IT was not until the evening, after tea, when S. Gedge Antiques
had gone by bus to Clerkenwell in order to buy a Queen Anne sofa
from a dealer in difficulties that William and June really became
known to one another. Before then, however, their respective
presences had already charged the atmosphere of No. 46 New Cross
Street with a rare and subtle quality.
William, even at a first glance, had been intrigued more than a little
by the appearance of the niece. To begin with she was a great contrast
to Mrs. Runciman. She looked as clean and bright as a new pin, she had
beautiful teeth, her hair was of the kind that artists want to paint
and her way of doing it was cunning. Moreover, she was as straight as a
willow, her movements had charm and grace, and her eyes were grey. And
beyond all else her smile was full of friendship.
As for June, her first thought had been, when she had unexpectedly
come upon William holding up to the light the picture he had bought at
Crowdham Market, that the young man had an air at once very gentle and
very nice. And in the first talk they had together in the course of
that evening, during the providential absence of Uncle Si, this view of
William was fully confirmed.
He was very gentle and he was very nice.
The conversation began shortly after seven o’clock when William had put
up the shutters and locked the door of the shop. It was he who opened
the ball.
“You’ve come to stay, Miss Gedge, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said June, “if I can make myself useful to Uncle Si.”
“But aren’t you adopted? The master said a fortnight ago he was going
to adopt you.”
“Uncle Si says I’m half and half at present,” said June demurely. “I’m
a month on trial. If I suit his ways he says I can stay, but if I don’t
I must get after a job.”
“I hope you will stay,” said William with obvious sincerity.
There was enough Woman in the heart of the niece of S. Gedge Antiques
to cause her to smile to herself. This was a perfect Simple Simon of a
fellow, yet she could not deny that there was something about him which
gave her quite a thrill.
“Why do you hope so?” asked Woman, with seeming innocence.
“I don’t know why I do, unless it is that you are so perfectly nice to
talk to.” And the Simpleton grew suddenly red at his own immoderation.
Woman in her cardinal aspect might have said “Really” in a tone of ice;
she might even have been tempted to ridicule such a statement made by
such a young man; but Woman in the shrewdly perceptive person of June
was now aware that this air of quaint sincerity was a thing with which
no girl truly wise would dare to trifle. William was William and must
be treated accordingly.
“Aren’t you very clever?”
She knew he was clever, but for a reason she couldn’t divine she was
anxious to let him know that she knew it.
“I don’t think I am at all.”
“But you are,” said June. “You must be very clever indeed to go about
the country buying rare things cheap for Uncle Si to sell.”
“Oh, anybody can pick up a few odds and ends now and again if one has
been given the money to buy them.”
“Anybody couldn’t. I couldn’t for one.”
“Isn’t that because you’ve not been brought up to the business?”
“It’s more than that,” said June shrewdly. “You must have a special
gift for picking up things of value.”
“I may have,” the young man modestly allowed. “The master trusts me as
a rule to tell whether a thing is genuine.”
June pinned him with her eyes. “Then tell me this.” Her suddenness took
him completely by surprise. “Is _he_ genuine?”
“Who? The master!”
“Yes--Uncle Si.”
The answer came without an instant’s hesitation. “Yes, Miss June, he
is. The master is a genuine piece.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said June with a slight frown.
“Yes, the master is genuine.” Depth and conviction were in the young
man’s tone. “In fact,” he added slowly, “you might say he is a museum
piece.”
At this solemnity June smiled.
“He’s a very good man.” A warmth of affection fused the simple words.
“Why he took me from down there as you might say.” William pointed to
the ground. “And now I’m his assistant.”
“At how much a week,” said the practical June, “if the question isn’t
rude?”
“I get fifteen shillings.”
“A week?”
“Yes. And board and lodging.”
She looked the young man steadily in the eyes. “You are worth more.”
“If the master thinks I’m worth more, he’ll give it to me.”
June pursed her lips and shook a dubious head. Evidently she was not
convinced.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure he will. In fact, he’s promised to raise my wages
half a crown from the first of the new year.”
“I should just think so!” said June looking him still in the eyes.
“Of course I always get everything found.”
“What about your clothes?”
With an air of apology he had to own that clothes were not included;
yet to offset this reluctant admission he laid stress on the fact that
his master had taught him all that he knew.
June could not resist a frown. Nice as he was, she would not have
minded shaking him a little. No Simon had a right to be quite so simple
as this one.
A pause followed. And then the young man suddenly said: “Miss June
would you care to see something I bought the other day at Crowdham
Market?”
“I’d love to,” said the gracious Miss June. She had seen ‘the
something’ already but just now she was by no means averse from having
another look at it.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming up to the studio.” William laughed
shyly. “I call it that, although of course it isn’t a studio really.
And I only call it that to myself you know,” he added naïvely.
“Then why did you call it ‘the studio’ to me?” archly demanded Woman in
the person of the niece of S. Gedge Antiques.
“I don’t know why, I’m sure. It was silly.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Woman. “Rather nice of you, I think.”
The simpleton flushed to the roots of his thick and waving chestnut
hair which was brushed back from a high forehead in a most becoming
manner; and then with rare presence of mind, in order to give his
confusion a chance, he showed the way up the two flights of stairs
which led direct to June’s attic. Next to it, with only a thin wall
dividing them, was a kind of extension of her own private cubicle,
a fairly large and well lit room, which its occupant had immodestly
called “a studio.” A bed, a washing stand, and a chest of drawers were
tucked away in a far corner, as if they didn’t belong.
“The master lets me have this all to myself for the sake of the light,”
said the young man in a happy voice as he threw open the door. “One
needs a good light to work by.”
With the air of a Leonardo receiving a lady of the Colonnas he ushered
her in.
A feminine eye embraced all at a glance. The walls of bare whitewash
bathed in the glories of an autumn sunset, the clean skylight, the two
easels with rather dilapidated objects upon them, a litter of tools and
canvases and frames, a pervading odour of turpentine, and a look of
rapture upon the young man’s face.
“But it _is_ a studio,” said June. Somehow she felt greatly
impressed by it. “I’ve never seen one before, but it’s just like what
one reads about in books.”
“Oh, no, a studio is where pictures are painted. Here they are only
cleaned and restored.”
“One day perhaps you’ll paint them.”
“Perhaps I will; I don’t know.” He sighed a little, too shy to confess
his dream. “But that day’s a long way off.”
“It mayn’t be, you know.”
He had begun already to try, but as yet it was a secret from the world.
“_Ars est celare artem_,” he said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Life is short, art eternal. It is the motto of the old man who teaches
me how to clean and renovate these things. He says it keeps him up to
his work.”
“You go to an art school?”
“I should hardly call it that. But the master wants me to learn as much
as I can of the practical side of the trade, so he’s having me taught.
And the more I can pick up about pictures, the better it will be for
the business. You see, the master doesn’t pretend to know much about
pictures himself. His line is furniture.”
“Didn’t I say you were clever?” June could not help feeling a little
proud of her own perception.
“You wouldn’t say that”--the young man’s tone was sad--“if you really
knew how little I know. But allow me to show you what I bought at
Crowdham Market. There it is.” He pointed to the old picture on the
smaller easel, which now divorced from its frame seemed to June a mere
daub, black, dilapidated, old and worthless.
She could not conceal her disappointment. “I don’t call that anything.”
“No!” He could not conceal his disappointment either. “Take this
glass.” A microscope was handed to her. “Please look at it ve-ry ve-ry
closely while I hold it for you in the light.”
June gave the canvas a most rigorous scrutiny, but she had to own at
last that the only thing she could see was dirt.
“Can’t you see water?”
“Where?”
With his finger nail the young man found water.
“No,” said June stoutly. “I don’t see a single drop. And that’s a pity,
because in my opinion, it would be none the worse for a good wash.”
This was a facer but he met it valiantly.
“Don’t you see trees?”
“Where are the trees?”
The young man disclosed trees with his finger nail.
“I can’t see a twig.”
“But you can see a cloud.” With his finger nail he traced a cloud.
“I only see dirt and smudge,” said June the downright. “To my mind this
isn’t a picture at all.”
“Surely, you can see a windmill?”
“A windmill! Why there’s not a sign of one.”
“Wait till it’s really clean,” said William with the optimism of
genius. He took up a knife and began delicately to scrape that dark
surface from which already he had half removed a top layer of paint
that some inferior artist had placed there.
June shook her head. There was a lovely fall in the young man’s voice
but it would take more than that to convince her. She believed her
eyes to be as good as most people’s, but even with a microscope and
William’s finger to help them they could see never a sign of a cloud or
so much as a hint of water. As for a tree!... and a windmill!... either
this handsome young man ... he really was handsome ... had a sense that
ordinary people had not ... or ... or...!
V
JUNE suddenly remembered that she must go and lay the supper.
William modestly asked to be allowed to help.
“Can you lay supper?” Polite the tone, but June was inclined to think
that here was the limit to William’s cleverness.
“Oh, yes, Miss June, I lay it nearly always. It’s part of my work.”
“Glad of your help, of course.” The tone was gracious. “But I daresay
you’d like to go on looking for a windmill.”
“Yes, I think perhaps I would.” It was not quite the answer of
diplomacy, but behind it was a weight of sincerity that took away the
sting.
“Thought so,” said June, with a dark smile. It would have been pleasant
to have had the help of this accomplished young man, but above all
things she was practical and so understood that the time of such a one
must be of great value.
“But I’m thinking you’ll have to look some while for that windmill,”
she said, trying not to be satirical.
“The windmill I’ll not swear to, but I’m sure there’s water and trees;
although, of course, it may take some time to find them.” William took
up a piece of cotton wool. “But we’ll see.”
He moistened the wool with a solvent, which he kept in a bottle, a
mysterious compound of vegetable oils and mineral water; and then, not
too hard, he began to rub the surface of the picture.
“I hope we shall,” said June, doubtfully. And she went downstairs with
an air of scepticism she was unable to hide.
Supper, in the main, was an affair of bread and cheese and a jug of
beer, drawn from the barrel in the larder. It was not taken until a
quarter past nine when S. Gedge Antiques had returned from Clerkenwell.
The old man was in quite a good humour; in fact, it might be said, to
verge upon the expansive. He had managed to buy the Queen Anne sofa for
four pounds.
“You’ve got a bargain, sir,” said William. It was William who had
discovered the sofa, and had strongly advised its purchase.
“That remains to be seen,” said his master, who would have been vastly
disappointed had there been reason to think that he had not got a
bargain.
After supper, when the old man had put on his slippers and an ancient
smoking cap that made him look like a Turkish pasha, he took from the
chimneypiece a pipe and a jar of tobacco, drew the easy chair to the
fire, and began to read the evening paper.
“By the way, boy,” he remarked, quizzingly, “have you started yet on
that marvellous thing you were clever enough to buy at Ipswich?”
“Crowdham Market, sir.”
“Crowdham Market, was it? Well, my father used to say that fools and
money soon part company.”
June, who was clearing the table, could not forbear from darting at
the young man a gleam of triumph. It was clear that Uncle Si believed
no more in the windmill, not to mention the trees and the water than
did she.
A start had been made, but William confessed to a fear that it might be
a long job to get it clean.
“And when you get it clean,” said his master, “what do you expect to
find, eh?--that’s if you’re lucky enough to find anything.”
“I don’t quite know,” said William frankly.
“Neither do I,” S. Gedge Antiques scratched a cheek of rather humorous
cynicism. And then in sheer expansion of mood, he went to the length of
winking at his niece. “Perhaps, boy,” he said, “you’ll find that Van
Roon that was cut out of its frame at the Louvre in the Nineties, and
has never been seen or heard of since.”
“Was there one, sir?” asked William, interested and alert.
The old man took up the evening paper, and began to read. “Canvas
sixteen inches by twelve--just about your size, eh? One of the world’s
masterpieces. Large reward for recovery been on offer for more than
twenty-five years by French Government--but not claimed yet seemingly.
Said to be finest Van Roon in existence. Now’s your chance, boy.” A
second time S. Gedge Antiques winked at his niece; and then folding
back the page of the _Evening News_, he handed it to William,
with the air of a very sly dog indeed. “See for yourself. Special
article. Mystery of Famous Missing Picture. When you find the signature
of Mynheer Van Roon in the corner of this masterpiece of yours, I
shouldn’t wonder if you’re able to set up in business for yourself.”
Allowing Fancy a loose rein in this benign hour, the old man, for the
third time honoured his niece with a solemn wink.