Mrs. Thompson Part 62

"I noticed that Yates called you Mrs. Thompson."

"Yes, I mentioned my idea to Yates; but I told her I shouldn't do it without consulting you. I did not think of dropping my real name altogether, but I thought I might perhaps call myself Mrs.

Marsden-Thompson--with or without a hyphen."

And she went on to explain that she was doubtful as to the legal aspects of the case. She did not wish to advertise the change of name, or to make it a formal and binding change. She just wished to call herself Mrs. Marsden-Thompson.

"Very well, Mrs. Marsden-Thompson, consider it done. For there's nothing to prevent your doing it. Your friends will call you by any name you tell them to use--with or without a hyphen."

"Oh, I'm so glad you say that. I was afraid you might not approve....

And now I want your advice about something else. It is a house with a little land that I am most anxious to buy, if I can possibly manage it--and I want you to find out if the owners would be inclined to sell."

Mr. Prentice advised her on this and several other little matters.

Indeed, before his third cup of tea was finished, he had made enlightening replies to questions that related to half a dozen different subjects.

"Thank you. A thousand thanks. Some more tea, Mr. Prentice?"

But Mr. Prentice did not answer this last question. He put down his empty cup, and began to laugh heartily.

"Why are you laughing like that?"

"Mrs. Marsden-Thompson," he said jovially. "For once I have seen through you. All things are permissible to your s.e.x; but if you were a man, I should be tempted to say you are an impostor--an arch-impostor."

"Oh, Mr. Prentice! Why?"

"Because you don't really think my advice worth a straw. You don't want my advice, or anybody else's. No one is capable of advising you. You just do things in your own way--and a very remarkable way it is."

"But really and truly I--"

"No. Not a bit of it. You fancied that my feathers might have been rubbed the wrong way by recent surprises; and ever since I came into this room, you have been most delicately smoothing my ruffled plumage."

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Marsden-Thompson demurely, "I a.s.sure you--"

"Yes, yes. But, my dear, it wasn't in the least necessary. I am just as pleased as Punch, and I have quite forgiven you for keeping me so long in the dark."

"On my honour," she said earnestly, "I wouldn't have kept you in the dark for _one_ day, if I could have avoided doing so. It was most painful to me, dear Mr. Prentice, to practice--or rather, to allow of any deception where _you_ were concerned.... But my course was so difficult to steer."

"You steered it splendidly."

"But I do want you to understand. I shall be miserable if I think that you could ever harbour the slightest feeling of resentment."

"Of course I shan't."

"Or if you don't believe that I trust you absolutely, and have the greatest possible regard for your professional skill.... You may remember how I _almost_ told you about it."

"No, I'll be hanged if I remember that."

"Well, I tried to explain--indirectly--that the whole affair was so complicated.... There were so many things to be thought of. There was Enid. I had to think of _her_ all the time.... Honestly, I put her before myself. Until Enid could get rid of Kenion, it didn't seem much use for me to get rid of poor Richard.... And if either of them had guessed, everything might have gone wrong--I mean, might have worked out differently. And of course it made _secrecy_ of such vital importance.

You do understand that, don't you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Prentice, laughing contentedly, "I do understand. But now I wonder--would you mind telling me when it was that you first thought of the Bence coup?"

"Well, I fancy that the germ of the idea came to me in church;" and Mrs.

Marsden-Thompson folded her hands, and looked reflectively at the tea-cups. "I was thinking of Richard, and of Mr. Bence--and then some verses in a psalm struck me most forcibly. One verse especially--I shall never forget it. 'Let his days be few; and let another take his office.'"

"How did that apply?"

"Well, I suppose I thought vaguely--quite vaguely--that if Richard was bad at managing a business, Mr. Bence was rather good at it.... Then, that very evening, you so kindly came in to supper, and told me as a positive fact that Bence was nearly done for. And then it struck me at once that, in the long run, Bence's failure could prove of advantage to n.o.body, and that it ought to be prevented;" and she looked up brightly, and smiled at Mr. Prentice. "So really and truly, it is _you_ that I have to thank. You brought me that _invaluable_ information. _You_ inspired me to do it."

Mr. Prentice got up from the easy chair, and playfully shook a forefinger at his hostess.

"Now--now. Don't drag _me_ into it. I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff."

"But I am truly forgiven?" And she stretched out her hand towards him.

"Not the smallest soreness left? You will still be what you have always been--my best and kindest friend?"

Mr. Prentice took her hand; and, with a graceful old-world air of gallantry that perhaps the headachy lady at home had never seen, he raised it to his lips.

"I shall be what I have always been--your humble, admiring slave."

x.x.x

One of the oldest of her dreams had become partially true. She had bought that pretty country-house, and was living in it with Enid. Not the total fulfilment of the dream, because she had not retired from business. She was busier than ever.

Many things foretold by her had now come to pa.s.s. The military camp on the downs, with its twenty thousand armed men and half as many thousand followers, had brought increased prosperity to the neighbourhood; the carriage and locomotive works established by the railway company had added to the old town another town that by itself would have been big enough to sustain a mayor and corporation; builders could not build fast enough to house the rapidly swelling population; the well-filled suburbs stretched for two long miles in all directions from the ancient town boundaries; and by platform lecturers, by members of parliament, by writers of statistical reviews, the growth of Mallingbridge was cited as one of the most remarkable and gratifying achievements of the last decade.

In a word--the cant word--Mallingbridge had boomed. And right at the top of the boom, rolling on to glory, was Bence's.

The prodigious success of Bence's made the world gasp. Nothing could hinder it. People fancied that the rebuilding might prove a dangerous, if not a fatal crisis in its affairs; but the proprietress accomplished the colossal operation without even a temporary set-back. She moved Bence's bodily across the road, squashed it into the confines of old Thompson's, and left it there for eighteen months while the new Bence palace was being erected. The magnificence of these modern up-to-date premises surpa.s.sed belief--facade of pure white stone; gigantic caryatids, bearing on their heads the projected ledge of the second floor, and holding in their hands the sculptured brackets of the monstrous arc lamps; fluted columns from the second floor to the fourth; and above the deep cornice, just visible from the street, the cupola on top of the vast dome that was the crowning splendour of the whole.

Then directly the shop had been moved back into this ornate frame, down went the old red-brick block of Thompson's; and on the site still another palace for Bence began to rise. It seemed no less magnificent than the other; and it was finished off--by way of balance to the dome--with a stupendous clock-tower. The local press, in a series of articles describing this useful monument, said that the four-faced time-piece was an exact replica of Big Ben at Westminster; the base of the numeral twelve was one hundred and thirty-two feet above the pavement; the small hand was as long as a short man, and the long hand was longer than an excessively tall man;--and so on. The author of the articles also stated that the architectural effect of Bence on both sides of the street was very similar to the _coup d'oeil_ offered by the dome and tower of the cathedral at Florence.

Customers scarcely knew on which side of the street they were doing their shopping: they went into one of the two palaces, and surprised themselves by emerging from the other. You entered a lift, and, as it swooped, the crowded floors flashed upward. "Which department, madam?

Parisian Jewellery?... Boots and Shoes! Step this way." You pa.s.sed through a long, narrow and brilliantly illuminated department, such as Sham Diamonds or Opera Cloaks, where artificial light is a necessity for correct selection; you went up a broad flight of shallow stairs; and there you were, in Boots and Shoes. But the thing you didn't know, the funny thing, was that all unconsciously you had been through a sub-way under the road. Just when you stood to gape at the sparkling ear-rings or to finger the rich soft cloaks, the heavy traffic of High Street was bang over your head.

And truly there was nothing that you could not buy now at Bence's--on one side of the road or the other. Ball dresses for as much as fifty guineas, tailor-made walking costumes for as little as eighteen s.h.i.+llings, a thousand pound coat of Russian sable, or a farthing packet of pins, palm trees for the conservatory or Brussels sprouts for the kitchen--whatever the varied wants of the universe, it was Bence's proud boast that they could be supplied here without failure or delay.

Sometimes when business had taken Mrs. Marsden to London and she and Yates were driving through the streets in a four-wheeled cab, she studied the appearance of the great metropolitan shops, and mentally compared them with what she had left behind her at Mallingbridge. Once, when the dusk of an autumn day was falling and she chanced to pa.s.s the most world-famous of all emporiums, she told the cabman to let his horse walk; then, as they crawled by the endless frontage, she measured the glare of the electric lamps, counted the big commissionaires, estimated the volume of the crowd outside the glittering windows; and, critically examining the thing in its entirety, she felt a supreme satisfaction. To her eye and judgment it was no bigger, brighter, or more impressive than Bence's. In all respects Bence's was every bit as good.

Each morning, fair or foul, at nine-thirty sharp, she left her charming and luxurious home, and came spinning in her small motor-car down the three-mile slope that now divided house from shop. The car, avoiding High Street, wheeled round through Trinity Square, worked its swift way to the back of Bence's, swept into a quiet, stately court-yard, and delivered her at the perron of a n.o.ble architraved doorway. This was the private or business entrance to the domed palace.

A porter in sombre livery was waiting on the marble steps to receive her, to carry her shawl or reticule, to usher her to the golden gates of the private lift.

In a minute she had majestically soared to an upper floor.