I Shall Not Want (47 page)

“Why not?” he asked.

“Not after what happened.”

He raised his hand again as if to touch her, but he let it fall to his side once more.

“But isn't that over now?” he asked. “Isn't that the past?”

It was here that Mary turned to him. Her face was set hard as she spoke.

“Do you know what my husband said before he died? What his last words were?” she asked.

John Marco dropped his eyes for a moment.

“Tell me,” he said.

“That he forgave you,” she answered.

He paused.

“There was nothing to forgive,” he replied at last.

“You didn't let him think that,” she said.

“That was only because I wanted you so much,” he answered. “I was desperate that night. Can't you understand?”

“But he wanted me, too. And he wasn't as strong as you are.”

John Marco drew in his breath sharply.

“Which of us did you want?” he asked. “Only tell me that.”

“I loved you first,” she said quietly. “You know that.”

“And afterwards?”

“I suppose a woman can't ever give up loving altogether,” she replied. “I often used to think about you.”

“And did you want me?”

She bowed her head.

“God forgive me, I did.”

“Would you have come if I'd asked you?”

“No.”

She drew herself up as she said it and the colour came back to her face.

“He was always so good to me,” she added. “And he relied on me for everything.”

John Marco was no longer standing still beside her. He had begun to pace up and down the room in quick, nervous steps. His eyes were shining and excited.

“Would you come now?” he asked. “Now . . . now that you can't hurt him.”

There was a sound from the room above them, the sound of a chair being dragged across the floor. Mary started and looked away from him. It was from her bedroom that the sound had come, from her bedroom that had always looked so pink and white and warm. And now
Thomas Petter's mother dressed already in full black, was sitting up there alone.

“You'd better go,” she said, passing her hand across her face. “I'd rather be alone to-night.”

But John Marco did not move.

“I love you, Mary,” he said. “I want you to let me help you.”

She shook her head again.

“He wouldn't have wanted it,” she told him. “He would have thought it unfaithful of me.”

“It's yourself you've got to think of now,” he reminded her. “Yourself and the child.”

“I can't,” she answered simply. “I must do what he would have wanted, always.”

She got up and went over to the door.

“I can't bear any more to-night,” she said. “Please leave me. Mr. Tuke's coming back later to try and help me to pray.”

John Marco was silent for a moment. Then he came over to her. He put his arms round her for a moment.

“You can come to me whenever you want to,” he said. “I shall be waiting.”

She remained in his arms without moving. And when he pulled her to him she closed her eyes.

“Kiss me,” he said.

She kissed him, still without re-opening her eyes. And then suddenly, as though for the first time realising what she had done, she thrust him away.

“You belong to Hesther,” she said. “Not to me. I mustn't see you.”

“Never?” he asked.

She bowed her head again.

“Never.”

There was a movement in the room above and then footsteps on the stairs outside the door. John Marco walked slowly over to the couch and took up his hat and gloves: he stood there for a moment looking round this room that he knew so well. Then the door of the sitting-room was
opened and a small, white-haired woman stood there. It was clear that she had been crying.

“I've just left him,” she said. “He looks so peaceful and lovely. He might be asleep.”

She spoke in the gentle voice of a mother still able to find something to cherish in her own flesh and handiwork.

Then she saw John Marco.

“Does this gentleman want to see him too?” she asked. “He can go up if he likes. Was he my son's friend?”

It was the day of the Annual General Meeting; the Marble Salon had been cleared for the shareholders; and John Marco was in the middle of his speech.

The shareholders seated in front of him on the rows of little gilt chairs were following every movement he made as if he were a conjurer; and like a conjurer he was playing with them. They had all read about their dividend in the printed report which had been sent to them, and the atmosphere when he started was one of relief even of optimism. But he very soon, and very deliberately destroyed all that. Speaking in a low, emotional voice that touched them, he described the pit-falls and difficulties that every new firm has to contend with; he addressed them as fellow men. And instead of seeing their chairman as a prosperous-looking business man with a flower in his buttonhole, they began to see him as a kind of pilgrim who for their sakes had wandered through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow, and had returned with the miraculous flower of five-per-cent attached to his staff. There he was, safe and sound enough for this one afternoon; but to-morrow morning when they were cheerfully spending the interest, he would be setting out again on another twelve months' pilgrimage for their sakes.

When John Marco paused for a moment and allowed himself a sip of water, the whole audience responded; it was as though they had actually seen him just getting to the river before he collapsed. And when he resumed, his tone was lighter: he was dealing now with the dividend that the firm was paying. He attributed none of his success to himself. It was the staff, he said, that they must thank for this; the most loyal, hard-working and conscientious staff in London. A general rustle of applause ran right
through the room: it was felt now that as well as being a pilgrim he was also a gentleman. Then, while the feeling of brotherhood was very strong among them all, he came to the real point of the address and told them that the capital was not enough.

The effect of this announcement was immediate and sensational. The timid ones took fright and began scribbling down hasty little notes, and the old hands sat back and pursed up their lips.

“The question we must now ask ourselves,” he was saying, “is whether we should be content to remain in the second rank of retail drapery with all the risks of possible extinction from bigger competitors or whether we should ourselves step into the front rank and so be able to snap our fingers at competition. You may ask yourselves why I should even bother to put the alternatives before you as the advantages of the one against the other are so obvious. But the answer to that must be simply that to step into the front rank requires money, a lot of money.”

He paused here and the audience became excited again; they felt that in some mysterious way they were being allowed to dabble in high finance. Even the timid ones became infected. And when he resumed, his voice had lost that note of appeal it had taken on before: it became hard and decisive, like that of a Chancellor announcing a stiff Budget.

“It is because of the fact that competition has now become so desperate and cut-throat in retail commerce,” he went on, “that your directors have decided—and I cannot pretend that I disagree with them—that somehow or other we should find the extra money. The sum that we need is another hundred thousand—not a small sum you'll say. But I propose to show our gratitude to those who helped us to find the money in the first place by giving them the opportunity of subscribing the whole of it if they wish, before we let any outsiders into the company.”

A quiet, bald man with thick, formidable-looking glasses—a solicitor's managing clerk perhaps—suddenly
allowed his report to slip from his fingers and came forward nervously to retrieve it. John Marco pounced on him: if he had been deliberately set down in the audience beforehand he could not have been more useful.

“Please, please,” he said addressing the man. “I don't want your money now. In the morning will be time enough.”

Someone laughed first and, after that, the rest was easy; John Marco enjoyed himself. He spoke of profits from big undertakings as though they were as easy to gather as apples in a ripe orchard, and began to refer with contempt to the five-per-cent that everyone had been so pleased about earlier in the afternoon. “There are some firms,” he said, slowly and with emphasis, “old-established and with a regular patronage who would be proud of the profit which we have announced to-day. But frankly, I am not proud of it. If I had not thought that eventually I could do better, I should not have asked for a penny-piece from any of you. It is because of the five-per-cent this first year that I now ask for your further support so that I may be able to give you ten next year.”

He sat down and the clapping began. It went on so long in fact that those who asked questions afterwards seemed, alien and dissentient. They were stamped at once as outsiders.

It was just as he had disposed of the last of the questioners—he was a compact, peaky man who expressed an un-swervable belief that any business with proper handling could be run on five hundred thousand pounds—and had sat down again, that he felt his eyes being unaccountably drawn in the direction of one corner of the room: it was as though there were some irresistible force attracting him.

At first he could see nothing. There were the familiar ranks of pink faces and, on either side of them, the row of marble columns that supported the roof of the salon. It was then that he saw, half hidden behind one of the columns, the figure of a woman. The figure was dressed
all in black; heavy sepulchral stuff that caught the light and swallowed it. The gloves were black. And from the back of her hat hung dense folds of crêpe like a widow's.

John Marco was still staring at her while one of the shareholders, a large, expansive-looking man who seemed to have been born into the world to be the foreman of juries, was proposing a vote of thanks “. . . how grateful we all are for the energy and foresight of our chairman ...” The words reached John Marco from nowhere, and slid away into limbo again; his gaze was fixed on the long pale face that was now visible against the deathlike ebony of the costume. For a moment, his eyes met Hesther's and the rest of the room, the shareholders, the marble columns and the directors' wives grew faint and vanished.

But the meeting was beginning already to break up. There was the clatter of chairs being bumped against each other and the rustle and movement of people searching for their hats and umbrellas. Half the people had their backs to him now; they were filing slowly out towards the door. There was one person, however, who was not leaving. She remained, composed and impassive, upon her chair.

Then, when the way was clear, she rose and with her long black garments flapping around her, began to advance up the aisle towards him.

He had waited until she was halfway up the hall; and then fled. But now in his own room he felt secure again, at ease. Perhaps she would go away again without troubling him, would return to whatever hiding-place it was from which she had emerged. Up to the very instant when he had seen her it had been his day, his victory; and now she had so nearly destroyed it. Until then he had proved himself cleverer than any of them. They had grasped at their five-per-cent just as he had intended and already they were hungering for more; he had done more than half Mr. Bulmer's job all ready for him. He realised now that he had only to raise his hand for new capital, great shining
sack-loads of it, to come pouring in on him, and the whole future suddenly seemed golden. Altogether it had been one of those moments when a man feels as if he were high on a hillside in the landscape of his life with the coming years spread out before him in the sunshine.

The knock of his secretary on the door startled him.

“What is it?” he asked abruptly.

The girl hesitated: she spoke in a hushed, timid voice as though uncertain that she had got the message right.

“Mrs. Marco to see you, sir,” she said.

John Marco raised his head.

“Tell her that I'm engaged on important business,” he said at last. “Tell her that I can't be disturbed.”

The vision of the figure in black rose before him again and he shut his eyes against it.

“She said it was very important,” the girl told him. “She said she had to see you.”

John Marco sat bolt upright in his chair.

“Tell her that I won't see her,” he replied. “Tell her that I've no intention of seeing her.”

He picked up one of the papers on his desk and began to read.

The girl turned away obediently. But, as she turned, the door behind her began to open. It opened very slowly as though there were someone on the other side who had been listening to everything that was going on within. Then, at last when it was open to its full width, Hesther stood there. In the clothes that she was wearing she appeared tremendous: she seemed to fill the whole doorway with blackness. The veil around her bonnet was down over her face now, and her eyes were visible only as darker spots amid the darkness.

She came forward.

“I shan't be with you long, John,” she said. “When I've got what I came for I shall be going away again.”

“Why
are
you here?” he asked as soon as they were alone together. “We've got nothing to talk about.”

She settled herself in the chair in front of him and began toying like a coquette with the jet crucifix on her bosom.

“Isn't it natural that I should come to you?” she asked.

John Marco did not move.

“You know we've each gone our own way by now,” he answered. “What else is it you've come for?”

Her body straightened itself.