I Shall Not Want (51 page)

John Marco dismissed the point and replied curtly that in October, when they had bought all their Christmas stock and had not yet sold any of it, no one but a fool could expect it to be good.

Mr. Lyman accepted the rebuke, but remained obstinately attached to his original point.

“Quite so, sir,” he said. “But what I really meant was that it isn't so satisfactory if you compare it with last year.”

“That's because we've bought more for Christmas,” John Marco retorted. “We've bought twenty thousand pounds' worth more.”

“I know we have,” Mr. Lyman replied; and unbelievably he repeated it. “I know we have,” he said again, slowly and distinctly.

John Marco turned sharply towards him.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“I was only wondering about the advisability of it,” Mr. Lyman said. It was obvious that he was speaking under strain: he had to screw his courage to utter each word he spoke. “Supposing that we don't get rid of it all, where shall we be then?” he asked.

“Just so,” said Mr. Hackbridge. “It
is
rather a lot, you know, sir. I really think ...”

He was not allowed to get any further, however. John Marco had brought his fist down on the table.

“You don't have to think,” he said. “I do that for you. You don't count for anything the whole lot of you. I made the business single-handed. Single-handed I tell
you.” He was speaking very rapidly by now and the vein in his forehead was throbbing. “If you think that I'm going to draw back,” he said, “simply because some of you are frightened, you're mistaken. Do you think that I don't know what the figures are like? Do you think that I haven't sat up all night working on them? But we're going on the way we started. I'm in charge of the buying and if you can't sell what I buy for you, I'll find people who can. If I buy another thousand pounds' worth or another twenty thousand pounds' worth by Christmas it's none of your business. And if you don't like the sort of stuff I buy for you you can get out.”

He stopped suddenly—the room for a moment swam in front of his eyes—and there was silence. Mr. Hackbridge coughed nervously but had nothing to say. Mr. Lyman and Mr. Skewin avoided each other's glances.

John Marco turned suddenly to Mr. Lyman.

“Are those the yearly figures you've got there?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Lyman meekly. “You'll find it all set out there. This year's figures are in red.”

John Marco held out his hand for the ledger and Mr. Lyman passed it over to him respectfully. With the book open in front of him John Marco appeared oblivious to everything: his head was bent low over the pages and he was jotting down odd figures on the pad beside him. Mr. Hackbridge coughed again and John Marco started. He looked up and then returned to beautiful columns of Mr. Lyman's handwriting.

“You can all go if you want to,” he said. “You can leave me here. I understand these figures.”

But when the last of them had gone John Marco shut up the book and sat staring emptily into the room in front of him. He had said more than he meant to say, a good deal more. But he had nothing to worry about. There wasn't anything that they could ever do to harm him; they were all three of them too dependent on him for that. And, besides, weren't they all of them still down on their
knees to him in sheer gratitude for what he had made them?

It was still early, scarcely more than nine o'clock in fact. But he was tired already—that outburst in the face of Mr. Lyman's stupidity had tired him more than he had realised—and he sat in his chair without moving. Then he went over to the cupboard and poured himself out another drink. He was surprised as he did so to notice how low the level in the decanter had become; he must have drunk more than he remembered.

The thing needed filling nearly every day now.

He put on his great coat and went out through the empty shop into the street. Outside it was cold, very cold. There was a frozen fierceness in the air. He stood on the pavement waiting for a cab, and shivered. Then the cab came into sight, the horse blowing out great festoons of cloudy breath, and he was carried through those silent, winding streets that were simply ravines between the houses, and to-night might have been crevasses in glaciers. The horse's hoofs sounded loud and hollow as if they were falling on ice, and the air that blew in round the corners of the shaky windows was sharp and treacherous. He thought of his leather arm-chair and the fire that would be waiting for him, and drew his great-coat in more closely around him.

When he reached the house and let himself in, the warm protection of the place greeted him like a spell. He stood for a moment in the glow of the chandelier, grateful for the comfort of it all. And as he stood there, he noticed that across one of the chairs in the hall Louise's wrap was lying, carelessly thrown down as though by someone in a hurry.

He went over and smoothed it with his hand—it was velvet, and felt soft and gentle underneath his fingers—folding it carefully across the back of the chair.

“She'll be cold without it,” he thought as he passed on up the stairs.

The house was quiet as it always was when Louise was not there; the whole life of it seemed somehow to be missing.

John Marco went into the drawing-room and crossed over to the fireplace. His chair was there, red and soft and yielding, and he sank into it. But as he did so, he heard very distinctly in the silence of the house a sound that he had not expected. It was the noise of someone, a woman probably, rapping urgently with her knuckles on a door. It was not on his door, but on a door somewhere on a floor above. And a moment later the sound of rapping was repeated.

He sat up and listened; and then, rising from his chair, he went and stood in the doorway. He could see the whole sweep of the landing from there. One of the maids was standing there knocking on Louise's bedroom door; her hand in its white cuff was raised ready to rap again. When she heard the sound of John Marco's footsteps on the stairs behind her, she started.

“Is your mistress in?” John Marco demanded.

The girl shook her head.

“No, sir,” she said.

“Then why were you knocking?”

The girl did not answer.

For a man of his size John Marco could still move rapidly. He mounted the stairs at a run and pushed the girl aside. Then he turned the handle of the door, ready to walk in. But the door itself was locked.

He was angry again now, flushed and angry as he had been at the board-meeting.

“Who's in there?” he demanded. “Who is it?”

But the girl only pulled out her handkerchief and started crying.

“I don't know, sir,” she answered. “Really I don't.”

John Marco turned his back on her—it was obvious that she was lying to him—and began pounding on the door with his fists.

“Who's inside?” he shouted, “Let me in.”

There was a movement inside the room, and very faint through the thickness of the door, the sound of voices. They were frightened voices, muffled and indistinct. They might have been trying to say something to him. But John Marco did not wait. Stepping back a pace, he ran his shoulder full against the panel. The door seemed for a moment to bend under him and the house shook. But the lock held fast. It was not until he had thrown himself against it twice, three times, four times that something in the woodwork of the lock splintered and the door sprang open.

He was sweating by now and his face was red and furious.

The only sound in the room was the sound of Louise's sobbing.

She was standing over by the dressing-table facing him, her hair dragged back from her head as though it had been pinned hurriedly by shaking fingers. The evening-dress that she was wearing was crumpled and disarranged. Beside her stood a young man, also in evening-dress. He was one of the pale young men whom John Marco dimly remembered. His hair was ruffled and he kept raising his hand to his collar from which his tie was somehow missing.

ii

John Marco went back down the stairs again without speaking; the maid was still there—she had flattened herself against the wall and was staring into the room of the secret—but John Marco did not notice her. He passed her, and went down below out of sight.

His great-coat and hat were down below in the hall where he had left them. He went up to them instinctively; they seemed to be part of him, and not to belong to this house at all. Then swinging the coat roughly onto his shoulders and pulling the hat down onto his head, he slammed the front door after him and was out in the street once more.

The air had grown still colder, and tiny particles of ice that cut into the skin like little frozen spears were being carried on the wind that had now sprung up. But he did not notice them. He was walking blindly, aimlessly and stumbling sometimes; walking in fact as Mr. Petter, miserable and broken, had once walked through the evening streets after hearing the awful warning of Mr. Tuke.

When he turned a corner, and the wind bore down full upon him, he set his head lower and forced his way against it, turning up the collar of his coat still higher. There was only one intention in the walking and that was to separate himself from the bedroom into which he had just looked. The memory of it—and his whole mind was full of nothing else: the room was lit up in his mind as if it had been a stage—made him walk faster. As he blundered along the gas-lit streets, he was almost running. He was not tired any longer, but numb. His legs ached and the cold had seeped into his limbs, drugging them. His head, too, was swimming and he wondered if he were going to faint, to collapse suddenly. The street that he was now in was one that he did not recognise: it stretched bleak and lifeless in front of him like a scenic backcloth, leading into the painted wilderness of Paddington and Maida Vale.

There was a public-house at the corner from which the jangle of mechanical music was coming. The door, as it swung open to admit someone, shot a band of vivid yellow light across the street, and there was the sound of voices and laughter. John Marco walked towards the threshold, his feet dragging as he moved, his lips quivering. Inside, the warmth smote him. The heat rose from the floor in great waves and danced around him. He went over to the bar and called for whiskey.

Not until the drink was in his hand did he look round him. Then he saw that they were cheap premises that he had come into, a place of no repute. Probably the whole neighbourhood was cheap as well—he had blundered
right out of his style and class—and was lost in the wild boundaries of the Harrow Road. There was sand on the floor, scraped bare in places by a hundred feet, and below the bar a row of scarred spittoons were standing. He noticed, now, that the others in the bar were staring at him: it was evident that they did not get a gentleman like him with a velvet collar on his coat in the place every night. The house was crowded and as he stood there he felt these scores of eyes pressing in on him.

When his glass was empty—he had drunk quickly—greedily, throwing back his head like a carter—he called for his drink again, and because his knees were weak, he groped his way over towards the couch. At the opposite end of the saloon was another couch set below a large discoloured mirror across which the outlines of ferns and flowers had been stencilled.

This couch was crowded with occupants—all women. There was a tittering sofa-full of them, loud-voiced blowsy women with colouring younger than their figures and large, feathery hats. They were all dressed in bright, rubbishy clothes and they kept taking sips at the glasses in front of them and glancing encouragingly in his direction.

The penny pianola in the corner stopped suddenly and, even with the noise of the voices, the room seemed abruptly to have grown quiet. But already someone was reaching in his pocket and, a moment later, the thing started performing again. John Marco closed his eyes and sat back. But it was not the pianola that he was hearing; it was the sound of Louise's sobbing. He could see her, too; her bare shoulders over the top of the frock showing white and half naked-looking, and her hair, that was all curls now, still half loose about her face. He opened his eyes again trying to forget it all and saw the landlord standing with his arms round his wife's waist. She was a big, clumsy woman with a dull, flattened face and crude, dyed hair. But as he looked he saw her place her red hand over his. “They're happier than I am,” thought John Marco. “They're
not alone.” And when the pot-man drew near him clearing the tables, John Marco called for his glass to be filled again.

It was this drink that overthrew him. The fatigue and then the shock, and now the heat of this stifling parlour, broke him down. His hands felt puffy and unfamiliar and he spilt a little from the glass as he raised it. As though by some inner sympathy among drinkers, the others in the bar recognised him now as one of them, as one of them who no longer was quite himself; and the barriers of class and dress were broken down. They drew in around him.

Before he had been sitting there for long, one of the women from the distant sofa came over and sat beside him. He was aware of her before he looked at her; and when he did look he saw a young woman—she was in her thirties probably—with bright yellow hair and a row of squalid teeth set in a smiling mouth. She moved closer towards him and, after a moment, when he still had made no advances to her, she said good-evening.

The fact that she did so, the fact that he should be sitting there because his big house in the Square was as suddenly shut to him as if it had been barred, and that this drab was now offering to console him in the only way she knew, amused him. After Louise, she was not an attractive companion; her hands which were resting on the table were loaded with rings that seemed to have been forced on them when her fingers had been thinner; the flesh now stood up in little ridges between them. But to have her speak to him, to listen to the tawdry nonsense which was all that she could utter—that would be something. Perhaps for a space she would even enable him to forget again.