Mary Marston | Page 7

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,