It was the year of Harpledon’s first “jumble sale” that all these odds
and ends of observation first began to connect themselves in my mind.
Harpledon had decided that it ought to have a village hospital and
dispensary, and Cranch was among the first to promise a subscription and
to join the committee. A meeting was called at Mrs. Durant’s and after
much deliberation it was decided to hold a village fair and jumble sale
in somebody’s grounds; but whose? We all hoped Cranch would lend his
garden; but no one dared to ask him. We sounded each other cautiously,
before he arrived, and each tried to shift the enterprise to his
neighbour; till at last Homer Davids, our chief celebrity as a painter,
and one of the shrewdest heads in the community, said drily: “Oh, Cranch
wouldn’t care about it.”
“How do you know he wouldn’t?” some one queried.
“Just as you all do; if not, why is it that you all want some one else
to ask him?”
Mrs. Durant hesitated. “I’m sure—” she began.
“Oh, well, all right, then! _You_ ask him,” rejoined Davids cheerfully.
“I can’t always be the one—”
I saw her embarrassment, and volunteered: “If you think there’s enough
shade in _my_ garden....”
By the way their faces lit up I saw the relief it was to them all not to
have to tackle Cranch. Yet why, having a garden he was proud of, need he
have been displeased at the request?
“Men don’t like the bother,” said one of our married ladies; which
occasioned the proper outburst of praise for my unselfishness, and the
observation that Cranch’s maids, who had all been for years in his
service, were probably set in their ways, and wouldn’t care for the
confusion and extra work. “Yes, old Catherine especially; she guards the
place like a dragon,” one of the ladies remarked; and at that moment
Cranch appeared. Having been told what had been settled he joined with
the others in complimenting me; and we began to plan for the jumble
sale.
The men needed enlightenment on this point, I as much as the rest, but
the prime mover immediately explained: “Oh, you just send any old
rubbish you’ve got in the house.”
We all welcomed this novel way of clearing out our cupboards, except
Cranch who, after a moment, and with a whimsical wrinkling of his brows,
said: “But I haven’t got any old rubbish.”
“Oh, well, children’s cast-off toys for instance,” a newcomer threw out
at random.
There was a general smile, to which Cranch responded with one of his
rare expressive gestures, as who should say: “_Toys_—in my house? But
whose?”
I laughed, and one of the ladies, remembering our old joke, cried out:
“Why, but the hobby-horse!”
Cranch’s face became a well-bred blank. Long-suffering courtesy was the
note of the voice in which he echoed: “Hobby-horse—?”
“Don’t you remember?” It was Mrs. Durant who prompted him. “Our old
joke? The wonderful black and white hobby-horse that Miss Lucilla
Selwick said she saw you driving home with when you first arrived here?
It had a real mane.” Her colour rose a little as she spoke.
There was a moment’s pause, while Cranch’s brow remained puzzled; then a
smile slowly cleared his face. “Of course!” he said. “I’d forgotten.
Well, I feel now that I _was_ young enough for toys thirty years ago;
but I didn’t feel so then. And we should have to apply to Miss Selwick
to know what became of that hobby-horse. Meanwhile,” he added, putting
his hand in his pocket, “here’s a small offering to supply some new ones
for the fair.”
The offering was not small: Cranch always gave liberally, yet always
produced the impression of giving indifferently. Well, one couldn’t have
it both ways; some of our most gushing givers were the least lavish. The
committee was delighted....
“It was queer,” I said afterward to Mrs. Durant. “Why did the
hobby-horse joke annoy Cranch? He used to like it.”
She smiled. “He may think it’s lasted long enough. Harpledon jokes _do_
last, you know.”
Yes; perhaps they did, though I had never thought of it before.
“There’s one thing that puzzles me,” I went on; “I never know beforehand
what is going to annoy him.”
She pondered. “I’ll tell you, then,” she said suddenly. “It has annoyed
him that no one thought of asking him to give one of his water-colours
to the sale.”
“Didn’t we?”
“No. Homer Davids was asked, and that made it ... rather more
marked....”
“Oh, of course! I suppose we all forgot—”
She looked away. “Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose he likes to be
forgotten.”
“You mean: to have his accomplishments forgotten?”
“Isn’t that a little condescending? I should say, his _gifts_,” she
corrected a trifle sharply. Sharpness was so unusual in her that she may
have seen my surprise, for she added, in her usual tone: “After all, I
suppose he’s our most brilliant man, isn’t he?” She smiled a little, as
if to take the sting from my doing so.
“Of course he is,” I rejoined. “But all the more reason—how could a man
of his kind resent such a trifling oversight? I’ll write at once—”
“Oh, _don’t_!” she cut me short, almost pleadingly.
Mrs. Durant’s word was law: Cranch was not asked for a water-colour.
Homer Davids’s, I may add, sold for two thousand dollars, and paid for a
heating-system for our hospital. A Boston millionaire came down on
purpose to buy the picture. It was a great day for Harpledon.