I Shall Not Want (16 page)

“Do you like it?” she asked.

But John Marco's answer was cut short. Mr. Morgan had arrived. He came sidling into the room a little astonished by the size of the place. It was a gentleman's house this, a pretty substantial property. It wasn't like an assistant's house at all, and he envied John Marco his good fortune. But he gave him his due. Marrying for money could be just as hard work as earning it in any other way; and glancing across at Hesther as she stood at the top of the table he reflected that he had seen younger and fuller-blooded brides. But he did what was expected of him. Going up to her, he kissed her ceremonially on both cheeks.

“An old man's privilege,” he said.

Then he came over and patted John Marco on the back.

“Have to go straight home in the evenings now,” he said. “Have your wife after you if you don't.”

He continued in the same vein until the others arrived. He was a different Mr. Morgan from the Old Gentleman in the shop; there was something vaguely and rather innocently salacious about him. Between some of his remarks he even winked. Evidently in a life that had long been devoid of it, the thought of sex had revived old, boisterous memories. For those few private minutes while he was alone with the young couple this white-haired Amosite Elder became a kind of plaintive Pan in a frock-coat; over his bright spectacles he leered. Then Mr. Tuke arrived too, and all was respectable again.

It had been Mr. Tuke's intention not to stay very long. But at the sight of so much good food his intention wavered. He began passing things; and in between passing them,
he ate. For every dainty that Mrs. Tuke got, he had two. And when tea was brought in he became quite reconciled to staying. The quantity of tea that he could drink—the quantity of tea, indeed, that he seemed to
need
to drink—was quite surprising. He drank three cups straight off, passing up his cup each time as though it were someone else's.

Mrs. Tuke was still engaged in comforting old Mrs. Marco. She was trying to get her to eat something and kept patting the back of her hand as though she were just emerging from a faint.

“You'll like it here when you get used to it,” she was saying. “It's very nice of your daughter-in-law to want to have you to live with her.”

“I was happy where I was,” Mrs. Marco protested. “I'd lived there ever since Mr. Marco died.”

“But think how lonely you'd have been,” Mrs. Tuke reminded her. “Think of what it would have been like without your son.”

Mrs. Marco pondered over the point for a moment, without replying. She was sitting huddled up in her chair with her shoulders hunched up like a monkey's. It was obvious that in spirit she was not of the party at all. And when Mrs. Tuke passed her anything she waved it away as if it had been poisoned.

“I'd rather have seen him dead,” she said suddenly, “than married to her.”

Mrs. Tuke patted her aged hand more vigorously. “You're over-tired,” she said.

“I may be over-tired,” Mrs. Marco answered. “But that doesn't alter that she stole him. He was all I had.”

“You'll feel better in the morning,” Mrs. Tuke told her. “See what a good night's rest does for you.”

“Good night's rest,” Mrs. Marco spat the words out. “I shan't sleep a wink under the same roof with her.”

She shifted herself round in her chair until she was facing Hesther as she said it.

Mr. Tuke detected at once that something was amiss and he recognised this as one of the occasions when tact, exemplary tact, would be needed to gloss it over. So, turning towards Hesther, he allowed his voice to swell until Mrs. Marco's remarks were drowned and inaudible.

“And has to-day been everything you could have wished?” he asked.

“Everything,” Hesther replied briefly.

“If only your dear uncle could have been here,” Mr. Tuke went on. “Such a loss. Such a sad loss.”

“If my uncle hadn't died we might never have got to know each other,” Hesther answered.

She looked sideways at John Marco as she spoke; but though he was standing by her he gave no sign of having heard.

“Perhaps not,” Mr. Tuke agreed. “Who shall say? How little we any of us know what is in store for us.”

While he was speaking his eye had been roving up and down the snowy terraces of the cake; it was still whole and unbroken as it had been when it was delivered from the shop.

“Isn't it time for the bride to cut the cake?” he suggested. “Isn't it time she plied the knife?”

As Hesther moved up to the middle of the table, Mr. Tuke followed her. He waited until she had the large silver-handled knife in her hand and then reached down and taking John Marco firmly by the wrist placed his hand over hers.

“Like that,” he said. “Together.”

He stepped back, smiling, and caught Mr. Morgan's eye.

“So much to learn,” he said. “So far to go.”

John Marco's hand, however, dropped to his side again.

Mr. Tuke could not help remarking the gesture: it was almost as though the young man were
reluctant
to have his hand on hers, as though he did not
want
to touch her. And what was more extraordinary was that the bride
herself did not seem to expect it. To cover up the incident, Mr. Tuke took hold of the knife himself.

“With your permission,” he said. “Allow me ...”

It was at that moment that Mrs. Marco suddenly reasserted herself. She had been watching everything going on around her with a kind of hostile intentness. And she leant forward intently, her old finger pointing.

“That's my tea-kettle,” she said.

“But you're forgetting,” Mrs. Tuke reminded her. “All your things have been brought round here. This is where you're going to live.”

“I'm not going to have that woman using my tea-kettle,” Mrs. Marco asserted loudly.

John Marco left Mr. Morgan to whom he had been talking and came over to her.

“You'd better go to bed,” he said. “You've done too much.”

Mrs. Marco stared at him for a moment before she answered.

“You want to get rid of me,” she said. “You want to be alone with her.”

“Go to bed,” he repeated; and leaning over her he began to lift her from her chair.

“Don't you dare to lay hands on me,” she said. “I can walk.”

It might, even then, still have been all right if Mrs. Tuke had not again intervened.

“This isn't a very good start,” she said reprovingly. “This isn't being kind.”

“Was it kind of her to break my home up for me?” Mrs. Marco demanded. “Did I ask her to do that?”

But John Marco did not wait any longer. He gathered old Mrs. Marco up in his arms and, holding her almost like a baby, was proceeding to carry her out of the room.

“Put me down,” she screamed. “Put me down.”

At the door he paused and turned to Hesther; it was the first time that they had heard him speak to her.

“Which room have you given her?” he asked.

Hesther's eyes met his: her dark ones were steady and unwavering.

“My uncle's room,” she said. “I'll come up with you.”

By the time they had got downstairs again, the company was just leaving. They had been sitting there in silence, ever since the others had left them. Even Mr. Tuke's usually boundless tact suddenly failed him; he just stood there gloomily eating. And when John Marco entered, Mr. Tuke made no pretext of wanting to remain. He went straight up to Hesther and shook her earnestly by the hand.

“We leave you,” he said simply, “in one another's arms.”

Then the others said good-bye as well, and Mr. Morgan went back to the shop. He was at heart a little vexed; vexed and disappointed. All the week he had hoped that this was going to be a jolly occasion: he had looked forward to enjoying himself. And he hadn't enjoyed himself a bit. And what was more he knew the reason for it: the two young people had tempted Fate and got married before the shadow of death was properly off the house. He was at heart considerably shocked that his star-assistant should have been so impetuous.

On the way back Mrs. Tuke, too, was silent and preoccupied; she did not even always answer when Mr. Tuke addressed her, and she abruptly interrupted his remarks with an observation of her own.

“I don't like it,” she said. “There'll be a tragedy in that house as sure as I'm alive. He didn't even know where his own mother was sleeping. And you can see that he isn't in love.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Tuke. “Then if he isn't in love why did he have to apply for a special licence?”

“I can think of one good reason,” said Mrs. Tuke grimly.

Inside the house Hesther and John Marco were alone together. They were not talking. They simply stood there,
eyeing each other across the loaded table on which stood the enormous wedding-cake, still uncut.

iii

It was ten o'clock the same evening.

There was to be no honeymoon—John Marco had insisted that he should be back at his counter by nine o'clock on the Monday morning—and they were seated at either side of the veined marble fire-place in their front drawing-room. Hesther was embroidering the collar of a dress. There were long pauses between the stitches; and sometimes for minutes on end she sat gazing into the fire. John Marco was staring into the same fire. But he was seeing different things.

Then Hesther broke the silence.

“You did better than you realised when you married me,” she said.

John Marco turned to her.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You're not a poor man any longer,” she said.

His mind kindled as he heard her. From nowhere Mr. Tuke's voice intoning the twenty-third psalm came back to him. “The Lord is my Shepherd: I shall not want. ...” But somehow the words frightened him. It was punishment that he had been expecting; and this was reward. “I shall not want,” he repeated to himself; “I shall not want.” And then as he said them the image of Mary rose up before him, pale and slender, and he began to understand.

But Hesther was addressing him again.

“He left me all his money,” she was saying. “Except what the Chapel got.”

Her eyes were on him as she spoke: she was watching him.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

“It can be yours if you want it to be,” she said.

He made no movement and she held out her hand to him.

“Come over to me,” she said. “Bring your chair beside mine.”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Go on talking to me as you are.”

She drew in her lips at the answer; but she resumed.

“Aren't you interested in knowing how much it is?” she asked.

He was looking hard at her, his eyes fixed on hers.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It's twelve thousand pounds,” she answered. “Twelve thousand pounds and this house.”

John Marco got up and began to walk about the room.

Twelve thousand pounds! So the Chapel had been right in what they had whispered about Mr. Trackett: he had died a rich man. And his fortune was the kind of fortune out of which larger fortunes could be made. With that amount behind him, John Marco could go forward to anything. He could ride the world.

“It's a lot of money,” he said slowly. “You must be careful of it.”

He was passing her chair as he said it and she caught him by the hand. She clung to him.

“I told you,” she said. “It can be yours if you want it to be. I shall trust you with it.”

“You trust me?” he replied.

“Yes,” she said. “I trust you with everything now. You're my husband aren't you?”

Her other hand was on his fore-arm by now, she was trying to pull him down to her.

“Kiss me,” she was saying. “Take me in your arms and kiss me.”

But he forced her hand away from him and stepped back.

“Don't you see that it can't be like that?” he said.

“But you've got to love me,” she said. “You've got to.”

She slid out of her chair as she said it and went down on her knees with her two arms round him so that he could not free himself.

“You can't think that I married you so that you could go on hating me,” she said. “I want to be loved. I want
you
to love me.”

Then, because he did not answer, because she realised at last that he intended never to give her the answer that she wanted, she went on in a lower voice almost as though speaking to herself this time.

“I want a child,” she said almost under her breath. “I want your child.”

Her arms were still round him and he was looking down on her. Her dark head was pressed against him; it seemed that in some hopeless fashion she was seeking refuge from what she had done.

John Marco paused.

“There can't be children,” he said. “Not in a marriage like this.”

“You mean never?” she asked.

“Never!” he repeated.

Her arms dropped to her side and she released him. He went over and stood by the mantelpiece with his back towards her. But Hesther did not move. She remained half-sitting, half-kneeling on the mat in front of the fire.

“If you give me a child,” she said, “you can have all the money.” She paused. “That's what I had always wanted to do with it—give it to my husband.”

She rose to her feet as she said it and began going round the room in the manner of a woman preparing for the night. She went over to the windows to see that they were latched and then crossed over to the door.

“I shall leave you now,” she said, still in the same quiet voice. “You can come up when you're ready.”

The room seemed very quiet after she had left him. The whole house was quiet; it hadn't warmed yet to the new life being lived within it. Instead, it was trying to absorb him into it, to enfold him in the kind of existence that it had always known; he could feel the four walls closing in on him. But the mood passed, and he saw the room in its old light again. It was a prosperous, solidly-comfortable sort of room. The rich ox-blood red of the paper set off the dark glow of mahogany. And over on the side
table was a fine gleam of silver. It was all his. Already he had got so much. But how much more was he prepared to take?