It had been a fearful year for Thompson & Marsden's. From the moment that the grand fascia permanently recorded the new style of the firm, money had flowed out of the business like water—and like big water, like mountain torrents or sea waves; while the feeding-stream of money that flowed into the business was obstructed, deflected, and plainly lessened in volume. And now, when all the immense outlay should begin to prove remunerative, even Marsden himself confessed that results were inadequate and unsatisfactory.

The Bazaar was a disastrous fiasco. The builders had broken their contract; the basement had not been completed on the stipulated date, and a law-suit was pending. Marsden swore that he would recover damages for the loss entailed by his builders' wickedness; but Mr. Prentice advised that he had a weak case.

When, to the strains of a Viennese orchestra, the public were invited to go down and enjoy themselves underground, they flatly declined the invitation. A peep into the brilliantly lighted depths was sufficient for them. Damp exhaled from the plastered walls; the few adventurous customers shivered and the girls sneezed in their faces. An epidemic of sore throat, engendered down there, rose and spread through the upper shop. After three weeks, Marsden's grand Christmas entertainment was withdrawn—like a pantomime that is too stupid to attract the children; the regiment of sneezing girls was disbanded; the mass of unsold rubbish was sent to London, to be disposed of for what it would fetch. And that, as the whole shop knew, was half nothing.

The Japanese department was almost as bad a bargain; the little ivory warriors terrified cautious citizens with their high prices; no one would come to buy and be educated. But Marsden for a long time was obstinate about his Oriental goods. He would not face the loss, and cut it short.

He seemed to have forgotten his American office equipments; but this feature had also failed to fulfil expectations. Only three small articles had been sold. However, as there was no risk here, the want of success did not much matter; but still it must be counted as one more of the governor's false moves. Indeed, as all now saw, everything attempted by the governor during this period of his energetic efforts had gone hopelessly wrong.

But he himself could not brook the disappointment caused by his failures. He was disgusted when he thought of what had happened since his pompous declaration of war. Although he would not admit that so far Bence was beating him, he inveighed against fate, against Mallingbridge, against all the world.

"What the devil can you do when you're buried in a dead and alive hole like this, surrounded by idiotic prejudices, and dependent on a lot of old fossils to carry out your ideas?"

The fitful energy that had occasioned so much trouble was now quite exhausted. He seemed to have entered another phase. He was never jolly now, but always discontented, and generally querulous, morose, or violently angry.

One after another the old shop chieftains succumbed beneath his bullying attacks. Mr. Ridgway and Mr. Fentiman had gone. Mr. Greig was going.

Mrs. Marsden always recognized the beginning of his onslaught upon anybody to whom in the old days she had been strongly attached. A few sneering words—lightly and carelessly; and then, when he returned to the charge, gross abuse of the doomed thing. She knew that it was doomed. In the wreck of her life this too must go. Then very soon there were insults and violences that rendered the position of the victim untenable, unendurable. Thus he had forced Mr. Ridgway and the others to resign.

Yates, the servant and friend that she loved, was also doomed. She was struggling to avert the stroke of doom, but she knew that sooner or later it must fall.

And during all this time his demands for cash were increasingly frequent. By his colossal outlay he had mortgaged the profits of years, and it was essential that the partners should wait patiently until they came into their own again. But he would not wait, and vowed that he could not further retrench his personal expenses. How was he to live without some ready cash? And if the firm could not furnish it, she must.

"I am trying to sell my big car," he told her. "And I suppose you will ask me to sell the little one next—and paddle about in the mud again. But, no, thank you, that doesn't suit my book at all."

At last she summoned to her aid something of that old resolution that seemed to have left her forever, and refused to comply with his request.

"No, Dick, I can't. It isn't fair. I can't."

"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; nobody 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 passing 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 asserted 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 & Glass, 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 assistants 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 glass 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, Dick?"

"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 scrape 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 space for them on your table."

"I could do with more space, 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 damned 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 coarse 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, passive, 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 Saturday 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, Dick, I cannot—"

"I don't ask it as a gift. Of course I meant to pay you back the other advances, but everything's been against me. I will try to pay you. Anyhow, this is a bona fide loan. It's only to tide me over."

"But you said that last time."

"Last time you refused—and I had to chuck away my little run-about—simply chuck it away. And I wanted to keep that car as much for your sake as for mine. I knew you enjoyed a ride in it."

She had ridden in the car once, and once only.

"Look here, old girl." And he removed his hat, and sat down on the other side of the dinner-table. Perhaps he had hoped that she would give him a cheque and let him go out again in two or three minutes; but now he saw it would take longer. "I must have the money by Monday morning—or I shall be in a devil of a hole. More or less a matter of honour.... Don't be nasty. Help a pal. It's not like you to refuse—when I tell you I'm in earnest."

"But, Dick, I am in earnest, too. Truly I can't do it."

"Rot. You can do it without feeling it." And he assumed a facetious air. "Just your autograph—that's all I ask for. I'll write out the cheque myself—save you all trouble. Just sign your name."

"No, I'm very sorry; but it's impossible."

He got up, and began to walk about the room, fuming angrily.

"Then I shall draw on the firm."

"Then I shall have to call in Mr. Prentice, and ask him to protect the firm—to go to the law courts if necessary."

"Oh, that's all my aunt. I've had enough of Mr. Prentice—Mr. Prentice isn't my wet nurse."

"Dick, be reasonable. Be kind to me. Don't you see, yourself, that—"

"I'm not going to have you and old Prentice treating me as if I was a baby in arms—lecturing, and preaching to me about the firm. You and Prentice aren't the firm. I'm just as much the firm as you are."

"Have I put myself forward? Do I ever deny your rights?"

"Be damned to Prentice." He took his hands out of his overcoat pockets, and brandished them furiously. "Prentice was my enemy from the very beginning;" and he raised his voice. It seemed as if he was purposely working himself into a passion. "I was a fool to submit to his bounce. I ought to have had a marriage settlement—money properly settled on me—and I was a fool to let him jew me out of it."

"I gave you a half share."

"Yes, in the business—but only the business."

"Wasn't that enough for you?"

"Yes, in good times, no doubt. But what about bad times? And what the devil did I know of the business before I came into it? Nothing was explained to me. I came in blindfold. I took everything on trust."

"Oh, I think you understood it was a paying concern."

"It wasn't proved to me, anyhow. No one took the trouble to let me see the books—and give me the plain figures. Oh, no, that would have been beneath your dignity."

"Or beneath yours, Dick?"

"Yes, and I was a fool to consider my dignity. That was old Prentice again. I suppose he took his cue from you. You had put your heads together, and decided that I was to behave like the good boy in the copy-books. Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what God will send you."

"Dick, please—please don't go on."

Suddenly he stopped walking about, leaned his hands on the table, and stared across at her.

"Suppose the entire business goes to pot. What then?"

"The business will recover, and continue—if it isn't drained to death."

"Yes, but it's all mighty fine for you. You can afford to take a lofty tone. Fat years are followed by lean years—We must wait for the fat years again. I know all that cut and dried cackle—it's the way people of property always talk. I came in with nothing—please to remember that. I'm absolutely dependent on the business—if the profits go down to nothing, am I to starve?"

"You shan't starve;" and she looked round the comfortable, well-furnished room.

"You had your private fortune—all that you'd put by,—and I suppose you have got all of it still."

"How can I have it all—when you know what I gave to Enid?"

"You gave Enid a dashed sight too much—but you had plenty left, in spite of that."

"Dick, on my honour, I hadn't a large amount left. I used to count myself a rich woman, but I was only relying on the business. What I took out one year I put back into it another year. I was always trying to improve it."

"I'll swear you haven't put any back since you married me."

"No, I haven't."

"No, that I'll swear." He had lowered his voice, and he was speaking with a scornful intensity. "No, good times or bad times in the shop, you are content to pouch your dividends from all your stocks and shares, and sit watching your nest-egg grow bigger and bigger, while—"

"Dick! You are tiring me out. Don't go on."

"Yes, I will go on. You started it—and now I mean to get to the bottom of things. Let's get to plain figures at last. What are you worth now—of your very own—apart from the firm?"

"Not one penny more than I need—for my own safety."

"Ha-ha! You're afraid to tell me."

"Why should I tell you? Dick, don't go on. It's cruel of you to bully me—when I'm so tired."

"Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? How much? Oh, I dare say I can figure it out for myself—without your help. Say twelve or fifteen hundred a year, coming in like clockwork. Why I saved you two-fifty a year myself, by cutting down what you intended to settle on Enid and that skinny rascal of a horse-coper."

"Dick—for pity's sake—"

"Then answer me." And he raised his voice louder than before. "What are you doing with your private income?"

"This house costs something."

"Oh, this house can't stand you in much. Where does the rest go—if you aren't saving it? Are you giving it to Enid?... That's it, I suppose. If that lazy swine wants two hundred to buy himself another thoroughbred hunter, I suppose he sends Enid sneaking over here—when my back's turned—and just taps you for it. You don't refuse him. But if I come to you, it's 'No, certainly not. Do you want to ruin me?'"

"Dick!"

"Then, will you let me have it?"

Her face was drawn and haggard; she looked at him with piteous, imploring eyes; and she hesitated. But the hesitation was caused by dread of his wrath, and not by doubt as to her reply.

"Dick. I am sorry. But I cannot do it."

"Is that your answer?"

"Yes, that is my answer."

"Very good." He snatched up his hat, clapped it on the back of his head, and stood for a few moments staring at her vindictively. Then, clenching his fist and striking the table, he burst into a storm of abuse....

"But you'll be sorry for this, my grand lady. I'll make you pay for it before I've done with you." This was after he had been raving at her for a couple of minutes, and his voice had become hoarse. "You'll learn better—or I'll know the reason why."

Then he turned, flung open the door, and stamped out of the room.

"What do you want here—you prying old hag? Stand on one side, unless you wish me to pitch you down the stairs."

Outside on the landing he had found Yates hastily moving away from the dining-room door. Terrified by the noise, she had been irresistibly drawn towards the room where her mistress was suffering. She longed to aid, but did not dare.

She came into the room now, and saw Mrs. Marsden leaning back in her chair, white and nearly breathless, looking half dead.

"Oh, ma'am—oh, ma'am! Whatever are we to do?"

"It's all right, Yates. Don't distress yourself. It's nothing.... Mr. Marsden lost his temper for the moment—but I assure you, it's all right."

"Let me get you upstairs to bed."

"No, leave me alone, please. I am quite all right—but I'll stay here quietly for a little while.... Go to bed, yourself. Don't sit up for me."

And her mistress was so firm that Yates felt reluctantly compelled to obey orders.

An hour passed; and Mrs. Marsden still sat before the fire, alone with her thoughts in the silent house. And then a totally unexpected sound startled her. The front door had been opened and shut; there were footsteps on the stairs: the master of the house had returned, to resume the conversation.

But to resume it in a very different tone.—He took off his hat and coat, came to the fire, warmed his hands; and then, resting an elbow on the mantelpiece, smilingly looked down at his wife.

"Jane, I'm penitent.... Really and truly, I'm ashamed of myself for letting fly at you just now. But you did rile me awfully by saying you hadn't got the money. Anyhow, I've come back to ask for pardon."

"Or have you come back to ask for the money again?"

"No, no. Wash that out. If you don't want to part, there's no more to be said. Forget all about it. Wash it all out. The word is, As you were—eh?... Old Girl?"

He was leaning down towards her, putting out his hand; and she was shrinking away from him, watching him with terror in her eyes. Before the hand could touch her face, she sprang from the chair and threw it over, to make a barrier against his movement.

"Janey! What's the matter with you? You naughty girl— I've apologised, haven't I? Let bygones be bygones—won't you?"

She had run round the table, and was standing where he had stood an hour ago. As he advanced she dodged away from him, keeping the length or the breadth of the table between them.

"Janey? What are you playing at? Hide and Seek—Catch who, Catch can? How silly you are!"

"Then stop. Don't touch me."

"Well, I never!" He had stopped, and he laughed gaily. "What next? This is a funny way to treat your lord and master. Janey, dear, you are forgetting your duties. You're very, very naughty."

He laughed again, and joined his hands in an attitude of devotion.

"There, I'm praying to you—like a repulsed sweetheart, and not like a husband who is being set at defiance. Dicky prays you to make it up. Janey, be nice—be good.... Dear old Janey—don't you know what this means?"

"Yes—it means that you want the money very badly."

Her face, that till now was so white, had flushed to a bright crimson.

"What a horrid thing to say! I'd forgotten all about the money. Why can't you forget it?... No, hang the money. Money isn't everything.... But, Jane, I've been thinking—for a long time—about the way you and I are going on together." And he changed his tone again, and spoke with affected solemnity. "It isn't right, you know. It has been going on a good deal too long, Janey—and it's just how real estrangements begin.... I don't know which of us is to blame—but I want to get back into our jolly old ways."

"That's impossible. We can never get back."

"Oh, rot, my dear. Skittles to that. When we used to have a tiff—well, we always made it up soon. It was like a lovers' squabble, and it only made us fonder of each other.... Janey, I want to make it up."

And with outstretched arms he advanced a step or two, pausing as she retreated.

"Oh, Janey—how can you?"

Then he brought out all the old seductions—the half-closed eyes, from which the simulated light of love was glittering; the half-opened lips, that trembled with a mimic passion; the soft caressing tones, made to vibrate with echoes of a feigned desire. To her it was all horrible—the most miserable of failures, an effort to charm that merely produces disgust. But he never was able to read her thoughts. He acted his little comedy to the end—like the cockbird who has started his amatory dance to fascinate the timid hen, he was perhaps too busy to observe results till the dance had finished.

"Dick—I implore you. Stop this hideous pretence."

Then he saw how entirely he had failed.

"All that is done with forever." Her face had become livid; she shivered, and her mouth twitched, as if a wave of nausea had come sweeping upward to her brain. "On my side it is dead—utterly dead;" and she struck her breast with a closed hand. "On your side it never existed.... So don't—don't think I can ever be deceived again." And she spoke with a concentrated force that completely staggered him. "If you didn't understand it—if you attempted to compel me, I believe—before God—that I should go out and buy a revolver, and kill myself—or kill you."

"I say. Steady."

He shrugged his shoulders, and turned away. Before he spoke again, he had picked up the overturned chair and seated himself by the fire.

"Very well, Jane. I twig;" and he laughed languidly.

"I'm not such a cad as to make love to a lady against her will. I'm all obedience. The next overture must come from you."

She could read his thoughts always, though he could never read hers. Moreover, he had ceased to act, and perhaps made no attempt to conceal the sense of relief that sounded with such a brutal plainness.

"But we can be friends, Dick—if you don't make it impossible. There must be shreds of our self-respect left. We can patch them together—if you don't tear them into smaller pieces."

"Oh, you're having it all your own way now."

"I'm bound to you; and I won't rebel—unless you drive me to despair. I'm your wife still." As she said it, a sob choked the last words, and tears suddenly filled her eyes. "I'm your wife still. I'll carry the chain—until you consent to break it."

"By Jove, you are on the high rope to-night."

"Now, about this money?" And she wiped her eyes, and blew her nose. "You've proved to me that you must have it. You've shown that you wouldn't shrink from any—from any ordeal in order to get it."

He looked round with reawakened interest.

"I do want it most damnably, or of course I wouldn't have asked you for it."

"Then for this once I suppose I must give it to you."

"Jane! Do you really mean it?"

"Yes. I'll give it you, if you'll tell me that you understand—if you'll promise that this shall be the very last time.... But with or without the promise, it will be useless to apply to me again."

"There's my hand on it."

He promised freely and readily.