But for herself, it would have been a fact instead of an hysterical fancy. It was her fault, not his.

When he had shut the door, she thought of herself dully, without pity, in stupid wonder.

This is the end. The heats of summer gone; the mimic warmth of autumn gone, too; nothing left but the cold, dead winter--the end of all.

XVI

The state of apathetic indifference continued; the slow months dragged by, and still she could not shake off her invincible weariness and spur herself to resume activity.

Once or twice Enid invited her to pay the long-postponed visit of inspection; and, when these invitations were refused, she offered to come to see her mother. But she was put off with vague excuses. The weather seemed so doubtful this week; later in the year Mrs. Marsden would certainly make the eight-mile journey, and examine the charming home of her daughter and her son-in-law.

It was an effort even to write a letter; nothing really interested her; her highest wish was to be left alone.

She heard and occasionally saw what was happening in the shop; but the old keen delight in business had faded with all other delights. She was not wanted down there behind the gla.s.s. Her husband was master there now, and he did not require her a.s.sistance. He was pushing on with his programme of change and innovation; he brought her architects' drawings and builders' plans to sign, and she signed them without questioning; he jauntily told her about his new j.a.panese department, his new agency trade, his revolutionised carpet store, and she listened meekly to everything, appeared willing to concur in anything.

He was inordinately pleased with himself, and his boastful self-confidence brimmed over in noisy chatter. He had declared war against Bence; henceforth, he vowed, the t.i.t-for-tat policy should be pursued with implacable thoroughness.

"Look out for yourself, Mr. Bence," he said vaingloriously. "It has been very nice for you up to now. Because you saw a naked face, you smacked it. But now you're smacked back--as you'll jolly well find. I expect my new fascia has opened your eyes to what's coming."

The new fascia had been erected. It was made of chestnut wood--a most artistic up-to-date piece of work, with the names Thompson & Marsden alternating in carved lozenges over all the windows, with linked festoons of flowers, with high relief and intaglio cutting--with what not decorative and grand. It ran the whole length of the street frontage and round the corner up St. Saviour's Court, and it cost 750.

But that expense was a fleabite when compared with the cost of the structural alterations that were now fairly in hand.

The yard was being completely covered. The carts would drive into what would be the ground floor; and above this there would be three floors of packing rooms, with every imaginable convenience of lifts, slides, and shoots, for manipulating the goods and discharging them at the public.

Meanwhile, the old packing rooms had been huddled into unused cellars, and the s.p.a.ce that they had occupied in the bas.e.m.e.nt, indeed the entire bas.e.m.e.nt, was being excavated to an astounding depth. Soon an immense subterranean area would be scooped out; vast halls with wide staircases would be constructed; a shop below a shop would be ready for Mr.

Marsden's use.

But what he proposed to do with it he had not as yet disclosed. He was feverishly anxious to get all the work finished, but the new bas.e.m.e.nt especially occupied his ambitious dreams.

"Mears, old buck," he said often, "I'm itching to get down there. And how d.a.m.n slow they are, aren't they?"

Having had his fling as a gentleman at large, he seemed to enjoy for a little while the quieter but more ma.s.sive importance derived from his position as the proprietor of a successful business, the employer of labour, the patron of art and manufacture. He paid handsomely for the insertion of his portrait in the local newspaper, and arranged with the editor that paragraphs about himself and his operations should appear amongst news items without the objectionable word Advertis.e.m.e.nt. On early closing day he swaggered about the town, feeling that he was one of its most prominent citizens, and proving himself always ready to stand a drink to anyone who would say so.

When his architect came down from London to go over the works with the contractor, he carried them off to the Dolphin, before anything had been done, and gave them a sumptuous luncheon--sat bragging and drinking with them for hours. When at dusk they returned to the shop, Marsden was red and noisy, the architect was in a fuddled state, and the contractor frankly hiccoughed.

"Down with you, old boy," said Marsden jovially. "And buck 'em up--the lazy bounders. Get a move on. I want this job finished; and it seems to me you're all playing with it."

After the governor had been lunching he lost that sense of decorum which from long habit should make it almost as impossible to speak loudly in a shop as in a church. All the a.s.sistants and several customers were scandalized by the noisy tongues of Mr. Marsden and his architect.

"And you jolly well remember that everything's to be done without interference to my business. It's in the contract--and don't you forget it. Start to finish--that was the bargain--business to be carried on as usual."

"Oh, we don't forget, Mist' Marsd---- No interferens. Bizniz muz go on zactly as usual."

But did it? Mears was appalled by the disturbance and confusion.

Outside in the street a long line of builders' carts blocked the approach of carriage-folk; from beneath the windows, through the opened gratings, earth and gravel and lumps of broken concrete were being painfully hauled out; the pavement was covered with mud, obstructed with debris, so that foot-people could not pa.s.s in comfort, and the Borough Surveyor had sent three notices urgently requesting the abatement of what was a public as well as a private nuisance. Inside the shop one heard growling thunders from the depths below one's feet, and sudden explosions as if one were walking over a volcano, while from every entrance to the dark vaults there issued clouds of destructive lime dust. Sometimes a department was shut up for an hour while a steel girder was rolled along the floor by twenty perspiring men; processions of bucket-bearers emerged unexpectedly; and one saw in every mirror a grimy face or a plaster-stained back.

What was the use of asking ladies to step upstairs and view our Oriental novelties, when the nearest staircase was temporarily converted into a slide for roped planks?

Ladies said No, thank you; they would call again.

"This is going to hit us, sir," said Mr. Mears gloomily. "It is going to hit us hard if it continues much longer."

"But it won't continue," said Marsden irritably. "They're bound by contract to finish before the twentieth of next month. Besides, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

There could be no doubt, thought Mears, as to the broken eggs; but the question was, Would Mr. Marsden's omelette ever come to table, or would it get tossed into the fire with so much else that seemed finding an end there?

Towards the completion of the contract time, Marsden more than once forced his wife to come through the door of communication, and have a look round the altered shop. She was admittedly convalescent now. She had not demurred when the master of the house gave Dr. Eldridge what he called "a straight tip" to cease paying professional visits. She had not protested when, in her presence, an almost straighter tip was given to Yates that the boring fuss about a malady of the imagination must cease.

In fact she herself had said that there was nothing the matter with her.

She could not therefore refuse to show herself when he explicitly commanded her to do so.

Many changes--as she pa.s.sed by Woollens and China and Gla.s.s, it was like walking in a dream, among the distorted shadows of familiar objects.

Miss Woolfrey ran out of China and Gla.s.s to welcome her; but the other a.s.sistants, male and female, seemed shy of attracting her attention.

Changes on all sides, which she looked at with indifferent eyes--but one change that slowly compelled a more careful observation. Perhaps downstairs this, the greatest of the changes, would not be observable?

But no, it was noticed as plainly downstairs as upstairs.

There were fewer customers.

She glanced at the clock outside the counting-house. Three-twenty! In the middle of the afternoon, at this season of the year, the shop should be thronged with customers; and it appeared to be, comparatively speaking, empty.

Marsden was waiting to receive her behind the gla.s.s, in her old sanctum.

"Come in, Jane. Here I am--hard at it."

Her bureau had disappeared. Where it used to stand there was a large but compact American desk; and in front of this Mr. Marsden sat enthroned.

She glanced round the room, and saw a small new writing-table in the s.p.a.ce between the second safe and the wall.

"I thought you could sit over there, Jane," said Marsden, pointing with his patent self-feeding pen. "You'd be out of the draught--for one thing."

She was to be pushed into a corner, to be made to understand her insignificant position under the new order of things,--but she did not protest.

"Now then. Come along."

He took her first of all through the Furniture, and showed her his sub-department for the sale of desks and all other office requisites similar to those which he had purchased for his own use. This was what he called agency work.

"No risk, don't you see, old girl! Doing the trick with other people's capital." And he explained how the German firm that supplied England with these American goods had given him most advantageous terms. "A splendid agreement for _us_! If the things don't go off quick, we just shovel the lot back at them--and try something else. That's _trade_.

Keep a move on--don't go to sleep."

Then presently he took her upstairs, to what he called his j.a.pan Exhibition.

The Cretonne Department had been compressed and curtailed to make room for this new feature, and she pa.s.sed through the archway of an ornate part.i.tion in order to admire and wonder at the Oriental novelties.

"Now, Jane, this is what I'm really proud of."

There was plenty to see and to think about--Marsden made her handle carved and tinted ivory warriors with glittering swords and tiny burnished helmets, dragons with jewelled eyes and enamelled jaws, exquisite little cloisonne boxes; made her stoop to look at the malachite plinths of huge squat vases; and made her stretch her neck to look at gold-embossed friezes of great tall screens.