One after another the old shop chieftains succumbed beneath his bullying attacks. Mr. Ridgway and Mr. Fentiman had gone. Mr. Greig was going.
Mrs. Marsden always recognized the beginning of his onslaught upon anybody to whom in the old days she had been strongly attached. A few sneering words—lightly and carelessly; and then, when he returned to the charge, gross abuse of the doomed thing. She knew that it was doomed. In the wreck of her life this too must go. Then very soon there were insults and violences that rendered the position of the victim untenable, unendurable. Thus he had forced Mr. Ridgway and the others to resign.
Yates, the servant and friend that she loved, was also doomed. She was struggling to avert the stroke of doom, but she knew that sooner or later it must fall.
And during all this time his demands for cash were increasingly frequent. By his colossal outlay he had mortgaged the profits of years, and it was essential that the partners should wait patiently until they came into their own again. But he would not wait, and vowed that he could not further retrench his personal expenses. How was he to live without some ready cash? And if the firm could not furnish it, she must.
"I am trying to sell my big car," he told her. "And I suppose you will ask me to sell the little one next—and paddle about in the mud again. But, no, thank you, that doesn't suit my book at all."
At last she summoned to her aid something of that old resolution that seemed to have left her forever, and refused to comply with his request.
"No, Dick, I can't. It isn't fair. I can't."
"You mean, you won't."
"Well, if you force me to use that word, I shall use it."
Then there was a terrible quarrel—or rather he abused her meanness and selfishness with brutal violence, and she protested against his injustice and cruelty with all the strength that she possessed.