Part 31 (1/2)

All these goods were very expensive; and she asked if any of them had been introduced, like the Yankee furniture, on sale or return.

”No, these are our own racket--and tip-top stuff, the best of its kind, never brought to Europe till last summer.... The stock stands us in close on four thousand pounds. You wouldn't think it, would you? But it's _art_. It's an education to possess such things.”

She hazarded another question. Did he think Mallingbridge would consent to pay for such high-cla.s.s education?

”It'll be a great disappointment to me if they don't clear us out in three months from now. Of course they haven't discovered yet what we're offering them. But they _will_. I go on the double policy--play down to your public in one department, but try to lift your public in another.

That's the way to keep alive.”

And, as they left the j.a.panese treasures and strolled about the upper floor, he rattled off his glib catch-words.

”These are hustling times. Get a move on somehow. That's what I tell them--They'll soon tumble to it.”

He parted from her near the door of communication.

”Ta-ta, old girl.... Oh, by the way, I shan't be in to dinner to-night--or to-morrow either. I'm off to London. I'm wanted there about my Christmas Baz----” And he checked himself. ”But I'll ask old Mears to tell you all about that.”

Then he ran downstairs, two steps at a time, and swaggered here and there between the counters to impress the a.s.sistants with his hustlingly Napoleonic air.

Occasionally he loved to step forward, wave aside the a.s.sistant, and himself serve a customer. He thoroughly enjoyed the awe-struck admiration of the shop when he thus granted it a display of his skill.

It was his only real gift--the salesman art; and it never failed him.

But it was something that he could not impart. a.s.sistants who imitated his method--trying to catch the smiling, almost chaffing manner that could immediately convert a grumpy lethargic critic into a prompt and cheerful buyer--were merely familiar and impudent, and ended by huffing the customer.

And the governor, when he happened to detect want of success in one of his young gentlemen or young ladies, came down like a hundred of bricks.

He treated the two s.e.xes quite impartially, and the women could not say that he bullied the men worse than he bullied them. But he had a deadly sort of satire that the younger girls dreaded more than the angriest storm of abuse. Thus if he saw one of them sitting down, he would address her with apparently amiable solicitude.

”Is that ledge hard, Miss Vincent? Couldn't someone get her a cus.h.i.+on?

Make yourself at home. Why don't you come round the counter and sit on the customers' laps?... We must find you a comfortable seat _somewhere_--and change of air, too. Mallingbridge isn't agreeing with your const.i.tution, if you feel as slack as all this.”

Like the people of his house, these people of his shop feared him, and, perhaps without putting the thoughts into words, or troubling to quote adages, understood that beggars on horseback always ride with reckless disregard of the safety and comfort of the humble companions with whom they were recently tramping along the hard road, and that no master is so tyrannical as a promoted servant. In the opinion of the shop-a.s.sistants, he could not go to London too often or stay there too long.

While he was away this time, Mears came to Mrs. Marsden with a long face and a gloomy voice, and gave her the delayed information as to her husband's Christmas programme.

The new underground floor was to be used for a grand Bazaar, and Mears had been told to win her round to the idea.

Mears himself hated the idea. He thought the bazaar a brainless plagiarism of Bence's, and altogether unworthy of Thompson's. It would be exactly like Bence's, but on a much larger scale--beneath the good respectable shop, a cheap and nasty shop, in which catchpenny travesties of decent articles would be the only wares; fancy stationery, sham jewellery, spurious metals; horrid little clocks that won't go, knives and scissors that won't cut, collar-boxes more flimsy than the collars they are intended to hold--everything beastly that crumples, bends, or breaks before you can get home with it.

”But he won't abandon the idea,” said Mears. ”That's a certainty. He's mad keen on it. The only thing is for you to use your influence--and I'll back you up solid--to persuade him to modify it.”

And Mears strongly advocated modification on these lines: make the bazaar a fitting annex,--subst.i.tute boots and shoes for the sixpenny toys, good leather trunks for the paper boxes, nice engravings for the coloured photographs,--offer the public genuine stuff and not trash.

Accordingly, Mr. Marsden, as soon as he returned, was begged by his partner and his manager to grant their joint pet.i.tion for a slightly modified Christmas carnival. But he said it was too late. They ought to have gone into the matter earlier.

He had bought the trash,--had engaged his London girls,--was ready; and like a general on the eve of campaign, he could not be bothered with advice from subordinate officers.

When discussing this horrible innovation, Mears had extracted from Mrs.