Quinneys 29

Quinneys 29

III*

 

Accordingly, Posy was dispatched to a boarding school at Bexhill-on-Sea,

kept by two gentlewomen of the right sort, sensible, up-to-date,

highly-trained teachers, who ruled well and wisely over some twenty

girls, the daughters, for the most part, of hard-working, professional

men. Here we will leave Posy in good company. She was feeling sore and

humiliated after an unconditional surrender; but her sense of impotence

soon passed away. She loved her whimsical father and desired to please

him, although she writhed—as he had writhed—under the heel of parental

discipline. She began to study with assiduity, and was highly

commended.

 

 

*IV*

 

Meanwhile, Susan and Quinney were left alone for the first time since

Posy’s birth. Susan rejoiced in secret. She had her Joe to herself.

Posy was in the habit of dusting the more valuable bits of china in the

sanctuary, and cleaning the old glass. Susan undertook these small

duties, and pottered in and out of the sanctuary at all hours. Quinney

threw crumbs of talk to her, but he refused emphatically her timid

request to serve him once more as a saleswoman. At his wish, she rarely

entered the shop below. James Miggott was in charge of that. Quinney

was engrossed with the buying and selling of "stuff"; he attended to an

immense correspondence, writing all his letters in the sanctuary, where

he could pause from his labours to suck fresh energy from the

contemplation of his treasures. The prices he paid for some of them

terrified Susan, although she knew that he made few mistakes and immense

profits. She remarked that his reluctance to part with the finest

specimens had become almost a monomania. There was a lacquer cabinet; in

particular, standing upon a richly gilded Charles the Second stand.

Quinney had paid eight hundred pounds for it, and he had been offered a

thousand guineas within six months. He confessed to Susan that he

couldn’t live without it. The cabinet was flanked by an incised lacquer

screen, a miracle of Chinese workmanship. He refused a handsome profit

on that. Susan asked herself:

 

"Does he worship these false gods? Would he miss that cabinet more than

he would miss me?"

 

She noticed, too, that he was overworked. During his many absences from

home letters would accumulate. To answer them he rose earlier and went

to bed later, deaf to her remonstrance. He promised to engage a typist

and stenographer—some day.

 

Nevertheless, this was a pleasant time, but it lasted only a few months.

Mrs. Biddlecombe took to her bed again. Susan was summoned to

Melchester. The old lady was really dying, but she took her time about

it. Susan ministered to her till the end.

 

After the funeral, when she returned to Soho Square, a surprise awaited

her. Quinney had fulfilled his promise. In the sanctuary, at a

beautiful Carlton desk, sat Miss Mabel Dredge, a young and attractive

woman, the typist and stenographer. Poor Susan experienced tearing pangs

of jealousy when she beheld her, but Quinney’s treatment of the stranger

was reassuring. Obviously, he regarded Miss Dredge as a machine.

 

And his unaffected delight over Susan’s return home was positively

rejuvenating.

 

 

 

 

*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.