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 château 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?