Quinneys 32

Quinneys 32

"I am your father’s foreman, and I earn three pounds a week. Lark and

Bundy, Tomlin, any of the big dealers would pay me five pounds a week,

but I can’t leave Soho Square."

 

Posy said hastily:

 

"I’m sure father couldn’t spare you."

 

"I am useful to him. I’m not such a fool as to underrate my services.

He is generous. He will raise my salary, but I shall remain downstairs.

I repeat, I know my place. I am fully aware that I ought not to be

talking to you like this. Mr. Quinney would be angry."

 

"Really, that is absurd."

 

"Do you know your father as well as I know him?"

 

She evaded his eyes.

 

"Perhaps not, but there’s nothing of the snob about daddy; he never

pretends to be better than he is. He rose from the ranks, and he’s

proud of it. I’m proud of it. I admire men who rise. I have no use for

slackers who owe everything to others. Why shouldn’t you rise higher

than father? You are better educated and a greater artist."

 

"What! You have thought of me as an artist?"

 

"I have been told that you are an artist. Father says so, and Mr.

Tomlin. It interested me enormously. You love your work for your work’s

sake. That is fine. And yet you tell me that you are unhappy, that it

gives you a shock to meet me, because I stand for everything you want

and can’t get. What do you want?"

 

"Freedom for one thing."

 

"Mustn’t freedom be earned? I have been taught so. You are serving, I

suppose, your apprenticeship. The work you love may be a small part of

that, and the rest drudgery. I used to loathe playing scales, but I

tried to be jolly."

 

"Your position is assured."

 

"If you’re the right sort, yours will be."

 

"I shall be jolly when it is. You ought to know all the truth, Miss

Quinney, if my stupid affairs don’t bore you too utterly?

 

"Can’t you see how interested I am?"

 

"You are divinely kind. I can’t express what your sympathy means to me.

Well, you spoke of my rising. That’s just where the shoe pinches. I

have not risen; I have fallen."

 

"Fallen from—what?"

 

"My people were gentlepeople."

 

"Oh!"

 

She drew in her breath sharply. James could see that his last shaft had

transfixed her. He was very clever, and he guessed exactly how she felt

about gentlepeople, using the word in its widest sense. Quinney’s money

had made her a gentlewoman.

 

"My father was an officer in the Army." (It was true that James’s

father had once held a second lieutenant’s commission in the Militia.)

"My mother was the daughter of a West Country parson. They died when I

was a boy. There was practically nothing for me. I was educated at a

charitable institution. Charity apprenticed me to a cabinet-maker at

Exeter. Charity nearly buried me—twice. I have known what it is, Miss

Quinney, to be without food, and without money, and to wake morning

after morning wishing that I had died in the night!"

 

 

*III*

 

This was the part of the tale which James told so fluently. Admittedly,

that last long sentence smacked of rhetorical effect. It could hardly

have been entirely impromptu. Nevertheless, it rolled Posy in the dust.

She became horribly conscious of rushing in where angels might fear to

tread. Indeed, that hackneyed quotation occurred to her. She

ejaculated, "Oh!" for the second time, and blushed piteously. James

rose to his feet. He spoke politely:

 

"I see that I have distressed you, and I am very sorry; but you asked

me."

 

"I, too, am sorry," said Posy earnestly. "I am most awfully sorry. I

wish I could say the right thing, but I feel rather a fool."

 

"The right thing for me to say, Miss Quinney, is good-bye. I shall go

to Lulworth this afternoon."

 

"But why should you go? I don’t understand. Are you going on our

account?"

 

"On my own."

 

Another transfixing shaft. Posy was too honest to misinterpret this

calm statement. Secretly she was thrilled by it; delicious shivers

crept up and down her spine. For the first time she became supremely

conscious of her power over a man. At that moment she turned from a

jolly girl into a woman. It touched her to fine issues. In a low,

tremulous voice she faltered:

 

"You know best."

 

James raised his hat and went.

 

 

*IV*

 

Half an hour later Susan had the story, with reserves, from Posy’s lips.

Are we to blame the girl because she left out the climax? At any rate,

her conscience remained clear. She could not betray a sacred

confidence.

 

Susan was not vastly interested, as a wiser mother might have been. She

accepted James’s departure with a certain smug satisfaction which

exasperated her daughter. She was sure that father would approve. Posy

said sharply:

 

"But, mummie, daddy couldn’t object to our being decently civil to Mr.

Miggott?"

 

"He might."

 

"But why—why?"

 

"Father is so ambitious for you, child. Any gallivanting about with his

foreman——"

 

"Gallivanting! Who spoke of gallivanting? Mr. Miggott is a gentleman.

You like him and respect him. So do I. The word ’gallivanting’ sounds

so housemaidy, so merry-go-roundy."

 

"Oh, well, my dear, I’m glad the young man has gone, that’s all."

 

The subject remained closed for the rest of the Weymouth visit. Mother

and daughter returned to London a month later. James was at work

downstairs. When Posy and he met, she could hardly believe that he was

the same James who had sat beside her on the pier. His dignified

salutation, "Good-afternoon, Miss Quinney!" seemed ludicrously

inadequate, but what else could the poor fellow have said? Posy could

find no answer to this insistent question, and yet she had expected a

different greeting. He had not offered to shake hands, nor had she.

Ought she to have held out her hand first? Was he offended because she

hadn’t? When she woke next morning she wondered whether James was

wishing that he had died in the night. The determination to brighten his

life, within reasonable limits, imposed itself upon her while she was

dressing. More, it inspired her to choose a clean, lilac-coloured

frock, which became her admirably. Putting up her hair she was careful

to arrange it artistically, because an artist might look at it with

deep-set, melancholy eyes. If you had told her that she was romantic

she would have been furious.

 

At breakfast Quinney said briskly:

 

"I’ve a job for you, my girl."

 

"Certainly, daddy."

 

"I’m going to turn over to you the dusting of my china, and the cleaning

of the Waterford glass. You used to do it nicely before you went to

boarding-school."

 

"I shall just love it."

 

Quinney was much gratified. Posy, he reflected, was his own dear

daughter; no nonsense about her, no highfalutin airs and graces, first

and last a perfect lady. He smacked his lips with satisfaction.

 

"You must teach me values, daddy."

 

"By Gum, I will. You’ll learn, too, mighty quick. Did the girls at your

school ever throw it up to you that you was a tradesman’s daughter?"

 

"No, I told them that you were the honestest dealer in England."

 

"So I am, my pretty, the honestest in the world. It pays to be honest."

 

"That’s not why you’re honest?"

 

"No, missie, it ain’t. I swore solemn never to sell fakes except as

such the night you was born."

 

"What a funny time to choose!"

 

Susan made a sign to him, but he went on:

 

"Funny? Never could make out why people use that word in such a silly

way. Funny? Your dear mother nearly died the night you came to us."

 

Susan interfered nervously.

 

"Now, Joe, you ain’t going into that, are you?"

 

"Yes, I am. Why not? It’s high time, speakin’ of values, that young

Posy should know just what she cost us. I say it’s part of her

education, the part she couldn’t learn at school. She’s eighteen. She

knows, I take it, that she didn’t drop from heaven into the middle of a gooseberry bush?"