Chapter XII Posy
I
Lord Mel sent many customers to Soho Square. He felt sincerely sorry for the little man, and told everybody that he was a fighter and a striver, and “straight.” Within a few months Quinney became the Quinney of old, full of enthusiasm and swagger, exuding energy, quite confident that he was soaring and likely to become a spire! An American millionaire one morning made a clean sweep of half the treasures in the sanctuary. Orders to furnish rooms in a given style with first-class reproductions came joyously to hand, and were executed promptly and at a reasonable price.
In due time, also, he became a member of the inner ring of big dealers. They tried to “freeze him out” by inflating prices, often at a serious loss to themselves, but eventually they were constrained to admit that the Melchester man was too shrewd for them, with a knowledge of values which seemed to have fallen upon him like the dew from heaven. At any moment he might stop bidding with an abruptness very disconcerting to the older men, leaving them with the lapin which they were trying to impose upon him.
In those early days he found the Caledonian market a happy hunting-ground, securing immense quantities of Georgian steel fire-irons, fenders, and dog-grates, at that time in no demand. He stored them in his immense cellars, covering them with a villainous preparation of his own which defied rust.
“Good stuff to lay down,” he remarked.
Afterwards the big dealers asked him how he had contrived to foresee the coming demand for old cut glass. Of this he had bought immense quantities also. He answered them in his own fashion.
“Can you tell me why one breed of dog noses out truffles?”
He bought innumerable spinets, good, bad, and indifferent, with reckless confidence. Even Tomlin remonstrated.
“What are you going to do with them?”
“You’ll see,” said Quinney.
One more blunder—and the use to which he turned it—must be chronicled. By this time he was recognized as an expert on eighteenth-century furniture. But he admitted that there were one or two who knew more than he. Tomlin, for example, who would drop in at least once a week for a chat and a glass of brown sherry. Upon one of these visits he found Quinney in a state of enthusiasm over a Chippendale armchair, unearthed in a small provincial town. Tomlin examined it carefully, and pronounced it a fake.
Quinney refused to believe this; but ultimately conviction that he had been “had” once more was forced upon him.
“Bar none, it’s the best copy I ever saw,” remarked Tomlin.
Quinney accepted his old friend’s chaff with some chucklings. Next day, he returned to the provincial town, and discovered the young cabinet-maker who had made the fake. He returned to Soho in triumph, bringing the cabinet-maker with him. His name was James Miggott, and he entered into a contract to serve Quinney for three years at a salary of two pounds a week.
“Seems a lot,” said Susan.
“He was earning twenty-five bob. I shall turn him loose on those spinets.”
Most people know something about Quinney’s spinets transformed by the hand of the skilful James into writing-desks, sideboards, and dressing-tables. The spinets brought many customers to Soho Square.
“Stock booming?” said Tomlin.
“It is,” said Quinney. He added reflectively: “I sold a spinet to-day, for which I gave fifteen shillings, for just the same number o’ pounds. James put in just one week on it. That’s all, by Gum!”
Some dealers maintain that Quinney made his reputation with spinets, inasmuch as he sold more of them for a couple of years than the trade put together. But he himself believes that his Waterford glass brought the right customers—the famous collectors who buy little, but talk and write much. They liked Quinney because he was so keen; and he never grudged the time spent in showing his wares to non-buyers.
“They tell others,” he observed to Susan. “No ’ad.’ can beat that.”
He had other dodges to capture trade. It became known that he charged nothing for giving his opinion upon specimens submitted to him. And he had an endearing habit of writing to purchasers of the spinets within a few months or weeks of the deal, offering an advance on the price paid, a “nice little profit,” invariably refused.
“Bless ’em! It warms their hearts to think they’ve made a sound investment.”
“How surprised and disappointed you’d be, Joe, if they accepted your offer!”
“Right you are, Susie; but there’s little fear of that, my girl.”
When a new customer entered the shop, Quinney would adopt an air of guileless indifference, which was likely to provoke the remark:
“Where is Mr. Quinney?”
“I’m Quinney. Like to have a look round? You may see something you fancy.”
“That’s a nice pie-crust table.”
“It’s a gem. Cheap, too.”
Then he would give a low whistle, a clear, flute-like note. James would appear from below.
“Where’s the receipted bill for this table?”
The bill was produced and shown to the stranger.
“See? Paid four pounds seventeen for it, just five weeks ago. Look at the date. You shall have it for six pounds, and, by Gum! I’ll make you this offer. You can return it to me any day you like within a year, and I’ll give you five pound ten for it. How’s that, as between man and man?”
These seemingly artless methods captivated the “think-it-overs” and the “rather-nicers,” who frequent curiosity shops in ever-increasing numbers. Mothers brought daughters to Soho Square to acquire historical information. Quinney refused to sell a Jacobean armchair because it was so useful an object-lesson to young and inquiring minds.
“Look at that, madam,” he would say. Perhaps the lady would murmur softly: “It is rather nice, isn’t it?” And the flapper would exclaim enthusiastically: “Mumsie, it’s perfectly lovely!”
“Much more than that!” Quinney would add, with mysterious chucklings. “See that rose? It’s a Stuart rose. And that crown on the front splat is an emblem of loyalty to the Merry Monarch.”
“Dear me! You hear that, Kitty!”
“Pay particular attention to the legs, ladies. Ball and paw, the lion’s paw, with hair above them, indicatin’ the strength of the Constitootion after the Restoration. Chapter of English history, that chair.”
He could embellish such simple themes according to fancy, and with due regard for the patience of his listener. To Susan he spoke of these intellectual exercises as “my little song and dance.”
II
Meanwhile, Posy was growing up, becoming a tall, slender, pretty girl. She attended a day-school in Orchard Street—a select seminary for young ladies. Susan accompanied her to and from Orchard Street. By this time she had accepted, with a serenity largely temperamental, the fate allotted to her. Once more Quinney was absorbed in his business. Adversity had brought husband and wife together, prosperity sundered them. Very rarely does it happen that a successful man can spare time to spend on his wife. The charming slackers make the most congenial mates. Compensation has thus ordained it, wherein lie tragedy and comedy. Many women, to the end of their lives, are incapable of realizing this elementary fact. They want their husbands to climb high—the higher the better; they understand, perhaps more clearly than men, what can be seen and enjoyed from the tops; they pluck, often as a matter of course, and gobble up the grapes of Eschol, but they refuse to accept the inevitable penalties of supreme endeavour. Their husbands return to them almost foundered, fit only to eat and sleep. In the strenuous competition of to-day what else is possible?
Susan did not complain, but then she belonged to the generation who accepted with pious resignation life as it is. Indeed, she accounted herself singularly fortunate, and whenever the present seemed dreary she fortified herself by thinking of a rosy past, or projected herself into an enchanted future, when he and she, Darby and Joan, would wander hand in hand to some garden of sleep, some drowsy country churchyard, where they would lie down together to await an ampler and happier intercourse in the life beyond.
Her interest in persons as opposed to things quickened with the growth of her child. Posy became to her what a Chelsea shepherdess modelled by Roubillac was to Quinney—a bit of wonderful porcelain to be enshrined, a museum piece! The maternal instincts budded and bloomed the more bravely because conjugal emotion was denied full expression. She faced unflinchingly the conviction that Posy must marry and leave her. By that time Joe might be more ready to enjoy the fruits of labour. For the moment, then, her husband was pigeon-holed. He remained at the back of her mind, at the bottom of her heart, masked by that sprightly creature, his daughter.
Posy accepted Susan’s love as a matter of course.
III
For her years—she was just fifteen—the girl exhibited a precocious intelligence and an essentially masculine shrewdness which distinguished her sire. In the girl’s presence Quinney observed no reticences. Invariably he discussed, with boyish zest and volubility, the day’s trafficking. Posy was not allowed to potter about the shop, but she ran at will in and out of the sanctuary, and she knew the value of every “gem” in it, and its history. Susan dared not interfere, but she prayed that Joe’s child might not be tempted to worship false gods. In an artless fashion she attempted to inculcate a taste for high romance. She read aloud Ivanhoe, and was much distressed by Posy’s comments upon certain aspects of the tale.
“The men had a good time, but the women’s lives must have been deadly. I’m jolly glad that I’m a twen-center!” She continued fluently: “You have a rotten time, mummie.”
“My dear!”
“But you do. I couldn’t stick your life!”
She used slang freely, protesting, when rebuked, that she picked it up from the lips of her chum, Ethel Honeybun, who was exalted as the daughter of a Member of Parliament. Susan’s silence encouraged her to go on:
“I want all the fun I can get. What fun have you had? You sew a lot, you read aloud to me, you take me to school—although I’m quite able to go alone—you order the meals, you are father’s slave.”
“I won’t have you say that!”
“But it’s true.”
“I love your father. I married for love. I am happy and contented in my own home. I have no patience with these new-fangled notions about women’s rights and women’s wrongs.”
“Ethel says——”
“I don’t wish to hear what Ethel says. Fun, indeed! Why, child, I’ve had you.”
“Was that fun?” She spoke seriously, fixing her mother with a pair of clear, grey eyes. “Some girls love dolls. Dolls rather bored me. Is it fun to mess about with a baby, wash it and dress it, and take it out in a pram? I call hockey fun.”
“You’ll lose a front tooth some fine day. That will be great fun.”
“Let’s be perfectly calm. I love talking things out. You don’t. I mean to say you try to hide your real self from me. Didn’t you think and talk as I do when you were a girl?”
“Most certainly not!”
“You are an old-fashioned darling, and I love you for it! I shouldn’t like you to talk as Mrs. Honeybun does. She says you and father spoil me. I wonder if that’s true. She gives Ethel beans sometimes, and Ethel answers back as if they were equals. It would give Granny a fit to hear her!”
Twice a year Posy paid a ceremonial visit to Mrs. Biddlecombe. The old lady was very fond of her, although she sniffed at her upbringing. Posy, indeed, had won a moral victory during her first visit, shortly after the Quinneys moved to London. At the end of three days Mrs. Biddlecombe had said majestically to the child:
“I hope you’re enjoying yourself, my dear!”
“I’m not,” said Posy, with shocking candour.
“Why not?” demanded the astonished grandmother.
“Because you’ve been so wonnerful peevish.”
“Bless my soul, what next! Well, well, you are a pert little maid, but I must try to be more agreeable.”
Posy eyed her reflectively.
“I dare say,” she murmured, “that I should be wonnerful peevish too, if I was very, very old.”
Quinney, against Susan’s wishes and protests, insisted that the child should be brought up “as a little princess.” She was given many so-called advantages. She was taught to play the piano indifferently well; she danced beautifully; she could chatter French, and was now struggling with German.
“Spare no expense,” said Quinney magnificently.
IV
His intimate relations with the growing girl remained constant. He would make the same remarks, pinch her blooming cheeks, pat her head, and kiss her smooth forehead.
“How’s my pet this morning?”
“Quite all right, daddy, thank you.”
“Gettin’ on nicely with your lessons?”
“Oh yes.”
Once, when she was five years old, he had soundly smacked her. The sprite had discovered the efficacy of tears as a solvent of difficulties. Whenever her little will was crossed she howled. She howled as if she enjoyed it, and her father was shrewd enough to know this. One morning he caught her up, laid her across his knee, and spanked her till his hand ached. Next day Posy smiled very sweetly at him, and said reproachfully:
“Daddy pank a Posy too hard.”
But she stopped howling.
He was well pleased when she began to make friends with people like the Honeybuns. Honeybun was an ubiquitous Socialist who slept at Clapham. Like Quinney, he had soared. The two men had nothing in common except this, but it was a bond between them. Mrs. Honeybun had been a governess in the family of a nobleman. She, too, had soared into an empyrean of advanced thinkers and workers. Familiarity with the titled classes had bred contempt for them. In and out of season she denounced the luxury and indolence of an effete aristocracy. Her own household was managed abominably. She preached and practised the virtues of an Edenic diet. Butcher’s meat was spoken of scathingly as the source of most physical and moral infirmities. Apart from this prejudice against flesh-pots and aristocrats, she was a kindly woman, over-zealous as a reformer, displaying a too tempestuous petticoat, but burning with ardour to ameliorate the condition of the poor and oppressed.
She exercised an enormous influence over Posy.
And it is not easy to analyse this influence, which, however well meant, was not entirely for good. Mrs. Honeybun was clever enough to admit that there can be no great gain without an appreciable loss. The only thing that mattered was the satisfaction of being able to affirm that the gain outweighed the loss. Her favourite hobby, which she rode mercilessly, was the necessity of Self-expression, the revealing of the Ego, the essential Spirit loosed from the bondage of the flesh.
Unhappily, to understand the Honeybun philosophy, a mosaic of all creeds, it became necessary to master the “patter.” The word is perhaps offensive, but it describes exactly the amazing jargon habitually in the mouths of the exponents of the New Revelation. It is rather dangerous, for example, to tell a young girl adored by her parents that she must begin by loving Herself. Properly assimilated, the injunction is Socratic. Posy accepted it literally. Mrs. Honeybun, of course, explained what she meant, but at such length, with such divagations and irrelevancies, that Posy soon became bored. She told herself that Ethel’s mother was a dear, an understanding person, tremendously clever and modern, a twen-center! She could obey this kind and fluent teacher with hearty goodwill. It was so delightfully easy to begin with loving one’s Ego.
Susan, it may be imagined, heard too much and too often of the Honeybuns; and she smiled when she discovered that the meals were “skimpy.” Posy had a healthy appetite not to be satisfied with nut cutlets or vegetable pie badly cooked and served at odd hours. No servant stayed long with the Honeybuns, because the remains of cold “vegy” pie were expected to be consumed at “elevenses.” Susan commented slily on this.
“Your friend, Mrs. Honeybun, seemingly, manages everything and everybody except her own house and her own servants.”
To this Posy fervently replied:
“The spiritual food in that house is simply wonderful!”
Before many weeks had passed Susan was given an opportunity of testing the truth of this statement. Mrs. Biddlecombe invited Posy to spend a fortnight in Melchester—a precious fortnight out of the mid-summer holidays. Ethel, some twenty-four hours later, entreated her friend to join the Honeybun family at Ramsgate. Much to Susan’s dismay Posy announced her intention of going to Ramsgate.
“It’s deadly dull at Melchester, mummie, and just think what a privilege it is, what an opportunity to spend a fortnight with Ethel’s mother.”
To her astonishment, Ethel’s mother placed a different interpretation upon the opportunity.
“Of course, you will go to your grandmother, and I shall expect you to be charming to the old lady. In the nature of things, you can’t pay her many more visits. Make this one a fragrant and imperishable memory. Express what is your true self by your devotion to an aged and apparently irritable grandmother.”
Posy obeyed, with a result which had special bearing on events duly to be chronicled. Mrs. Biddlecombe, captivated by the sweetness and dutifulness of one whom she had hitherto regarded as a spoiled child, altered her will, leaving everything she possessed to Posy. Susan, she was aware, would be adequately provided for. Perhaps it tickled an elementary sense of humour to make Posy independent of a too autocratic father.