Mrs. Thompson: A Novel

by W. B. Maxwell

The new fascia had been erected. It was made of chestnut wood—a most artistic up-to-date piece of work, with the names Thompson & Marsden alternating in carved lozenges over all the windows, with linked festoons of flowers, with high relief and intaglio cutting—with what not decorative and grand. It ran the whole length of the street frontage and round the corner up St. Saviour's Court, and it cost £750.

But that expense was a fleabite when compared with the cost of the structural alterations that were now fairly in hand.

The yard was being completely covered. The carts would drive into what would be the ground floor; and above this there would be three floors of packing rooms, with every imaginable convenience of lifts, slides, and shoots, for manipulating the goods and discharging them at the public. Meanwhile, the old packing rooms had been huddled into unused cellars, and the space that they had occupied in the basement, indeed the entire basement, was being excavated to an astounding depth. Soon an immense subterranean area would be scooped out; vast halls with wide staircases would be constructed; a shop below a shop would be ready for Mr. Marsden's use.

But what he proposed to do with it he had not as yet disclosed. He was feverishly anxious to get all the work finished, but the new basement especially occupied his ambitious dreams.

"Mears, old buck," he said often, "I'm itching to get down there. And how damn slow they are, aren't they?"

Having had his fling as a gentleman at large, he seemed to enjoy for a little while the quieter but more massive importance derived from his position as the proprietor of a successful business, the employer of labour, the patron of art and manufacture. He paid handsomely for the insertion of his portrait in the local newspaper, and arranged with the editor that paragraphs about himself and his operations should appear amongst news items without the objectionable word Advertisement. On early closing day he swaggered about the town, feeling that he was one of its most prominent citizens, and proving himself always ready to stand a drink to anyone who would say so.

When his architect came down from London to go over the works with the contractor, he carried them off to the Dolphin, before anything had been done, and gave them a sumptuous luncheon—sat bragging and drinking with them for hours. When at dusk they returned to the shop, Marsden was red and noisy, the architect was in a fuddled state, and the contractor frankly hiccoughed.

"Down with you, old boy," said Marsden jovially. "And buck 'em up—the lazy bounders. Get a move on. I want this job finished; and it seems to me you're all playing with it."

After the governor had been lunching he lost that sense of decorum which from long habit should make it almost as impossible to speak loudly in a shop as in a church. All the assistants and several customers were scandalized by the noisy tongues of Mr. Marsden and his architect.