Quinneys’

Chapter XIV James Miggott

I

In common with other great men who have achieved success, Quinney was endowed with a Napoleonic faculty of picking the right men to serve him. Having done so, he treated them generously, so that they remained in his service, loath to risk a change for the worse. He paid good wages, and was complaisant in the matter of holidays.

James Miggott had been his most fortunate discovery. James was “brainy” (we quote Quinney), ambitious, healthy, and an artist in his line: the repairing of valuable old furniture. Also he was good-looking, which counted with his employer. A few weeks after joining the establishment it had been arranged that he should sleep in a comfortable room in the basement, and take his meals at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. During his provincial circuits Quinney liked to know that a man was in charge of the house at night. James’s habits, apparently, were as regular as his features.

By this time he had come to be regarded as foreman. Bit by bit he had won Quinney’s entire confidence. The master talked to the man more freely than he talked to Susan about everything connected with his business. James listened attentively, made occasionally some happy suggestion, and betrayed no signs of a swollen head. A natural inflation might have been expected. Quinney’s eyes failed to detect it. Moreover, Susan liked him, and respected him. He attended Divine service on Sundays; he ate and drank in moderation; he was scrupulously neat in appearance; he had received a sound education, and expressed himself well in good English. Truly a paragon!

Quinney had secured Miss Mabel Dredge after his own fashion. Hitherto his typewriting had been done by a firm which employed a score of typists. The head of that firm happened to be a lady of great intelligence and energy, the widow of a stockbroker who had died bankrupt. Quinney knew about her, liked and admired her, and told her so in his whimsical way. She liked and respected Quinney. Also, by an odd coincidence, Mrs. Frankland had begun her struggle for existence in London at the time when Quinney left Melchester. They had compared notes; each had undergone thwackings. When Mrs. Frankland began to make money she spent most of it at Quinneys’. Amongst other bits, she had bought a spinet—cheap. Accordingly, when Quinney entreated her to find a competent young woman, she generously offered him the pick of her establishment.

Mabel Dredge went with alacrity, glad to escape from a small table in a large room, not too well ventilated. She intended, from the first, to give satisfaction, to “hold down” the new job. She was tall and dark, with a clear, colourless skin, and a rather full-lipped mouth, which indicated appreciation of the good things in life. Mrs. Frankland had said to her:

“You will earn a bigger salary, Mabel, and Mr. Quinney won’t make love to you.”

Mabel Dredge smiled pensively. She could take care of herself, and she had no reason to suppose that she was susceptible. Men had made love to her, but they were the wrong men. She had refused kind invitations to lunch or dine at smart restaurants. When she walked home after the day’s work she encountered smiles upon the faces of well-dressed loafers. No answering smile on her lips encouraged these dear-stalkers to address her. But, deep down in her heart, was a joyous and thrilling conviction that she was desirable. The male passers-by who did not smile aroused unhappy qualms. Was she losing her looks? Was she growing old? Could it be possible that she might die an old maid?

Upon the morning when she appeared in Soho Square Quinney sent for James. He said abruptly:

“James Miggott will show you round. If you want to know anything, go to him. Don’t ask me foolish questions, because that makes me lose my hair; and I ain’t got any to lose that way. See?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Dessay he’ll tell you where you can get a plate of roast beef in the middle of the day, between one and two. You have an hour off then. What did Mrs. Frankland allow you?”

“Forty minutes.”

“Just so. You’ll find me easy to get along with, if you do your duty. James will tell you that I’m a remarkable man. I call him James, and I shall call you Mabel. It saves time, and time’s money. You can scoot off with James.”

The pair disappeared. Quinney’s eyes twinkled. He was thinking of Susan, and recalling that memorable afternoon when he kissed her for the first time behind the parlour-door in Laburnum Row.

II

We have mentioned James Miggott’s almost magical powers of transforming eighteenth-century spinets into desks and dressing-tables. These useful and ornamental pieces of furniture were sold as converted spinets, and they commanded a handsome price because the transformation was achieved with such consummate art. Even experts were at a loss to point out the difference between what was originally old and what had been added. James had access to Quinney’s collection of mahogany—the broken chairs, tables, beds, doors, and bureaux which the little man had bought for a song of sixpence before mahogany leapt again into fashion. The collection had begun in Melchester, and Quinney was always adding to it. In it might be found exquisitely carved splats and rails and ball-and-claw legs, many of them by the hand of the great craftsmen—Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, and Adam. One cellar and two attics were full of these interesting relics.

Shortly after James’s appearance in Soho Square Quinney succumbed to the temptation of doctoring “cripples,” which besets most honest dealers in antique furniture. He had, as we know, pledged himself not to sell faked specimens of china or faked old oak, except as such. And he had stuck to the strict letter of this promise, thereby securing many customers, and winning their confidence. It had paid him to be honest. With sorrowful reluctance we must give some account of his divagations from the straight and narrow way.

The temptation assailed Quinney with especial virulence, because “cripples” of high degree appealed to him quite as strongly as, let us say, a desperately injured sprig of nobility, battered to bits in a motor accident, may appeal to the skill and patience of a famous surgeon. When Quinney found a genuine Chippendale chair in articulo mortis, he could sit down and weep beside it. To restore it to health and beauty became a labour of love, almost a duty. He had not, of course, the technical skill for such work; and he had not found any cabinet-maker who was absolutely the equal of the Minihy man till he discovered James Miggott. The first important task assigned to James was the mending of an elaborately carved Chippendale settee, a museum piece. James threw his heart and his head into the job; and, within the year, that settee was sold at Christopher’s, after examination by experts, as an untouched and perfect specimen. Quinney was no party to this fraud, for the settee had never belonged to him, but it opened his eyes to the possibilities of patching “cripples.” And every week he was being offered these “cripples.” The finest specimens, by the best craftsmen, are rare; the full sets of eight incomparable chairs, for instance, come but seldom into the open market. But the “cripples” may be found in any cottage in the kingdom, fallen from the high estate of some stately saloon to the attic of a servant.

Tom Tomlin was one of the very few who saw the Chippendale settee after James had restored it. Within a few days he attempted to lure the young man from Soho Square, but James refused an offer of a larger salary, and elected to stay with Quinney. Possibly he mistrusted Tomlin, whose general appearance was far from prepossessing. Tomlin, however, was not easily baffled. He seized an early opportunity of speaking privately to Quinney.

“Joe,” he said, “this young feller is the goods. He can do the trick.”

“Do what trick?”

Tomlin winked.

“Any trick, I take it, known to our trade. The very finest faker of old furniture I ever came across. Now, as between man and man, are you going to make a right and proper use of him?”

“What d’ye mean, Tom?”

“Tchah! You know well enough what I mean. Why beat about the bush with an old friend? Are you going to turn this young man loose amongst that old stuff you’ve collected?”

Quinney laughed, shaking his head.

“Am I going to let James Miggott fake up all that old stuff? No, by Gum! No!”

“But, damn it! Why not?”

“Several reasons. One’ll do. I’ve sworn solemn not to sell fakes unless they’re labelled as such.”

“Of all the silly rot——”

“There it is.”

Tomlin went away, but he returned next day, and asked for a glass of brown sherry. Quinney had one, too.

“I’ve a proposition to make,” said Tomlin. “You’ve got a small gold mine in this Miggott, but you don’t mean to work him properly. Well, let me do it.”

“How?”

“Suppose I send you ‘cripples’ to be mended. Any objections to that?”

“None.”

“This young Miggott mends ’em, and puts in his best licks on ’em too. Then you send ’em back to me.”

“That all?”

Tomlin winked.

“Do you want to know any more? Is it your business to inquire what becomes of the stuff after you’ve doctored it? And, mind you, I shall pay high for the doctorin’. You leave that to me. You won’t be disappointed with my cheques.”

Let it be remembered, although we hold no brief for Quinney, that this subtle temptation assailed him shortly after his bludgeonings, when he was tingling with impatience to “get even” with the Londoners who had “downed” him.

In fine, he accepted Tomlin’s offer.

Quinney has since confessed that at first he was very uneasy, honesty having become a pleasant and profitable habit. There were moments when he envied moral idiots like Tomlin, stout, smiling, red-faced sinners, who positively wallowed and gloried in sinfulness. Tomlin pursued pleasure upon any and every path. He went racing, attended football matches, was a patron of the Drama and the Ring, ate and drank immoderately, made no pretence of being faithful to Mrs. Tomlin, or honest with the majority of his customers. His amazing knowledge of Oriental porcelain had given him an international reputation. He never attempted to deceive the experts, and, in consequence, was quoted as a high authority in such papers as The Collector and Curios. He knew exactly what his customers needed, and was the cleverest salesman in the kingdom. Less successful dealers affirmed that the devil took especial care of Tom Tomlin.

III

Quinney had no reason to complain of Tomlin’s cheques. He knew that his old friend was being scrupulously square, and sharing big profits with him. Tomlin had customers from the Argentine, from the Brazils, from all parts of the earth where fortunes are made and spent swiftly. The “cripples” disappeared mysteriously, and were never heard of again. By this time Tomlin had moved to his famous premises in Bond Street. He had not achieved the position of Mr. Lark, because he lacked that great man’s education and polish, but he was quite the equal of Mr. Bundy.

It is important to mention that Tomlin sent very few cripples to Soho Square. Nor were they delivered by his vans. They arrived unexpectedly from provincial towns; they were invariably authentic specimens, the finest “stuff.” No understrapper beheld them. James carried them tenderly to his operating theatre, whence they emerged pale of complexion, but sound in limb. Daily massage followed, innumerable rubbings. Then Tomlin would drop in, and nudge Quinney, and chuckle. The two dealers would pull out their glasses and examine the patient with meticulous zeal. James would watch them with a slightly derisive smile upon his handsome face. At the end of his three years’ engagement Quinney raised his salary to three pounds a week. The little man expected an extravagant expression of gratitude, but he didn’t get it. At times James’s smile puzzled him.

IV

Posy remained at Bexhill-on-Sea till she was eighteen. Her friendship for the Honeybuns had been slowly extinguished. Mrs. Honeybun, who mortified everything in her thin body except pride, refused peremptorily to see Posy against the expressed wish of her father. Posy wrote to Ethel long screeds answered with enthusiasm at first and then perfunctorily. At the end of the year the girls drifted apart.

Posy, however, made other friends. When she came home for her first holidays, Quinney and Susan conspired together to make things pleasant for her. She had plenty of pocket money. Susan and she went to many plays, many concerts, all the good shows. Quinney rubbed his hands and chuckled, but he declined to accompany them.

The two years of school passed with astonishing swiftness; and the improvement to Posy quickened a lively gratitude in Quinney to Lord Mel. She developed into a charming young woman, irresponsible as yet, but a joyous creature, easy to please and be pleased. Quinney was delighted with her. He told her solemnly:

“My poppet, you’re a perfect lady; yes, you are.”

Posy went into peals of laughter.

“Daddy, how funny you are!”

This talk took place upon the day that Posy said good-bye to her school-fellows, and returned home as a more or less finished product of the boarding-school system.

“Funny? Me? I don’t feel funny, my pretty, when I look at you. I feel proud. One way and t’other I suppose you’ve cost me nigh upon four thousand pounds!”

“Daddy, dear! Not as much as that, surely?”

Quinney cocked his head at a sharp angle, while he computed certain sums.

“I figure it out in this way,” he said slowly. “In hard cash you stand me in about fifteen hundred spread over the last ten years. Now, if I’d stuffed that amount into Waterford glass, I could have cleaned up five thousand at least. See?”

“I see,” said Posy, and laughed again.

“The question now is,” continued Quinney, absorbed in admiration of her delicate colouring, “what the ’ell am I going to do with such a fancy piece?”

“Father!” exclaimed Susan. “Do please try to remember that you’re not talking to Mr. Tomlin.”

“When I feel strongly,” replied Quinney simply, “I just have to use strong language. Posy has come home to what?”

“She’s come home, Joe. That’s enough. Why bother about anything else?”

“Because I’m the bothering sort, old dear—that’s why. I look ahead. I count my chickens before they’re hatched.”

Susan said slily:

“Yes, you made sure that this chicken was going to be hatched a boy.”

The three laughed. It was a pleasant moment of compensation for long years of anxiety and toil. Each had worked for it. Posy had submitted, not without kickings and prickings, to strict discipline; Quinney, from the child’s birth, had determined that the stream must rise higher than its source; Susan, serenely hopeful about the future, had worried unceasingly over the present, concerned about petty ailments, the putting on and off of suitable under-linen, and so forth.

“Don’t bother about me, daddy; I’m all right.”

“By Gum, you are! That’s why I bother. In my experience it’s the right bits that get smashed!”

V

Perhaps nobody was more surprised at the change in Posy than James Miggott. Hitherto the young lady, home for the holidays, had ignored him, not purposely—she was too kindhearted for that—but with a genuine unconsciousness of giving offence. He was part and parcel of what she least liked in her father’s house, the shop. Not for an instant was she ashamed of being the daughter of a dealer in antiques, who owned a shop; what exasperated her was the conviction that the shop owned him, that he had become the slave of his business. The Honeybuns had rubbed into her plastic mind that the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, the root-cause of ruin to nations and individuals, began and ended with the lust of accumulating material things. Nothing moved Mrs. Honeybun to more fervent and eloquent speech than the text: “Lay not up treasures upon earth!” At Bexhill-on-Sea Posy had heard this same injunction upon the lips of a local Chrysostom, to whom she listened enthusiastically every Sunday morning. The text had a personal application, because she never heard it, or a variant on it, without thinking of the sanctuary and her father’s “gems,” apostrophized by Susan as “sticks and stones.” Posy admired beautiful things, but if they were very costly she seemed to have a curious fear of them. Before she was born, Susan had experienced strongly the same fear of her Joe’s idols.

She was, however, discreet enough to conceal this from her father. He took her to Christopher’s, where a miraculous piece of reticulated K’ang He was on exhibition, prior to sale. It was an incense-box decorated with figures of the eight Immortals in brilliant enamels. Metaphorically, Quinney went down on his knees before it. Next day he told Posy that it had fetched seven thousand guineas! He stared at her sharply, because she showed no enthusiasm.

James Miggott beheld her as Aphrodite fresh from the sea. Poor Mabel Dredge appeared sallow beside her, tired and spent after a hot July. Posy glowed. She was not insensible to the homage of admiring glances, and James, by the luck of things, happened to be the first good-looking man with whom she was thrown into intimate contact. Propinquity! What follies are committed in thy company!

She wondered why James’s handsome face and manly figure had never impressed her before. She spoke to Susan about him with nonchalant vivacity:

“James is a power in this house.”

“Yes, dear; your father thinks the world of him. He is a very good young man.”

“Good? Now what do you mean by that?”

“Gracious! I hope you haven’t inherited father’s trick of asking questions.”

“Is James pious?”

“Pious? He goes to church; he does his duty; he is to be trusted; he’s a hard worker, and from what your father tells me, a real artist.”

“An artist? Does he work for the love of his work?”

“I think he does.”

Then and there Posy decided to cultivate James Miggott. He had excited the curiosity of an intelligent maiden. She found herself wondering what he did with himself when his work was done. Did he read? Had he any real friends? Was Miss Dredge a friend of his? What were his ambitions? The more she thought of him, the sorrier she became for him. Possibly he perceived this. Upon the rare occasions when they met, he was careful to assume a captivating air of melancholy, preserving conscientiously the right distance between them, scrupulously polite but somewhat indifferent to her advances, thereby piquing her to bolder efforts to bridge the distance. A woman of experience might have been justified in assuming that a man who could play so careful a game was no tyro at it.

This preliminary sparring lasted nearly two months.