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-à-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.