Nan Barmister lived in Soho; a part of Soho which is now pulled down,
though, from a point of view of beauty, the warehouses which have taken
the place of the sombre eighteenth-century houses are scarcely an
improvement. When Nan lived there, there were no real warehouses in the
quiet street which led to nowhere. It was quite a short street, with a
blank wall at the end, and a piece more wall, enclosing a timber-yard,
on the right-hand side. The rest of the right side was taken up with
a couple of the old houses; one unoccupied, the other—to judge by the
number of plates on the door and railings—very much occupied, and by
people who were also much occupied, a surprising number of professions
being set forth—machine kilting, feather curling, and agencies for all
manner of things.
On the left-hand side Nan lived. The houses on that side had an even
more sombre look: two were shut up, the charwomen of the neighbourhood
said on account of some lawsuit; the other two were the property of
Robert Barmister, Nan’s father. By the door-lintel of one was a rubbed
brass plate, bearing his name in faint letters, and on the wire blind
of the window nearest the door the same name appeared in still fainter
letters. There was nothing to say what he did, nor why he was to be
found there; but in daylight, if one looked up at the higher windows,
one could see through the dusty panes the corners of wonderful cabinets
and the graceful backs of chairs made when the making of chairs was
a fine art. Robert Barmister used his two houses as warehouses,
and people in the second-hand furniture trade knew it without his
advertising the fact. They and others, whether interested in buying or
selling, knew that one of the finest judges of the antique, and one of
the truest connoisseurs and shrewdest dealers and matchers of old with
old or new, was to be found in the room behind the wire blind.
It was a good-sized room, with a painted ceiling, mellowed past
recognition by years of smoke, and a chimney-piece, ornamented with
dolphins in relief, for which a considerable sum had been offered. In
this room, on a gloomy first of October, Nan sat, rather inadequately
filling Robert Barmister’s desk-chair. She looked younger than her
five-and-twenty years; her slight figure and earnest eyes gave an
impression almost of childishness. But in some respects, at least, she
was not childish; the Jew dealers, who came there to buy and sell,
knew that, and any one of them would have dealt with her as with her
father—with a bias in favour of extra honesty for her. And any one of
them would have taken her opinion against most others on an article of
virtu, for she had not only inherited her father’s judgment and grown
up under his tuition, but also had unerring instincts of her own.
It was on some such business she had been fetched to the office that
afternoon: she was seldom to be found there unless fetched. Barmister
did not care to actually associate her with himself in his trade,
though he valued her opinion. Josiah Foregood, clerk, foreman, and
general factotum, valued it still more. It was he who fetched her that
afternoon, for Barmister was out, and a man had called with a chest to
sell.
The man, a voluble, weakly individual, was in the office now,
expatiating on the beauties of the chest and, seeing he had a woman
to deal with, the hardships of his own situation. Josiah, at his desk
behind a partition, heard all that he said, and knew that it was
wasted breath. He could, by leaning forward, see Nan’s face, and he
knew that, whether she was really listening or not—and there was some
doubt about that—she would form her own judgment of man and article
entirely apart from anything she heard. She rose at length, and came
to look at the chest. It was small, and of metal, with a wonderful
complication of locks in the lid: inside it was divided into several
compartments, and outside ornamented with fine wrought work and some
curious little paintings on the panels in between.
“It is an Armada treasure-chest,” the vendor announced; “it has been in
my family for generations. I’m a Cornishman.”
“Ah?” Nan examined the box: she examined with her hands, which were
rather large, and as sensitive as a blind person’s.
“It is of Dutch workmanship,” she said at length, and somewhat as if
the man had not spoken, “made under the Spanish influence probably
fifty years after the Armada, I cannot be sure of the exact date. I
should say it was made for a burgomaster: one who had trade with India.
The shape and size of it, and of the compartments inside, suggest it
was meant more for the reception of unset jewels than for papers or any
other form of treasure. If it has been in the possession of your family
for generations, your family should be of Dutch extraction.”
The man stared; he was of the constitutionally inefficient, and such
are easily upset by the efficient, even when the latter have no thought
of doing so.
“Do you think I did not come by it honestly?” he demanded, between
bluster and affront.
Nan looked up in surprise. “Why should I?” she said, and clearly no
such idea had occurred to her. “I should rather like to know how you
did come by it, though,” she said, “only out of curiosity; these things
do not very often come to England.”
“It belonged to a lodger me and my wife had,” the vendor admitted
rather sulkily; “he was a Dutchman, an oldish man, and he died while he
was with us. We didn’t know anything about his people, and we haven’t
been able to hear anything; and as he died a bit in our debt, and
didn’t leave much, we thought we might as well take what there was: I
don’t know who’s a better right to it than us.”
“No,” Nan agreed, whereupon he went on to explain again the badness of
times.
She listened, or appeared to: at the end she said, “The chest is not
really worth much, that is, you could not anywhere get much for it.
Such things are of no actual use now, and not much ornament; they are
little more than curiosities, and they do not happen to be the fashion.
It would be almost impossible to sell it to a collector, or amateur,
at any price, consequently, a dealer would not be likely to give you
anything worth having for it. Were my father here, I think it is very
doubtful if he would buy it; but personally I like it, and, as you say
you are in need of money, I will give you three pounds for it, if you
care to sell it for that.”
He did not—if he could get any more—though he was satisfied with it
when he was convinced more was not to be got. It took a little while
to convince him; which was, perhaps, not surprising, seeing that it
took other, and more experienced, people a little while to realise that
Nan’s first price was her last one, both in buying and selling, and
that in such matters, as well as others, she simply said what she meant
and no more. But after a time he did realise it, took the money, and
departed, leaving the chest behind.
When he was gone, Josiah came from behind his partition to look at the
purchase. He had worked with Robert Barmister from the early days and
the small beginnings, and he loved the work with the whole-hearted
completeness that Barmister did, and Barmister himself, as that shrewd
dealer loved no one, and Nan, better still. He came now to look at the
newly made purchase, and to shake his head over it.
“He won’t be pleased,” he said.
Nan was obliged to agree. “If he does not approve, I can pay for it
myself,” she said.
At that moment Barmister came in, and almost instantly his eye fell on
the chest.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I have just bought it,” Nan answered.
“For how much?”
She told him.
“What!” he said, and his tone conveyed his opinion.
But she stood her ground: she ventured to do far more on her own
authority than ever Josiah did, perhaps because she did not act unless
she was sure; and when she was sure, she was sure indeed. She was sure
now that the price she had paid for the chest was a fair one.
“If it is not sold well and reasonably soon,” she said, “I can buy
it in myself. Or you can give it me on my birthday, if you like; my
birthday is at the beginning of next month, you know, and you always
give me what I choose then; you can give me this.”
Her father grunted. “I can give it to the dustman and it would not
break me,” he said, “nor yet alter the fact that you’ve bought like a
fool, which is a thing I didn’t expect of you.”
She said she was sorry she had annoyed him, and then slipped away,
leaving him arranging affairs with Josiah, previous to starting on a
business journey which would take him away until to-morrow.
She went by a door in the far corner of the room; it was a narrow door
set in the panelling, so that one hardly noticed it: her own movements
were so quiet and light that one hardly noticed her coming and going
either. The old house was curiously quiet, in spite of being in the
heart of London: quiet and brown; in a way, one found her quiet and
brown, too, fitted to the surroundings—or the surroundings fitted to
her—as a mouse to its hole in the wainscot.
She had not, since she could remember, lived in any other place than
this, with her father and the work. They had come there when her mother
died, which was when she was very young, and had been there ever since.
There were people who said that the necessity to combine office, and
dwelling-house, and warehouse under one roof was as far from Barmister
now as were the pinched early days when he and his wife had apartments
in Bayswater. These people said he could have afforded to take a
house at Blackheath, or Surbiton, or some other suburb, and come to
and fro to his work like other men. They also said, among themselves,
not to him, that he ought to do it for the sake of his daughter, if
for nothing else. But he did not; so Nan had no chance of associating
with girls of her own age, or spending a pleasant, leisurely youth
cultivating a taste for literature, and dancing and playing, with the
probability of finally marrying a nice, wholesome young man with a
satisfactory position in the City, and in her turn founding a family
of useful, wholesome people to do the same all over again. She had no
chance of this, and, possibly through ignorance of what she missed, no
regrets about it.
That day, when she had left the office, and her condemned purchase,
she went back to her usual avocations: a few household duties in the
roomy basement, where reigned Mrs. Bidden, who had grown grey in the
same service; later to the sitting-room upstairs to needlework and
books—books on rather unusual subjects which sometimes sent their
reader, with her slow-moving, but curiously accurate, mind, to odd
places to verify facts. They sent her no further that day than to one
of the warehouse rooms, there to search out on a pear-wood pix for
some detail of carving which would fix the date when a certain form
of lance was used in Flanders. She could trust herself as to the date
of the Flemish pix, but, without guarantee, she could not trust the
author who made statements lightly and unsupported about the lances
used in Flanders. So she went in search of assurance to one of the
long-windowed rooms which, from childhood, had been her favourite haunt.
She could not remember the time when she had not been familiar with
the smell of wood and the dust which distils from old tapestry, nor
when there had not been for her a fascination in the big rooms with
their dust-dimmed, painted tables, their inlaid cabinets, and mirrors
filmy in the London air. Almost her clearest early recollection was
in connection with one of these rooms. To herself she called it “the
beginning of seeing things,” and to this day she remembered it and its
thrill of revelation, as a few people remember the moment when they
first found they were able to read or do some one of the few things
which open the doors of the world. It was many years ago, she must
have been very small at the time, for the cabinets had towered so tall
to her, when, in an October dusk, she had come suddenly upon a little
tulip-wood secretaire. Whether it had not been there when she last
came, or whether she had passed it by unheeded, she did not know: only
knew that now she saw it, and saw it perfect. Not that her ignorance
called it so, or really realised its beauty; yet it filled her suddenly
with a strange sense of completeness and utter satisfaction: a curious,
almost physical, feeling, mixed with the subconscious mental one. She
never forgot the sensation, though she never attempted to explain it:
she thought for many years that it was a common experience, and came to
everyone at some time; it was, to this day, a bewildering puzzle to her
how any could fail to feel perfection when it was there. The tulip-wood
secretaire was in her own room now; her father had given it to her. He
had come upon her that day, years ago, while she still stood before it,
and, though not a sympathetic man, had divined what was waking in her,
as possibly another would not. When later, in answer to his question as
to what he should give her on her birthday, she, ignorant of its value,
had asked for the secretaire, he immediately gave it.
It stood in the corner of her room now, and she looked at it
thoughtfully when, later that afternoon, she went to get her hat,
recalling the occasion of its giving, and debating whether this year
she should ask for the iron chest. Her father never refused her
birthday request; he would not now though, if it were for the chest,
he would not approve it. But, as it happened, she did not ask for it,
something occurred that afternoon which supplied her with quite another
request.
She went that afternoon to see Miss Janet Foregood, the one member of
her own sex with whom she was at all intimate. A client had sent a
present of a hamper of pears, and she, remembering Miss Janet’s liking
for them, took a basketful to her.
The Foregoods lived in Bayswater, not far from where Robert Barmister
and his young wife had lodged in the early days. The house was very
small, and rather grimy and dull-looking outside; inside such things
were impossible where Miss Janet lived. A little brisk woman she was,
some years younger, many sizes smaller and much quicker than her
brother Josiah. She was busy upholstering the seats of her best-room
chairs when Nan arrived, having bought some odd pieces of material for
the purpose.
“Travellers’ samples,” she explained. “I picked them out from several
dozen; no two alike, and some regular trash.”
The ones she had bought were not trash; she was a better judge of
fabrics in the dark than many women in the daylight; but they certainly
were not alike, she had been more particular to secure quality than any
near approach to uniformity of pattern. Nan admired the texture, as she
truthfully could, and said nothing about the design; then she presented
the pears, which were duly appreciated.
“I shall bake those big ones,” Miss Janet said; “though I say it
myself, I can bake a pear with anyone.” She could cook anything with
anyone, and she knew it. “Your poor dear mother loved a baked pear,
though she had no more idea how to do one than to fly! She was as sweet
a soul as ever lived, but as ignorant as a baby of how to do most
things. I remember the first time I saw her she was trying to cook a
bit of a chop for herself on the sitting-room fire in the rooms she and
your father used to have just round the corner from here. Dear! I never
saw anything so unhandy!”
“Perhaps she had never been taught,” Nan suggested.
Miss Janet was contemptuous of such an explanation. “You can’t teach
some people to cook,” she said, “and real cooking can’t be taught
anybody; your true cook’s born, not made, same as your true anything
else.”
She filled her mouth with little nails here, and proceeded to take them
out one by one to use. “The funny thing is,” she said, when nearly all
were used, “no one knows why they’re born so; there’s a great deal of
talk made about heredity, I know: all I say is—h’m!”
Nan suggested there was something besides immediate ancestry to be
reckoned with.
“There had need be,” Miss Janet retorted, “and even then you can’t
account for it, not for real, natural ability, what I call ability, not
mere handiness; it’s just an accident, a Divine accident. Take your
cousin, Michael Annarly, for instance—how do you account for him?”
Nan did not attempt to; indeed, she knew little of him personally.
“If all that is said of Michael Annarly is true,” Miss Janet said,
arranging a piece of trimming round her chair. “I don’t suppose it is
myself, seeing it’s said by a relation who thinks she glorifies herself
that way. Still, if half or a quarter is true, there’s enough to show
he must be a very remarkable person, such a one as doesn’t occur
many times in a generation. You’re not going to account for that by
parents and grandparents. His father—tea trade, with a hobby for tools
and messing about with machinery and gas-fitting in his young days,
plumbing you might call it, but I suppose you’d better say engineering.
His mother—your mother’s sister, and not at all unlike her, poor dear,
only prettier. I only saw her once, but I saw the resemblance straight
away—dreamy, imaginative, sensitive; big eyes like pools of water full
of reflections, delicate hands alive to the last inch of skin; married
young, younger than your mother, because she was prettier; died young,
quite strong physically, but too fine for this world: that’s what
Michael Annarly’s parents were.”
Nan did not contradict, Miss Janet was probably correct in her
statements, she generally was. On this matter at least she knew more
than Nan, whose sole source of information was the little lady herself,
and who saw a great deal less of the Annarlys than Miss Foregood did of
Mrs. Barker, a connection of theirs, distant certainly, but proud of
the relationship.
“To hear her talk,” Miss Foregood said, “one would think she was
responsible for Michael Annarly, instead of a second cousin of his
father’s and a poor one at that. He’s done well, I grant it to her,
but I don’t see what that’s to do with her, any more than his brains,
which do seem to be worth talking about. Just hold up that end of the
trimming, my dear, I want to see if there’s enough.”
Nan did so, and there was found to be exactly enough, which might
have been foretold, seeing that Miss Janet herself had measured it.
Being satisfied, she resumed her hammering and talking. “No,” she said
emphatically, “you can’t account for that kind of ability. It is like
old Moss’s cat. Moss was an old man down in the country where I lived
when I was a little girl; he had a white cat with a yellow tail. That
cat was what you might call a Divine accident; you might breed hundreds
and thousands of cats and not get another. The chances of getting one
would be greater if you bred from a yellow father and a white mother,
but the chances of getting the yellow and the white mixed just that way
aren’t worth reckoning; it was, as I say without disrespect, a Divine
accident. And that’s the way with real born ability; you can’t account
for it, it’s an accident.”
She knocked in her last nail as she spoke, and then rose to inspect her
handiwork.
“I think it looks very well,” she said; she seldom scrupled to say what
she really thought about her own doings, or other people’s.
“It looks very well indeed,” Nan agreed. She rose too, and said she
must go.
Miss Janet came with her to the front door, stopping on the way to put
the finished chair in its place.
“It is safer there than in the kitchen,” she said, though it was
difficult to think of any harm that could befall it in that spotless
room.
Nan went home by train, only a few minutes’ journey, getting out at
Tottenham Court Road Station, from whence she had not far to walk. By
the time she alighted twilight was falling, and a fine rain with it;
there had been some rain earlier in the day, and a good deal during
the night; the roads were in a bad state, and the air damp and raw.
Just as she was about to leave the station she caught sight of a
figure in the distance, one she recognised. For a second she hardly
thought she had seen aright, rather that her own thoughts had become
visualised, which was almost as probable as that Michael Annarly should
be here in the flesh. Next moment she knew him real, and drew back
to the station doorway, with a sensitive plain woman’s instinct not
to court recognition. It was easy to avoid it, it is always easy for
insignificant women, it is one of the few compensations allowed them
that they can usually see so much quicker than they are seen. She had
recognised Michael Annarly at some distance, and without really seeing
his face; he would not recognise her until he was close upon her.
She knew the sort of recognition, the momentary blank ignorance of
identity, to be perceived by quick faculties under automatic courtesy,
the swiftly following but entirely vague remembrance of someone seen
somewhere, and then, when she had almost passed, a recollection of her,
and sometimes perhaps, when she had quite passed, a momentary regret
that recognition had not been quicker and fuller. She knew the sort of
thing, and a mixture of sensitive vanity and shyness prompted her to
avoid it; so she stood within the station doorway, screened by a stout
old gentleman, until Michael should have passed.
Just as he was level with her he turned a little, and for the first
time she saw his face fully. Owing to some shifting of the passers-by
she saw the whole of him—sodden, muddied boots, the boots of one who
has been walking long in bad weather; creased, splashed clothes, the
clothes of one who has worn them many hours; grey, drawn face, white
about the pinched nostrils, dark about the eyes, which looked forth
without seeing, which had seen one thing and could see nothing else.
Not Michael Annarly the successful, and so remote, kinsman she had
sometimes met; but a man on the edge of some abyss.
She slipped from behind the old gentleman, and went swiftly down the
street after him.