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CUSTOMERS.
The next day was Saturday, a busy one at the shop. From the
neighboring villages and farms came customers not a few; and
ladies, from the country-seats around, began to arrive as the
hours went on. The whole strength of the establishment was early
called out. Busiest in serving was the senior partner, Mr.
Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with a bald crown, a heavy
watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the wide space
between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large
hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his
little one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had
cultivated an ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree
that, to use the common hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By
nature he was good-tempered and genial; but, having devoted every
mental as well as physical endowment to the making of money, what
few drops of spiritual water were in him had to go with the rest
to the turning of the mill-wheel that ground the universe into
coin. In his own eyes he was a strong churchman, but the only
sign of it visible to others was the strength of his contempt for
dissenters--which, however, excepting his partner and Mary, he
showed only to church-people; a dissenter's money being, as he
often remarked, when once in his till, as good as the best
churchman's.
To the receptive eye he was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as
he bent over a piece of goods outspread before a customer, one
hand resting on the stuff, the other on the yard-measure, his
chest as nearly touching the counter as the protesting adjacent
parts would permit, his broad smooth face turned up at right
angles, and his mouth, eloquent even to solemnity on the merits
of the article, now hiding, now disclosing a gulf of white teeth.
No sooner was anything admitted into stock, than he bent his soul
to the selling of it, doing everything that could be done, saying
everything he could think of saying, short of plain lying as to
its quality: that he was not guilty of. To buy well was a care to
him, to sell well was a greater, but to make money, and that as
speedily as possible, was his greatest care, and his whole
ambition.
John Turnbull in his gig, as he drove along the road to the town,
and through the street approached his shop-door, showed to the
chance observer a man who knew himself of importance, a man who
might have a soul somewhere inside that broad waistcoat; as he
drew up, threw the reins to his stable-boy, and descended upon
the pavement--as he stepped down into the shop even, he looked a
being in whom son or daughter or friend might feel some honest
pride; but, the moment he was behind the counter and in front of
a customer, he changed to a creature whose appearance and
carriage were painfully contemptible to any beholder who loved
his kind; he had lost the upright bearing of a man, and cringed
like an ape. But I fear it was thus he had gained a portion at
least of his favor with the country-folk, many of whom much
preferred his ministrations to those of his partner. A glance,
indeed, from the one to the other, was enough to reveal which
must be the better salesman--and to some eyes which the better
man.
In the narrow walk of his commerce--behind the counter, I mean--
Mr. Marston stood up tall and straight, lank and lean, seldom
bending more than his long neck in the direction of the counter,
but doing everything needful upon it notwithstanding, from the
unusual length of his arms and his bony hands. His forehead was
high and narrow, his face pale and thin, his hair long and thin,
his nose aquiline and thin, his eyes large, his mouth and chin
small. He seldom spoke a syllable more than was needful, but his
words breathed calm respect to every customer. His conversation
with one was commonly all but over as he laid something for
approval or rejection on the counter: he had already taken every
pains to learn the precise nature of the necessity or desire; and
what he then offered he submitted without comment; if the thing
was not judged satisfactory, he removed it and brought another.
Many did not like this mode of service; they would be helped to
buy; unequal to the task of making up their minds, they welcomed
any aid toward it; and therefore preferred Mr. Turnbull, who gave
them every imaginable and unimaginable assistance, groveling
before them like a man whose many gods came to him one after the
other to be worshiped; while Mr. Marston, the moment the thing he
presented was on the counter, shot straight up like a poplar in a
sudden calm, his visage bearing witness that his thought was
already far away--in heavenly places with his wife, or hovering
like a perplexed bee over some difficult passage in the New
Testament; Mary could have told which, for she knew the meaning
of every shadow that passed or lingered on his countenance.
His partner and his like-minded son despised him, as a matter of
course; his unbusiness-like habits, as they counted them, were
the constantly recurring theme of their scorn; and some of these
would doubtless have brought him the disapprobation of many a
business man of a moral development beyond that of Turnbull; but
Mary saw nothing in them which did not stamp her father the
superior of all other men she knew.
To mention one thing, which may serve as typical of the man: he
not unfrequently sold things under the price marked by his
partner. Against this breach of fealty to the firm Turnbull never
ceased to level his biggest guns of indignation and remonstrance,
though always without effect. He even lowered himself in his own
eyes so far as to quote Scripture like a canting dissenter, and
remind his partner of what came to a house divided against
itself. He did not see that the best thing for some houses must
be to come to pieces. "Well, but, Mr. Turnbull, I thought it was
marked too high," was the other's invariable answer. "William,
you are a fool," his partner would rejoin for the hundredth time.
"Will you never understand that, if we get a little more than the
customary profit upon one thing, we get less upon another? You
must make the thing even, or come to the workhouse." Thereto, for
the hundredth time also, William Marston would reply: "That might
hold, I daresay, Mr. Turnbull--I am not sure--if every customer
always bought an article of each of the two sorts together; but I
can't make it straight with my conscience that one customer
should pay too much because I let another pay too little.
Besides, I am not at all sure that the general scale of profit is
not set too high. I fear you and I will have to part, Mr.
Turnbull." But nothing was further from Turnbull's desire than
that he and Marston should part; he could not keep the business
going without his money, not to mention that he never doubted
Marston would straightway open another shop, and, even if he did
not undersell him, take from him all his dissenting customers;
for the junior partner was deacon of a small Baptist church in
the town--a fact which, although like vinegar to the teeth and
smoke to the eyes of John Turnbull in his villa, was invaluable
in the eyes of John Turnbull behind his counter.
Whether William Marston was right or wrong in his ideas about the
rite of baptism--probably he was both--he was certainly right in
his relation to that which alone makes it of any value--that,
namely, which it signifies; buried with his Master, he had died
to selfishness, greed, and trust in the secondary; died to evil,
and risen to good--a new creature. He was just as much a
Christian in his shop as in the chapel, in his bedroom as at the
prayer-meeting.
But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell
the truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had
to remind himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it
was the work given him to do, and to take more and more
frequently the strengthening cordial of a glance across the shop
at his daughter. Such a glance passed through the dusky place
like summer lightning through a heavy atmosphere, and came to
Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a world within and
beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where struggled no
antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was the
visible garment of truth.
The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such
a man be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull?--To
this I reply that Marston's greatness had yet a certain
repressive power upon the man who despised him, so that he never
uttered his worst thoughts or revealed his worst basenesses in
his presence. Marston never thought of him as my reader must soon
think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor John was gradually
improving, coming to see things more and more as he would have
him look on them. Add to this, that they had been in the business
together almost from boyhood, and much will be explained.
An open carriage, with a pair of showy but ill-matched horses,
looking unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park
on the other, drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest
ran from end to end of the shop, swaying as well those outside as
those inside the counter, for the carriage was well known in
Testbridge. It was that of Lady Margaret Mortimer; she did not
herself like the Margaret, and signed only her second name
Alice at full length, whence her friends generally
called her to each other Lady Malice. She did not leave the
carriage, but continued to recline motionless in it, at an angle
of forty-five degrees, wrapped in furs, for the day was cloudy
and cold, her pale handsome face looking inexpressibly more
indifferent in its regard of earth and sky and the goings of men,
than that of a corpse whose gaze is only on the inside of the
coffin-lid. But the two ladies who were with her got down. One of
them was her daughter, Hesper by name, who, from the dull, cloudy
atmosphere that filled the doorway, entered the shop like a gleam
of sunshine, dusky-golden, followed by a glowing shadow, in the
person of her cousin, Miss Yolland.
Turnbull hurried to meet them, bowing profoundly, and looking
very much like Issachar between the chairs he carried. But they
turned aside to where Mary stood, and in a few minutes the
counter was covered with various stuffs for some of the smaller
articles of ladies' attire.
The customers were hard to please, for they wanted the best
things at the price of inferior ones, and Mary noted that the
desires of the cousin were farther reaching and more expensive
than those of Miss Mortimer. But, though in this way hard to
please, they were not therefore unpleasant to deal with; and from
the moment she looked the latter in the face, whom she had not
seen since she was a girl, Mary could hardly take her eyes off
her. All at once it struck her how well the unusual, fantastic
name her mother had given her suited her; and, as she gazed, the
feeling grew.
Large, and grandly made, Hesper stood "straight, and steady, and
tall," dusky-fair, and colorless, with the carriage of a young
matron. Her brown hair seemed ever scathed and crinkled afresh by
the ethereal flame that here and there peeped from amid the
unwilling volute rolled back from her creamy forehead in a
rebellious coronet. Her eyes were large and hazel; her nose cast
gently upward, answering the carriage of her head; her mouth
decidedly large, but so exquisite in drawing and finish that the
loss of a centimetre of its length would to a lover have been as
the loss of a kingdom; her chin a trifle large, and grandly
lined; for a woman's, her throat was massive, and her arms and
hands were powerful. Her expression was frank, almost brave, her
eyes looking full at the person she addressed. As she gazed, a
kind of love she had never felt before kept swelling in Mary's
heart.
Her companion impressed her very differently.
Some men, and most women, counted Miss Yolland strangely
ugly. But there were men who exceedingly admired her. Not very
slight for her stature, and above the middle height, she looked
small beside Hesper. Her skin was very dark, with a considerable
touch of sallowness; her eyes, which were large and beautifully
shaped, were as black as eyes could be, with light in the midst
of their blackness, and more than a touch of hardness in the
midst of their liquidity; her eyelashes were singularly long and
black, and she seemed conscious of them every time they rose. She
did not use her eyes habitually, but, when she did, the
thrust was sudden and straight. I heard a man once say that a
look from her was like a volley of small-arms. Like Hesper's, her
mouth was large and good, with fine teeth; her chin projected a
little too much; her hands were finer than Hesper's, but bony.
Her name was Septimia; Lady Margaret called her Sepia, and the
contraction seemed to so many suitable that it was ere long
generally adopted. She was in mourning, with a little crape. To
the first glance she seemed as unlike Hesper as she could well
be; but, as she stood gently regarding the two, Mary, gradually,
and to her astonishment, became indubitably aware of a singular
likeness between them. Sepia, being a few years older, and in
less flourishing condition, had her features sharper and finer,
and by nature her complexion was darker by shades innumerable;
but, if the one was the evening, the other was the night: Sepia
was a diminished and overshadowed Hesper. Their manner, too, was
similar, but Sepia's was the haughtier, and she had an occasional
look of defiance, of which there appeared nothing in Hesper. When
first she came to Durnmelling, Lady Malice had once alluded to
the dependence of her position--but only once: there came a flash
into rather than out of Sepia's eyes that made any repetition of
the insult impossible and Lady Malice wish that she had left her
a wanderer on the face of Europe.
Sepia was the daughter of a clergyman, an uncle of Lady Malice,
whose sons had all gone to the bad, and whose daughters had all
vanished from society. Shortly before the time at which my
narrative begins, one of the latter, however, namely Sepia, the
youngest, had reappeared, a fragment of the family wreck,
floating over the gulf of its destruction. Nobody knew with any
certainty where she had been in the interim: nobody at
Durnmelling knew anything but what she chose to tell, and that
was not much. She said she had been a governess in Austrian
Poland and Russia. Lady Margaret had become reconciled to her
presence, and Hesper attached to her.
Of the men who, as I have said, admired her, some felt a peculiar
enchantment in what they called her ugliness; others declared her
devilish handsome; and some shrank from her as if with an
undefined dread of perilous entanglement, if she should but catch
them looking her in the face. Among some of them she was known as
Lucifer, in antithesis to Hesper: they meant the Lucifer of
darkness, not the light-bringer of the morning.
The ladies, on their part, especially Hesper, were much pleased
with Mary. The simplicity of her address and manner, the pains
she took to find the exact thing she wanted, and the modest
decision with which she answered any reference to her, made
Hesper even like her. The most artificially educated of women is
yet human, and capable of even more than liking a fellow-creature
as such. When their purchases were ended, she took her leave with
a kind smile, which went on glowing in Mary's heart long after
she had vanished.
"Home, John," said Lady Margaret, the moment the two ladies were
seated. "I hope you have got all you wanted. We shall be
late for luncheon, I fear. I would not for worlds keep Mr.
Redmain waiting.--A little faster, John, please."
Hesper's face darkened. Sepia eyed her fixedly, from under the
mingling of ascended lashes and descended brows. The coachman
pretended to obey, but the horses knew very well when he did and
when he did not mean them to go, and took not a step to the
minute more: John had regard to the splendid-looking black horse
on the near side, which was weak in the wind, as well as on one
fired pastern, and cared little for the anxiety of his mistress.
To him, horses were the final peak of creation--or if not the
horses, the coachman, whose they are--masters and mistresses the
merest parasitical adjuncts. He got them home in good time for
luncheon, notwithstanding--more to Lady Margaret's than Hesper's
satisfaction.
Mr. Redmain was a bachelor of fifty, to whom Lady Margaret was
endeavoring to make the family agreeable, in the hope he might
take Hesper off their hands. I need not say he was rich. He was a
common man, with good cold manners, which he offered you like a
handle. He was selfish, capable of picking up a lady's
handkerchief, but hardly a wife's. He was attentive to Hesper;
but she scarcely concealed such a repugnance to him as some feel
at sight of strange fishes--being at the same time afraid of him,
which was not surprising, as she could hardly fail to perceive
the fate intended for her.
"Ain't Miss Mortimer a stunner?" said George Turnbull to Mary,
when the tide of customers had finally ebbed from the shop.
"I don't exactly know what you mean, George," answered Mary.
"Oh, of course, I know it ain't fair to ask any girl to admire
another," said George. "But there's no offense to you, Mary. One
young lady can't carry every merit on her back. She'd be
too lovely to live, you know. Miss Mortimer ain't got your waist,
nor she ain't got your 'ands, nor your 'air; and you ain't got
her size, nor the sort of hair she 'as with her."
He looked up from the piece of leno he was smoothing out, and saw
he was alone in the shop.
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