I Shall Not Want (46 page)

John Marco crushed out the stump of his cigar in the ash-tray; the butt of the cigar was all ragged and bitten.

“It is too good to be true,” he said. “We may have to raise more capital.”

iii

It was late one evening as John Marco was passing out through the shop when he saw Mr. Hackbridge coming towards him. Hackbridge was walking very fast, and seemed agitated; he was walking so fast, in fact, that as he dragged his large, heavy feet across the thick pile carpet he left a trail behind him like a tractor's.

“There's a gentleman to see you, sir,” he said breathlessly.

John Marco took out his watch and raised his eyebrows.

“At this time?”

“Yes, sir. He said it was urgent.”

“What's his name?”

“Mr. Tuke, sir. It's a private matter he wants to see you on.”

Mr. Tuke! What did Mr. Tuke want? What right had he to come round to the shop like this after closing time trying to link the old life, the struggling, unpleasant one, onto the new? He would refuse to see him, would snub him bluntly through a second person.

“Tell Mr. Tuke,” he replied, “that I am too busy to see him.” He paused. “Tell him also,” he added, “that I am not aware of any business between us that requires an interview.”

Mr. Hackbridge shifted from one leg to the other.

“He told me you would probably give that sort of an answer,” he explained, “and he said he wanted you to re-consider it. What he wants to see you about is very private and personal.”

For a moment John Marco's heart closed and did not re-open: a little shudder of coldness ran through him. The words sounded sinister and disturbing. But they couldn't mean anything, couldn't mean the one thing that he was alarmed that they might mean: Mr. Tuke didn't know anything about
that.
The words, “very private
and personal” remained, however: he stood quite still, frowning, thinking over them.

“Have Mr. Tuke shown up,” he said at last. “Have him shown up to my private office.”

He broke off and began casting desperately about in his mind for some kind of solution to the mystery of the visit. But seeing that Mr. Hackbridge's eye was on him he controlled himself.

“And have him shown up the main staircase,” he added. “I want him to see the sort of place he is in.”

Mr. Tuke was standing gazing out of the window when John Marco entered. His hands were clasped behind his back and there was a slip of paper held between them. At the sound that the door made in closing Mr. Tuke swung round and, defiantly lifting the point of his chin above his round collar, he faced John Marco.

It was nearly three years since they had met and John Marco's first impression was that in the interval Mr. Tuke had shrunk somehow; shrunk and grown shoddier. The spell of seeing him in the pulpit every Sunday, had been snapped; and all that remained of that awe-inspiring presence was a large, red-faced man in a shiny clerical suit. His hair was a little longer than it had been, and the silver in it now began to show; it fell in lank, unfrivolous waves about his ears.

But the one thing that had not altered was his voice: that still came resounding out of some deep cavern inside him.

“John Marco,” he said gravely, “have you repented? Is your soul ready to be washed?”

“So that's it, is it?” John Marco reflected. “It's my soul he's after.”

He did not reply at once. He allowed his eyes to run up and down Mr. Tuke contemptuously. Then he set his feet wide-apart on the rich carpet that was under him and addressed him in the tone of voice which he used sometimes to travellers who were too insistent and could not otherwise be got rid of.

“You're wasting your time, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “I'm not interested.”

And having said it, he turned deliberately away as though the whole distasteful interview were over.

But Mr. Tuke was not to be put off so easily: he had the consciousness of right on his side. Instead of being abashed, he came forward.

“John Marco,” he said, still in the same grave voice, taking hold of the lapels of his coat as though they were the two runners of a stole, “I am come to-night as the bringer of very solemn news.”

John Marco turned slowly towards him.

“Very well then,” he said. “Tell me.”

Mr. Tuke, however, would not allow himself to be hurried.

“I am not satisfied that you are in a state of grace to hear it,” he replied.

John Marco drew himself up for a moment as though to say something, but suppressed whatever it was on his lips. Then he came forward, his thumbs under the arm-holes of his waistcoat. His head was a little to one side and he regarded Mr. Tuke through eyes that were more than half closed.

“You're being impertinent, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “You're forgetting that I'm no longer of your dispensation.”

At the word “impertinent” Mr. Tuke pursed his lips. He could remember clearly the day when John Marco as a young man with too much wrist showing below the cuffs of his jacket had come to him, and asked to be allowed to expound in Sunday School.

“If you choose to show no respect to me,” he replied hotly, “at least you owe some to my cloth.”

John Marco paused.

“I don't recognise your cloth,” he said.

Mr. Tuke still controlled himself.

“Then perhaps you will recognise my years,” he answered.

His face was flushed and his breathing came heavily as he said it. He was obviously right on the edge of one of his really spectacular angers.

But John Marco continued to stare at him without moving.

“You came to tell me something, Mr. Tuke,” he said.

“I came to give you this,” Mr. Tuke replied. “You should purify your soul before you read it.” He paused. “It will show how Thomas Petter was prepared to trust you,” he added.

As he spoke he handed John Marco the piece of paper that was in his hand.

John Marco hesitated for a moment.

“Did Thomas Petter ask you to come here?” he demanded.

Mr. Tuke shook his head.

“I came,” he said, “because it was my duty.”

John Marco took the paper and began to read.

“I, Thomas Petter, chemist, of
28
Harrow Street, Paddington”
the message ran,
“being of sound mind and under no duress do hereby bequeath to my wife, Mary Ann Petter, all of which I die possessed. As my executors I appoint Mr. Eliud Tuke, of
7
Chapel Walk, Minister of God, and John Marco, of Tredegar Terrace, merchant, and, in the event of the death of the said Mary Ann Petter, to administer my estate for the advantage of my daughter, Mary Elizabeth Petter, infant, until she shall have attained the age of twenty-one years.

Signed Thomas Petter, May 11th,
1903.

As John Marco held this piece of script in his hand he saw again, clearly, the man who had written those words. There he was, pink and prim and innocent, sitting up at the little fumed-oak desk in the tiny sitting-room, diligently penning this, his own last will and testament. For a moment John Marco felt sorry for him; felt again that queer sensation of pity that Mr. Petter had always provoked. There was something so oddly defenceless, so
vulnerable, about him. With all the millions of London to choose from he had deliberately selected for one of his executors the only man who had shown himself to be a peril to him. And having inscribed this foolish document, he had omitted even to have it witnessed; in law the thing might never have existed.

“When did you come by this?” he asked.

“To-day.”

“It was written five years ago,” John Marco said coldly.

“He was still your friend then, remember,” Mr. Tuke replied.

And as he said it, John Marco understood the reason for his visit: Mr. Tuke had seen at last the harm that he had done to Mr. Petter by his foolish warning and was seeking now to make amends for it. He was at one single clumsy stroke trying to repair a breach in a friendship within the Tabernacle and win back the most conspicuous of all his erring Amosites. Between them they had unearthed this old draft of a testimony, and Mr. Tuke had brought it round here in an effort to break John Marco's heart by reminding him of the happy past.

John Marco looked up and saw Mr. Tuke's eyes fixed on him, they were gleaming and moist-looking.

“He shan't have me,” John Marco thought bitterly. “I'm free of him.”

And folding the paper contemptuously across, he handed it back to Mr. Tuke.

“Take it away,” he said. “I've no use for it.”

Mr. Tuke almost snatched it from him.

“You're not worthy to touch it,” he said. “I debated whether I should even show it to you.”

“Then you decided wrong,” John Marco answered. He was angry now and his voice was raised to match Mr. Tuke's. “Go back and tell him the truth about me. Tell him that I hated him. Tell him that I tried to seduce his wife. Tell him anything that you like.”

Mr. Tuke swallowed hard for a moment and his face took on a deeper colour. Then he turned his back on John Marco and went over to the door. In the doorway he paused for a moment and faced John Marco again.

“I thank God,” he said, collecting his dignity about him like a cloak, “that I shall never be able to deliver that message. Our brother is dead.”

It seemed strange to be standing there again in the little doorway in Harrow Street; and as he raised his hand to the bell, John Marco half expected it to be Thomas Petter himself who would come down the stairs in answer to it.

The ride from the shop had been a violent, impetuous one; it seemed that even after all those years every minute was precious. He had hailed a hansom, and by the time he reached Harrow Street he had raised the flap that separated him from the driver half-a-dozen times and had shouted up to him to hurry.

But, now that he had reached the house, there seemed no one to admit him. He had just rung again—it was the third or fourth time that he had rung—when he heard the sound of footsteps descending. They were light footsteps; the footsteps of a woman. But they came down the stairs slowly and wearily. Then the door opened and Mary stood there in front of him.

They stood for a moment looking at each other without speaking.

Then John Marco held out his hand.

“Mary,” he said. “I've come to you.”

She ignored the hand that was held out to her: her whole attitude was one of dumb, infinite fatigue.

“There's nothing that you can do,” she answered. “It's too late.”

“I . . .I thought I might be able to help you,” he said.

“I don't need anything,” she answered.

She was very calm, he noticed; surprisingly calm. Or was it that she was still dazed by it all and could not yet realise what had happened to her? It would not be until
next morning, the first morning in which she woke to a world that did not contain a husband, that she would really understand what it meant.

“Let me come in,” John Marco said to her. “I want to talk to you.”

She stood back and held the door open for him.

“You can come in,” she said.

He followed her up the stairs and into the tiny sitting-room that was full of memories of those evenings when all three of them had been there together. It was not until then that he saw her face. She had recently been crying and her eyes were still wet. Her hair, too, was not brushed smoothly back like pale satin as it usually was: it now fell all about her face, covering up the line of the clear forehead. But the effect of it was somehow to make her look younger. She seemed no different now from the girl who had taught next to him in Mr. Tuke's Sunday School.

“Are you alone here?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“His mother's upstairs,” she said. “With him.”

“And the child?”

“I sent her back home,” she answered. “She doesn't know what's happened yet.”

There was something distant and unmoved in the manner in which she answered these questions; it might have been somebody else's tragedy in the midst of which she had found herself.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I don't know,” she answered. “I haven't had time to think.”

“Do you know how he left you?” he asked.

Her hand went helplessly to her forehead.

“He never told me,” she said. She hesitated for a moment as though other thoughts were filling her mind. “There was always enough for the three of us while he was here,” she added.

“Then you don't know whether you're provided for?”

She hesitated again.

“He told me that we might have to go back home again to my people,” she answered, and then paused.

“All last night he kept on saying it.”

She turned away and went over to the window and he saw she was crying. At first she cried softly, almost silently, as though she were trying to conceal it. Then she gave over the pretence and cried openly. Resting her arm up against the sash she laid her forehead upon it and stood there weeping.

John Marco went towards her and raised his hand to place it on her shoulder. But at the last moment he drew back. Somehow, her grief separated them. They were near to each other, standing side by side, but it was as though her misery had built a wall around her, leaving him on the outer side of it. He felt as he looked at her that, no matter how he tried, he could not reach her. To do something for her, however; to make her feel that at this moment she had never been less alone—that was why he had come.

“You can stay here if you'd rather,” he said. “You need never want for money. I'll take care of that.”

She did not answer immediately. Instead she kept her face turned away from him. And when she replied her voice was quiet again.

“It's good of you, John,” she said. “I always believed in you. But I couldn't take it.”