"You mean, you _won't_."

"Well, if you force me to use that word, I shall use it."

Then there was a terrible quarrel--or rather he abused her meanness and selfishness with brutal violence, and she protested against his injustice and cruelty with all the strength that she possessed.

After this he absented himself for a fortnight. He sent no messages; he left the business to take care of itself, or be run by the other partner; n.o.body knew where he was.

When he reappeared he showed a perceptible deterioration of aspect, as if the vicious orgies through which probably he had been pa.s.sing had set their ugly print upon his mouth, and had tarnished the healthy brightness of his eyes. Henceforth the evidences of his increasing dissipation became more and more obvious. He had abandoned himself to the influences of this second phase. He drank heavily. He was careless about his clothes; never looked spick and span and well-groomed; often looked quite seedy and shabby, lounging in and out of the Dolphin Hotel, with cheeks unshaven, and an unbrushed pot hat on the back of his head.

But although he neglected his work, he made people understand that he still considered himself the boss, and whenever he came into the shop he a.s.serted his authority. After lying in bed sometimes till late in the afternoon, he would come down and upset everybody just when the day's work was drawing to a close.

At the sight of him all eyes were lowered, and many hands began to tremble behind the counters. Before he had progressed from the door of communication to the top of the staircase, somebody, it was certain, would be dropped on. But on whom would he drop?

Once it was his ancient admirer and ally, Miss Woolfrey. Outside China & Gla.s.s, she spoke to him pleasantly if nervously.

"Good evening, sir. You'll find Mrs. Thompson downstairs in the office."

"Who the devil are you talking about?"

"Mrs. Thompson, sir--Oh, lor, how silly of me! Mrs. _Marsden_, sir."

"Yes, that's the name; and I'll be obliged if you won't forget it." He was always exceedingly angry if, as still often happened, the old a.s.sistants accidentally used the name that from long habit sprang so easily to their lips.

"Mrs. Marsden, if you please. And not too much of that." He looked about him wrathfully, involving half the upper floor in his displeasure.

"I wish you'd all learnt manners before you got yourselves taken on here. 'Yes, Mrs. Marsden. No, Mrs. Marsden'--that's the way I hear you.

Don't any of you know that Madam is the proper form of address when you're speaking to your employer's wife?"

When he went behind the gla.s.s all the clerks began to blunder and to get confused. He called for day-books, ledgers, and cash-books, and glanced at them with lordly superciliousness while the poor clerks humbly held them open before him. Nothing was ever quite right--he blamed somebody for illegible hand-writing, someone else for a blot, someone else for the dog's ear of a page.

As promised by Miss Woolfrey, he found the late Mrs. Thompson quietly working at the little corner table in his room. Then he stood before the fire warming his legs, and haranguing about shop-etiquette, up-to-date methods, time-saving systems, and complaining of the many faults that he had discovered.

His wife listened without discontinuing the work.

Gradually, in spite of all his dictatorial interferences, he was allowing her to do more and more work. He told the heads of the staff that when he was out of the way, they were to take their instructions from Mrs. Marsden. Then, when underlings came to him, obsequiously asking for his orders in regard to small matters, he said he could not be worried about trifles. Mrs. Marsden would direct them. He had more than enough important things to think of, and could not descend to petty details.

One afternoon he came in from the street, turned the type-writing girl out of the room, and told his wife to give him all her attention.

"Attend to me, old girl. News. Great news."

He slapped his legs, and laughed. He was elated and excited. It was a flash of jollity after months of gloom.

"Do you remember what I told you eighteen months ago?"

"What did you tell me, d.i.c.k?"

"I asked you to mark my words--and I said, that little bounder over there wasn't going to last much longer."

The old story of Bence's approaching bankruptcy had been revived again.

Marsden had heard it once more, at the Dolphin bar or in the Conservative Club billiard room, and he greedily swallowed every word of it.

He said it was a hard-boiled fact this time. One of the profligate brothers had died; the widow was taking his money out of the business; and Archibald Bence, deprived of capital without which he could not sc.r.a.pe along, would go phutt at any minute.

"There, old girl, I thought it would buck you up to hear such news, so I ran in to tell you. But now I must be off."

And then, in his unusual good temper, he noticed the difficulties under which she was labouring.

"I say, you don't seem very comfortable with all your papers spread out on chairs like that. It looks so infernally messy--but I suppose you haven't s.p.a.ce for them on your table."

"I could do with more s.p.a.ce, certainly."

"Very well. You can sit at my desk--when I am not here. But don't fiddle about with anything in the drawers;" and he laughed. "You'd better not pry among my papers, or you may get your fingers snapped off. The whole d.a.m.ned thing shut up with a bang when I was looking for something in a hurry the other day."

She wondered if there could be any valid reason for the persistent recurrence of these stories of financial shakiness behind their rival's outward show of prosperity. Were these little puffs of smoke, appearing and disappearing so frequently, indicative of latent fire? She asked Mr.

Mears what he thought about the gossip carried in such triumph by her credulous husband.

Mears did not believe a word of it.

"We've heard such yarns for ten years, haven't we?" And Mears nodded his head in the direction of the street. "I've used my eyes, and I don't see any signs of it--and I think Mr. Marsden shouldn't reckon on it."

"No, I quite agree with you."

"Although," said Mears, "it would be very convenient to us, if it _did_ happen--and if it _is_ going to happen, the sooner it happens the better."

"It won't happen," said Mrs. Marsden, sadly and wearily. "The wish is father to the thought--there's no real sense in it."

At this time she often thought of Archibald Bence; and of how, when alluding to his idle spendthrift brothers, he used to say with quaintly candid self-pity, "There's a leak in my shop."

Well, there was a leak on each side of the street, now.

Availing herself of her husband's permission, she came out of the corner, and was generally to be seen seated in the chair of honour at the tricky American desk.

Little by little she was resuming control over the ordinary routine management of the shop; and, although in its greater and more momentous affairs she remained practically impotent, she was allowed full opportunities to supervise and encourage its daily traffic.

Once or twice as Mears stood by her chair in the office and watched her knitted brows while she considered the questions of the hour, he thought and felt that it was quite like old times.

But this was a transient thought. Old times could never really come again. Stooping to take the papers on which she had scrawled her brief and rapid directions, he noticed the coa.r.s.e grey strands in the hair that such a little while ago used to be so smooth, so glossy, and to his mind so pretty. He could see, too, the differences in her whole face.

The face was slightly smaller; the florid colours were fading so fast that occasionally she seemed sallow; the lines of the kind mouth had grown harder; and there was a curious, pa.s.sive, subdued look where once there had been outpouring vitality. And the bodice of the black dress hung loose, in small folds and creases, on the shoulders that used to fill it with such handsome thoroughness.

But instinctively Mears understood that behind the narrower and less glowing mask the inward force was not extinguished--the indomitable spirit was there still, not yet quenched, and perhaps unquenchable.

He watched her--with a veneration deeper than he had ever felt in the easy prosperous past--while she went on quietly, bravely working, day by day, week after week.

One Sat.u.r.day evening, after an uneventful but laborious week, when she had supped alone and was reading by the dining-room fire, Marsden came in and abruptly asked her for money.

"This is serious, Jane--no rot about it. I'm stuck for a couple of hundred, and I must have it."

"Really, d.i.c.k, I cannot--"