Quinneys'
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Title: Quinneys'
Creator: Horace Annesley Vachell
Release date: December 2, 2015 [eBook #50596]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50596
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUINNEYS' ***
Produced by Al Haines.
QUINNEYS'
HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL
JOHN MURRAY
1917
FIRST EDITION . . . May 1914
Reprinted . . . . . May 1914
Reprinted . . . . . November 1914
Reprinted . . . . . April 1915
Reprinted . . . . . June 1915
Reprinted 1/- net . . . July 1915
Reprinted . . . . . July 1915
Reprinted . . . . . August 1915
Reprinted . . . . . August 1915
Reprinted . . . . . September 1915
Reprinted . . . . . November 1915
Reprinted . . . . . January 1916
Reprinted . . . . . September 1916
Reprinted . . . . . March 1917
TO
CYRIL MAUDE
*CONTENTS*
BOOK I
CHAPTER
I. THE SIGN
II. THE DREAM COTTAGE
III. THE PLEASANT LAND OF FRANCE
IV. THE INSTALLATION
V. SUSAN PREPARES
VI. THE VISITOR ARRIVES
VII. JOSEPHINA
VIII. LIGHT OUT OF THE DARKNESS
IX. SALVAGE
BOOK II
X. BLUDGEONINGS
XI. MORE BLUDGEONINGS
XII. POSY
XIII. RUCTIONS
XIV. JAMES MIGGOTT
XV. AT WEYMOUTH
XVI. A BUSINESS PROPOSITION
XVII. INTRODUCES CYRUS P. HUNSAKER
XVIII. EXPLOSIONS
XIX. THINGS AND PERSONS
XX. BLACKMAIL
XXI. MABEL DREDGE
XXII. A TEST
XXIII. THE RESULT
*QUINNEYS'*
*BOOK I*
*CHAPTER I*
*THE SIGN*
*I*
"Good-evening, Mr. Quinney!"
"Good-evening!" Quinney replied, as he passed a stout red-faced
fellow-townsman.
With his back to the man, Quinney smiled. He could remember the day,
not so long ago, when Pinker, the grocer, called him "My lad." Then his
whimsical face grew solemn, as he remembered that a smile might be
misinterpreted by others whose eyes were fixed upon him with sympathy
and interest. He walked more slowly, as befitted a chief mourner
returning from his father's funeral, but he was queerly sensible of a
desire to run and shout and laugh. He wanted to run from a drab past
into a rosy future; he wanted to shout aloud that he was free--free! He
wanted to laugh, because it seemed so utterly absurd to pull a long face
because a tyrant was dead and buried. The fact that the old man was
buried made a vast difference.
Suddenly he was confronted by a burly foot-passenger, who held out a
huge hand and spoke in a deep, muffled voice.
"So, Old Joe is dead, and Young Joe reigns in his stead?"
"Right you are," replied Quinney.
Despite his efforts, a note of triumph escaped him.
"Left you everything?" continued the burly man. Quinney nodded, and
after a pause the other continued huskily: "Old Joe had something snug
to leave--hey?"
"Right again," replied Young Joe.
"More'n you thought for, I'll be bound?"
"Maybe."
"Well, my boy, hold on to it--as he did. It's a damned sight easier to
make money than to keep it."
"I made some of it," said Quinney.
"Not much."
Quinney shrugged his shoulders and passed on, slightly exasperated
because a butcher had stopped him in Mel Street, Melchester, with the
obvious intention of pumping details out of him. The butcher walked on,
chuckling to himself.
"Young Joe," he reflected, "is a-goin' to be like Old Joe. Rare old
skinflint he was, to be sure!"
Quinney, meantime, had reached the dingy shop known to all Melchester as
"Quinney's." The shutters were up--stout oak boards sadly in need of a
coat of paint. Quinney opened a side door, and entered his own
house--his--his! He could think of nothing else. Quinney's, and all it
contained, belonged to him. Immediately after the funeral, when the
house was full of people, the young man was dazed. And when the will
was opened, and he learned that Old Joe had saved nearly ten thousand
pounds, he felt positively giddy, replying vaguely to discreet whispers
of congratulation with jerky sentences such as "By Gum, this is a
surprise!" or, with nervous twitchings of the mouth and eyes, "Rum go,
isn't it, that I should be rich?"
Later, Young Joe had gone for a walk alone, seeking the high downs above
the ancient town. The keen air blew the fog out of his brain, and
presently he exclaimed aloud:
"Yes; I am Quinney's."
After a pause he burst out again, speaking with such vehemence that a
fat sheep who was staring at him ran away.
"Gosh! I'm jolly glad that I gave him a tip-top funeral. He'd have
pinched something awful over mine."
After this explosion--silence, broken intermittently by whistling.
*II*
Upon entering the house, Quinney went into the shop, and disdainfully
surveyed the stock-in-trade. Everything lay higgledy-piggledy. The big
window was full of faked brass-work which seemed to gleam derisively at
a dirty card upon which was inscribed the legend, "Genuine Antiques."
Among the brass-work were bits of pottery and some framed mezzo-tints.
Inside the shop, upon an unswept floor, old furniture was piled ceiling
high. Some of it was really good, for mahogany was just then coming
into fashion again, but in such matters Old Joe had always been behind
his times. He preferred oak, the more solid the better, buying
everything at country sales that happened to go cheap; assorted lots
allured him irresistibly. He was incapable of arranging his wares,
laughing scornfully at his son's suggestions. In the same spirit he
refused to remove dust and dirt, being of the opinion that they lent a
tone to antiques which were not quite genuine. He had never bought
really good stuff to sell to customers outside the trade.
When, as frequently happened, he came across a valuable piece of
furniture or a bit of fine china, he would communicate at once with a
dealer, and in particular with a certain Thomas Tomlin, who invariably
paid ten per cent advance on the bargain, which might be regarded as a
handsome profit. To the visitors, especially Americans, who dropped in
to Quinney's on their way to and from the Cathedral, Old Joe would sell
at a huge profit what he contemptuously stigmatized as rubbish. A few
of his regular customers were well aware that Old Joe knew nothing of
the real value of some of his wares. He bought engravings and prints in
colour, and these he sold at a price about double of what he had paid,
chuckling as he did so.
Porcelain he understood, but not pottery; and even in porcelain he
refused obstinately to pay a high price, unless he was quite sure of his
turnover. Young Joe had always despised these primitive methods, and
nothing pleased him so much as when he was able to rub well into his
sire the mortifying fact that ignorance and funk had prevented him from
securing a prize.
As the young man gazed derisively at his possessions, the roustabout boy
told him that Mr. Tomlin had called, promising to return after the
funeral; and half an hour later the dealer arrived, to find Young Joe
staring devoutly at two figures of Bow and a plate of Early Worcester.
Tomlin greeted the young man with a certain deference never exhibited
before.
"Sorry to disturb you, Joe, on such a sad occasion."
"'Tain't sad!" snapped joe. "You know as well as I do that the old man
gave me a hell of a time. Now he's gone, and that's all there is about
it."
"I came about them," Tomlin indicated the china. "Last thing your pore
father wrote to me about."
"Nice bits, eh?"
Tomlin examined them. As he did so, a keen observer might have noticed
that Young Joe's eyes were sparkling with what might have been
excitement or resentment, but not gratification.
"How much?" said Tomlin.
"They're not for sale."
"What?"
"I should say that I'm keepin' 'em for a party I know."
"Anything else to show me?" grunted Tomlin, caressing the Bow glaze with
a dirty but loving finger. "Your father mentioned a mirror-black jar,
K'ang He period."
"Keepin' that too," replied Quinney quietly.
"Sold it?"
"Not yet."
Quinney smiled mysteriously.
"Then what's up? Ain't my money as good as the next man's?"
"If you want a plain answer, Mr. Tomlin, it ain't--to me."
"Ho! What d'ye mean?"
"Just that. It don't pay to deal with the trade. If I pick up a good
thing, you get the credit; you claim all the credit. Our name is never
mentioned, not a line. In this town we have the reputation of selling
rubbish. I'm going to change all that."
"Are you?" Tomlin was visibly impressed and distressed. "Well, look ye
here, take my advice, and walk in the old man's footsteps. He done
well."
"I shall do better."
Tomlin stared at the speaker, who spoke with an odd air of conviction.
Quinney continued in the same quiet drawl, "If you want to buy any of
this," he waved a contemptuous hand, "it's yours--cheap!"
"Rubbish!"
"Just so."
Tomlin sat down and wiped his forehead. He was feeling warm, and the
sight of young Quinney so exasperatingly cool and smug in his black
clothes made him warmer.
"Ho! That's the game, is it?" As Quinney nodded, he continued: "Me and
you can do business together."
"Together?"
"I say--together. How would a trip abroad suit you?"
Quinney lifted his eyebrows; the first indication of interest in his
visitor.
"A trip--abroad?"
"To France. I've heard of a man in Brittany--a wonder. His line is old
oak; mostly copies of famous pieces. He's the greatest faker in the
world, and an artist. No blunders! Would you like to go into a deal
with me? You know old oak when you see it?"
"I think so."
"You go over there and buy five hundred pounds' worth and put it into
this shop, after you've cleared out the rubbish. I'll go halves. It's
a dead cert, and this is the right place for the stuff. My pitch
wouldn't do, and I haven't the room. I'll send you customers."
"It's a go," said Quinney.
"You mean to make things hum? And I can help you. Never gave you
credit for being so sharp."
Details were then discussed, not worth recording; but during this
memorable interview, which led to so much, Quinney was sensible of an
ever-increasing exaltation and powers of speech which amazed him as much
as the older man. He announced curtly his intention of getting rid of
the rubbish, repainting and redecorating the premises, and dealing for
the future in the best, whether fakes or genuine antiques.
"Never could persuade the old man that the 'Genuine Antiques' card was a
dead give-away."
Fired with enthusiasm, he seized the card and tore it up there and then,
while Tomlin applauded generously.
"You're yer father without any moss on you," he remarked, as he took his
leave, promising to return on the morrow. Upon the threshold he asked,
"Doin' anything particular this evening?"
"Yes," said Quinney.
Tomlin went out, but returned immediately.
"You ought to have a sign."
"I mean to."
"Thought of that already?"
"Thousands and thousands o' times. It'll be a hangin' sign of
wrought-iron; the best; painted black, with 'Quinney's' in gold. It'll
cost twenty pounds."
"That's going it."
"I mean to go it."
*III*
Quinney supped simply at seven, and then he walked across the Cathedral
Close, down a small street, known as Laburnum Row, and knocked at the
door of a genteel, semi-detached cottage. The very respectable woman
who opened the door drew down the corners of a pleasant mouth when she
beheld the visitor. A note of melancholy informed her voice as she
greeted him, but her sharp, brown eyes sparkled joyously as she said:
"Never expected to see you this evening, Mr. Quinney."
"I'm tired of doing the things that are expected," was the surprising
reply. Then, with a flush, he blurted out, "Susan in?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Biddlecombe, leading the way into the parlour. "The
child's upstairs."
Mother and daughter had seen Quinney approaching, whereupon Mrs.
Biddlecombe had remarked, "It's all right. You smooth your hair, dear,
and slip on your blue gown."
Meanwhile, Quinney took the most comfortable chair, and stared with
appraising eye at the furniture. Above the mantelpiece hung the portrait
in water-colour of a handsome woman, obviously a lady, as the word was
interpreted by the grandmothers of the present generation. This was
Mrs. Biddlecombe's mother, the wife of a doctor, who had been
bear-leader to a sprig of nobility, accomplishing with him the Grand
Tour. In her turn, Mrs. Biddlecombe had married a medical gentleman
(her word), who, unhappily, was called from the exercise of his
profession in a promising suburb to a place invariably designated by
Mrs. Biddlecombe as his last home. Later, the widow, left in very
humble circumstances, had married beneath her rightful station in life a
certain George Biddlecombe, a small builder and contractor, of
Melchester, who, failing in business when Susan was some five years old,
had died of disgust. Since this second bereavement, Mrs. Biddlecombe
supported herself and her daughter by taking in lodgers, cleaning lace
and fancy work. She was a stout, energetic creature, not much the worse
for the wear and tear of a never-ending struggle to raise herself to the
position which she had adorned before her second disastrous marriage.
"The funeral was well attended," she remarked.
"The old man was hardly what one might call popular," replied Quinney.
"He'll be missed in Melchester."
"Missed, but not regretted," the son replied grimly.
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Biddlecombe, thinking of the builder and contractor.
Quinney pulled himself together, sitting upright in the arm-chair and
speaking firmly.
"I ain't here to talk about him. Less said on that subject the better.
I'm my own master now, ma'am, able to please myself. Lord! How he
hated my coming here!"
"I know, I know!"
"Never appreciated Susan, neither. Dessay you think I ought to be at
home, mourning. Well, he knocked all that out o' me long ago. Plain
talk is best. As a matter of business, with an eye on some of our
customers in this stoopid old town, I shall do what is expected in the
way of a tombstone, and I shall try not to sing and dance in High
Street, but between you and me it's a riddance."
Mrs. Biddlecombe smiled uneasily, but she said honestly:
"I've been through it, Mr. Quinney."
"You've had the doose of a time, ma'am--and a born lady, too."
Mrs. Biddlecombe put her handkerchief to her eyes, and dabbed them
gently. She did not quite understand her visitor, who was presenting
himself in a new and startling light, but she was comfortably aware that
his own inclination and nothing else had brought him to Laburnum Row.
For a moment her mind was a welter of confused excitements and
speculations. Would her Susie rise to this momentous occasion? Would
she clasp opportunity to her pretty bosom? And if so, what might not be
done with such clay as Quinney, plastic to the hand of an experienced
potter. Nevertheless, the young man's too brutal declaration of
independence shocked cherished conventions. She beheld him shrinkingly
as an iconoclast, a shatterer of the sacred Fifth Commandment.
"Are you thinking of leaving Melchester?" she asked.
"Not yet, although I am goin' abroad."
"Abroad?"
"To France, ma'am.";
Mrs. Biddlecombe frowned. France was a godless country, where
tempestuous petticoats abounded. She hoped that Susan was arraying
herself in the blue gown. Blue suited the child's milk and roses
complexion. In blue she might provoke comparison with the audacious
hussies across the Channel. She was clever enough to murmur
sympathetically, "You need a holiday, to be sure."
At this Quinney laughed.
"It's business. I'm after old oak. Want to work up a connection--hey?"
"Do you speak French?"
"Me? Do I speak Chocktaw? Do I speak English properly? Do I, now? O'
course you parleyvoo like a native?"
"Not quite, Mr. Quinney."
"And Susie--you learned her French, and the pi-anner?"
"I did my best."
"Angels can do no more," said Quinney admiringly. "Upset yer
neighbours, too."
He smiled maliciously, having suffered long and patiently at the hands
of neighbours. Mrs. Biddlecombe feigned ignorance of his meaning, when
Quinney laughed again, almost indecorously.
"Lord bless you, I know all about that. You pinched to get that piano,"
he indicated an ancient instrument, "because it was the only one in the
row. And French! By Gum! Is there a girl except Susie who parleyvoos
in this part of the town? Not one! The whole row gnashes its teeth over
that."
His pride in Susan's accomplishments touched the mother's heart. Her
voice rang out clearly and triumphantly:
"It's perfectly true."
At this moment Susan Biddlecombe entered the parlour, and Quinney sprang
to his feet to greet her. She was just eighteen, and very pretty and
refined, with small hands and feet, and delicately-cut features. The
mother boasted that she looked a gentlewoman, and for the purposes of
this narrative, it is far more important to add that she was innately
gentle and womanly, with no tainting tincture of the ogling, smirking,
provincial coquette.
Quinney kissed her!
Mrs. Biddlecombe blushed scarlet. Susan smiled, hesitated, and then
kissed Quinney.
Mrs. Biddlecombe ejaculated "Gracious!"
"Give us yer blessin'," said Quinney, quite riotously. Then,
masterfully, he kissed the girl again, turning to confront the
astonished mother.
"Settled between us three months ago," he explained fluently. "We
dassen't tell a soul, not even you, because of the old man. He was
capable of leavin' every bob to an orsepital for dogs. He said to me
once, 'Don't let me hear anything of goings on between you and that
there Biddlecombe girl!' By Gum, I obeyed him! He never did hear
anything. Me and Susie took jolly good care o' that. I only hope as he
knows now."
At this Susan murmured:
"Joe, dear, please don't!"
Then mother and daughter solemnly embraced.
"I hated not to tell you," whispered Susan, "but Joe would have his
way."
"The old 'un told me I might look high with my prospects, but he never
did know quality. Quantity was what he'd go for. Lord! How he fairly
wallowed in job lots! Well, all that's over."
He began to walk up and down the small room, telling the two women his
plans for the future. They listened with shadows of perplexity in their
brown eyes, and presently Mrs. Biddlecombe carefully cleaned and put on
her spectacles, peering at her future son-in-law with eyes just dimmed
by happy tears.
Presently he spoke of the sign, making a rough drawing. Mrs.
Biddlecombe laughed slily as she pointed out the apostrophe in
"Quinney's."
"Isn't Susie going to help?" she asked. "Why not 'Quinneys'?"
"By Gum, you're right. Of course she's going to help. Make a rare
saleswoman, too."
"I should love to help!" said Susan eagerly. "You'd soon teach me, Joe."
"All the tricks in the trade, Susie, and perhaps one or two of our own."
The girl opened wider her honest eyes. "Must there be tricks?" she
asked, and a finer ear than Quinney's might have detected a note of
anxiety.
"Bless your innocent heart--yes! Dessay I shall learn a bit from you.
Course o' Shakespeare now, to improve one's powers o' speech."
He laughed so hilariously that Mrs. Biddlecombe held up a restraining
finger.
"We're semi-detached, you know."
"I'm rich enough not to care what Laburnum Row thinks or says," he
declared. "What day will suit you to get married, Susie?"
"Oh, Joe--this is sudden."
"Sudden? I was tellin' your mother that I had to go to France on biz,
but I want you to come along, too, to do the parleyvooin'. Can you get
ready in a month?"
Mrs. Biddlecombe frowned, shaking her head.
"You must wait longer than that."
"Why?"
"It's customary."
"Blow that! I want Susie, and while we're in France the shop can be
overhauled. You'll keep an eye on it--hey?"
"I wash my hands of any marriage entered upon in undue haste."
Finally, he agreed to wait two months, not a moment longer.
"But I shall order the sign to-morrow--'Quinneys''--with letters
cuddling up against each other. It'll be made in London, quite
regardless. Next Sunday and you, Susie, will take a little walk in and
about Melchester. I shan't ask you to pig it over the shop."
"I shouldn't mind that a bit."
"But I should. I'm marrying a lady, one of the best, and I'll start the
thing in style, just bang up."
"A semi-detached?"
"Lord, no! Wouldn't hurt your mother's feelin's for worlds, but a
semi-detached ain't private enough for me. The neighbours might hear me
yellin' when Susie pulls my hair."
Mrs. Biddlecombe rose majestically.
"I'm going to open a bottle of my ginger cordial," she said solemnly.
As the door closed behind her, Quinney exclaimed, "Now, Susie, you jump
on my knee. I want to tell you that I'm the happiest man on earth."
He spoke in a tone of absolute conviction.
*CHAPTER II*
*THE DREAM COTTAGE*
*I*
Melchester, although urban in the strict sense of the word, was sweetly
fragrant of the country. Mel Street, except on Sundays, was always more
or less blocked with country wagons and carts loaded with Melshire
cheeses and butter and cream and eggs. Melshire bacon is famous the
world over. There were no factories; and admittedly the town depended
upon the surrounding country, which included wind-swept downs, and
pleasant valleys, and many woods full of pheasants, and languid streams
full of coarse fish. Essentially a country town which had fallen asleep
in the Middle Ages, and went on slumbering, like a hale old man who has
dined well. The curates and minor canons struggled against this
somnolence. Vice might be found in many of the back streets, vice
half-drunk, passive, Laodicean, hardly ever rampageous, save on such
rare occasions as when the military were camping just outside the
moss-grown walls.
The townfolk, generally, were content with themselves and the conditions
under which they strolled from the cradle to the grave. Susan
Biddlecombe, for instance, thanked God morning and evening because her
lines were cast in pleasant places. Till she met Quinney, her mind had
dwelt placidly in the immediate present. He hurled it into the future
with a breathless phrase adumbrating incredible possibilities. But that
was later, after the death of his father, who might have lived another
twenty years. Before that great piece of good fortune Joe indulged in
talk that was very small indeed; and the one excitement incidental to
her engagement was its secrecy. Being a pretty girl, and half a lady,
she had visualized marriage as a tremendous change, possibly for the
better, quite possibly for the worse. But during these dreams she
beheld herself as herself, never reckoning that her ideas and ideals
might make another woman of her under conditions and conventions other
than what she so thoroughly understood.
She was romantic; but who dares to define romance. What does it mean to
a girl like Susan Biddlecombe? Adventure? Yes. She was thrilled to the
core when Quinney kissed her for the first time behind the parlour door;
and her heart beat delightfully fast whenever she approached their
trysting-place in a secluded corner of the Close. Romance inspired her
with the happy thought of corresponding with her lover in cypher. The
engagement ring became a treasure indeed, because she dared not wear it
except at night. From the first she had gallantly faced the fact that
her Joe did not look romantic, but there was a flavour of the bold
buccaneer about his speech, and a sparkle in his eye quite captivating.
His firm, masterful grip of a girl's waist was most satisfying, although
it provoked protest. She had murmured, "Please--don't!" And to this he
replied tempestuously, "Sue, darling, you like it; you know you like it.
What's the use of trying to flimflam me?" He was not to be silenced
till she whispered blushing that she did like it. Awfully?
Yes--awfully. The man pressed the point, asking astounding questions.
What ought to be the tale of kisses, for example? Could a maid stand
five hundred of 'em? Why not try the experiment at the first
opportunity?
In this primitive fashion he captured her.
On the following Sunday the lovers found a cottage which seemed to be
the real, right thing. It was set in a small garden, surrounded by a
small holly hedge, and flanked on the north-east by a row of tall elms.
Behind the cottage was a plot of ground, which included a superb
chestnut tree, with low branches, upon which, as Susan observed,
hammocks could be swung.
"Hammocks?" repeated Quinney.
"On Sunday," said Susan, "in the summer, we can lie in hammocks and
think of how hard we work during the week. It will be heavenly."
"By Gum! You have ideas, Sue."
"Mother always said I was too romantic."
The cottage was roofed with big red tiles encrusted with mosses and
lichen; and about its walls in summer-time clambered roses and clematis.
"I love it already," Miss Biddlecombe declared with fervour.
"More than you love me?"
For answer she made a grimace. Quinney, with a broad grin upon his
lips, encircled her waist with his arm. But a pin pierced his finger,
which began to bleed, whereupon the young woman seized the finger and
put her lips to it.
"I've drunk my Joe's blood," she said, with a charming blush.
"Oh, you jolly cannibal!" exclaimed Quinney.
They kissed each other tenderly, and almost forgot the cottage.
Presently Quinney said, "I believe this'll do?" and she answered
ecstatically, "It's exactly right."
Quinney qualified this.
"There may be others better still; it's only the best we've seen so
far."
"I dare say you think there's a better girl than I am somewhere or
other?"
"No, I don't!"
"How awful it would be if I caught you looking for her."
"No fear o' that!" he affirmed solemnly.
Next morning early they went together to the agent, derisively scornful
of the gossips, who, to do them justice, refrained from unpleasant
remarks. Laburnum Row knew by this time that young Joe Quinney had ten
thousand pounds, and the rosy-fingered fact that he had found a wife in
a semi-detached cottage was tremendously acclaimed.
The agent smiled discreetly when he saw them, and may have wished, poor
fellow, that he, too, was young again and shamelessly in love.
"Bird-nestin', we are," said Quinney.
"Just so. Did you like the nest you saw yesterday?"
The sly fellow glanced at the girl, who answered eagerly, "It's too
sweet for anything!"
Obviously, she wished to clinch the bargain on the nail, but, much to
her exasperation, the more cautious male began to ask questions,
listening attentively to the answers, and displaying a shrewd
understanding. Susan decided that her Joe was wasting valuable time,
because she wanted to discuss wallpapers. She sniffed when Quinney
said, "Is there anything else on your books prettier than this cottage?"
She shuffled impatiently, when the agent answered impassively, "Oh yes!"
While the men had been talking she had decided that an ugly pigsty must
be pulled down, that the kitchen must be refloored, and that the big
water barrel should be painted apple-green and white.
"Where is this other cottage?"
"On the Mel, five minutes' walk from your place. It belongs to the widow
of an artist, and it's a real bargain. You ought to see it."
"We will see it," said Quinney.
Susan shrugged her small shoulders. All this talk was lamentably
foolish. Men were great sillies. While they were staring at cottage
number two, some enterprising stranger might snap up cottage number one.
A nice sell that would be!
"Come on, Sue," said Quinney.
Miss Biddlecombe "came on" reluctantly holding her tongue because she
dared not speak her mind before the agent, and very cross by reason of
this abstention.
"You ain't tired?" asked Quinney, reading her face wrongly. The
tenderness in his voice brought back a brace of dimples.
"Tired? Not a bit, but I'm sure that our cottage is the prettier."
"Please suspend judgment," said the agent formally. How could he divine
that the pretty maid, who smiled at him so sweetly, would have suspended
him from the nearest tree for being a bore and a nuisance. She smiled
upon him with rage in her heart.
And, behold, the second cottage was infinitely prettier than the first.
Susan gasped when she beheld it, and she was quite furious with Quinney
when he said drawlingly, "This looks all right, but what's wrong with
it? Why hasn't it been gobbled up long ago?"
"There is something wrong with it--the price."
"I guessed as much."
The agent explained glibly, for he, too, had learned of young Joe's
great inheritance.
"It's not big enough for well-to-do folk; and it's much too expensive
for poor people. It cost quite a lot of money. There's a boathouse,
and fishing rights and everything is in tip-top order. So it's not
surprising that the price is tip-top also. But it's a genuine bargain."
"How much?"
The agent mentioned a sum which made Quinney whistle. Susan groaned.
She had quite forgotten cottage number one. It had grown common in her
brown eyes, which dwelt with rapture upon a tiny lawn sloping to the
sleepy Mel, upon the veranda where in summer-time Joe and she could eat
their meals, upon the lilac and laburnum soon to bloom, upon the placid
stream so plainly loath to leave such delightful banks. No neighbours
other than the owners of big gardens would disturb their peace. Over
everything hung a veil of romance and beauty. Furtively, she wiped two
tears from her eyes.
"Let us go," she said quietly.
She turned, and the men followed her in silence.
*II*
Quinney went back to his shop without making any reference to cottage
number one. Undoubtedly number two was a bargain, but he remembered a
maxim often in his father's mouth, "At a great pennyworth pause awhile;
many are ruined by buying bargains." Moreover, the first cottage was to
be had at a modest rent. Number two was not offered on lease; the owner
wanted spot cash for the freehold. Before the lovers parted, Susan
whispered, "I do wish we had not seen that cottage by the Mel. It's made
me hate the other."
Quinney nodded gloomily. Susan continued softly, "It's a dream cottage.
I shall think of it as that, and pretend that it doesn't really exist.
I may go there sometimes when I'm asleep."
"You must look a little dear when you're asleep!"
"Oh, Joe, you do say such odd things."
"We'll look at some other cottages."
"I shall be perfectly happy with you anywhere--except in that first
cottage."
"One of these fine days you'll live in a big house in London."
"What?"
"I mean it. You make a note of what I say. This old town is well
enough, but it ain't big enough for me."
"Joe, you do surprise me."
"Bless you, dear heart! I surprise myself. I'm a smallish man, as
inches count, but I'm simply bustin' with big ideas. I surprised
Tomlin, too."
"I don't like Mr. Tomlin."
"Now, why not?"
"He looks so sly."
"He's foxy, very. Has to be. A London dealer must be sharper than his
customers. The big collectors, the chaps that write thumpin' cheques
are no fools, and some of them are knaves. I could tell you
stories----"
"Please don't, dear."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to listen to unpleasant stories now; and besides, mother
is expecting me. It's washing day."
"I hate the thought of my Sue at the wash tub!"
She considered this gravely, with her head a little upon one side. Then
she answered soberly, "I like doing things, and getting them done
properly."
"By Gum, you seem to forget you're a lady born."
"I'm only half and half, Joe. It will be a real pride to me getting up
your shirts."
"There'll be none o' that, my girl."
She laughed gaily, but her face was pensive as she returned to Laburnum
Row.
*III*
Next Sunday happened to be an exceptionally fine day. Quinney
accompanied Susan and her mother to the Cathedral, but after the service
Mrs. Biddlecombe returned to Laburnum Row, leaving the lovers in the
elm-encircled Close. Quinney, whose eyes were sparkling even more than
usual, strolled across the Mel, and presently he paused opposite the
Dream Cottage. Susan pinched his arm.
"How horrid of you to bring me here," she whispered. "I hate the sight
of it now."
"But why? Queer things girls are, to be sure."
"If it's queer not to stare at what one can't have, I'm queer," said the
young lady rather shortly. "I was never one to flatten my nose against
the window of a hat-shop when I'd no money to buy hats."
"You're a sensible little dear! But I brought you here because the
place is sold. I knew that would cure you. Now oughtn't we to have a
squint at the first?"
"It would make me squint to look at it now."
"It's nicer than a tent."
"A tent?"
"You said you would live happily in a tent with me."
"Men don't understand women."
"That's a horrid thought with our two lives to live out together."
He looked so sorry because he couldn't understand women that Susan
kissed him, having satisfied herself that nobody was in sight. She said
softly:
"Well, Joe, it is really my fault because I did disguise my
disappointment very cleverly, didn't I?"
Quinney chuckled.
"Disguise it? Bless your simple heart! I saw two fat tears rolling
down your cheeks. I was the one who disguised my disappointment."
Whereat Susan protested stoutly that she had never seen any man look so
disgusted as her Joe, when the agent mentioned the price of the Dream
Cottage. She concluded on a high note of assurance.
"Desperate diseases require desperate remedies. Now that we're here,
we'll go in, and I'll let it soak in that the place is really and truly
sold." Quinney nodded, and Miss Biddlecombe continued fluently, "After
I've seen it once more I shall never give it another thought."
"Don't be too cocksure about that!"
"I tell you I shan't, and besides, the river is certainly dangerous."
"Dangerous to us?"
She blushed delightfully, pressing his arm, but saying nothing.
Quinney, divining her thoughts, fell more in love with her than ever.
She went on artlessly, "I expect the house is damp in winter."
"Dry as a bone. I asked about that."
"When did you ask?"
"I suppose when we looked at it."
"I never heard you ask. I'm feeling quite happy about it now. I wonder
whether the people who have bought it have moved in?"
He was able to assure her that they hadn't. But she asked immediately
how he had come to know of the sale.
"The agent told me."
"When?"
"When I wrote to him."
"Why did you write to him?"
"To make inquiries about other cottages, of course."
They passed through a wicket-gate into a small garden gay in summer with
larkspurs, hollyhocks, and what children call "red-hot pokers." A path
of flagged stones wandered round the house.
"Cosy, ain't it?" he said. And as he spoke she noticed that his voice
trembled. She tried to interpret the expression upon his shrewd
whimsical face, and failed.
"Are you so tremendously sorry that this lovely place is sold?"
"I'm tremendously glad," he replied.
"I can't screw myself up to say that, Joe. I wonder who is coming to
live here?"
"A childless couple."
"A childless couple!" Her face softened. "I'm sorry they're childless.
I can see children running about this garden."
"And tumbling into the river!"
"I was only joking about that. But perhaps----"
"Exactly. They may have a dozen yet."
She sighed as she surveyed the pleasance. Nothing, she decided, could
ever be so exactly right again. Then Quinney said abruptly
"We can't keep your poor mother waiting for dinner."
"Bother dinner. I want to have a long, last lingering look."
"But you may come again, because you happen to know the man who has
bought it."
The note of triumph in his voice was illuminating.
"Joe!" she exclaimed. "It's you!"
"Yes; it's me. Now ain't I a regular old rag-bag o' surprises?"
*IV*
The furnishing of the Dream Cottage occupied them very agreeably during
the two pleasant months that elapsed before their marriage, but there
were moments when Susan became exasperatingly conscious of immense
differences between herself--as she was beginning to know herself--and
the man she loved. Mrs. Biddlecombe and she, for instance, had nourished
the conviction that the home being the true sphere of woman, it would be
their privilege and pleasure to arrange it according to the lights,
farthing dips, perhaps, vouchsafed to the middle class in Victorian
days. But the Man of Many Surprises, as Susan called him, dealt
drastically with this conviction, dispatching it swiftly to the limbo of
unrealized ambitions and broken hopes. In those days, it may be
remembered, popular fancy strayed wantonly amongst ebonized
super-mantels, and cabinets with gilded panels upon which exotic birds
and flowers were crudely painted. Aspinall's Enamel entered generously
into most schemes of decoration. Fireplaces were filled with Japanese
umbrellas. Japanese fans were arranged upon bilious-looking
wall-papers, and Japanese bric-a-brac, cheap bronzes, cheap porcelain,
everything cheap, became a raging pestilence.
Quinney's taste soared high above this rubbish so dear to the hearts of
Susan and her mother. Afterwards he marvelled at the sure instinct
which had guided him aright. Where did it come from? Why, without
either knowledge or experience, did he swoop unerringly upon what was
really beautiful and enduring, and at that time more or less despised?
Mrs. Biddlecombe had bought a book entitled, _How to Furnish the Home
with One Hundred Pounds_. She read aloud certain passages to Quinney,
who listened patiently for half an hour, and then snorted.
"You've taken cold," said the anxious Susan.
"That rot would make any man choke," said Quinney. "Makes me perfectly
sick," he continued, warming to his work, as he encountered the amazed
stare of the women, "makes me want to smash things! Silly rot, and
written by a woman, I'll be bound."
"It's written by a lady," observed Mrs. Biddlecombe, "an authoress,
too."
"It's written by a fool!" snapped Quinney. "We've Solomon's word for it
that there's nothing so irksome as a female fool. This particular brand
o' fool don't know, and never will know, the very first principles o'
furnishing, whether for rich or poor. Buy good solid stuff. Don't touch
rubbish! Rubbish is beastly. Rubbish is wicked. I've had enough of
rubbish. Me and Susan is going to start right. And as for cost," he
paused to deliver a slashing blow, "I'm going to put one thousand
pounds' worth of stuff into my house!"
Mother and daughter gasped. Quinney seemed to have swollen to monstrous
dimensions. Was he stark mad? Tremblingly they waited for what might
follow.
"Perhaps more," he added flamboyantly, "and everything is going to be
good, because I shall choose it. It's become a sort of religion with
me. A fine thing like that K'ang He jar of mine makes me feel good. I
can kneel down before it."
Mrs. Biddlecombe observed majestically:
"Don't be blasphemous, Joseph!"
"Blasphemous?" he repeated derisively. "It's blasphemy to my notion to
prefer ugliness to beauty. Suppose I'd done as father wanted me to do,
and got engaged to that ugly laughin' hyena, Arabella Pinker, because
she had something in her stocking besides a leg like a bed-post."
"Now you are indelicate, isn't he, Susan?"
"I chose Susan instead of Bella. Blasphemous! Now, tell me, what do you
go to the Cathedral for?"
"To worship my Maker."
"Well, I'm going to be honest with you and Sue. I go to the Cathedral to
look at the roof, the finest bit of stonework in the kingdom. My
thoughts just soar up into that vaulting. I feel like a bird o'
Paradise. Our Cathedral is God's House, and no mistake. My mind can't
grapple with Him, but it gets to close grips with that fan vaulting,
which He must have designed."
"Never heard you talk like this before," murmured Susan.
In her heart, which was beating faster than usual, Miss Biddlecombe was
profoundly impressed, because she had wit enough to perceive that her
Joe was absolutely sincere. But she trembled at his audacity, because
she had been trained to say "Gawd" rather than "God," believing devoutly
that the lengthening of the vowel indicated piety.
"I've had to bottle up things," said Quinney grimly. "Now I'm free to
speak my mind, and you're free too, my girl. Hooray, for plain speech!
Lawsy, how it hurts a poor devil to hold his tongue!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe retired from the parlour feeling quite unable to deal
faithfully with a young man who must be, so she decided, slightly under
the influence of liquor. Her ideas had been put to headlong flight, but
they returned like homing doves to the great and joyous fact that her
prospective son-in-law possessed ten thousand pounds. Enough to
intoxicate anybody--that! Her own steady head swam at the luck of
things. Later, when the first exuberance had passed, Susan and she
would have a word or two to say. For the moment there were ten thousand
reasons, all of them pure gold, in favour of discreet silence.
*V*
To Susan alone, under a pledge of secrecy, Quinney became alluringly
expansive. Once, in her flapper days, she had seen Lord George Sanger's
famous three-ring circus, and had tried to take in and assimilate three
simultaneous shows. Result--a headache! Peering into Quinney's mind was
quite as exciting as the three-ring circus, and nearly as confusing. He
could soar to the giddy pinnacles of Melchester Cathedral, and thence,
with a swallow's flight, wing his way through the open windows of a
stately pile of buildings designed by Inigo Jones for the fourth
Marquess of Mel.
Indeed, the door had not closed behind the ample rotundities of Mrs.
Biddlecombe when he asked abruptly:
"Ever seen the Saloon at Mel Court?"
"Never, Joe."
"It's furnished just right according to my ideas. I want to have
furniture of that sort. Georgian--hey? We'll go there together, when
the family are in town. In that Saloon I feel as I do in the
Cathedral--reg'lar saint! It's spiffin'! And every bit of the period.
Not all English--that don't matter. The china will make your mouth
fairly water, the finest Oriental! Pictures, too, but of course we
can't touch them yet."
Susan gazed anxiously into his face, which was glowing with enthusiasm.
"Joe, dear, shall I fetch you a glass of barley water?"
"Barley water? Not for Joe! I've thought of that, too, my pretty. I'm
going to have a cellar. None o' your cheap poisons! Sound port and old
brown sherry, in cut-glass decanters!"
Susan opened her mouth, closed it, and burst into tears. At the moment
she believed that her clever Joe had gone quite mad. The young man
kissed away her tears, and soon brought the ready smile back to her
lips, as the sanity which informed so remarkably his powers of speech
percolated through her mind. He might say the strangest and most
surprising things, but they were convincing, indeed overpoweringly so.
He held her hands, as he talked, in his masterful grip, and looked
keenly into her soft brown eyes.
"Sue, dear, it's not surprisin' that I surprise you, because, as I told
you before, I surprise myself. I lie awake nights wondering at the
ideas that come into my head. I suppose the old man was such an
example----"
"An example, Joe?"
"Of how not to do things! Lawsy, what a wriggler, to be sure, twisting
and turning in the dark, and disliking the light. Wouldn't clean our
windows, because he didn't want our customers to see the fakes too
plainly. We just pigged it. You know that? Yes. I had to make a
flannel shirt last a fortnight. Same way with food. Cheap meat, badly
cooked. Stunted my growth, it did, but not my mind. I used to spend my
time thinking what I'd do when I got out of Melchester."
"Out of Melchester?"
Susan and her mother were in and of the ancient town. In these days of
cheap excursions and motor-cars it is not easy to project the mind back
to the time when the middle classes rarely stirred from home. To be in
Melchester, according to Susan Biddlecombe, was a pleasure; to be of it,
a privilege. Melchester had imposed upon her its inexorable conventions,
the more inexorable because they were unformulated, exuding from every
pore of the body corporate. Chief amongst them perhaps was veneration
for the Bishop, who ruled his diocese with doctrinal severity tempered
by gifts of port wine and tea and beef. Nonconformity was ill at ease
and slightly out of elbows beneath the shadow of the most beautiful
spire in England. The only Radical of importance in the town was
Pinker, the rich grocer. And when the Marquess of Mel said to him,
chaffingly, "Ah, Pinker, why don't you belong to us?" the honest fellow
replied, "It's this way, my lord. The Conservative gentry deal with me
because I know my business. The Radicals buy from me because I'm a
Radical. They'd sooner deal with the Stores than with a Tory grocer."
Quinney continued:
"I have my eye on London, Paris, and New York."
"Mercy me!"
"Meanwhile, Melchester is good enough. But our house must be a show
place--see?"
Susan tried to see, but blinked.
"I shall take some of our customers to our house, to show them the
things they can't have. I mean, of course, the things they can't have
except at a big price. Nothing bothers a collector so much as that.
Your real connoisseur"--Quinney had not yet mastered the pronunciation
of this word--"goes dotty when he can't get what he wants. By Gum, he
feels as I used to feel when I wanted you, and the old man was alive and
everlastingly jawing about Arabella Pinker. I shall have a lot of
Arabellas in the shop, but my Susans will be at home."
"But, Joe, mother and I were so looking forward to furnishing the Dream
Cottage."
"I know, I know!" He began to skate swiftly over the thin ice. "But
your ideas, sweetie, are so--so semi-detached. You haven't got the
instinct for the right stuff. I have. You and your mother want to stir
up Laburnum Row. I'm a-going to make the whole of Melchester sit up and
howl. See?"
Susan nodded. Very dimly she apprehended these incredible ambitions,
and yet her instinct, no more at fault than his, whispered to her that
Joe could do it. From that moment Laburnum Row appeared in its true
proportions. Quinney said quickly:
"I'll leave the kitchen and the bedrooms to you, but, remember, no
rubbish."
Accordingly it came to pass that the Dream Cottage was furnished with
charming bits of Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, picked up here
and there throughout Wessex. The rubbish in the shop was sold _en
bloc_, being taken over by a small dealer. The premises were put into
the hands of a London decorator, a friend of the great Tomlin.
Upon the day the painters went in Quinney marched out and married his
Susan.
*CHAPTER III*
*THE PLEASANT LAND OF FRANCE*
*I*
They crossed to Saint Malo two days after the wedding. The groom was
horribly sea-sick; the bride, a capital sailor, ministered to him
faithfully. This experience is recorded, because it opened Joe's eyes
to the fact that physical infirmity is a serious disability. He had
never been "outed," as he expressed it, before. And it was humiliating
to reflect that his small Susan could confront without a qualm wild
waves when he lay prostrate, limp in mind and body, capable only of
cursing Tomlin, who had dispatched him upon this perilous enterprise.
He was not too well pleased when Susan kissed his clammy brow and
whispered, "Oh, Joe, I do love to look after you." Somehow he had never
contemplated her looking after him. His very gorge rose at the thought
of his inferiority. Twenty-four hours afterwards he felt himself again,
the better perhaps for the upheaval, but the memory of what he had
suffered remained. He told himself (and Susan) that he would be
satisfied with establishing himself in London. New York and Paris could
go hang!
They wandered about Saint Malo, criticizing with entire candour
everything they beheld. Susan aired her French; the true Briton
expressed a preference for his own honest tongue. The Cathedral aroused
certain enthusiasms tempered by disgust at the tawdry embellishments of
the interior. Susan, however, was impressed by the kneeling men and
women, who wandered in and out at all hours. She stared at their
weather-beaten faces uplifted in supplication to some unknown saint.
She became sensible of an emotion passing from them to her, a desire to
kneel with them, to share, so to speak, the graces and benedictions
obviously bestowed upon them. For the first time in her life she
realized that religion may be more than an act of allegiance to God.
These simple folk, workers all of them, could spare five minutes out of
a busy morning to pray. Her own prayers never varied. Night and
morning she repeated piously the formulas learned at her mother's knee.
Upon Sundays she followed more or less attentively the fine liturgy of
the Church of England. Naturally intelligent and supremely sympathetic,
she could not doubt that prayer meant more to these Papists than to her,
something vital, something absolutely necessary. She glanced at her
husband's face, wondering whether he shared her thoughts. Joe was
worshipping after his own fashion the Gothic architecture of the nave,
and favourably contrasting it with the transepts. She touched his arm
timidly.
"Would it be wicked, Joe, to kneel down here?"
Joe stared at her whimsically.
"Do you want to?" he asked.
"Ye-es."
"Well, then, do it. You ain't going to pray to that?" He indicated a
graven image, atrociously bedizened in crude blue and silver tinsel.
"Oh no!" she answered; then she added, with a blush, "I only want to
thank God that we are here--together."
"Right you are!" said Joe heartily, but he did not offer to kneel with
her. She moved from him slowly, with a backward glance, which escaped
his notice, and knelt behind a pillar, covering her face with her hands,
wondering at first what her mother would say if she could see her, and
almost tremblingly glad that she couldn't. Oddly enough, when she began
to pray it never occurred to her to use the old familiar forms. She
thanked God because He had made her happy; she entreated a continuance
of that happiness in her own artless words, words she might have used to
her mother. When her prayer was ended, she became conscious of the
strange intimacy of her invocation. She felt a glow, although a minute
previously the lower temperature of the Cathedral after the warm
sunshine without had struck her chillingly. When she rose from her
knees, her eyes were shining. She returned to her husband, who said:
"Regular mix-up we have here. Let's skin out of it."
*II*
They travelled by easy stages to Treguier, their destination, stopping
overnight at Saint Brieux and Guingamp. By the luck of things they
happened to reach Treguier at the time of the great Pardon, _le Pardon
des Pauvres_, the Pardon of Brittany's greatest and most potent
Saint--_Yves de la Verite_. Everything also combined to make this new
experience an imperishable memory. Their hotel in Treguier was
charmingly clean and comfortable, an inn of the olden time kept by two
elderly spinsters. It overlooked the river Jaudy flowing placidly to the
sea. Beyond, under soft skies, lay the Breton landscape, quietly
pastoral, pleasingly undulating, with a thin mist revealing rather than
obscuring its beauty. Susan woke early, hearing the sound of sabots
upon the quay, and the tinkle of bells upon the horses. She went to the
open window and looked out. Already the town was full of pilgrims,
peasants in the costume of the country, all chattering and
gesticulating. Some had come in boats. Susan marked the whiteness of
the women's coifs and the stout cloth of their gowns. When they
laughed, she saw rows of white teeth; their faces were superbly tanned
by sun and wind; they looked what they were--the sisters, the wives, the
mothers of strong men. Amongst them, terribly conspicuous wandered a
few beggars, disease-stricken wretches importuning alms of the healthy,
pointing shrivelled, dirty hands at their dreadful sores, advertising,
almost triumphantly, their poverty and misery. Susan had learned from
the two sisters that this was the fete of the ver poor, she had been
warned to expect a parade of misery and deformity, and Mademoiselle
Yannik had added softly, "Look you, madame, it is good, when one is
young and strong and happy, to look sometimes at these _miserables_."
*III*
The Pardon is not held at Treguier, nor at Minihy, but on the other side
of the Jaudy, upon a hill near Porz-Bihan. Here, in former times, stood
a chapel, now in ruins; only the ossuary is left, in which may still be
found an image of the great Saint, very old, very crudely fashioned, but
supremely interesting by reason of the veneration with which it is
regarded by the peasants. The Quinneys watched the pilgrims coming and
going in a never-ending procession. Each offered prayers and oblations
in copper to the Saint, who stared down upon them with that vague,
impersonal regard which would seem to indicate indifference or
lassitude. Upon an altar were ranged other saints, rude images of
painted wood, saints never canonized, and looking as if they resented
the unique honour paid to Yves le Veridique. Many of the pilgrims
muttered some formula in Breton, which afterwards Mademoiselle Yannik
translated for Susan. It ran: "If theirs be the right, condemn us. If
ours be the right, condemn them." For this is the patron saint of
lawyers, and of the poor oppressed by the law. The procession of
_Miserables_ followed. An Englishman told the tale of the Miracle of
the Soup to Susan. He described vividly a farm hard by filled with
outcasts upon the eve of the Pardon. And so bitter had been the weather
that the farmer had made small provision for his guests, assured that
only a few would demand his hospitality. The _pot-au-feu_ hung upon its
hook, but there was hardly soup enough in it to feed half a dozen, and
scores were arriving. And then suddenly a stranger appeared, approached
the hearth, and affirmed that there would be enough for all. Having
said this, he vanished, and, lo, a miracle! The crowds were abundantly
fed. The stranger was the Saint himself, the blessed Yves. Susan was
thrilled, but Joe whispered to her, "Do you believe that yarn, Sue?" and
she whispered back, "Yes." He squeezed her arm as he replied, "Lawsy,
you are a blessed little fool!"
But the great impression remained of poverty and pain parading before a
comparatively prosperous and healthy crowd, who regarded the unfortunate
with kindly and compassionate eyes. Susan was melted to tears, but Joe
said emphatically:
"What do you make of this show?"
She replied hesitatingly, "They recognize that the poor must be always
with them."
Joe persisted.
"How does this apply to you and me?"
"We must help when we can, dear."
"We have to help, Sue. Rates and taxes. By Gum, I've never seen such a
lot of wretched devils in all my life. And the sight o' their misery
just hits a particular nail of mine bang on the head. Drives it home,
like. Me and you must never be poor. We must pull together against the
remotest chance o' poverty."
"They can't help it, Joe."
"Perhaps not, but we can."
They returned in a chastened mood to the excellent dinner provided at
the inn.
*IV*
Next day they paid a visit to the great artist, who reproduced so
wonderfully pieces of old furniture. Fortunately for the Quinneys, the
Englishman, whom they had met at the Pardon, accompanied them. He
happened to be staying at the same inn, and knew _le pays Tregorrois_ as
well as, indeed much better than, Quinney knew Melshire. Also he spoke
French fluently, and could make himself understood in Breton. Lastly,
he was something of a collector of Breton _faience_ and old oak, a buyer
in a small way of chests and panelling. The Quinneys interested him
enormously. Joe was evidently an original, and Susan, as evidently, the
reverse, and the more attractive on that account in masculine eyes. He
swooped upon the immense differences in the characters of bride and
groom, having the instinct of the explorer, and promised himself some
amusement in studying them. Joe had been as frank with him as he was
with Mrs. Biddlecombe.
"I've powers within me," he explained, over a matutinal pipe. "They
push me on--see?"
George Le Marchant nodded, smiling pleasantly.
"Pushed you across the Channel?" he suggested.
"Just so. Beastly crossin'--humiliatin'. Felt like a scoured worm!"
Susan interrupted. She saw that Le Marchant, although he wore shabby
clothes, was a gentleman.
"That'll do, Joe."
"Nearly did 'do' for me. The wife"--he liked this expression, having
heard Pinker use it--"the wife fairly wallered in it. Blue water, wind
and waves--ugh!"
"It would have been just lovely," Susan admitted, "if Mr. Quinney----"
"Hadn't 'ad his bloomin' head in a basin. No, I ain't going to say
another word. Disgusting about fits it. Well, I was saying it was
something stronger than meself drove me out of good old England."
"Mr. Tomlin," put in Susan. She added for the benefit of the stranger,
"He's a big London dealer."
Joe snorted.
"Tomlin ain't stronger than me, Susan. He's bigger in the trade, that's
all, and come to his full growth, too. I'm sorter speak sproutin'. Do
you know Tomlin, of the Fulham Road?"
"Oh yes."
Le Marchant smiled faintly. Quinney, intent upon his own glorification,
missed a derisive expression, but Susan was sharper. She decided
instantly that there had been "dealings" between the great Tomlin and
this nice gentleman, and that they had not been entirely satisfactory.
Joe continued, warming to his work:
"Tomlin told me about this faker of old oak."
"But he's not a faker. Really, you must purge your mind of that. He's
an artist. Dealers, of course, buy his reproductions and sell them
again as authentic antiques, but he sells them at a moderate price for
what they are--superb copies. They are so masterly in every detail that
you won't know the copy from the original when you see both together."
"Oh, won't I?" said Quinney. "I've a lot to learn, and I'm learning
something every day, but old oak is my hobby. I've handled it since I
was a baby, and I shall know."
"We'll see," said Le Marchant, smiling. "What did you think of the
Pardon yesterday?"
He addressed Susan, but Joe answered, taking it for granted that his
opinion was worth something.
"Rum show! Very--French, hey? Praying hard all the morning didn't
prevent 'em from getting jolly tight in the afternoon."
Le Marchant laughed.
"These are Bretons, Mr. Quinney. Celts, not Latins."
He began to explain, talking very pleasantly, with a knowledge of his
subject which challenged Susan's attention. She liked to hear about
people so different from herself; their quaint superstitions, their
ardent beliefs, and the primitive simplicity of their lives appealed to
her strangely. But she was quick to perceive that Joe was bored. His
shrewd face wore an expression gradually becoming familiar to her. Later
he would say that there was nothing "in" such talk. It didn't lead
anywhere; at any rate not in the directions whither Susan and he were
steering. Why couldn't Le Marchant talk about that Quimper pottery,
those jolly old figures of the Saints and Saintesses. A man might pick
up a wrinkle or two worth something listening to _that_. He knocked the
ashes from his pipe and rose to his feet.
"Ain't we wastin' valuable time?" he asked.
*V*
The establishment of the master copyist much impressed Quinney on
account of its size. The visitors were shown everything, and the
proprietor said to Mrs. Quinney:
"Vous voyez, madame, je ne cache pas mon jeu, moi."
"What's he sayin'?" asked Joe.
Le Marchant answered.
"He assures us that he's not a faker."
They beheld tanks of acid in which new ironwork was placed. In a few
hours or days the corroding acid achieved the work of years. There were
piles of wood, new and old, awaiting treatment. Quinney asked if there
was a worm-holing machine. He had heard that one had been patented.
The proprietor laughed.
"The worms themselves do the work here, monsieur."
Then he placed in Joe's hands two wooden candle-sticks.
"One of these," said he, "is genuine, and worth its weight in gold, a
fine specimen of the sixteenth century. The other was made here within
a year. Which is which?"
"Lawsy!" said Quinney. "I ought to know."
He examined them very carefully, and guessed wrong.
Le Marchant smiled, well pleased, because he had predicted truly. The
proprietor pointed to a bureau of oak, exquisitely carved.
"Is that old or new, monsieur?"
Quinney spent five minutes in examining the specimen, feeling the
"patine," scraping it with his nail, staring through his glass at the
marks of the chisels.
"It's old," said he at last.
"It's quite new, monsieur."
"I'm fairly done," said Joe. "This beats the world, this does."
"That piece," said the proprietor, "is signed by me here," and he showed
Quinney two interlaced initials, cleverly concealed. "The original is
in the Cluny, and valued by experts at four thousand pounds. I can sell
it for sixteen pounds."
"Mark it 'sold,'" said Joe.
He bought chests old and new, panelling, tables and chairs, desks and
wardrobes. The proprietor smiled, rubbing his hands together.
"Obviously, monsieur is in the business?"
"I am," replied Quinney, "and, by Gum, I thought I knew my business till
I met you."
Le Marchant acted as interpreter. The three returned to Treguier and
breakfasted upon the small terrace overlooking the Jaudy. Quinney was
in the highest spirits. But to Susan's dismay, he talked of returning
to England and finishing their honeymoon in a country where a man could
make himself understood. What about Weymouth? What price nice sands?
He assured Le Marchant that his Susan liked paddling, because she could
show a neat pair of ankles. Also they could nip over to Dorchester.
Rare place that for old stuff! Inevitably he returned to his business
with an enthusiasm which indicated that he found it more engrossing than
ordinary honeymooning. Susan listened with a tiny wrinkle between her
smooth brows. When Quinney rushed upstairs to fill his pouch with
English tobacco, Le Marchant said thoughtfully:
"Wonderfully keen, isn't he?"
The swiftness of her answer surprised him.
"Do you think he's too keen?"
He evaded the eager question.
"As for that, Mrs. Quinney, one can hardly be too keen in business
nowadays."
"I meant--is he too keen for his own happiness?"
He hesitated. On the morrow he would go his way, and, humanly speaking,
there was little probability of his meeting this particular couple
again. He wondered vaguely what the future held for them. Then he
shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
"His keenness might make for his happiness. I divide the people I know
into two classes, those who care for things and those who care for
persons."
"Surely a man can care for both?"
"One must be the dominant interest."
"You think it's bad to care too much for things?"
"You are very sharp. However, in this case there isn't much cause for
serious alarm."
"Why not?"
He stared pensively at her charming face, thinking that Quinney was
indeed a lucky fellow to have captured and captivated so sweet a
creature.
"Well, you stand between him and false gods."
"False gods! What a good way of describing faked Chelsea figures!"
*CHAPTER IV*
*THE INSTALLATION*
*I*
Mrs. Biddlecombe welcomed the homing couple when they returned to the
Dream Cottage, but she positively refused to forsake the semi-detached
in Laburnum Row, although Quinney, for his part, was willing to
entertain a mother-in-law indefinitely, if Susan wished it. Susan,
rather to his surprise, did not wish it. And the obvious fact that her
husband considered the matter of small importance slightly distressed
her, as indicating an abnormal indifference to _persons_ which
contrasted oddly with his absorption in _things_ of wood and stone,
graven images, let us call them, which the almighty Tomlin had set up in
the freshly decorated and enlarged premises in Mel Street. Tomlin,
indeed, had sent down a lot of stuff, and some of it was very good. Joe
could hardly tear himself from the porcelain, and gloated over the blue
and white, so Susan affirmed, as if he wished to kiss it.
The London dealer followed his crates.
He expressed unqualified approval of what Joe had bought in Brittany,
taking, however, most of the credit to himself, inasmuch as he had
dispatched Quinney to Treguier. The younger man grinned, wondering what
Tomlin would say when he beheld the Dream Cottage and its furniture. He
arranged that Mrs. Biddlecombe should be present upon that memorable
occasion, for he was well aware that the good soul did not share his
enthusiasm for mahogany, and that she resented his criticism of her
burked schemes of decoration.
Need it be recorded that Quinney triumphed? Tomlin was so impressed that
he said gaspingly, "I'll take the lot off your hands, Joe, at a
twenty-five per cent. advance."
"No, you won't!" replied Joe. "Our furniture is not for sale, old man.
Not yet, by Gum!"
"You are a wonder!" said Tomlin generously.
"Isn't he?" exclaimed Susan.
It was a great moment.
Late dinner followed, a _partie carree_. Joe provided champagne, and
port in a cut-glass decanter. Warmed by this splendid hospitality,
Tomlin became anecdotal. Perhaps he wanted to astonish the ladies.
Unquestionably he succeeded in doing so. One story will suffice to
illustrate Tomlin's methods, and it was told, be it remembered, with
exuberant chucklings within two hundred yards of the Cathedral Close.
"It's becoming harder every day, ma'am," he addressed Mrs. Biddlecombe,
"to get hold of the right stuff--cheap. I have agents everywhere. Old
Mr. Quinney was one. And now and again they hear of a real bargain.
Often as not the people who 'ave it won't part. They would part, ma'am,
if they was offered the right price, but that wouldn't be business. No.
Well, only the other day, I got hold of the sweetest table, genuine
Adam, and _hand-painted_! Paid a fiver for it!"
"Really, did you now?" murmured Mrs. Biddlecombe For all she knew a
"fiver" might be a large or a small price. Tomlin continued:
"Yes, ma'am, a fi' pun note. It was this way. The table belonged to a
decayed gentlewoman, who'd seen better days, and needed money."
Mrs. Biddlecombe sighed; the anecdote had become almost personal, and
therefore the more interesting.
"That may happen to any of us," she murmured.
"She had inherited this table from her grandma," continued Tomlin, "and
my agent heard of it, and saw it. He offered the old lady four pun ten,
and she wouldn't deal. Obstinate as a mule she was!"
"Sensible old dear, I call her," said Quinney.
"My agent was fairly boiled, and then inspiration struck him. He never
went near the old gal for a couple of months. Then he called with a
friend, a stout, red-faced man, bit of an amateur actor. My agent
introduced him as a collector of choice bits. Asked if he might show him
the little table. Old lady was willing enough, and of course the low
comedy feller crabbed it."
"Stale dodge that," remarked Quinney.
"Wait a bit. After crabbin' it, he pretended to be interested in other
things; and then he began to act queer. He'd slipped a bit o' soap into
his mouth, so as to froth proper."
"Gracious me! Why!" asked Mrs. Biddlecombe.
"Then he went into a regular fit, fell down, and as he fell grabbed the
little table, and broke off one of its pretty spindle legs. When he
come out of his fit, my agent said that the least thing a gentleman
could do was to buy the table he'd spoiled. The old lady took a fiver
as compensation, and jolly glad she was to get it. I sold that table to
an American millionaire for one hundred and twenty-five--guineas!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe rose majestically. She saw that her son-in-law was
laughing.
"Come, Susan, let us leave these _gentlemen_ to their wine."
Susan followed her out of the room. When the door was shut behind them,
Quinney said:
"Old man, that yarn was a bit too thick for 'em. See?"
Tomlin laughed boisterously.
"One more glass of port," he replied, "and I'll tell you another."
He told several; and when the men returned to the small drawing-room,
Susan said timidly that her mother had gone back to Laburnum Row.
Later, when she was alone with her husband, she asked a sharp question:
"Joe, dear, you wouldn't have done what Mr. Tomlin did, would you?"
"About what, Sue?"
"About that table. Mother and I thought it was horrid of him to take
advantage of a poor old lady."
Joe evaded the question cleverly:
"Look ye here, my girl, Tomlin is--well, Tomlin. Don't you mix him up
with me."
"But, Joe, you are mixed up with him--in business."
"Temporary arrangement, my pretty, nothing more."
He kissed her, murmuring, "Blessed little saint you are!"
*II*
Melchester was profoundly interested in the new premises, and the other
dealers in genuine antiques went about, so Quinney affirmed, chattering
with rage, and predicting ruin.
"They'll be ruined," said Quinney, chuckling and rubbing his hands.
"Nobody will buy their muck, and they know it."
He had very nice hands, with long slender fingers, manifestly fashioned
to pick up egg-shell china. Also in spite of his accent, which time
might reasonably be expected to improve, his voice held persuasive
inflections, and the resonant _timbre_ of the enthusiast, likely to ring
in the memories of too timid customers, the collectors who stare at
bargains twice a day till they are snapped up by somebody else. Quinney
despised these Laodiceans in his heart, but he told Susan that they did
well enough to practise upon.
"You want to get the patter," he told his wife, "and the best and
quickest way is to turn loose on the _think it overs_. See?"
It had long been arranged between them that Susan was to help in the
shop and acquire at first hand intimate knowledge of a complex business.
Quinney summed up the art of selling stuff in a few pregnant words.
"Find out what they want, and don't be too keen to sell to 'em. Most
men, my pretty, and nearly all the women go dotty over the things
hardest to get. Our best stuff will sell itself, if we go slow. Old
silver is getting scarcer every day."
Susan smiled at her Joe's words of wisdom. He continued fluently:
"We've a lot to learn; something new every hour. And we shall make
bloomin' errors, again and again. All dealers do. Tomlin was had to
rights only last week over two Chippendale chairs; and he thinks he
knows all about 'em. I've been done proper over that coffee-pot."
He showed her a massive silver coffee-pot with finely defined marks upon
it.
"A genuine George II bit, Susie, and worth its weight in gold if it
hadn't been tampered with by some fool later on. All that repousse work
is George IV, and I never knew it. The worst fake is the half-genuine
ones."
"Gracious!" exclaimed his pupil.
"There are lots o' things I don't know, and don't understand, my girl;
all the more reason to hold tight on to what I do know. And what I know
I'll try to share with you, and what you know you'll try to share with
me."
"I'm stupid about things," said Susan.
Quinney strolled across the room, and selected two jars more or less
alike in shape and paste and colour.
"Can you tell t'other from which?" he asked. "Look at 'em, feel 'em
inside and out."
Susan obeyed, but after a minute she shook her head.
"Ain't they just alike, Joe?"
"Lord, no! One's the real old blue and white, hand-painted, and worth
fifty pound. T'other is a reproduction, printed stuff, with a different
glaze. Look again, my pretty!"
"This is the old one, Joe."
"No, it ain't. Slip your hand inside. Which is the smoother and better
finished inside?"
"Yes, I feel the difference, but I don't see it. I wish I could see
it."
"You will. I'm going to put a little chipped bit of the best on your
toilet table. You just squint at it twenty times a day for one year,
and you'll know something. That's what I'm doing with the earlier
stuff, which is more difficult to be sure of, because it doesn't look so
good. I wouldn't trust my judgment to buy it. That's Tomlin's job."
Susan frowned.
"I don't like Mr. Tomlin, Joe."
"Never asked you to like him, but we can learn a lot from Tomlin. See?
He's an expert upon Chinese and Japanese porcelain and lac. We've got
to suck his brains."
"Ugh!" said Susan.
During these first few weeks she displayed great aptitude as a
saleswoman. Her face, so ingenuous in its expression, her soft voice,
her pretty figure attracted customers. The price of every article in
the shop was marked in letters which she could turn into figures. But
this price was a "fancy one," what Quinney termed a "top-notcher."
Susan was instructed to take a third less. Quinney trained her to
answer awkward questions, to make a pretty picture of ignorance, to pose
effectively as the inexperienced wife keeping the shop during the
absence of her husband. He had said upon the morning of the grand
opening of _Quinneys'_, "I don't want you to tell lies, Sue."
"I wouldn't for the world," she replied.
He pinched her chin, chuckling derisively. "I know you wouldn't; but I
don't want you to tell all the truth neither."
"What do you mean?"
"This oak now. Me and you know it's new, but if a customer tells you
it's old, don't contradict him. 'Twouldn't be polite. All you know
about it is this--your clever hubby picked it up in France, in Brittany.
See?"
She asked anxiously, "It won't be acting a lie, dear?"
"Not a bit of it! By Gum, Sue, I'm as proud of that conscience of yours
as I am of that jar. Not a flaw in either."
After this she played her part so artlessly that Joe chuckled half a
dozen times a day. She tackled the Bishop--alone. Quinney saw the
great man approaching and told Susan. She wished to bolt, but Quinney
disappeared instead, listening to the duologue that followed. The
Bishop stared at the fine wares from Tomlin's, whipped out his
spectacles, and entered, smiling at Susan's blushing face.
"Good-morning, my lord!"
"Good-morning, Mrs. Quinney. May I look at some of these tempting
things?"
He looked at what was best amongst the porcelain sent down by Tomlin,
displaying knowledge of the different periods. Then he said
courteously, "As this is my first visit, I must buy something for luck.
What is the price of that small jar with the _prunus_ decoration? If it
is within my means----"
He paused, gravely expectant, but Susan divined somehow what was
flitting through his mind; the outrageous prices exacted by old Quinney.
She perceived that this was a test purchase. The price of the jar was
marked five pounds. Susan said demurely, "We can sell this to you, my
lord, for three pounds ten."
"I'll take it, Mrs. Quinney."
He went away with his purchase in his hand. Quinney came back, not too
well pleased.
"He'd have given a fiver for it. Why didn't you ask more than we was
prepared to take?"
Susan, knowing her own strength, answered decisively:
"His lordship confirmed me, Joe."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"He knows about china. He passed by the inferior stuff. I wanted him
to tell his friends that our prices were very reasonable; and I wanted
him to come again. He promised that he would. And I think the clergy,
our own clergy, ought to be treated--generously."
"By Gum, you're right!" said Quinney. "They'll tell the old women that
our prices touch bottom, reg'lar bargains."
She was equally successful with Mrs. Nish, a widow of ample means and an
ardent collector. Mrs. Nish may have seen the Bishop's jar and have
learned from him that it had been bought at a modest figure. She came
in next day, richly rustling in black silk, a large, imposing woman,
with a deportment that indicated opulence and a complexion heightened by
good living. Mr. Nish had accumulated a fortune in Australia,
sheep-farming, and had died--as so many such men do--when he retired
from active business. His widow bought a large house standing in a
small garden, just outside Melchester. The Close called upon her (not
the County), because she subscribed generously to local charities. Her
taste, however, was flamboyantly rococo; and on that account Quinney
despised her, although he admitted to Susan that she might be educated.
When he beheld her pair of prancing bays, he whispered to Susan, "Have a
go at the old girl!" Then he retreated discreetly to his inner room.
Mrs. Nish greeted Susan with much affability, and immediately mentioned
the Bishop, "my lording" him with unction. The jar with _prunus_
decoration was spoken of as a little prune pot.
"I want one just like it."
"I'm afraid," said Susan, "that you will not find another just like it."
"As near as may be," said Mrs. Nish.
"The only other jar with similar decoration, and of the same period, is
this."
She displayed the finest jar in their possession, adding, "The price is
fifty pounds."
Mrs. Nish was tremendously impressed.
"It can't be worth all that," she protested.
"I think his lordship would tell you that it was. We don't expect to
sell it. In fact it belongs to somebody else. We get a small
commission if it is sold."
Susan carefully replaced the jar, and picked up its counterfeit.
"This is modern, madam, a very clever production, made by the same
factory in China. We ask five pounds for this."
"I don't buy fakes."
"Of course not, madam. My husband says Lord Mel has not a finer piece
of blue and white than that."
Mrs. Nish turned aside to examine the oak, but her eyes wandered now and
again to the big jar. Susan knew that she was thinking how pleasant it
would be to say carelessly, "Oh, yes; I paid fifty pounds for that."
Quinney carried the jar to her house late that afternoon, and he told
Susan that she was a clever dear.
"You like the work?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"I like being with you, Joe."
"Good! You can consider yourself permanently engaged, Mrs. Quinney."
"Permanently?"
His quick ear detected an odd inflection. He glanced at her sharply,
and saw a faint blush. In silence they stared at each other. Then
Quinney kissed her, pinched her cheek, pulled her small ear, as he said
boisterously:
"Ho! Another job in view?"
She whispered:
"I--I think so."
*CHAPTER V*
*SUSAN PREPARES*
*I*
When Susan left the shop and returned to her own house to make
preparations for a visitor, she went unwillingly, postponing the hour
that meant separation from the man she loved, making light of his
anxiety, but secretly rejoicing in it. Her faithful heart dwelt with
apprehension upon a future spent apart from Joe, apart from the
excitements of the shop, a future of small things and small people. She
tried to visualize herself as a mother and the vision was blurred. When
she said rather timidly, "What will you do without me?" he had assured
her with vain repetitions that he had more than enough to occupy his
mind. The dolorous conclusion was inevitable. Joe could get along
without a partner in the shop. But she could not conceive of life
without him.
During this period of intermittent joys and fears, chasing each other
daily and nightly through her brain, Susan was humorously conscious that
Joe regarded the coming baby as his rather than hers. He would say,
chuckling, "Well, Mrs. Q., how is _my_ baby this morning? Any news of
him?" The sex of the child was taken for granted. Susan had sufficient
obstinacy and spirit to resent this cocksure attitude. From the first
she maintained that it would be a girl. Mrs. Biddlecombe was much
shocked at the intimate nature of conversations carried on before her.
The good woman belonged to a generation which never mentioned babies
till they lay in bassinettes, fit to be seen and worshipped by all the
world. Quinney trampled upon these genteel sensibilities.
"The kid _is_ comin'--ain't it?"
"We hope so," replied his mother-in-law austerely.
"We know it, old dear. Why not talk about it? Joe Quinney, junior!
There you are!"
"It sounds so--indelicate."
"That be blowed for a tale! Lawsy, there's no saying what my son may
not be. Think o' my brains and his dear little mother's looks." Worse
followed. He began to call Susan "mother." Mrs. Biddlecombe protested
in vain. Laburnum Row laughed openly. Everybody knew! One terrible
morning, a disgusting small boy shouted after her, "Hullo, gran'ma!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe, moreover, had no sympathy with Susan's ardent desire
to remain near her husband, intimately connected with the things which
interested him so tremendously. She lacked the quickness of wit to
perceive what Susan instinctively recognized, the increasing and
ever-absorbing love that this queer young man manifested for his
business. In that business, in the unwearying quest for beautiful
objects, the wife foreshadowed a rival, a rival the more to be feared
because it was amorphous, senseless, chaotic. She took little pleasure
in the beautiful furniture which filled the Dream Cottage, because she
could never feel that it was hers. She would have chosen things which he
despised as rubbish, but they would have been very dear to her. In a
real sense Joe's furniture stood massively between husband and wife.
Again and again when she was hungering for soft words and caresses, he
would stand in front of the Chippendale china cabinet, and apostrophize
it with ardour, calling upon Susan to share his enthusiasm, slightly
irritable with her when she failed to perceive the beauty in what she
summed up in her own mind as "sticks and stones." She hated to see him
stroke fine specimens of porcelain. She came within an ace of smashing a
small but valuable Ming jar because he kissed it. Her condition must be
taken into account, but above and beyond any physical cause soared the
conviction, that her Joe's business might become the greatest thing in
his life, growing, as he predicted it would, to such enormous
proportions that there would be no room for her. Once she prayed that
his soaring ambitions might be clipped by a merciful Providence. She
rose from her knees trembling at her audacity, telling herself that she
was disloyal. And then she laughed, half hysterically, supremely
sensible that her Joe would travel far upon the road he had chosen, and
that it behoved her to quicken her steps, and not to lag behind, for it
was certain that he would expect her to keep up.
She had to pass some lonely hours. Mrs. Biddlecombe neglected no duties
connected with her own house, and the work at the Dream Cottage was done
meticulously by the competent servant whom Mrs. Biddlecombe had
installed there, and over whom she exercised a never-flagging vigilance.
Quinney issued orders that the mistress was to be spared. She was quite
capable of doing many things which the robust Maria would not allow her
to do. Even the delight of sewing upon minute garments was
circumscribed. Quinney, after secret "colloguing" with Mrs. Biddlecombe,
prepared a surprise. An amazing basket arrived from London, embellished
with pale blue ribbon, and filled with a layette fit--so the
advertisement said--for "a little lord."
Quinney attached a label inscribed with the following legend:
"To Joseph Quinney, Jr., Esq., care of Mother."
Susan's feelings upon the receipt of this superb and complete outfit--I
quote again from the advertisement--were of the bitterest--sweetest.
She had set her heart upon making her child's clothes, and she sewed
exquisitely. She had to pretend that she was overwhelmed with surprise
and gratitude, and Joe's delight in her simulated delight partly
compensated her for being so grossly deceitful. Wild plans entered her
head for compassing the destruction of the layette. During one awful
moment she experienced the monstrous thrills of a Nero, for the thought
had come to her, "Why not burn the furniture and the basket together?"
The cottage and furniture were handsomely insured! A mild perspiration
broke upon her forehead, as she murmured to herself:
"What a wicked, wicked girl I am!"
*II*
She distracted her mind by reading novels, and was mightily interested
in the works of Rosa Nouchette Carey. In the middle of the day Joe
would rush in, kiss her tenderly, inquire after Master Quinney, sit down
to dinner, and chatter boisterously of his business. His solicitude for
her comfort never failed, but its insistence became enervating. She had
excellent health, and was happily free from the minor ills which afflict
many women in her condition. But this sort of talk became exasperatingly
monotonous:
"Feelin' fine, are you?"
"Oh yes, Joe."
"Any one bloomin' thing you fancy?"
"Nothing."
"Not worriting? No stewin' in your own juice, hey?"
"No, no, no!"
"Good. Everything is going to be all right. Lucky little dear, you are,
to have a hubby who looks after you properly, and Joe Quinney, junior,
will be looked after also. Make no error about that. He's going to be
a very remarkable young man! Chose his parents with rare right
judgments he did. By Gum, when I read that little 'ad.' about his kit
bein' fit for a lord, I says to myself, 'Why not? Why shouldn't my son
be a lord one day?'"
"Joe, you are funny!"
"Funny? I'm dead serious, my girl. This stream," he tapped an inflated
chest, "rose higher than its source. It began not far from the gutter,
Susie. I'm not ashamed of it. Nothing of the snob about Joe Quinney!
I'm a bit of a river. I'm marked on the map. I flow all over the shop;
yes, I do. And my son may become a sort of Amazon. Do you know how
many square miles the Amazon waters?"
"Gracious, no!"
"Useful bit of knowledge. Nigh upon three million square miles!"
"Mercy!"
"I see Joe Quinney, junior, percolatin' everywhere, bang from one end of
the Empire to another."
"She's not born yet, poor little dear!"
"She! There you go again."
"I'm sure it will be a 'she.'"
"Not him. You trust my judgment. It's a gift with me. All great men
have it. Bonyparte and Wellington and Julius Caesar."
"You do go it."
"That's right. Do for a motto, that would. Go it! Keep a-moving! The
people in this silly old town are standin' still, up to their knees in
their graves already, poor souls!"
Then he would kiss her again, and bolt off to the shop, chuckling and
rubbing his hands.
Susan would return to her novel, and bury hopes and fears in the mild
adventures of a conventional and highly respectable pair of lovers. She
had always liked sweets, but at this period she enjoyed a surfeit of
them. The sentiment that exuded from every page of her favourite
romances affected her tremendously, and may have affected her unborn
child.
*III*
Upon the eve of the child's birth, nearly a year after her marriage,
Susan wrote a letter to her husband. She had spent the day pottering
about her bedroom, turning over certain clothes, notably her
wedding-gown, and recalling vividly the events succeeding her marriage,
the journey to France, all the pleasant incidents of the honeymoon.
From a small desk which had belonged to her father, a solid rosewood box
clamped with brass, she took certain "treasures," a bit of heather
picked by Joe when they took a jaunt together to the New Forest, a
trinket or two, a lock of Joe's hair, his letters tied up in pink ribbon
and her birth certificate, solemnly thrust into her hand by Mrs.
Biddlecombe upon the morning ol the wedding. Inside the desk remained a
few sheets of the "fancy" notepaper which she had used as a maid. She
selected a new nib, placed it in an ivory penholder, and began to write:
"MY DARLING HUSBAND,
"I want to tell you that the last year has been the happiest of my life.
I don't believe that I can ever be quite so happy again. You have been
sweet to me. When I have tried to tell you this, you have always
laughed, and so I want to write it down.
"Your loving
"SUSIE.
"P.S.--I hope you will marry again."
She placed the letter in an envelope to match, addressed it, and wrote
above it, "To be opened after my death." Then she shed a few tears,
feeling lonely and frightened, peering into the gulf which yawned in
front of her, knowing that the hour was almost at hand, when she must
fall down, down, down into unplumbed abysses of terror and pain.
She locked up the letter in the desk, put on a cloak, and crawled into
the Cathedral, whose vastness always impressed her. The great nave was
strangely familiar, yet unfamiliar. A soft, silvery light diffused
itself. Susan noticed that she was alone, whereas she was accustomed to
the Sunday crowd. The silence seemed to enfold her. It struck her
suddenly that for many hours during each day and night the great church
wherein she had worshipped since she was a child, was empty and silent,
a mere sepulchre of the mighty dead, who, lying in their splendid tombs,
awaited the Day of Resurrection.
Did they ever come forth at night?
What did it feel like to be dead?
Such questions had never seriously presented themselves to her before,
because she was normally healthy in mind and body. Death, indeed, had
been acclaimed in Laburnum Row as a not unwelcome excitement for the
living, an incident that loosened all tongues, which called for
criticism, and a good deal of eating and drinking. Now, alone amongst
the dead, Susan considered the inevitable change from the point of view,
so to speak, of those who were "taken." She was accustomed to these odd
middle-class euphuisms. This particular expression, invariably used by
Mrs. Biddlecombe, indicated a certain selection upon the part of the
Reaper, who "took" presumably those, whether young or old, who were ripe
for the sickle.
Susan shivered, praying fervently that she might be spared, that she
might be deemed unripe. Her thoughts flitted hither and thither, not
straying far from the austere figure with the sickle, settling now upon
this hypothesis and now upon that. For example, the commonest form of
condolence in Laburnum Row, leaping smugly from every matronly lip, was,
"He (or she) has entered into rest." Or, with tearful conviction,
"God's will be done." To doubt the truth of these statements would have
seemed to Susan rank blasphemy. Even now, face to face with the awful
possibility, her simple mind sucked comfort from them; they fortified
her trembling body for the great ordeal. But, at the same time, she was
conscious of a feeling of revolt, because life was so sweet, and her
enchanting pilgrimage had just begun. It would be cruel to take her!
And how would it affect Joe?
He would have his business; he would absorb himself in that. If he did
marry again he would choose some sensible woman, able to look after his
house and his child. She could not bear the horrid thought that a
second wife might be prettier than the first, that her Joe might forget
her kisses upon the lips of another woman. She murmured to herself,
"Joe can't do without me. I shall not be taken this time."
She went back to the Dream Cottage, unlocked her desk, opened her
letter, and added these words to the postscript:
"Marry a nice sensible woman, not quite so pretty as I am, one who will
be kind to my baby."
She stared at this for some time, pursing up her lips. Then she
carefully erased the possessive pronoun, and wrote "your" instead of
"my."
She was smiling when she locked the desk.
*IV*
Ten days afterwards the child was born. Quinney was summoned at four in
the afternoon by the breathless Maria, who gasped out that he was
wanted. Somehow Quinney leapt to the conclusion that all was over.
"Is the baby born?" asked Quinney.
"No, nor likely to be till after midnight."
She whisked off, leaving an astonished man vaguely wondering from what
source Maria had received this positive information. He closed the
shop, and then ran home. The doctor was leaving the cottage. Again
Quinney stammered out:
"Is it over?"
"Just begun," the doctor replied. Quinney hated him because he looked
so blandly self-possessed and indifferent.
"Mrs. Biddlecombe is with her," continued the doctor, in the same
suavely impassive tone. "They will send for me later. Good-afternoon!"
Quinney wanted to reply, "Oh, you go to blazes! I shall send for
somebody else; a man, not a machine," but he merely glared at the
doctor, and nodded. Pelting upstairs, two steps at a time, he
encountered Mrs. Biddlecombe upon the landing, with her forefinger on
her lip.
"Not so much noise, _please_!" she commanded, with the air and
deportment of an empress. It struck Quinney that she had expanded
enormously. Also she was dressed for the part, wearing an imposing
dressing-gown, and felt slippers. Quinney had an odd feeling that she
was enjoying herself at Susie's expense. Secretly he was furious,
because she seemed to block the entrance to _his_ room. He tried to
push past her.
"Where are you going, Joseph?"
He was quite confounded, but from long habit he replied in his jerky,
whimsical way:
"Into my room o' course. Where did you think I was going? Into the
coal cellar?"
Mrs. Biddlecombe answered with majesty, not budging:
"We"--Maria was indicated as an accomplice--"have got another room ready
for you."
Quinney said resolutely, "I'm a-going to stay with Susie till it's
over."
"No, you ain't!"
"Yes, I am!"
She gripped his arm. Her voice was coolly contemptuous, but she spoke
with authority.
"No, you ain't. 'Tisn't seemly."
"That be damned!"
"Joseph Quinney! And an innocent unborn babe might hear you! Now,
listen to me, and do just as I tell you. Men ain't wanted on these
occasions. You can go in and see Susan for a few minutes, but,
remember, out you go when I say the word. Try to be a help and not an
hindrance. I sent for you because you may be wanted to run for the
doctor."
"Run from 'im more likely," said Quinney. "Cold-blooded beast."
"He's just what a gentleman should be at such times. You take pattern
by him! Now, go in, don't shout, say something cheerful, and leave the
room when I nod."
Throughout this speech Quinney was conscious that his will was ebbing
from him. The mother-in-law triumphed by virtue of superior knowledge
and experience. Quinney respected knowledge.
"But if Susie wants me to stay----?"
"She won't."
He entered the room. Somehow he had expected to find his wife in bed,
pale, frightened, passive. She was walking up and down. Her cheeks
were red, her eyes were bright. And yet there was something about her,
some hunted expression in the tender eyes, some nervous tension which
moved the man tremendously. His eyes brimmed with tears, his voice
broke, as he called her by name. For a moment they clung to each other,
and he wondered at her strength. Mrs. Biddlecombe, frowned portentously.
There were moments when she told herself that Susan had married a very
common person.
"That'll do," she said. "We don't want any flustrations."
Susan murmured:
"Dear, dear Joe!"
She pulled down his head and kissed the tears from his eyes. It was a
moment of pure bliss for her. They sat down, holding each other's hands,
oblivious of Mrs. Biddlecombe, who still stared at them, trying to
remember how the late Mr. Biddlecombe had behaved when Susan was born,
and vaguely mindful of his conspicuous absence, and the discovery later
that he had assuaged his anxiety with strong waters.
Meanwhile, Susan's tenderness had aroused in her husband the
determination to vanquish his mother-in-law. The power to cope with her
surged within.
"You want me to stay, Susie?"
"Oh yes, till the pain comes."
"And after?"
"No, no!"
"But why, why?"
She looked prettier and sweeter than he had ever seen her when she
whispered:
"I couldn't bear for you to see my face. It, it," her voice quivered,
"it frightens me. Just now I looked in the glass, and I didn't
recognize it as mine."
"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Biddlecombe.
"I shall do as Susan wishes," said Quinney humbly.
"You will leave the room when I nod?"
"Please!" said Susan, with her arms about his neck.
Presently Mrs. Biddlecombe nodded.
*CHAPTER VI*
*THE VISITOR ARRIVES*
*I*
Quinney went downstairs, whistling softly to hide a growing perturbation
of spirit. He could not disguise from himself that he was terribly
worried. Till now he had bolstered anxiety with the reflection that
what was happening had happened before to millions and billions (he
loved big figures) of women, but he had never realized that each and all
of them had suffered cruel pain. When Susan spoke of her changed face,
a spasm of agony twisted him. He resented fiercely the conviction that
his wife must suffer, and he divined somehow, partly from Mrs.
Biddlecombe and partly from Susan, that the pain was greater than he had
supposed. He salved his quivering sensibilities with the balm applied
by all husbands at such moments; she was young, healthy, and strong. She
would pull through. And yet, the damnable thought that sometimes things
did happen grew and grew.
He descended into a modest cellar, and brought up a bottle of port,
which he decanted carefully. It was the best wine that could be bought
in Melchester, and he had secured a couple of dozen with the intention
of drinking his son's health many times. He tasted it to satisfy
himself that the wine was in prime condition. He held it to the light
and marked its superb colour. Then he sat down to read the paper, as
was his habit when the day's work was done. Pinker, the grocer, and
other men of substance in Melchester, were too fond of boasting that
they read the morning paper in the morning before attending to the
paramount claims of their own business. This attitude of mind towards
the affairs of the nation perplexed Quinney, who frankly considered his
own affairs first. He belonged to that once immense majority of his
fellow-countrymen--a majority much decreased of late years--who believe
that certain altruists manage more or less successfully the business of
the country. He was quite willing to allow these gentlemen, whose
services were unpaid, a comparatively free hand upon the unexpressed
condition that they did not bother him or interfere with the conduct of
his private affairs. At that time the Tories were in power, coming to
the end of a long tenure of office. Quinney passively approved of the
Tories, and actively disliked Radicals, whom he stigmatized generally as
mischief-makers. Under certain circumstances he would have been a
red-hot Radical. During his father's lifetime, for instance, when he
groaned in secret beneath the heel of oppression, he would have been
eager--had the opportunity presented itself--to join any secret society
organized for the overthrow of "tyrants."
He read the paper through, criticizing nothing except the wording of
certain advertisements. He meant to advertise his own wares some day,
although Tomlin believed in more particular methods. In the early
'nineties, small tradesmen had no faith in Advertisements. They built
up a small but solid connection, which they came to regard as
unalienably theirs.
Presently Quinney lit his pipe, and his thoughts with the smoke strayed
upstairs. Mrs. Biddlecombe appeared.
"Smoking?"
Quinney, conscious of implied censure, replied defiantly:
"Generally called that, ain't it?"
"You can smoke outside."
"I can, but I won't. How's Susie?"
The inevitable answer distressed him terribly.
"Susan will be much worse before she's better. You can fetch the nurse,
and finish your pipe while you are fetching her."
He fetched the nurse, who lived not far away in a row of small
jerry-built houses. She was a tall, thin woman, with a nice complexion,
and hair prematurely white. Her invincible optimism much fortified our
hero. And she possessed an immense reserve of small talk, and intimate
knowledge of simple, elemental details connected with her profession.
She captured Quinney's affection by saying, after the first glance at
his face:
"Now, don't you worry, Mr. Quinney, because there's nothing to worry
about with Dr. Ransome and me in charge of the case. We never have any
trouble with our patients. You'll be the proud father of a big fat
baby-boy before you know where you are."
She talked on very agreeably, but she managed to convey to her listener
that, temporarily, he was an outsider, at the beck and call of women,
and regarded by them as negligible. This impression became so strong
that he knocked the ashes and half-consumed tobacco out of a second pipe
before he entered the Dream Cottage. The nurse was greeted by Mrs.
Biddlecombe with majestic courtesy and taken upstairs.
Once more Quinney found himself alone.
Feeling much more hopeful, he beguiled another hour in examining his
furniture and china. It is worth mentioning that already he was able to
discern flaws in these precious possessions, indicating an eye becoming
more trained in its quest after perfection. None of these household gods
were regarded as permanent. They would be sold to make room for finer
specimens of craftsmanship. Amongst his china, he discovered a bogus
bit. Hitherto he had believed it to be a fine specimen. He was
half-distressed, half-pleased at the amazing discovery. He had paid
five pounds for it. The paste was all right, but the decoration was
unquestionably of a later period. Half of its value, actual and
prospective, had vanished. Nevertheless, the gain was enormous.
Unaided, he had detected the false decoration, the not quite pure
quality of the gilding.
"I'm climbin'!" he muttered to himself.
As he replaced the "fake" in the cabinet, consoling himself with the
reflection that he could easily resell it at the price he had paid, he
smelt fried fish. Extremely annoyed, he rushed into the kitchen, where
Maria was caught, red-handed, in the astounding act of frying mackerel
at six o'clock.
"What's the meaning o' this?"
Maria answered tartly:
"Meat tea for you and Mrs. Biddlecombe."
She too, ordinarily the respectful menial, dared to glare at him, as if
resenting his appearance in his own kitchen as an unpardonable
intrusion. Quinney said violently, not sorry to let off steam:
"What the hell d'ye mean? Meat tea? I eat my supper at seven, and you
know it!"
Maria tossed her head.
"You'll eat it at six to-night. Mrs. Biddlecombe's orders. I shall
give notice if you swear at me."
He fled--vanquished by another woman. At the door he fired a parting
shot:
"Smells all over Melchester. I believe that fish is bad."
"I didn't buy it," replied Maria calmly.
*II*
The meat tea was served, and Mrs. Biddlecombe joined Quinney at table.
He made no protests, but refused to touch the mackerel. When
interrogated he said that he disliked stale fish.
"Stale fish, Joseph!"
"Did you buy it?"
"I did."
"Did you choose it?"
Mrs. Biddlecombe's ample cheeks turned a deeper damask.
"I did not. I instructed the fishmonger to send round some fresh fish."
"Thought so!" said Quinney, as he attacked the cold beef.
Unhappily, Mrs. Biddlecombe was beguiled into eating heartily of the
mackerel, desiring to assert her faith in its freshness and her
confidence in the fishmonger. Conversation languished. Presently,
Quinney jumped to his feet and raced upstairs. He tapped at his wife's
door. The nurse opened it, and as she did so the husband heard a faint
moan.
"You can't come in now," said the nurse.
"I'm not coming in. You tell my wife, with my love, not to eat any
mackerel, and don't you touch it yourself, if you want to be fit and
well to-night."
He returned to the dining-room feeling, for the first time, that he had
been of practical service to omnipotent woman! But the faint moan had
destroyed his appetite. He told Mrs. Biddlecombe that he intended to
walk up and down the garden.
"You'll be within call?"
"Of course. Any notion when the doctor will be wanted?"
"He may be wanted at any minute."
"You may want him before Susan does!"
He shut the door before the astonished lady could reply.
*III*
Alone in the garden so dear to Susan, so carefully tended by her, his
torment began. The evening was warm, and the windows of Susan's room
were thrown wide open. All sounds floated out into the gathering
twilight. Quinney sat down on a bench, and listened, palsied with
misery.
The time passed. He would walk about, and then sit down again, lighting
his pipe and letting it go out half a dozen times before it was smoked.
Once he ventured into the kitchen, where the sight of his face softened
Maria. She was a spinster, but at least twenty-five years old. So
Quinney blurted out:
"Is it always like this?"
"First time--yes," replied Maria.
Finally, Mrs. Biddlecombe descended, and bade him fetch the doctor. She
was not an observant woman, but even she, with her prejudices against
all males, could not fail to mark the ravages of suffering.
"My God!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "I didn't know it was like this. I've
heard her!"
"I do not regret that!" replied Mrs. Biddlecombe, not unkindly, but with
emphasis. "If I had my way all men and all big boys, too, should know
what their mothers have suffered. They might be kinder to them."
Dr. Ransome was fetched. He lived near the Close, in a comfortable
red-brick house. It seemed to Quinney perfectly extraordinary that this
man of vast experience in suffering should be so leisurely in his
movements and speech. However, he managed to instil some of his
confidence into the unhappy husband, assuring him that the case
presented no untoward symptoms, and was likely to end happily in a few
hours.
A few hours!
As they passed the wicket gate Dr. Ransome paused.
"Mr. Quinney," he said gravely, "I advise you to go for a brisk walk.
You can do nothing more."
"But if my wife should want me?"
"She is not likely to want you. It might make it easier for her, if she
knew you were out of the way."
"I'll sit in the dining-room," said Quinney.
He did so, casting longing eyes at the decanter of port, sorely tempted
to drink and drink till he became drunk. He was learning much upon this
terrible night. Ever afterwards, when he encountered drunkards, he
forebore to condemn them, wondering what had first driven them to seek
oblivion, and thankful that the temptation to do so had never mastered
him.
Presently the nurse joined him, and he was struck by the change in her
pleasant, capable face. Upon being pressed, she admitted cautiously
that there were slight complications.
Worse followed!
At midnight, Quinney was dispatched for another doctor. And then what
he had predicted, half in jest, came to pass. Mrs. Biddlecombe was
seized with violent pains. Quinney had been right about the mackerel;
and the nurse was called upon to give undivided attention to the elder
woman. Quinney took refuge in the kitchen, where Maria was busy
preparing hot poultices and predicting two deaths in the house, if not
three, before morning. Never in his short life, not even in the throes
of nightmare, had Quinney imagined any concatenation of misery which
could compare with the realities of this night.
At three in the morning, once more alone in the dining-room, he went
down on his knees. In a wild, unreasoning fashion, dazed by what he had
experienced, he proposed to bargain with Omnipotence. Solemnly, he swore
that he would sell no more new oak as old, if his precious Susan was
spared. He renounced fervently all claim to Joseph Quinney, junior. If
choice had to be made, let the child be taken and the mother left!
He rose from his knees somewhat comforted, so true is it that sincere
prayer, if it accomplishes nothing else, is of real benefit to those who
pray. He remembered the faked specimen of Early Worcester, and his
resolution to sell it at the first opportunity. He rushed into the
sitting-room, seized the cup and saucer, and smashed them. The violence
of the action seemed to bind the bargain between himself and the Ruler
of the Universe. Standing erect this time, he swore that faked china as
well as faked oak was to be eternally repudiated. Let him perish,
instead of Susan, if he failed to keep his word!
By an odd coincidence, he had hardly registered these vows when he
realized that there was silence upstairs. Within a few minutes Maria
poked her head into the room to report a marked improvement in Mrs.
Biddlecombe.
"And your mistress?"
Maria shook her head.
"I know nothing about her, sir."
"Everything seems strangely quiet."
"Yes, sir; terribly so."
She dabbed at her eyes, inflamed already by much weeping, and withdrew.
Quinney went to the foot of the stairs, listening. The suspense became
excruciating, harder to endure than the anguished moaning of his wife.
He never knew afterwards how long he remained there, but presently the
door opened and the measured tread of both doctors was heard on the
landing. They came slowly downstairs till they perceived Quinney. Dr.
Ransome spoke, and his voice seemed to come from an immense distance:
"It's all over! Your child is born."
"Thank God!" exclaimed Quinney. He added tremulously: "And my poor
wife?"
"She is very much exhausted. Presently you can go to her for a minute.
It has been a complicated case, but we anticipate no further
complications."
Quinney burst into tears.
Both doctors consoled him, taking him by the arm, patting his shoulder,
telling him that he was the father of a robust infant, that there was no
cause whatever for unreasonable anxiety. Not till they were on the
point of leaving the cottage did the distracted father remember the
decanter of port.
"Come in here, gentlemen, please."
They followed him into the dining-room, and three glasses were duly
charged.
"My son!" said Quinney, holding up his glass.
Dr. Ransome stared at him, then he smiled.
"Don't you know? Didn't we tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"You are the father, my dear sir, of a ten-pound daughter!"
*CHAPTER VII*
*JOSEPHINA*
*I*
He stole up to his wife's room as soon as the doctors had gone. The
pale silvery light of early dawn seemed to steal up with him, making the
silence more impressive and mysterious. Upon a table on the landing the
lamp burned low. He had been told to expect the weak wail of the
newly-born. The nurse, indeed, as they walked together from her
cottage, had spoken of it as the most wonderful sound in all the world
when heard by a father for the first time. But he had not heard it.
He turned out the lamp, and noticed that his hand was trembling.
Exercising his will, which he knew to be strong, he endeavoured to stop
this strange twitching. He could not do so. Suddenly, he became
conscious of an immense weariness; hie limbs ached; his head was
throbbing; he felt like an overtired child. It even occurred to him
that it would be not altogether unpleasant to cry himself to sleep. An
odd fear of seeing Susan gripped him. What did she look like after the
rigours of this awful night? Was she lying insensible? Would she know
him? Would he break down before her, when he beheld the cruel ravages
of intense pain? For her sake he must pull himself together.
Thereupon a struggle for the mastery took place between spirit and
flesh. He was not able to analyse his emotions, but he divined somehow
that this was his labour, that something was being born out of him,
wrenched from his very vitals, a new self with a brighter intelligence,
a more vigorous sympathy. The pains of the spirit were upon him.
Presently an idea emerged; the conception which must take place in every
human soul, the quickening of a transcendent conviction that pain is
inevitable and inseparable from growth. It would be absurd to contend
that his writhing thoughts could twist themselves into the form to which
expression has been given here. He was very young, and, apart from a
special knowledge of his business, extremely ignorant; but it was
revealed to him at this moment, a babe and suckling in such matters,
that something had happened to him, that he could never be the same
again. Fatherhood, and, all it implied, had been paid for with tears
and agony.
The door of Susan's room opened.
He saw the nurse, who beckoned. Her face had become normal; she smiled
gravely, as he passed her, and she closed the door softly, leaving
husband and wife together.
His first impression was that the room smelled very sweet, filled with
the fragrance of the flowers in the garden. The windows remained wide
open. The light was stronger than on the landing, but soft, for the sun
had not yet risen. Everything was in order. The habit of swift
observation enabled him to grasp all this in a flash, although, so far
as he knew, his eyes were fixed upon the bed. Susan lay upon her side
of it. Her face was milk-white, with purple lines beneath eyes which
seemed unduly sunken. Her pretty hair, done in two plaits, framed her
face. To Quinney she looked exactly like a child who had been
frightfully ill. It was impossible to think of her as a mother. Nor
did he do so. He had forgotten the baby altogether, his mind was
concentrated upon the Susan whom he loved, upon the Susan who appeared
to have returned from a long journey into an unknown land, a new and
strange Susan, for her lips never smiled at him, but in her tender eyes
he recognized his wife, his own little woman, his most priceless
possession, the soul of her shone steadily out of those eyes acclaiming
his soul as he acclaimed hers.
When he kissed her, she sighed. He slipped his hand beneath the
bedclothes, and took her hand, murmuring her name again and again. She
did not speak, and he did not wish her to speak. Her silence implied
far more than speech.
He felt the faint pressure of her hand, so small and weak within his
grasp. Then he laid his head upon her bosom. He could just hear her
heart, beating slowly and feebly. He lifted his head, putting his cheek
against hers. She sighed again--deliciously! He tried to believe that
his strength, which seemed to have returned on a spring-tide of
irresistible volume, could be infused into her. And it may have been
so, for presently she spoke, the words fluttering from her pale lips.
"You are not very disappointed?"
Disappointed!
He reassured her upon that point, so overmasteringly that she smiled,
and the pressure of her hand became stronger.
The nurse appeared, beckoning once more. Quinney followed her
obediently into the adjoining room, where an object that looked like a
wrinkled orange was affirmed to be his daughter's head! Obviously the
nurse expected him to kiss this; and he did so without any uplifting
exultation, without a single compensating thrill! It occurred to him
vaguely that Susan and he had paid a thumping price for very little. He
was shown a hand like the hand of an anaemic doll. Into the tiny palm
he slipped, cautiously, his forefinger. To his amazement, the finger
was gripped unmistakably.
"Well, I'm damned!" he exclaimed. As the nurse raised her eyebrows in
silent protest, he added quickly: "I've been swearing all night; one
more little one don't count!"
The nurse glanced professionally at his haggard face and dishevelled
hair.
"You go to bed at once!" she commanded.
He did so.
*II*
Susan's recovery from her confinement was slow but unattended, as the
doctor had predicted, by complications. She was able, happily, to nurse
her child, but for many months she remained in cotton wool at the Dream
Cottage, recruiting her energies in the pleasant garden, and rarely
straying beyond it. The question of her returning to the shop was
settled drastically.
"Who'll take care of the kid? Wouldn't leave her to a nursemaid, would
you?
"N-n-no," faltered Susan, feeling more wife than mother. She qualified
the doubtful negative by murmuring: "I did love helping you."
"Lord bless you! You're helping me at home--a woman's right place.
It's the biggest help a woman can give to a man. You run things fine!
Yes, you do!"--for she had shaken her head. "And the kid has the very
best nurse in all the world! Shop, indeed! I don't want my wife
demeaning herself in a shop!"
He snorted with indignation, and Susan, with a suppressed sigh, let the
subject drop for ever.
Meanwhile he had told her of his solemn oath, which made a profound
impression upon a sensitive mind and conscience. The immediate
consequence, however, of a determination to renounce false gods was
absolutely unforeseen. Two days after the birth of the baby, when the
shattered little mother was still lying between life and death, Quinney
distracted his mind by putting on one side every doubtful piece of
_vertu_ in his possession, repricing faithfully, even at a loss to
himself, each particular fake. He was engrossed in this very
uncongenial task--for the old Adam was merely dazed and not dead within
him--when the Marquess of Mel entered the shop. He had heard from Dr.
Ransome a racy and humorous account of Quinney under stress, and had
been much moved thereby. As a grand seigneur of the old school he
deemed it a duty to call upon so remarkable a tenant, and if necessary,
hearten him up by the purchase of a bit of furniture or china.
Heretofore, the Quinneys, father and son, had dealt with the magnate's
agent. Lord Mel, so far as he knew, had never exchanged a single word
with the son of a man whom he accounted an old rascal.
Quinney received him without betraying any awe of his rank, listening
respectfully to his landlord's felicitations. He loved a lord, as all
true Britons do and must, but he had not yet recovered from a tremendous
shock, and his thoughts were entirely centred upon Susan. When Lord Mel
paused, Quinney replied:
"She's not out of the wood yet, my lord."
"I know how you feel--I have been through it. And now show me over your
premises. The Bishop tells me that you have some fine porcelain."
"I've a lot of poor stuff, too!" grumbled Quinney.
Lord Mel smiled. He enjoyed what he called "browsing" in curiosity
shops, but he had never heard so candid an admission before. He was
still more surprised at what followed. His own taste strayed pleasantly
in the eighteenth century, and he was not aware, of course, that this
was Quinney's beloved period. Nor did he know that the saloon at Mel
Court was nearly as familiar to Quinney as to himself. At first his
attention was challenged by the faked oak. The panels were really
beautiful, and inasmuch as they had deceived Quinney himself, it is not
very remarkable that they imposed themselves upon an amateur.
"Have you much of this oak?" he asked.
"Any amount of it!"
"Enough to panel a room?"
"Yes, I think so."
"What will you take for the lot? It happens that I can use it at Mel
Court. I am building a new billiard room, and my lady is rather tired
of mahogany."
Quinney's keen eyes sparkled. Lord Mel was too big a swell to bargain,
and he was obviously not a "think-it-over fellow." He would pay,
cheerfully, a big price for these panels and, as likely as not, ask no
questions about them. Then he thought of Susan, white and helpless in
the big bed. With a tremendous effort, and speaking abruptly, as man to
man, he said:
"It's all faked stuff."
"What! Impossible!"
"I can sell the lot, my lord, at a price that will surprise you." He
named the price, which included a modest profit to himself, wondering
what Tomlin would say when he heard the story. Tomlin, of course, owned
an undivided half-interest in the panels. Lord Mel was astounded. He
bought the panels, and stared at Quinney's whimsical face.
"The price does surprise me," he admitted.
"Perfectly wonderful!" said Quinney. "The real stuff--if you could have
found such a quantity--would have run into a couple of thousand."
"But, pardon me, aren't you doing business upon rather a novel plan?"
"That's as may be, my lord. I propose to keep the very best fakes and
to label 'em as such. I have the genuine stuff, too. Take Oriental
china. Look at those jars!"
He was fairly started, aglow with excitement and enthusiasm, oblivious
of himself and his visitor, pouring out a flow of intimate information,
unconsciously displaying himself rather than his wares, forcing his
queer personality upon a man of the world, a connoisseur of men as well
as porcelain. Inevitably, his genius--long afterwards recognized as
such--for beauty challenged the attention of his listener--himself a
lover of beauty. They met as equals upon the common ground of similar
tastes. Quinney let himself go. In his perfervid excitement he gestured
as he did before Susan; the floor was strewn with aitches; grammar
halted feebly behind his impassioned sentences. There were things, lots
o' things, that were just right--perfection; and one of 'em--one
bloomin' bit o' real stuff, one tiny cup, potted by a master, painted by
an artist, gilded by an honest man who used the purest gold, twenty-two
carat, by Gum!--was worth all the beastly rubbish in the world. He
ended upon the familiar note.
"I hate rubbish! Rubbish is wicked, rubbish is cruel, rubbish poisons
the world. I was brought up amongst it, and that's why I loathe it and
fear it."
When he finished Lord Mel held out his hand.
"Mr. Quinney," he said simply, "I am happy to make your acquaintance;
you are building even better than you know."
It is quite impossible to exaggerate the results that flowed directly
and indirectly from this memorable interview. In the first place,
Quinney secured a patron and friend who was all-powerful in a large
county. Lord Mel kept open house; he entertained the greatest men in
the kingdom. He sent his guests to the man whom he affirmed positively
to be the only honest dealer that he knew; he brought experts to whom
Quinney listened feverishly, sucking their special knowledge from them,
as a greedy child sucks an orange. He allowed our hero access to his
own collections, permitted him to make an inventory of them, and later
discarded upon his advice certain questionable specimens. In a word,
this oddly-assorted couple became friends, comrades, in their
indefatigable quest for beautiful objects. It was Lord Mel who
dispatched Quinney to Ireland--one of his richest hunting grounds. In
Ireland Quinney fell passionately in love with old cut-glass, at a time
when the commercial demand for it was almost negligible. In fine, Lord
Mel discovered Quinney and trained him to discover himself.
*III*
Picture to yourself Tomlin's amazement and disgust when he paid his next
visit to the ancient town some three weeks after the sale of the panels.
And it must be admitted that he had reason for complaint, and that his
first comment upon Quinney's astounding proceedings was justified.
"You don't seem to have thought of me!"
"I didn't," said Quinney, with admirable simplicity.
"I told you about that fellow in Brittany; I sent you to him; I provided
half the cash, and I was counting upon big profits. You've let me down
badly."
"Looks like it, to be sure!"
"Damned outrage, I call it!"
"So it is; but I was desperate. Susan was dying. I never thought of you
at all. Now, look here! Don't overheat yourself! You was counting upon
a fifty per cent. profit."
"Perhaps more."
"You do like to get your fore-feet into the trough. Any Jew blood in
your family? Keep cool! At first we got our big profit, and how much
stuff did we sell? Very little. Now I've orders coming in faster than
I can fill 'em, and your profit, small and quick, will knock endways the
big and slow. See?"
Eventually he made Tomlin see, and the London dealer had to admit that
Lord Mel, played by Quinney as a trump card, introduced a new element
into the game. The orders were coming in.
"It's silly to be dishonest," said Quinney, "because sooner or later a
feller is found out."
"Honest fakes," murmured Tomlin. The contradiction in terms upset him.
"That's it. And my fakes are goin' to be advertised as the best in the
world--really fine stuff, at a price which'll defy competition."
"You're an extraordinary man, Joe. There is something in it. Honest
fakes!"
"Rub this in as vaseline, old man. If we can sell honest fakes cheap,
we can sell the real Simon pure stuff at the top notch. Rich people
don't haggle over a few extra pounds if they know that they're not being
imposed upon. I'm going to offer to take back any bit I sell as genuine
which may be pronounced doubtful by the experts."
Tomlin shook his head mournfully, having no exalted faith in experts.
Also, he, was beginning to realize that Quinneys' as a sort of
dumping-ground for his surplus and inferior wares was now under a high
protective tariff. He growled out:
"If you think you know your own business----"
"Cocksure of it, old man!"
"I can only hope that Pride won't have a fall."
"You come with me and drink my daughter's health. Never saw such a kid
in all my life--and not a month old!"
Tomlin grinned, perceiving an opportunity of "landing" heavily.
"Daughter? Rather muddled things, haven't you? Thought you'd arranged
with your missis that it was to be a boy?"
"Did you? Well, being a better husband than you are, I let her 'ave her
own way in that."
*IV*
The daughter was duly christened Josephina Biddlecombe, and, for the
purposes of this narrative, we may skip a number of pet names, beginning
with Baby and ending with Josie-posie. Ultimately she was called Posy
and nothing else--a rechristening that took place in the distinguished
presence of the Bishop of Melchester. The child was nearly three years
old when that courtly prelate happened to drift into the shop. Susan
and the child had entered a few minutes before.
"And what is your name, my dear?" he asked.
"Josie-posie," she replied demurely. Even at that early age Quinney's
daughter was absolutely devoid of fear or shyness. She added
confidingly: "And I wear a macheese."
"What does she wear?" asked the Bishop of Susan.
Susan blushed.
"She means a--chemise, my lord."
The Bishop laughed heartily, inferring that hitherto she had worn some
other garment. Then he said in his pleasant voice: "Josie-posie is too
big a name for so tiny a maid. I like the second half of it better than
the first."
"So do I," said Susan.
"Yes, yes; Posy is a sweet, old-fashioned name, and it describes the
child admirably."
When he had taken leave of them, Quinney said with conviction:
"He's right. Posy she is, the little dear! And his lordship didn't
fail to notice, I'll be bound, that she smells as sweet as she looks."
After this incident the child was always called Posy.
It is not easy to describe the sprite, because she presented a baffling
combination of father and mother. Her native grace, her pretty
colouring and delicate features, were a sweet inheritance from Susan;
her quickness of wit, her powers of observation, her unmistakable sense
of beauty--for she shrank tremblingly from what was mean or ugly--came
from Quinney. Essentially she was a child of love, adored by both her
parents, and, up to a certain point, spoiled by them. Mrs. Biddlecombe
was fondly of the opinion that the child had taken from her parents what
was best in each, buttressing the assertion by calling attention to the
dash of red in the golden locks, and the peculiar alertness of the
mite's glance flashing hither and thither, searching for the things
which delighted her, and acclaiming them when found with joyous
chirruping and gestures.
"Reg'lar butterfly!" said Quinney. "Dotty about flowers! Picks out the
best, by Gum!"
The first three years passed without incident. The business prospered.
Quinney engaged a capable assistant, and began his travels. His
restlessness affected Susan, but she accepted it resignedly. He was
different from other men and not to be judged by ordinary standards.
Argument was wasted upon him. She expostulated vainly when he began to
change the furniture. The knowledge that each bit was more valuable and
beautiful than its predecessor did not appeal to her at all. She
beguiled him into talking about his business, feigning interest in its
growth, but became increasingly conscious that the details bored her.
The Dream Cottage, as she had pictured it, faded from memory. It had
become a sort of small pantechnicon, a storehouse of precious objects
which came and went, an annexe to the shop, to be kept swept and
garnished for the entertainment and instruction of collectors.
The garden, however, was her peculiar domain, diffusing its own
satisfactions and graces. The kitchen and nursery were hers also. She
was an excellent housewife, and made Posy's frocks, and some of her own,
despite the protests of Quinney, who babbled foolishly of satins and
brocades.
Undaunted by her awful experience, she hoped for another child. Upon
this point Mrs. Biddlecombe had something to say.
"I was an only child, you was an only child, your grandfather was an
only child. It's in the family. After what you went through----"
"Joe would like a son, mother."
"Has he hinted that to you?"
"No."
"You take it from me that he doesn't."
To Susan's astonishment, Joe confirmed what had seemed a ridiculous
assumption. After Josephina was weaned, Susan whispered to him one
night:
"I do miss my baby."
"Enjoyed bein' woke up--hey?"
"Yes."
"Like another, perhaps?" She detected the scorn in his voice.
"If--if you wanted it, Joe. A little son this time."
He caught hold of her, speaking vehemently, crushing her to him, as if
to remind her how nearly she had slipped from his keeping.
"Now look here, Susie, I ain't going to have another."
She laughed faintly, as she replied:
"It isn't you who will have it. Mother says she wishes that the men
could take turn and turn about."
"Ho! Said that, did she? You tell her from me that I suffered quite
enough with my first. Enough to last me all my life, and yours, too!"
Susan shook with laughter.
"Oh, Joe, you are a darling!"
"Silly name to call me! Red-headed and freckled! But no more nonsense
about little sons. When my daughter marries, her husband can take my
name. See?"
"I see," said Susan; "but I'm afraid baby's husband may not."
At the end of three years, a small cloud arose in their clear sky. Mrs.
Biddlecombe announced solemnly that she was seriously ill, and about to
meet her Maker.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*LIGHT OUT OF THE DARKNESS*
*I*
When Mrs. Biddlecombe made this solemn declaration it never occurred to
either Quinney or Susan to dispute the infallibility of such a
statement. The worthy lady belonged to a type rapidly becoming extinct
in this country, a type which has provoked the astonishment and humorous
criticism of foreigners. She had never questioned what she devoutly held
to be certain divinely-revealed truths. Persons who presumed to differ
from her, or perhaps it would be fairer to say, from the indiscriminate
mass of public opinion which she represented, were accounted beyond the
pale of Christian charity and toleration, _tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner_ being an arrow which glances harmlessly against prejudice and
predilection. There was no joint in her armour of righteousness through
which it could penetrate. The type is still so common that comment upon
it would be tedious. Amongst other cherished beliefs was a conviction
that illness came direct from God. Had Susan, as a child, been struck
down with typhoid fever, Mrs. Biddlecombe would have accepted the blow
with resignation and tended the sufferer, under the direction of a
medical attendant, with exemplary tenderness and fortitude. She would
not have overhauled the system of drainage. Accordingly, when the Hand
of Providence--as she put it--was laid heavily upon her massive body,
she accepted the infirmity with pious resignation, and informed Laburnum
Row that it was the beginning of the end. Dr. Ransome diagnosed the
case, accurately enough, as cardiac weakness arising from chronic
dyspepsia. His patient was of a full habit, and took no exercise beyond
the common round of duties connected with her small house. A competent
servant "did" for her, perhaps in more senses than one. Ransome, of
course, reassured her again and again in regard to her symptoms. They
were such as could not be ignored at her age--fifty-five--but with care
and a less generous diet she might reasonably hope to live happily for
many years. Mrs. Biddlecombe refused to believe this. She made her
will, leaving everything she possessed to Susan, selected her last
resting-place in the Melchester cemetery, not too near the grave of her
second husband, the contractor and builder, and announced calmly that
she was "ready." Quinney, of course, had a private word with Dr.
Ransome, but that cautious diplomat had to admit that his patient might
go suddenly. Quinney told Susan what had passed between them, using his
own vernacular.
"Old Pomposity is hedgin'--see? Just like him! Comes to this, Susie.
You was at death's door, seemin'ly, but, by Gum! you pulled through
because you wouldn't leave me!"
Susan nodded, pressing his arm.
"Works t'other way round with your mother. She's made up her mind to
die, and the doctor can't argue her out of the notion. Her heart is
weak, and if it begins flutterin' it may stop for ever just because the
pore old dear won't will it to go on wigglin'. There y'are!"
Susan was much upset. She loved her mother, although the two women had
little in common, and the feminine instinct of ministration, root-pruned
by her husband, began to sprout vigorously. She paid long daily visits
to Laburnum Row, and Quinney soon noticed a falling off in the quality
of his food. Twice they were summoned in the middle of the night to say
good-bye to a woman who believed herself to be dying.
"A bit thick!" said Quinney.
"Joe!"
"But, isn't it? Let's face the facts. You spend a lot o' time away
from home, away from Posy. Losin' your nice fresh colour, you are! And
I'm losin' my appetite for the good meals I used to have."
"But mother wants me. And any moment----"
"So she thinks. Quite likely to make old bones yet. Now, look here,
I've a plan--the only plan. I simply won't have you trapesin' round to
Laburnum Row at all hours of the day and night. Tell your mother to
pack up and come to us."
Alas! poor Susan!
She was hoist with her own petard. Protest died on her lips. She
submitted, not daring to confess that a dying mother could be regarded
by a dutiful daughter as an unwelcome visitor.
Mrs. Biddlecombe, however, refused, at first, to budge. "Let me die
here, Joseph." Quinney used the clinching argument.
"You are not going to die, Mrs. B., but, if you did, just think of the
sad job we'd have gettin' you down them narrow stairs. And we never
could receive all your friends in such a small parlour."
"That's true," sighed Mrs. Biddlecombe. "There's a lot in what you say,
Joseph."
"There is, old dear! I'm uneducated, and I know it, but my talk is full
o' meat and gravy. It's nourishing!"
Accordingly, Mrs. Biddlecombe came to the Dream Cottage, and was
installed comfortably in the guest chamber. As time passed, the good
lady grew to like her room so well that she refused to leave it. She
became, in short, bedridden, and increasingly dependent upon Susan, who
never failed her. Quinney began to spend his evenings away from home.
He joined a club which met bi-weekly in a snug room at the Mitre. Susan
encouraged him to join his friends, because she was terrified lest he
should be bored at home. Also, his wanderings in search of furniture
and china became more extended, and when he returned triumphant,
exulting in wonderful bargains, she found it increasingly difficult to
share his enthusiasm, and to rejoice with him over a prosperity which
seemed to be driving them farther apart.
She told herself, on her knees, that she was a wicked, ungrateful woman.
Indeed, she was amazed at her own emotions, unable to analyse them,
conscious only that she was torn in two by circumstance and consequence.
Her Joe loved her faithfully; he grudged her nothing; he worked hard for
her and his child; he had none of the vices common to the husbands of
many women she knew; he was almost always in high health and spirits.
And Posy? What a darling! No cause for anxiety there. A sweet sprite,
budding rapidly into a pretty, intelligent girl. And she herself?
Healthy, the mistress of a charming little house filled with beautiful
things, but not happy.
Why--why--why?
Civil war raged beneath her placid bosom. War to the knife between
conjugal and maternal instincts. Her duty to child and mother stood
between what she desired more passionately than anything else--a renewal
of intimate intercourse with a husband who was drifting out of her life,
leaving her stranded upon barren rocks. She found herself wondering
whether his feeling for her was waxing lukewarm. She would cheerfully
have undergone the cruellest pangs to experience once more the ineffable
bliss of kissing tears from his eyes, of hearing his voice break when he
whispered her name, of knowing that he suffered abominably because she
suffered.
She began to pray for something to break the deadly monotony of her
life.
And her prayers were answered.
*II*
Quinney was returning one night from the club soberly conscious that he
had slightly exceeded his usual allowance of port wine. He was in that
mellow frame of mind, far removed from intoxication, which dwells
complacently upon the present without any qualms as to the future. For
instance, despite the extra glass or two, he knew that he would awaken
the next morning with a clear brain and a body fit to cope with any
imposed task. In fine, he was sober enough to congratulate himself upon
the self-control which had refused further indulgence, and at the same
time righteously glad that he had not drunk less. The colour of the
good wine encarmined his thoughts, the bottled sunshine irradiated his
soul.
He passed slowly through the Cathedral Close, pausing to admire the
spire soaring into a starlit sky, black against violet. He had left the
Mitre at half-past eleven, but few lights twinkled from the windows of
the houses encircling the Close. The good canons retired early and rose
rather late, thereby, perhaps, securing health without being encumbered
with the burden of wisdom. With rare exception all Melchester
slumbered.
Quinney, out of native obstinacy, felt astoundingly awake. He began to
compute the hours wasted in sleep. He had quaint theories on this
subject, which he aired at the club. It has been said that party
politics left him cold, although he grew warm and excited over his own
ideas. The Tories assured him that England was going behind, but their
reasons, taken from pamphlets and newspapers, were unconvincing, if you
happened to read--as Quinney did--the Radical counter-blasts. Ever
since his memorable trip to France Quinney posed as the travelled man.
The French, he contended, were prosperous because they saved money and
time. They rose earlier, worked harder for more hours out of the
twenty-four. Also, he had been much impressed by the French Sunday as a
day of recreation as well as rest. The French did not need a
half-holiday on Saturday, because they made a whole holiday of Sunday.
Susan was appalled at this view, but Quinney used the argument with
telling effect at the club. Pinker, the Radical grocer, was immensely
taken with it. If cricket and football could be played on Sunday the
British workman would earn another half-day's pay. Multiply that by
millions, and there you are!
He strolled on to the Mel, and paused again, staring at that placid
stream rolling so leisurely to the sea. He was rolling as leisurely
to--what? The question caught at him, insistently demanding an answer.
He realized, almost with a shock, that nearly seven years had passed
since he married Susan. During that seven years he had doubled his
capital. He was worth twenty thousand pounds at least, probably more,
and his best years were yet to come. Mrs. Biddlecombe, it is true, was
not so sanguine. According to her, prosperity in the present indicated
adversity in the near future.
"Joseph's luck will turn," she would say to Susan in her husband's
presence. Finally, Quinney retorted with some heat:
"Now, Granny, don't you go on barkin' your old knuckles over that. I
ain't superstitious, but long ago I had 'arf-a-crown's worth o'
fortune-tellin' from the Queen o' the Gipsies herself. I'm to live to
be seventy-six, and to bend the knee to my Sovereign."
"What did the foolish woman mean by that?"
"A queen, I tell you. She meant knighthood. Sir Joseph and Lady
Quinney! What ho!"
"Sir Humpty and Lady Dumpty more like!"
Perhaps the tart answer had spurred him to greater endeavour. He was
extremely sensitive under a skin toughened by paternal thwackings, and
well aware that his mother-in-law was inclined to sniff whenever his
name was mentioned. The poor old dear was a bit jealous! She had
fallen in the social scale; he was rising, soaring into the blue, like
the great spire of Melchester Cathedral.
During the past seven years he had hugged close his intention of leaving
Melchester for the wider sphere of London. The fact that Tomlin, Susan,
and Mrs. Biddlecombe were obstinately opposed to such a leap into the
unknown merely fortified his resolution. Tomlin, of course, nosed a
rival, for some of his customers knew Quinney. Susan hinted that Posy
would lose her bloom in London streets. Mrs. Biddlecombe pointed out,
with businesslike acumen, that he and his father had built up a big and
increasing country connection which would be greedily snapped up by some
Melchester dealer. And, lastly, the mighty Marquess of Mel had uttered
a word of warning:
"It would mean a big fight. You are not in the ring, my dear fellow."
Whenever his kind patron addressed him as a dear fellow Quinney's blood
warmed within him. And his keen eyes sparkled at the prospect of a
fight. He liked fights. As a boy he had fought to a finish other boys
bigger than himself; and the victory had not invariably been with them.
He remembered his victories, as he answered Lord Mel:
"I should get into the ring, my lord."
"Um! Would you! And"--his landlord laughed pleasantly--"I should lose
a good tenant."
"London's the best market for knowledge," said Quinney.
"Quite, quite! Can you attempt to compete with the experts?"
The question rankled, biting deep into his soul, inciting him to further
study of the things he loved. But such study grew more and more
difficult. He had become the expert of Melchester. On and about his
own "pitch" it was impossible to find a man with more technical
knowledge than his own. In London, he would be rubbing shoulders with
world-famous collectors and connoisseurs. They would "down" him at
first, rub his nose in the dust of the big auction rooms; but in the end
he would learn what they had learned, and triumph where they had
triumphed.
*III*
These thoughts were trickling through his mind as he gazed at the placid
Mel trickling also to troublous seas, where its clear waters would be
merged and lost. Quinney squirmed at the remote possibility of being
merged and lost. He muttered uneasily: "It fair furs my tongue to think
o' that." The extra glass of wine had not excited him to the
consideration of perilous enterprises. An extra pint might have done
so. No; the old port which had ripened in the Melchester cellars
exercised a benignant and restful influence. Its spirit, released at
last, seemed to hover about the ancient town, loath to leave it. We may
hazard the conjecture that the wine in the cellars of our universities
may be potent to lull the ambitions of restless scholars, and to keep
them willing prisoners in drowsy quadrangles.
Quinney lighted his pipe. He felt ripe for an important decision. For
some months the necessity of enlarging his present premises had bulked
large in his thoughts. A successful country dealer must carry an
immense amount of stock, because he dare not specialize. His hatred for
rubbish had become an obsession. More, his love of the finest specimens
of furniture and porcelain interfered with the sale of them. He placed
a price on these which eventually he got, but often he was constrained
to wait so long for the right customer that his profit was seriously
diminished. He sold quickly immense lines of moderately-priced
"stuff"--chairs, tables, chests of drawers, bureaux, bookcases,
bedsteads, and mantel-pieces. The "gems," as he called them, were taken
to the Dream Cottage, and only shown to the worthy few.
To enlarge his premises was no ha'penny affair. Lord Mel, it is true,
had offered to do so, but only on the condition that his tenant should
sign a long lease; and a long lease meant remaining in Melchester. Ten,
twenty years hence, he would be too old to begin again in London.
He smoked his pipe much too quickly.
To be candid, he was struggling desperately with the twin brethren, who,
whether good or bad, accompany each of us from the cradle to the grave.
He was at grips with heredity and environment. Afterwards he admitted
to himself and to Susan that two would have prevailed over one. He made
up his mind to write to Lord Mel's agent on the morrow, and he consoled
himself with the sound reflection that he was grasping substance, not
shadow. London might ruin him--he knew that, being no fool--and yet he
was in the mood to shed tears upon the grave of ambition. Never, never,
would he bend the knee before his Sovereign if he remained in
Melchester!
He sighed profoundly as he slipped his pipe into his pocket. By this
time he was lucidly himself. The decision to enlarge his premises, and
all that meant, would not be weakened, but strengthened, by a night's
sleep. Sleep! He smiled derisively. Sleep! Everybody in Melchester
was asleep. He beheld himself and Susan growing fat in this sleepy
town. Susan was already plumper. She would develop into just such a
fleshly tabernacle as her mother.
He exclaimed loudly and virulently:
"Damn!"
This was his acknowledgment of defeat. His "Vae victis." He writhed
impotently in the toils of circumstance, although the struggle was over.
The night seemed to have turned darker, the stars paled in the violet
sky, as he walked slowly towards the Dream Cottage, wherein his
wonderful dream would never come true. One would like to record that
thoughts of his pretty, loving wife, and thoughts of his
Posy--admittedly the gem of gems--stirred within him, pouring spikenard
upon his lacerated sensibilities. It was not so. They stood for poppy,
and mandragora, or, as he might have put it, old port and brown sherry
in cut-glass decanters. And every fibre of his small, sturdy body
clamoured for a fight in the London ring, a fight to a finish with the
experts of his trade.
At that dark moment he beheld light.
*IV*
The light came from Dream Cottage--a faint luminous glow, so strange, so
mysterious, that he stood still, straining his eyes to determine the
meaning of it till that meaning flared full upon him.
One of the chimneys was ablaze!
Instantly his dormant energies awoke to liveliest activity. He raced
back to a corner of the Close, where he had passed a policeman. The man
had wandered farther on his beat. He overtook him, gasping.
"My house is afire!"
The policeman recognized Quinney, and nodded owlishly.
"Your house afire?" he repeated.
"You bolt for the engine--see?"
He twirled round the massive figure, and pushed it vigorously. The
guardian of the night broke into a slow trot. Quinney shouted:
"Get a move on!" and sped back to the cottage. The light was no longer
faintly luminous. Flames--hungry tongues of destruction--were licking
the darkness.
*CHAPTER IX*
*SALVAGE*
*I*
Quinney found Susan asleep. In the small dressing room next to their
bedroom, Posy also slumbered sweetly, although acrid smoke was filling
the house. When Susan understood that she was not the victim of some
hideous nightmare, Quinney imposed his commands.
"You've time to slip on warm clothes. Bolt on to the lawn with Posy.
Don't try to save any of your rags. I'll wake Maria--and then I've a
lot to do. The best stuff downstairs is not insured. The engine will be
here in two jiffs. You scoot out o' this! Hear me?"
She nodded breathlessly, swept off her feet by his excitement. He
vanished, before she could answer him or remind him of a bedridden
mother-in-law.
Maria also was asleep. Quinney hauled her out of bed, and pointed to
the attic window.
"Look at that," he said grimly, "and scoot!"
Maria scooted.
Quinney leapt downstairs, cursing himself for a fool inasmuch as he had
neglected to increase his insurance. The "gems" had slowly accumulated
month after month. He breathed more easily when he reached the ground
floor, but he was well aware that the old house would burn like tinder.
The roof of thatch had begun to blaze; he could hear the crackle of the
flames overhead.
With profound regret it must be set down that he had quite forgotten
Mrs. Biddlecombe.
He worked methodically, beginning with the uninsured porcelain, the
Worcester, Chelsea, and Bow, which he carried tenderly into the garden.
He had removed the most valuable specimens before the engine arrived.
Maria, stout creature, half-dressed, bare-legged and bare-footed, joined
him. Together they hauled out the Chippendale chairs and china
cupboard.
"Seen your missus?" asked Quinney, when she first appeared.
"On the lawn," replied Maria.
Presently they heard the welcome rattle of the engine, and the Chief
strode in, followed by two firemen.
"Women all out?" he asked.
"You bet!" replied Quinney. At that moment he remembered Mrs.
Biddlecombe. "My God!" he exclaimed, gripping the Chief. "There's Mrs.
Biddlecombe! Bedridden, by Gum!"
Maria burst into the riotous laughter of a Bacchante.
"The old lady," she spluttered, "was the first to scoot. She just ran
out like I did."
"Ran?" repeated Quinney.
"Like a rabbit!" said Maria, more calmly.
"We've about five more minutes," remarked the Chief.
During that brief period wonders were accomplished; but at the very last
Quinney narrowly escaped death in his determination to save a print in
colour which he had overlooked. A fireman grabbed him and held him as
the roof fell.
*II*
Kindly neighbours sheltered the women for that night, while Quinney
mounted guard over his furniture and porcelain. He never left his
precious things till they were safely stored in a warehouse. When his
fellow-townsmen condoled with him he laughed in their solemn faces. The
sense of freedom which had so expanded his spirit upon the
never-to-be-forgotten occasion of his sire's funeral once more possessed
him. The fire had burnt to cinders the resolution to remain in
Melchester. He found himself wishing that the shop had burned too.
What a glorious clearance that would have been, to be sure!
Nevertheless, the sight of Susan's face dampened his rejoicings.
Obviously, she had swooped upon the truth. Mrs. Biddlecombe had been
forgotten, left to frizzle, while a madman, at the risk of his life, was
rescuing sticks and stones!
"You never thought of mother," said Susan. The small woman looked rather
pale, and Quinney marked for the first time the wrinkle between her
eyes. Mrs. Biddlecombe had the same vertical line, deeply cut. Also
there was an inflection in Susan's voice which he recognized regretfully
as an inheritance from the old lady. He was tempted to lie boldly, to
affirm with loud authority that he had left the care of the invalid
mother to a devoted daughter. Fortunately, he remembered the
Bacchanalian laughter of Maria. The baggage had peached. He replied
simply:
"I didn't."
Susan compressed her pretty lips, and the likeness to her mother became
startlingly strong.
Quinney tried a disarming smile as he murmured:
"She legged it out on to the lawn. Maria says she ran like a bloomin'
rabbit."
"If Maria said that I shall have to speak to her seriously."
"She didn't say 'blooming.' I'm sorry, Susie. It's awful, I know, but
you needn't glare at me as if I'd left the old lady to burn on purpose.
And out of evil comes good--hey? We know now that she's as spry as
ever. Almost looks as if firin' had cured her."
"If you mean to make a joke of it----"
He saw that she was deeply offended, and foolishly attempted to kiss
her. Susan repulsed him.
"What! Refuse to kiss your own hubby!"
"Mother might be lying dead; and you thinking only of sticks and
stones."
"Come off it!" said Quinney irritably.
Susan turned her back on him, and he returned to the shop. It was their
first serious trouble.
*III*
When they met again two hours afterwards the wrinkle had vanished; and
no allusion was made to this unhappy incident, either then or later.
Susan was busy moving into temporary lodgings and buying necessary
articles of clothing for herself and her mother. Quinney was thinking
of London, and fairly spoiling for the fight ahead. It would begin when
he tackled Susan and her mother, and he knew that this first encounter
would be no bloodless victory. Posy would be used as a weapon, an
Excalibur in the hands of a devoted mother.
After much pondering, he did an unwise thing--what might have been
expected from a man engrossed in his own business, and fully sensible
that he understood that business better than anyone else. He had always
despised futile argument. Mrs. Biddlecombe and Susan would argue for
hours, repeating themselves like silly parrots, and evading, like most
women, the real issues. He told himself that he would be quite unable
to listen patiently to their prattle about country air and old friends,
and rolling stones denuded of nice comfortable moss. Why not make his
arrangements without consulting them? Whatever they might say, he
intended to move from Melchester. He had nailed his flag to the mast
when the roof of Dream Cottage fell in. It streamed over his future, a
Blue Peter.
Accordingly, he slipped away to London some two days later, leaving two
women and an intelligent child in blissful ignorance of what was waving
above them. He told Susan that an interview with the fire insurance
people was imperative. She was quite ready to believe that, and speeded
him on his journey with smiles and kisses.
"While you are away," she said cheerfully, "I shall be looking out for
another Dream Cottage."
"You won't find it in Melchester," he replied curtly.
Upon arrival in London he set forth gallantly in search of a "pitch."
He wandered in and out of curiosity shops big and small. Some of the
dealers knew him slightly. Many of the older men used to deal with his
father. They were well aware that the son refused on principle to sell
to the trade. Tomlin had passed round that word long ago. Quinney
inspected their wares, and chuckled to himself whenever he encountered a
fake labelled as a genuine antique. The biggest men displayed stuff not
above suspicion. Indeed, the chuckling became audible when he
discovered a Minihy cabinet in a famous establishment in St. James's
Street.
"Guarantee that?" he asked of the rather supercilious young gentleman in
a frock coat who was doing the honours.
"Certainly."
It was then that Quinney chuckled. The young gentleman, quite unaware
that he was entertaining a provincial dealer, said loftily:
"It's French. Came out of a French chateau in Touraine."
"Signed?"
"I think not. It's signed all over as a bit of the finest Renaissance
craftsmanship."
Quinney bent down, still chuckling.
"It is signed," he said, with conviction.
"Really? Where, may I ask?"
Quinney indicated a small, much-battered piece of oak.
"Remove that," he observed quietly, "and you will find the signature
under it."
"Whose signature?"
"The signature of a great artist who lives near Treguier in Brittany."
"Lives? What do you mean?"
Quinney met the young gentleman's scornful eyes and held them.
"I mean, my lad, that your master has here a very clever copy, signed
where I say by the man who copied it, whom I know. I've not asked the
price, but I'll tell you this: if it's genuine, it's cheap at two
thousand; if it's a copy I can buy a dozen just like it at sixteen
pounds apiece. Good-morning."
After three days' hard walking, Quinney summed up results as follows:
There were three classes of dealers in London. The tip-toppers, with
establishments in fashionable thoroughfares, who sold the best stuff at
a fancy price; the men, whose name was Legion, who lived here, there,
and everywhere, selling wares good, bad, and indifferent at a small
profit; and the middle-men, who sold almost exclusively to the big
dealers.
"There is a place for me," said Quinney, with absolute conviction.
He said as much to Tomlin next day. They were lunching together in an
old-fashioned eating-house just off Fleet Street, sitting bolt upright
upon wooden benches, and inhaling an atmosphere which advertised
insistently cheese, onions, chump chops, and tobacco. Tomlin was the
host, and he had ordered steak-and-kidney pudding, a Welsh rarebit to
follow, and a bottle of port. He attacked these viands with such gusto
that Quinney said to himself:
"Never did see a man with a more unhealthy appetite!"
Warmed into candid speech by this fine old English food and drink,
Tomlin said thickly:
"A place for you, my tulip? Hope it won't be in the Bankruptcy
Court!"--and he chuckled grossly.
Tomlin's place, be it mentioned, was at the wrong end of the Fulham
Road, but he was talking of moving to Bond Street. Tomlin reckoned
himself to be one of the big dealers, and he talked in a full, throaty
voice:
"You're a fool to leave Melchester, Joe. I say it as a friend."
"There's a place for me in London," repeated Quinney.
"Where?"
"Well, somewhere between the Fulham Road and Long Acre."
"'Ow about rent?"
"'Tisn't the rent that worries me."
"Customers?"
"That's right--customers. The business will have to be built up slowly,
because I mean to specialize."
"In what?"
"Old English porcelain, glass, and the finest furniture."
"You'll starve."
"I mean to have one other department which may keep the pot boiling."
"Give it a name, Joe."
"Not yet."
"My first and last word to you is: Go back to Melchester and stay
there."
Tomlin repeated this till Quinney sickened of his company. But he
wanted the London man to predict disaster in his raucous tones. Success
would taste the sweeter when it came. Moreover, Susan hated Tomlin, to
such an extent, indeed, that she would flout his judgment. She had
never forgiven his tale of a table with a broken leg.
The men separated after smoking two cigars. Quinney walked to Soho
Square, lit a better cigar than Tomlin had given to him, and stared at
an ancient house with a pediment over the door, and a signboard upon
which were inscribed the exciting words, "To Let."
The mansion--for it was thus styled--had challenged his attention and
interest two days before. Tomlin would have ridiculed the idea of taking
such a house, and turning it into a shop, but Tomlin was a tradesman,
whereas Quinney believed himself to be an artist. The house was of the
right period--early Georgian from garret to cellar.
Quinney went over it.
It seemed to be the real right thing, so right that the little man, who
had unconsciously absorbed some of the Melchester sermons, told himself
that the guiding finger of Providence could be plainly discerned. There
were dry cellars for storing valuable woods, a back-yard, and a big
drawing-room, finely decorated in the Adam style, possibly by the hand
of the Master, which occupied the first floor, and looked out upon the
Square through three nobly-proportioned windows. Quinney decided
instantly to make this splendid room his "sanctuary," the
treasure-house, wherein his "gems" would be fittingly enshrined. The
ground floor would serve admirably as a shop. There were several
bedrooms and excellent offices.
In regard to the situation he came to this conclusion. The shops of the
groundlings in the trade were invariably small and ill-lighted; the
establishments of the big dealers commanded a rent beyond his means. In
any case, he would have to work up a clientele, and his customers, when
they did find their way to this ancient square, would behold his
beautiful wares under the happiest conditions of space and light.
The rent, including rates and taxes, came to less than three hundred a
year! A big rent, it is true, for a dealer with his capital, but much
less than Tomlin paid for large and inconvenient premises in the Fulham
Road.
He signed a long lease within twenty-four hours, and returned, exulting
in his strength, to Melchester and Susan.
*IV*
He did not tell her his wonderful news at once. A habit of secretiveness
concerning his business was forming itself. It must be recorded on his
behalf that Susan's indifference to "sticks and stones" exasperated him.
By this time he had recognized her inability to appreciate fine "stuff!"
As a saleswoman she had enchanted him, but even then, when she trotted
about the shop smiling sweetly at his customers, he knew that she would
never acquire a sense of values, that nice discrimination which detects
unerringly the good from the very good, and acclaims the genius of the
artist so subtly differentiated from the handicraft of the artisan.
Susan, artless soul! had news of her own to impart. She had found a
house just outside Melchester--a house with a bathroom, with hot and
cold water laid on, a labour-saving house quite up to date--a bargain!
The expression of his shrewd face, as he listened, warned Susan that he
was keeping something from her. Human paste she understood better than
he did. The animation died out of her voice as she faltered:
"You look so queer, Joe."
Then he told her.
To his surprise and satisfaction she acquiesced meekly. She was
thinking that her prayers had been answered; but she could not bring
herself to say so. Also she was cruelly hurt at his lack of confidence,
afraid to speak lest she should say too much, too proud to break down,
pathetically silent. Quinney went on floundering amongst the broken ice.
"I'm out for a big thing. I know that I can pull it off single-handed.
Results will justify this move, Susie. It's no use my hidin' from you
that I'm in for a fight. They'll down me if they can, but in the end I
shall come out on top, my girl. On top!"
"On top of what, Joe?"
He caught hold of her cold hands, gripping them tightly. He never
noticed how faintly the pressure was returned.
"Atop o' the heap. A big dealer. It's in me. Always knew it. Not a
dog's chance here. Why, even Primmer of Bath had to go to London. I
was in his Piccadilly place yesterday. And I can remember what his old
shop at Bath used to be."
"What does Mr. Tomlin say?"
"He's nasty, is Tom Tomlin. I wanted him to be nasty. By Gum! I egged
him on to call me a fool and an idiot."
"How I dislike that man!"
"He fairly wallowed in prophecies. It will be the same here. I can
hear Pinker goin' it."
"Have you asked Lord Mel's advice?"
Quinney glanced at her sharply.
"His lordship was very kind, but he's my landlord, and I'm a good
tenant. He may be offended. I must risk that."
Susan sighed as she said with finality:
"It's done?"
"Thank the Lord--yes!"
He suffered at the hands of Mrs. Biddlecombe, who, since the fire, had
become livelier in mind and body. She believed that a miracle had been
wrought upon her aged and infirm body, and regarded it as sanctified by
a Divine touch. Laburnum Row repeated with awe the old lady's solemn
words:
"When I woke to hear the roaring of the flames, I heard a Voice. It
seemed to say: 'Martha Biddlecombe, arise and walk.'"
A select party of friends was listening, but--weed your acquaintance how
you may--nettles will spring up unexpectedly. A thin, acidulous
spinster remarked drily:
"We heard you--ran."
"It is perfectly true," replied Mrs. Biddlecombe, with austere dignity.
"The hand of the Lord was upon me, and I ran."
According to her lights, she dealt faithfully with Joseph Quinney. As
his guest, helpless beneath his roof, she had curbed too sharp a tongue.
In her own lodgings, and mentally as well as physically "on her legs
again," she deemed it a duty to let that tongue wag freely. She
received her son-in-law seated upon a sofa, the hard, old-fashioned sofa
covered with black horse-hair. Above the mantelpiece was a framed print
in crude colour, a portrait of the Great White Queen, in all her
Imperial splendour handing a cheap edition of the Bible to a naked
savage. Underneath this work of art was inscribed: "This is the secret
of England's greatness." Upon a small marble-topped table near the sofa
was another Bible.
"Be seated, Joseph."
She had allowed him to kiss her cheek; and he guessed, as he saluted
her, that she was in happy ignorance of his monstrous offence. At her
request Susan was not present.
"You are going to London?"
"That's right."
"It is not right, Joseph. It is very far indeed from being right. It
would seem that right and wrong, as I interpret such plain words, have
no definite meaning to you."
"Pop away!"
"What?"
"I said 'Pop away.' I meant, go on firing."
"I beg to be allowed to finish without flippant interruption on your
part. Personally, the affairs of this world do not concern me any
longer. I am interested in them so far as they concern others, my own
flesh and blood. Susan was born in Melchester, and so were you."
"We couldn't help it. You might have chosen a livelier spot. Me and
Susan wasn't consulted. Children in a better managed world would be
consulted, but there you are."
"Do you think, Joseph, in your arrogance, that you could manage this
world better than it is managed?"
"Lord bless you, yes!"
"I trust that the Lord will bless me, young man. but He will assuredly
not bless you, unless you mend your ways and your manners."
"Keep it up!"
It enraged her to perceive that he was enjoying himself. She wondered
vaguely how the Bishop would deal with such a hardened offender.
"I, for one, refuse to accompany you to London."
"Sorry."
"Are you sorry? I doubt it. Susan will miss me"--she wiped away two
tears invisible to Quinney, and her voice trembled querulously as she
continued--"and Posy will be deprived of a grandmother at a time when
her mind and character are being made or marred. I understand, also,
that you are risking a fortune which is more than ample for a man in
your station of life. It would appear also that you have taken this
step in defiance of advice from the Marquess of Mel."
"I took it"--he drew in his breath sharply, speaking almost as solemnly
as his very upright judge--"because I had to take it. Melchester is too
small for me, too sleepy, too stoopid, too hide-bound. The most
wonderful thing in the whole town is just like me."
"To what do you allude?"
"To the spire of the Cathedral. It soars, don't it? Can you see it
laying flat on the ground? Can you fancy it asleep? It taught me to
soar. When I was a boy, crawlin' at the old man's heel, I used to say
to it: 'Gosh, you're well out of it!' And now"--he smiled
triumphantly--"I'm well out of it, for ever and ever, Amen!"
Mrs. Biddlecombe rallied her failing energies for a last charge.
Somehow she was impressed by this queer son-in-law. He confounded her.
She remarked slowly:
"It seems a strange thing to say, but I have heard of spires struck by
God's lightning."
"Maybe," said Quinney, rising; "but you can take it from me that this
spire won't be struck because it's fitted with a lightnin' conductor."
He retired, chuckling. Mrs. Biddlecombe shook her head. She was
utterly at a loss to determine whether Quinney was alluding to the
Cathedral spire or to himself. If to himself, who or what was his
lightning conductor?
*BOOK II*
*CHAPTER X*
*BLUDGEONINGS*
*I*
London exercised the influence that might be expected upon such a
character as Quinney's. The soot, so to speak, brought out the
chlorophyl. As he put it to Susan, with grim humour:
"Makes us feel a bit green, hey?"
He had supposed that the big dealers would ignore him; he had not
expected what he found--active hostility. His first fight, for example,
opened his eyes by closing one of them. A brief account of it must be
chronicled. He had kept out of the auction rooms, like Christopher's,
but he frequented small sales, and became a menace to a ring of Hebrew
dealers, who, hitherto, had managed such affairs with great executive
ability entirely in their own interests. Quinney was well aware of their
methods. At the sale proper prices were kept at the lowest possible
level. The real buying and selling took place afterwards in a private
room at some neighbouring tavern. Quinney, who was invited to join the
"ring," knew all about "knock-outs," and decided that he would not
identify himself with such an unsavoury crowd. Tomlin warned him.
"Leave those swine alone, Joe."
"I mean to, old man."
"But remember this, they won't leave you alone, the dirty dogs!"
They didn't.
Upon the eve of a small sale in the suburbs, held at the house of a
bankrupt merchant, who had bought, in the days of his prosperity, some
good bits of furniture, Quinney was "nosing round," as he called it, by
himself, jotting down in a notebook the prices he was prepared to pay on
the morrow. Suddenly there entered a truculent-looking young man of the
type that may be seen boxing at Wonderland, which is just off the
Whitechapel Road. He swaggered up to Quinney and said drawlingly:
"Buyin' against my crowd, you was, las' week?"
Quinney eyed him nervously, as he answered with spirit:
"Your crowd, hey?"
"I said my crowd. Want to join us?"
"No, my lad, I don't."
"Why not?"
"I'm rather careful about the company I keep, see?"
The young man glanced round. They were quite alone. Then he hit
Quinney hard. Our hero ducked ineffectively, and caught the blow on his
left eye. Instantly he realized that his antagonist was what is called a
"workman." Nevertheless he "set about him." In less than a minute the
fine old adage which sets forth that right is greater than might was
lamentably perverted. Quinney was left half senseless on a Turkey
carpet which bore stains of the encounter, and his aggressor fled. Next
day, Quinney remained at home, tended by Susan, who admitted that she
felt like Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite.
"Can't you prosecute?" she asked indignantly.
"Never saw the fellow before, never likely to see him again. Hired for
the job, he was--earned his money, too."
After this experience he kept out of third-class London sales, buying as
before from provincial dealers, making it worth their while to come to
him first. Your provincial man is not omniscient, and is prepared to
accept a small profit upon every article that passes through his hands.
Quinney secured some bargains, but he could not sell them, because he
had no customers.
His next experience was more serious. He had gone to Melshire to buy a
certain satin-wood commode with panels painted by Angelica Kauffman.
The owner of the commode, a fox-hunting squire, knew nothing of its
value, but he happened to know Quinney, and he offered the commode to
Quinney for fifty pounds. This incident illustrates nicely the sense of
honour which prevails among dealers in antiques. The commode had been
advertised as part of the contents of an ancient manor house. Other
Melshire dealers, many of them Quinney's friends, were attending the
sale. Immensely to the fox-hunting squire's surprise, Quinney pointed
out that it would not be fair to the other dealers to buy before-hand a
valuable bit of furniture already advertised in a printed catalogue. He
concluded:
"It'll fetch more than fifty pounds."
At the sale it fetched ninety-seven pounds. At the "knock-out"
afterwards, bidding against the other dealers, Quinney paid nine hundred
pounds for this "gem," and told himself, with many chucklings, that he
would double his money within a few weeks. He returned to London with
his prize, and recited the facts to Susan, whose sympathy ranged itself
upon the side of the Melchester squire.
"Seems to me that poor man was robbed. Ninety-seven pounds for a thing
that you say is worth two thousand. It's awful."
"Is it? Now, look ye here, Susie, I'm going to put you right on this
for ever and ever, see? I'm not in this business for my health. Like
every other merchant, I buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the
dearest. It's not my business to educate country gentlemen, who've had
twice my advantages. If the owners of good stuff don't take the trouble
to find out the value of what they've got, so much the worse for them,
the blooming idiots! I play the game, my girl. I might have bought
that commode for a level fifty. Think of it! Why didn't I? Because
I'm an honourable man. Because it wouldn't have been straight with the
others who were after that commode. Has it soaked in? I'll just add
this: It's we dealers who create values. Never thought o' that, did
you? Nor anyone else outside the profession. But it's gospel truth.
Dealers create the big prices, not the silly owners, who don't know
enough to keep their pictures in decent condition. I remember a country
parson who kept his umbrella in a big _famille verte_ jar. Tomlin
bought that jar for a few pounds, and sold it at Christopher's for
fifteen hundred. The parson made a fine hullabaloo, but it served him
jolly well right. We do the work, and we're entitled to the big
profits."
Susan felt crushed, but a leaven of her mother in her constrained her to
reply:
"I hope that commode is worth nine hundred pounds."
"It's worth a damn sight more than that, Susie!"
Tomlin came to see it next day. He examined it carefully, with his
sharp nose cocked at a critical angle. Finally, he said hesitatingly:
"Are you quite sure, Joe, that Angelica Kauffman painted them panels?"
"Just as sure, old man, as if I'd seen her at it."
Nevertheless, Tomlin's question rankled.
*II*
With many apologies, we present the reader to Messrs. Lark and Bundy, of
Oxford Street. Gustavus Lark is probably the best known of the London
art dealers. He is now an old man, and his sons and Bundy's sons manage
an immense business. Ten years ago he had not retired. Criticism of
him or his methods are irrelevant to this chronicle, but a side-light is
thrown upon them when we consider how he treated Joe Quinney, a young
man against whom he had no grudge whatever. Gustavus Lark heard, of
course, that a Melchester dealer, newly settled in Soho Square, had
bought a commode said to be painted by Angelica Kauffman for nine
hundred pounds. Immediately he sent for his eldest son, a true chip of
the old block.
"Why did we not hear of this?"
The son answered curtly:
"Because we can't hear of everything. There wasn't one big London
dealer at the sale; and the only thing worth having was this commode."
"Is it the goods?"
"I believe so."
"Do you know?"
"Well, yes--I know."
"I must send for Pressland."
Pressland deserves some little attention. England honours him as a
connoisseur of Old Masters. Upon pictures his word is often the first
and the last. We know that he "boomed" certain painters, long dead. To
quote Quinney, he "created" values. And he worked hand in hand with
just such men as Gustavus Lark. In appearance he might have been a
successful dentist. He wore a frock-coat and small side-whiskers. He
said "Please" in an ingratiating tone. His hands were scrupulously
clean, as if he had washed them often after dirty jobs. Out of a pale,
sallow face shone two small grey eyes, set too close together. He
contradicted other experts with an inimitable effrontery. "What is
this?" he would say, laying a lean forefinger upon a doubtful signature.
"A Velasquez? I think not. Why? Because, my dear sir, I know!"
Admittedly, he did know about Velasquez; and this knowledge was, so to
speak, on tap, at the service of anybody willing to pay a reasonable
fee. But his knowledge of furniture and porcelain was placed with
reserve at the disposition of dealers. He told many persons that he
made mistakes, and the public never guessed that such mistakes were paid
for munificently.
Gustavus Lark sent for Pressland. The men met in Lark's sanctum, an
austere little room, simply furnished. There is another room next to
it, and when Gustavus sends for a very particular visitor nobody enters
that ante-chamber except a member of the firm.
"Do you know this Soho Square man, Quinney?"
"I have met him."
"Has he come to stay?"
"Um! I think so."
Gustavus Lark stroked his beard. He looked very handsome and
prosperous, not unlike a genial monarch whom he was said by his clerks
to understudy.
"I want you," he said slowly, "to go to Soho Square this morning, and if
by any chance Quinney should ask your opinion of the commode, why"--he
laughed pleasantly--"in that case I shouldn't mind betting quite a
considerable sum that you would discover it to be--er--a clever
reproduction."
Pressland smiled.
"Probably."
"I mean to have a look at it myself later."
Pressland went his way. Part of his success in life may be assigned to
a praiseworthy habit of executing small and big commissions with
becoming promptitude. He strolled into Quinney's shop as if he were the
most idle man in town.
"Anything to show me?" he asked languidly.
Quinney was delighted to see him. He recognized Pressland at once.
"Happy and honoured to see you, sir."
Presently, he took him upstairs into the drawing-room, already spoken of
as the "sanctuary." In it were all his beloved treasures. He had done
up the room "regardless." Here stood his Chippendale cabinet, filled
with Early Worcester and Chelsea; here were his cherished prints in
colour, his finest specimens of Waterford glass, two or three beautiful
miniatures, and many other things. Pressland was astonished, but he
said little, nodding his head from time to time, and listening
attentively to Quinney. As soon as he entered the room he perceived the
satin-wood commode standing in the place of honour.
Pressland praised the Chippendale cabinet, and ignored the commode.
Quinney frowned. Finally he jerked out:
"What do you think of that, sir?"
"What?"
"That commode. Pedigree bit, out of an old Melshire manor house. Good
stuff, hey?"
Pressland adjusted his pince-nez, and stared hard and long at the
panels. Quinney began to fidget.
"Bit of all right--um?"
Pressland said slowly:
"I hope you didn't pay very much for it, Mr. Quinney."
"I paid a thumping big cheque for it. Never paid so much before for a
single bit."
Pressland murmured pensively:
"I thought you knew your furniture."
"Ain't it all right? There's no secret about what I paid. It's been
paragraphed--nine hundred pounds."
A soft whistle escaped from Pressland's thin lips. He said depressingly:
"I dare say you know more about those panels than I do."
Quinney protested vigorously:
"Don't play that on me, Mr. Pressland. If I knew one quarter of what
you know about pictures I'd be a proud man."
"A pedigree bit? What do you mean by that?"
"Owner said it had been in his family for more than a hundred years. He
said that the panels were painted by Angelica Kauffman."
"Are you quite sure he didn't say after Angelica Kauffman?"
Quinney shook his head. From every pore in his skin confidence was
oozing.
"Did he know the value of it?"
"No, he didn't."
"Ah! He must have been pleased with your cheque."
Quinney explained matters. Pressland's expression became acutely
melancholy; and his silence, as he turned away, was eloquent of a
commiseration too deep for words.
"Isn't it right, Mr. Pressland?"
"My opinion is worth little, Mr. Quinney."
"I'm prepared to pay for it if necessary."
"No, no, no! Not from you. Well, then, I am afraid you have been had.
Did the dealers at the 'knock-out' suspect that you wanted it badly?"
"Perhaps they did. I kept on bidding."
"Just so. It's a little way they have. Very, very jealous, some of
them. You have been successful. Success makes enemies. I have enemies.
There are men in London who accuse me of abominable, unmentionable
things." He smiled modestly, spreading out his hands.
"You can afford to laugh at 'em, Mr. Pressland."
"I do."
"Am I to take it from you, sir, that Angelica did not paint those
panels?"
Pressland shrugged his shoulders.
"I am of opinion, and I may well be mistaken, that those panels were
painted after Angelica Kauffman's death, probably by a clever pupil.
But please ask somebody else."
He drifted away, promising to call again, assuring Quinney that he would
send him customers.
*III*
Susan had the story red-hot from his trembling lips about ten minutes
later.
"I've been done--cooked to a crisp!" he wailed.
She kissed and consoled him tenderly, but he refused to be comforted.
She had applied raw steak to his injured eye. What balm could she pour
upon a bruised and bleeding heart?
"That man knows. He felt sorry for me. He hated to tell me. He
promised that he would tell nobody else--a good sort! What did your
mother say--Sir Humpty and Lady Dumpty. There you are!"
She kissed him again and stroked his face.
"I was so sure of my own judgment, Susie. The loss of the money is bad
enough, but everybody will find out that I've been had. That's what
tears me!"
"He may be mistaken."
"Not he. He knows. I've a mind to go outside and hire a strong man to
kick me."
Next morning there was a wholesome reaction. Susan and he stood in front
of the commode. The sun streamed upon it.
"By Gum! I do believe it's all right. If it isn't, I'd better go back
to Melchester and stay there." He caressed the lovely wood so tenderly
that Susan felt jealous. "Oh, you beauty!" he exclaimed passionately.
"I believe in you; yes, I do. An artist created you. An artist painted
those panels."
He recovered his cheerfulness, and assured Susan that he was prepared to
back his opinion against Tomlin, Pressland, and all other pessimists.
Upon the following Monday Gustavus presented himself. For a dizzy
moment our hero believed that the most illustrious male in the kingdom
had dropped in incognito. Gustavus wore a grey cut-away coat, with an
orchid in the lapel of it, and he was smoking an imposing cigar.
"I am Gustavus Lark," he said.
"Pleased to see you, Mr. Lark."
No man in England could make himself more agreeable than the great
dealer. Gossip had it that he had begun life as a "rapper." A rapper,
as the name signifies, is one who raps at all doors, seeking what he may
find behind them--a bit of porcelain, a valuable print, an old
chair--anything. A successful rapper must combine in one ingratiating
personality the qualities of a diplomat, a leader of forlorn hopes, a
high-class burglar, and an American book agent. When the door upon which
he has rapped opens, he must enter, and refuse to budge till he has
satisfied himself that there is nothing in his line worth the buying.
Tomlin had the following story to tell of Gustavus, as a rapper. You
must take it for what it's worth. Tomlin, we know, was a bit of a
rascal, and a liar of the first magnitude, but he affirmed solemnly that
the tale is true.
Behold Gustavus in the good old days of long ago, when prints in colours
were still to be found in cottages, rapping at the door of some humble
house. A widow opens it, and asks a good-looking young man what his
business may be. He enters audaciously, and states it. He is seeking
board and lodging. He is seeking, also, a set of the London "Cries."
But he does not mention that. He has heard--it is his business to hear
such gossip--that the widow possesses the complete set in colour, the
full baker's dozen. He arranges for a week's board and lodging, and he
satisfies himself that the prints are genuine specimens. In his satchel
he carries thirteen bogus prints, excellent reproductions. At dead of
night he takes from the frames the genuine prints and substitutes the
false ones. Three days afterwards he goes to London, and, later, sells
the prints for a sum sufficient to start him in business. But he does
not rest there, as a lesser man might well do. A rapper's hands, be it
noted, are against all men. He robs cheerfully the men of his own
trade--the small dealers. Gustavus, then, proceeds to pile Pelion upon
Ossa. He next visits a dealer of his acquaintance and tells him that he
has discovered a genuine set of "Cries," which can be bought cheap in
their original frames. The dealer, who is not an expert in colour
prints, is deceived by the frames and by the authentic yarn which the
widow spins. He does buy the prints cheap, and sells them as genuine to
one of the innumerable collectors with more money than brains. Gustavus
gets his commission and nets a double profit!
Quinney had heard this story from Tomlin and others, but the benevolent
appearance of his visitor put suspicion to flight, as it had done scores
of times before. It was quite impossible to believe that an old
gentleman, who bore such an amazing resemblance to one venerated as the
Lord's anointed, could have begun his career as a rapper!
"Anything of interest to show me?" asked Gustavus blandly. He treated
everybody, except his own understrappers, with distinguished courtesy.
He spoke to Quinney, whom he despised, exactly as he would have spoken
to a Grand Duke.
"Glad to take you round, Mr. Lark."
"I am told that you do not sell to dealers."
"That's as may be. I want to build up a business with private
customers."
"Quite right. My own methods."
He glanced round the shop, which was divided roughly into sections. In
the first were genuine bits; in the second were the best reproductions
conspicuously labelled as such. The reproductions were so superlatively
good that Lark recognized at once the character of the man who had so
audaciously exposed them. Then and there he made up his mind that
Quinney was to be reckoned with. He smiled as he waved a white hand
protestingly at a piece of tapestry which might have challenged the
interest of an expert. He had sold such tapestry as old Gobelins, and
he knew that the maker of it only dealt with a chosen few.
"Wonderful, isn't it?" said Quinney.
"You mean to sell first-class copies as such?"
"Yes. I guarantee what I sell, Mr. Lark, as--as you do."
"I don't sell fakes."
"Not necessary in your case. Will you come upstairs?"
"With pleasure."
Quinney was trembling with excitement. Gustavus noticed this, and went
on smiling. Pressland had prepared him. He praised and appraised many
things in the sanctuary, but he merely glanced at the commode.
"I want you to look at this, Mr. Lark."
"Bless me! Is that the commode which you bought in Melshire?"
"It is. What do you think of it?"
Gustavus protruded a large lower lip; his eyebrows, strongly marked,
expressed surprise, a twinkle in his left eye indicated discreet
amusement.
"Why isn't it downstairs with the others?"
"The others?"
"By the side of that piece of tapestry."
"It's the best bit I have," said Quinney defiantly.
"Surely not. I have bought such tapestry as yours before. I will admit
that I paid a big figure for it. We dealers are sadly done sometimes.
This commode is quite as good in its way as the Gobelins, but it ought
not to be next that cabinet."
"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Lark, that you call it a fake?"
"A fake--no. A copy admirably executed--yes."
"Oh, Lord!"
He made no attempt to conceal his distress. Gustavus patted his shoulder
encouragingly.
"I may be mistaken. I am often mistaken."
"You?"
"Even I. Come, come, I see that I have upset you. But, as a friend, as
a brother dealer, I say this: Get rid of it. You are taking up a line
of your own. You mean to sell honest copies as such, and to guarantee
the genuine bits. A capital idea. Only don't mix up the two. To
succeed in London it is necessary to establish a reputation. My eldest
son tells me that you built up a substantial business in
Melchester--that your reputation there was above reproach. Excellent!
I rejoiced to hear it. In our business we want men like you. But, no
compromise! Sell that commode for what it is, a fine copy executed at
the end of the eighteenth century. As such it has a considerable value.
I have a customer, an American gentleman, who would buy it to-morrow for
what it is, and pay a handsome figure."
The unhappy Quinney moistened his lips with a feverish tongue.
"What do you call a handsome figure, Mr. Lark?"
"Five or six hundred."
"And I paid nine!"
"Well, well!"
Gustavus turned his broad back upon the commode, and examined the Early
Worcester in the Chippendale cabinet. There was a tea-set of the Dr.
Wall period, bearing the much-prized square mark, some thirty pieces of
scale-blue with flowers delicately painted in richly-gilded panels.
"Is that scale-blue for sale?"
"At a price, Mr. Lark. I have had it for three years. I'm waiting for
a customer who will give me two hundred pounds, not a penny less."
"Two hundred pounds? And you won't sell to the dealers who have
customers who write such big cheques. Now, look here, Mr. Quinney, I am
sorry for you. I know how you feel, because I have made, I repeat, sad
and costly blunders myself. You don't ask enough for that scale-blue."
"Not enough?"
"I could sell that set for three hundred this afternoon. To prove that
I am not boasting I will offer you two hundred guineas, cash on the
nail."
"Done!" said Quinney. He added excitedly: "I'm much obliged, Mr. Lark.
I wish you could send me the American gentleman."
Gustavus laughed. He looked at Quinney with quite a paternal air.
"Come, come, isn't that asking too much?"
"I beg pardon, of course it is, but what am I to do about that commode?"
"I repeat--sell it."
"You know that I haven't a dog's chance of selling it now. Don't
flimflam me, Mr. Lark! You're too big a man, too good a sort. You've
treated me handsomely over that scale-blue. Now help me out of this
hole, if you can."
Lark nodded impressively. He went back to the commode, and examined it
meticulously, opening and shutting the doors, looking at the back,
scraping the paint of the panels with the point of a penknife. Then the
oracle spoke portentously:
"I never haggle with dealers, Mr. Quinney, and I don't want that
commode; but, to oblige you, I'll give you five hundred for it, and
chance making a hundred profit."
"Make it six hundred, Mr. Lark."
"I repeat--I never haggle."
"Damn it! I must cut a loss."
"Always the wise thing to do. My offer holds good for twenty-four
hours. Isn't Tomlin a friend of yours?"
"We've had many dealings together."
"He might pay more."
"Not he. I'll accept your offer, Mr. Lark, with many thanks. I'll not
forget this."
Gustavus returned to Oxford Street. He sold the commode to an American
millionaire for two thousand five hundred pounds, but Quinney,
fortunately for his peace of mind, never discovered this till some years
had passed.
He told Tom Tomlin that Lark was a perfect gentleman, and that the story
of the Rapper and the London "Cries" was a malicious lie on the face of
it.
Tomlin sniffed.
*CHAPTER XI*
*MORE BLUDGEONINGS*
*I*
The loss of four hundred pounds stimulated our hero to greater efforts.
Deep down in his heart, moreover, lay the desire to rehabilitate
himself. Susan had spared him exasperating reproaches, but he perceived,
so he fancied, pity in her faithful eyes. Her ministrations recalled
that humiliating Channel crossing, when his superiority as a male had
been buried in a basin! Let us admit that he wanted to play the god
with Susan, to shake the sphere of home with his Olympian nod, to hear
her soft ejaculation: "Joe, dear, you are wonderful!"
At this crisis in his fortunes he found himself, for the first time in
his life, with time on his hands. His premises were overstocked to such
an extent that he dared not run the temptation of attending sales. To
succeed greatly, he only needed customers, and they shunned him as if
Soho Square were an infected district.
It began to strike him that he had embarked upon a highly speculative
business. Tomlin was clear upon this point.
"It's a gamble if you go for big things. Buying that commode was a
gamble. You can't escape from it. That's what makes it interesting.
Win a tidy bit here, lose a tidy bit there, and it's all the same a
hundred years hence."
This familiar philosophy percolated through Quinney's mind. It never
occurred to him that he could be called a gambler, and yet something in
him thrilled at the name. He heard Tomlin's platitudes, and wondered
why he had never thought of them before.
"Farming's gambling--a mug's game! Sooner put my money on to a horse
than into the ground! Marriage! The biggest gamble of all! You struck
a winner, my lad--I didn't."
"I suppose," said Quinney, staring hard at Tomlin, "that you don't
gamble outside your business?"
"Yes, I do, when I get a gilt-edged tip."
"Race-horses?"
"Stock Exchange. Customers tell me things. I'm fairly in the know, I
am. Make a little bit, lose a little bit! It binges me up when I feel
blue."
"I'd like to get back a slice o' that lost four hundred quid."
"Maybe I can help you to do it. A customer of mine is in the Kaffir
Market."
"Kaffir Market! What's that?"
It has been said that Quinney was grossly ignorant of things outside his
own business.
"If you ain't as innocent as Moses in the bulrushes! African Mines, you
greenhorn! He tells me of things. Never let me down--not once. He
says a boom is just due."
"Do you risk much, Tom?"
"Lord bless you, no! I buy a few likely shares on margin, and carry 'em
over. A man must have some excitement."
"Yes," said Quinney thoughtfully, "he must."
He did not mention this talk to Susan, but as he kicked his heels
waiting for customers, the necessity of excitement--any
excitement--gripped at his vitals. Meanwhile, let it be placed to his
credit that he resisted the daily temptation to sell stuff to dealers.
He could have sold his treasures to Lark at a fine profit, but he
remained true to the principle: keep your best things to attract private
customers. He hoped that his kind patron, Lord Mel, would come to see
him. Possibly his lordship was offended, because his advice had been
spurned. Then he heard that Lord Mel was abroad, and not likely to
return to England for several months. He missed the bi-weekly meetings
at the Mitre, and he did not dare to tell his Susan that he was
depressed and dull, because he dreaded the inevitable "I told you so."
Susan missed her few friends, and Quinney strained his powers of
deception in the attempt to cheer her up by affirming that he had
bettered his position by leaving Melchester.
Many wise persons contend that if you want anything inordinately, you
get it. Excitement came to Quinney when he least expected it.
*II*
Hitherto adventurers of the first flight had left him alone. Small
imposters are easily detected. Nobody could deal with the baser sort of
trickster more drastically than Quinney. Rappers, for example, rapped
in vain at his door. If he opened it, they never crossed the threshold.
But when a provincial pigeon, preening his wings, is discovered within a
stone's throw of the Greek quarter in London, some fancier is likely to
make an attempt to bag the bird. Such a one entered Quinney's
establishment some three months after the lamentable sale of the
commode. He appeared to be a quiet, well-dressed man, and he wore a
single pearl in his cravat, which inspired confidence. He asked Quinney
if he ever attended sales as an agent, to buy things on the usual
commission. Quinney had acted as agent for Lord Mel upon several
occasions, and we may pardon him for mentioning the fact to the
stranger, who seemed mildly impressed. He remarked casually that he
knew Lord Mel, and had shot some high pheasants at Mel Court. Quinney,
in his turn, was impressed by this information, for he knew that Lord
Mel was nice in his selection of guests. Eventually Quinney consented
to attend a certain sale, and to bid for two Dutch pictures which the
stranger had marked in a catalogue.
"This is my card," said the stranger. "I shall be happy to give you a
banker's reference." He named a well-known bank, but Quinney was quite
satisfied with the name and address on the card. His visitor was an
army officer, a Major Fraser, and he belonged to a famous Service Club.
Somewhat to his disappointment, the two Dutch pictures fetched a price
beyond the limit imposed by the Major, who dropped in next day and
expressed his regrets. He was
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