Part 51 (1/2)

”Why should they do that?”

”Why?” And again Mrs. Marsden smiled. ”Why indeed? It set me thinking--and I read the speech carefully. Later on, the chairman spoke of the scheme for moving their carriage and engine works out of the London area. Well, I put those two hints together; and this is what I made of them. I believe that the company intend at last to develop all that land of theirs--the fields by the river,--and I prophesy that within three years they'll have built the new carriage works there.”

She said this exactly as she used to say those luminously clever things that he remembered in the past. He listened wonderingly and admiringly.

But when the ladies left him alone to smoke his cigar or finish the wine that the guest had neglected, he sighed. She could give these flashes of the old logic and insight; she could talk so wisely about matters that in no way concerned her; but in the one great matter of her own life, where common sense was most desperately required, she had behaved like a lunatic.

He let his cigar go out, and he could not drink any more wine. Rain was pattering on the windows, and the wind moaned round the house--a sad dark night. He rang the bell, and told the servant to order a fly for Mrs. Marsden at a quarter to ten.

The fly took her home comfortably; and when she alighted at the bottom of St. Saviour's Court and offered the driver something more than his fare, he refused it.

”Mr. Prentice paid me, ma'am.”

”Oh!... Then you must accept this s.h.i.+lling for yourself.”

”No, ma'am. Mr. Prentice tipped me. Good-night, ma'am.”

XXVI

Enid was free. The farmhouse stood empty, with the ivy hanging in festoons and long streamers about the windows, the gra.s.s growing rank and strong over the carriage drive, and a board at the gate offering this eligible modernised residence to be let on lease. Its sometime mistress had gone with her little daughter to the seaside for eight or ten months. After her stay at Eastbourne she would return to Mallingbridge, and take furnished apartments--or perhaps rent one of the tiny new villas on the Linkfield Road. She wished to be near her mother, and she apologized now for leaving Mrs. Marsden quite alone during so many months; but, as she explained, Jane needed sea air.

”Never mind about me,” said Mrs. Marsden. ”Only the child matters. Build up her health. Make her strong. I shall do very well--though of course I shall miss you both.”

She was getting accustomed to solitude and silence. Truly she had never been so entirely isolated and lonely as now. In the far-off days when Enid used by her absence to produce a wide-spreading sense of loss, there had been the work and bustle of the thriving shop to counteract the void and quiet of the house. And there had been Yates. Now there was n.o.body but the plain-faced grim-mannered Eliza, who had become the one general-servant of the broken home.

Mr. Marsden still lunched and dined at the house, but he was never there for breakfast. He did not go upstairs to his bedroom and dressing-room once in a week. Sometimes for a fortnight he and his wife did not meet at meals. His voracious appet.i.te manifested itself intermittently; there were days on which he gorged like a boa-constrictor, and others on which he felt disinclined to eat at all. Then he required Eliza to tempt him with savoury highly-spiced food, or to devise some dainty surprise which would stimulate his jaded fancy and woo him to a condescending patronage. He would toy with a bird--or a couple of dozen oysters--or a bit of pickled mackerel. Now and then, after he had been drinking more heavily than usual, he would himself inspire Eliza.

”Eliza, I can't touch all that muck;” and he pointed with a slightly tremulous hand at the dinner table. ”But I believe I could do with just a simple hunk of bread and cheese, and a quart of stout. Run out and get some stout--get two or three bottles, with the screw tops. You know, the large bottles.”

Then perhaps he would find eventually that this queer dinner-menu was a false inspiration. The bread and cheese were more than he could grapple with--and he asked for something else to a.s.sist the stout.

In a word, he was rather troublesome about his meals; and Mrs. Marsden fell into the habit of taking her scanty refreshment at irregular hours.

He did not upbraid her for keeping out of his way. Eliza looked after him in a satisfactory manner; and he never upset or frightened Eliza.

Grim Eliza ran no risk of receiving undesired attentions.

Everybody knew that Mr. Marsden often drank too much. One night when he failed to appear at dinner time, he was found--not by Eliza but by the Borough constabulary--in a state of total intoxication on the pavement outside the Dolphin.

After this regrettable incident the Dolphin dismissed him and his barmaid together. The attendance at the saloon had been dropping off. A siren cannot draw custom, when you have a great hulking bully who sits in the corner and threatens to punch the head of every inoffensive moderate-sized gentleman upon whom the siren begins to exert her spell.

The Dolphin was very glad to see the backs of Miss Ingram and her friend.

Miss Ingram secured an engagement at the bar of the Red Cow, and Mr.

Marsden faithfully followed her thither. The Red Cow was the disreputable betting public-house of which the town council were so much ashamed; people went there to bet, and it was likely to lose its license; but Marsden was content to make it his temporary club, and indeed seemed to settle down there comfortably enough.

He still occasionally came to the shop. All eyes were averted when he swung one of the street doors and slouched in. He seemed to know and almost to admit that he was a disgrace and an eyesore, and though he scowled at the shop-walker swiftly dodging away and diving into the next department, he did not bellow a reprimand. He hurried up the shop; and it was only when he got behind the gla.s.s that he attempted to display anything like the old swagger and bl.u.s.ter.

”Well, Mears, what's the best news with you?... You all look as if you were starting for a funeral--as black as a lot of mutes. How's business?” And he began to whistle, or to rattle the bunch of duplicate shop-keys that he carried in his trousers pocket. ”I say, Mears, old pal--I'm run dry. Can't you and the missus do an advance--something on account--however small--to keep me going?”