WHEN the Tudor Cup was sold at Sotheby’s in the year 18– for the sum of
£7000, the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer echoed round the world—at all
events, round the world of men who gather bibelots. There were only
three such treasures in existence—this one now destined for America,
which was understood to have come from Holland; another in the national
collection in Paris; and a third in Scotland, the property of Sir Gilbert
Quair, whose ancestor had acquired it one hundred and fifty years before
by winning a game of cards in a London coffee-house.
Among those people who were profoundly moved by this record price for a
quite unimpressive-looking battered silver tankard was the firm of Harris
and Hirsch, the Bond Street art-dealers; and two days after the sale in
London, Mr Harris hastened up to Scotland, quartered himself at an inn in
Peebles, and pushed some discreet inquiries. Sir Gilbert Quair, he
discovered, was in a state approaching penury, living an almost hermit
life in the House of Quair beside the Tweed, with a deaf old housekeeper,
a half-daft maid who never came out of doors, and an equally recluse man
whose duty it was to act as guide to the numerous tourists who flocked to
the house for the sake of its place in Ballad Ministrelsy and its
antiquarian collection. If the gossips of Peebles could be trusted, the
baronet lived upon the shilling fees his guide exacted from the visitors,
dodging, himself, from room to room of his mansion for fear of
encountering Americans and English, whom he hated—resenting their
intrusion on his privacy, but counting their numbers eagerly as from his
window he watched them coming up the long yew avenue.
Harris, the Bond Street dealer, modestly bent on hiding his own
importance in the commercial world of art—for the nonce a simple English
gentleman with a taste for miniatures—called next day at the House of
Quair, whose crenellated tower looked arrogantly over ancient woods and
fields where lambs were bleating piteously and men were walking along the
furrows scattering seed.
The avenue of yews, which led from the highway into Peebles through
neglected and dishevelled grounds, brought the Bond Street dealer to the
forlorn façade of the mansion and the great main door. He rapped upon
the iron knocker; the sound reverberated as through a vault, with hollow
echoes such as come from vacant chambers. Far back in the dwelling’s
core there was a clatter of something fallen, but no one answered to the
summons of the visitor; and having rapped in vain again, he ventured
round the westward wing, to find himself confronted by a door on the side
of which was hung the evidence that this was properly his entrance. It
was a painted board, with the legend—
QUAIR COLLECTION.
Open to the Public Tuesdays and Thursdays.
ADMISSION ONE SHILLING.
Now this was neither a Tuesday nor a Thursday, and Harris swore softly.
He was just on the point of making his retreat when a footstep sounded on
the gravel of a little walk that led to a bower upon the terrace, and
turning, he found himself face to face with Sir Gilbert Quair.
“The collection is not on view to-day, sir,” said the baronet, an elderly
thickset gentleman wearing a shabby suit of tweed.
Mr Harris took off his hat—not to the wearer of the shabby tweed suit,
but to the owner of the Tudor Cup.
“I am most unfortunate,” he stammered. “I was not aware that the
collection was only on view on certain days, and, unhappily, I must
return to England this evening. It happens that I am something of an
amateur in miniatures, fortunate in the possession of a few choice
examples, and, being in this neighbourhood, I could not resist the
temptation to see the celebrated collection of Sir Gilbert Quair, which
is rich in miniatures.”
He passed the baronet his card, to which the name of a well-known London
club contributed the proper degree of uncommercial importance. Sir
Gilbert turned it over in his fingers with a little hesitation, shot a
shy glance of the keenest scrutiny from under his bushy eyebrows at the
visitor.
“In the circumstances—” he began, and taking a key from his pocket,
unlocked the door which led to the collection, but before he let his
visitor through he held out to him a little wooden box with a slit in the
lid of it. “In the absence of the usual guide,” said he, “I’ll collect
your shilling for him, Mr Harris.”
Five minutes later Harris was manifesting the most rapturous appreciation
of Sir Gilbert’s miniatures, which in truth were nothing wonderful; but
at every opportunity, when unobserved by his host, his eyes went ranging
in search of the Tudor Cup. It was his host who finally called attention
to it under glass in a corner cupboard.
“If you had been interested in old English silver, Mr Harris, this piece
might have had some attraction,” said Sir Gilbert, drenching his flaring
nostrils with a pinch of snuff from a tiny ivory spoon. “I’m no great
judge myself, but my father highly prized it.”
The Bond Street dealer, with a thudding heart, peered through the glass
at the very counterpart of that tarnished goblet which had fetched £7000
in Sotheby’s. He was wondering if the dry, old, shabby gentleman looking
over his shoulder, and odorous with macconba, was aware that this was a
Tudor Cup, or if he had read the newspapers carefully and knew what Tudor
Cups were worth in Sotheby’s.