeping expanse of brim above him and those double rows of buttons running almost to his feet he had the air not of an English minister at all but of a plump oriental mandarin strutting along pavements that were alien. Hesther as usual was clothed in all-enswathing black. When she insisted on paying her fare and the boy’s, the money had to be dragged out of some unthinkable pocket hidden deep down beneath layer under layer of stuff. The boy, tall and leggy by now—he was nearly fifteen—was the only one of them who would not excite comment. His thin, pale face, that seemed to mirror the blankness of the day outside, stared moodily out of the window, and he said nothing.
But even so, Mr. Weelch for his part wished that he himself were not with them. The stir caused by Hesther’s appearance was considerable and he had the sickening and steadily growing fear that people might take her for his wife. To indicate that he was with, but not of, them M Weelch moved a little apart and sat staring at the ceiling. From Stoke Newington High Street to Tredegar Terrace, Bayswater, he read the advertisements that plastered the roof of the bus, and tried to appear at his ease.
Mr. Weelch had not visited John Marco’s before; indeed until he had heard Hesther’s lavish and excited description he had not even known of it. And now that he saw it, he was amazed; it was so wildly in excess of anything that he could have imagined. He was used to the fantasies of hysterical women, and knew how the size of things often tends to become exaggerated in the telling. But there was no time now for vain reflections: already Hesther was rushing him off his feet. She led the way across the central hall to the main staircase without pausing: she was now in that tense mood of suppressed excitement which comes of putting a much prayed-over plan into operation. Mr. Weelch followed her closely, but the boy stood still once or twice to look round; it was his first glimpse of Babylon and it seemed that already he was tempted.
The first set-back came when Hesther sent in her own name, and was told that John Marco would not see her. But she refused to accept such an answer.
“Tell Mr. Marco that his son is outside,” she said to the girl.
The effect of this new message was instantaneous. Hardly had the secretary closed the door behind her than she came out again. There was a new kind of respect in her voice by now.
“Mr. Marco says will you send the boy in, please,” she said.
Hesther got up and beckoned to Mr. Weelch to follow.
“Not by himself he doesn’t go,” she whispered. And taking the boy by the hand she led him in.
John Marco had got up from his desk and was standing in the centre of the room. In the cruel light of the lamp above him his hair showed grey and harsh; in the last few months the grey had spread to the temples and his forehead was now framed in the half-whiteness. But his attitude at that moment was not that of a man whose years are telling on him. He was tense and erect, and there was an eagerness about him; even his arms, now hanging stiffly at his side, seemed ready
to be held out for the boy whom he was awaiting.
It was Hesther, however, who came in first, her son behind her. She smoothed back the straggling lock of hair that fell forward across the boy’s face, tugged at the creased lapels of his jacket. Then putting her arm about his shoulders she began to push him forward.
“That’s your father,” she told him in a voice that began trembling as she said it. “Speak to him.”
John Marco stood there, staring at him. The boy was taller than he expected; taller and thinner and shabbier. That sad little boy whom he had seen in the Park years ago hand in hand with Hesther, had vanished. He had been shabby, too; but shabbiness is one thing in a child and something else in a youth who reaches to his mother’s shoulder. And his shabbiness disgusted him; he wanted to take him down into the shop and re-clothe him, clothe him this time like a man.
But it was not only at the tight Norfolk jacket and deplorable boots that he was looking. He had lifted his eyes and was gazing into the boy’s face. And, as he looked, he saw that it was Hesther’s face. The jet hair that caught the light and did not reflect it, the deep, incalculable eyes, the heavy mouth that drooped so sharply at the corners—they were all the same. And there was, too, that air half resignation, half resolve, that he remembered.
There was, however, something else, something that he couldn’t name. It was simply that as he stood there a voice inside him cried out that this boy was his and should be cherished, that every other boy in the world was less to be esteemed. He looked into his face more closely. And as he looked he saw that it was not the face of a child at all; it was the face of someone who has already encountered the first round of life’s disappointments.
But the boy, he saw, was holding out his hand to him. He had obediently gone forward and now stood waiting awkwardly for John Marco to say something.
I Shall Not Want Page 41