The Boss of Little Arcady/Chapter 21
Little Arcady is grievously shaken
Mrs. Potts had written. I had Solon's word for it; but that which followed the writing will not cease within this generation or the next to be an affair of the most baffling mystery to our town folk. Me, also, it amazed; though my emotion was chiefly concerned with those gracious effects which the gods continued to manage from that apparently meaningless sojourn of J. Rodney Potts among us.
Superficially it was a thing of utter fortuity. Actually it was a masterpiece of cunning calculation, a thing which clear-visioned persons might see to bristle with intention on every side.
Years after that innocent encounter between an adventurous negro and an amiable human derelict in the streets of a far city,—those two atoms shaken into contact while the gods affected to be engaged with weightier matters,—the cultured widow of that derelict recalled the name of a gentleman in the East who was accustomed to buy tall clocks and fiddle-backed chairs, in her native New England, paying prices therefor to make one, in that conservative locality, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, almost.
Such was the cleverly devised circumstance that now intervened between my neighbor and an indigence distressing to think about. It was as if, in the game, a red four which one had neglected to "play up" should actually permit victory after an intricate series of disasters, by providing a temporary resting-place for a black trey, otherwise fatally obstructive, causing the player to marvel afresh at that last fateful but apparently chance shuffle.
A week after Mrs. Potts had written, the gentleman who received her letter registered as "Hyman Cohen, New York, N.Y.," at the City Hotel. From his manner of speech when he inquired for the Lansdale home it was seen that he seemed to be a German.
When Miss Caroline received him a little later, he asked abruptly about furniture, and she, in some astonishment, showed him what she had, even to that crowded into dark rooms and out of use.
He examined it carelessly and remarked that it was the worst lot that he had ever seen.
This did not surprise Miss Caroline in the least, though she thought the gentleman's candor exceptional. Little Arcady's opinion, which she knew to tally with his, had always come to her more circuitously.
The strange gentleman then asked Miss Caroline, not too urbanely, if she had expected him to come all the way from New York to look at such cheap stuff. Miss Caroline assured him quite honestly that she had expected nothing of the sort, and intimated that her regret for his coming surpassed his own, even if it must remain more obscurely worded. She indicated that the interview was at an end.
The strange gentleman arose also, but as Clem was about to close the door after him, he offered Miss Caroline one hundred and fifty dollars for "the lot," observing again that it was worthless stuff, but that in "this business" a man had to take chances. Miss Caroline declined to notice this, having found that there was something in the gentleman's manner which she did not like, and he went down the path revealing annoyance in the shrug of his shoulders and the sidewise tilt of his head.
To Mrs. Lansdale's unaffected regret, and amazement as well, the gentleman returned the following morning to say that he was about to leave for New York, but that he would actually pay one hundred and seventy-eight dollars for the stuff. This was at least twenty-two dollars more than it could possibly be worth, but the gentleman had an unfortunate passion for such things. Miss Caroline bowed, and called Clem as she left the room.
The gentleman returned the morning of the third day to close the deal. He said he had missed his train on the previous day, and being a superstitious man he regarded that as an augury of evil. Nevertheless he had resolved to take the stuff even at a price that was ruinous. He unfolded two hundred dollars in the presence of Clem, and wished to know if he might send a wagon at once. Clem brought back word from Miss Caroline, who had declined to appear, that the strange gentleman would oblige her by ceasing his remarkable intrusions. Whereupon the gentleman had said: "Oh, very well! Then I go!"
But he went no farther than the City Hotel; and here one may note a further contrivance of indirection on the part of our attending Fates.
From the evening train of that day the 'bus brought another strange gentleman, of an Eastern manner, but somewhat neater of dress than the first one and speaking with an accent much less obtrusive. This gentleman wrote "James Walsingham Price, N.Y.," on the register, called for a room with a bath, ordered "coffee and rolls" to be sent there at eight-thirty the next morning, and then asked to see the "dinner card."
After mine host, Jake Kilburn, had been made to understand what "dinner card" meant, he made Mr. James Walsingham Price understand that there was no dinner card. This being clear at last, the newcomer said: "Oh, very well! Then just give my order to the head-waiter, will you—there's a good chap—a cup of consommé, a bit of fish, a bird of some sort, broiled, I fancy,—er—potatoes au gratin, a green salad of some kind,—serve that with the bird,—a piece of Camembert, if it's in good condition, any entremet you have and a demi-tasse. I'll mix the salad dressing myself, tell him,—oh, yes—and a pint of Chambertin if you've something you can recommend."
Billy Durgin, scrutinizing the newcomer in a professional way, told me afterwards that Jake Kilburn "batted his eyes" during this strange speech and replied to it, "like a man coming to"—"supper in twenty minutes," after which he pounded a bell furiously and then himself showed his new and puzzling guest to a room—but not a room "with a bath," be it understood, for a most excellent reason.
Billy Durgin was excited half an hour later by noting the behavior of the first strange gentleman from the East as his eyes fell upon this second. He threw both hands into the air, where they engaged in rapid horizontal shakings from his pliant wrists, and in hushed gutturals exclaimed, "My God, my God!" in his own fashion of speech, which was reproduced admirably for me by my informant. Billy was thus confirmed in his earlier belief that the first strange gentleman was a house-breaker badly wanted somewhere, and he now surmised that the newcomer must be a detective on his trail. But a close watch on their meeting, a little later in the evening, seemed to contradict this engaging hypothesis. The second stranger emerged from the dining room, where he had been served with supper, and as he shut the door of that banqueting hall, Billy, standing by, heard him, too, call upon his Maker. He called only once, but it was in a voice so full of feeling as to make Billy suspect that he was remembering something unpleasant.
At this point the newcomer had glanced up to behold the first strange gentleman, and Billy held his breath, expecting to witness a sensational capture. To his unspeakable disgust the supposed sleuth grinned affably at his supposed quarry and said: "Ah, Hyman! Is the stuff any good?"
"How did you find it out?" asked the first strange gentleman.
The other smiled winningly. "Why, I dropped into your place the other day, and that beautiful daughter-in-law of yours mentioned incidentally where you'd gone and what for. She's a good soul, Hyman, bright, and as chatty as she can be."
"Ach! That Malke! She goes back right off to De Lancey Street, where she belongs," said the first stranger, plainly irritated.
"How did you find the stuff, Hyman?"
"Have you et your supper yet?"
"Yes—'tisn't Kosher, is it? How did you find the stuff?"
"No, it ain't Kosher—nothing ain't Kosher!"
"It's a devilish sight worse, though. How did you find the stuff, Hyman?"
The one called Hyman here seemed to despair of putting off this query.
"No good! No good!—not a decent piece in the lot! I pledge you my word as a gentleman I wouldn't pay the freight on it to Fourth Avenue!" Billy remarked that the gentleman said "pletch" for pledge and "afanoo" for avenue.
The second stranger, hearing this, at once became strangely cheerful and insisted upon shaking hands with the first one.
"Fine, Hyman, fine! I'm delighted to hear you say so. Your words lift a load of doubt from my mind. It came to me in there just now that I might be incurring that supper for nothing but my sins!"
"Have your choke," said Hyman, a little bitterly.
"I have, Hyman, I have had my 'choke'!" said James Walsingham Price, with a glance of disrelish toward the dining room.
It seemed clear to Billy Durgin, who reported this interview to me in a manner of able realism, that these men were both crooks of the first water.
Billy at once polished his star and cleaned and oiled his new 32-caliber "bull-dog." The promise of work ahead for the right man loomed more brightly than ever before in his exciting career.
While I discussed with Miss Caroline, that evening, the unpleasant mystery of her late caller, there came a note from him by messenger. He offered six hundred and twenty-one dollars for her furniture, the sum being written in large letters, so that it had the effect of being shouted from the page. He further expressed a wish to close the deal within the half hour, as he must leave town on the night train.
Had Miss Caroline been alone, she might have fallen. Even I was staggered, but not beyond recovery. The messenger bore back, at my suggestion, a refusal of the offer and a further refusal to consider any more offers that evening. There was indicated a need for calm daylight consideration, and a face-to-face meeting with this variable Mr. Cohen.
"But he leaves on the night train," said Miss Caroline. "It may be our last chance, and six hundred dollars is—"
"He only says he leaves," I responded. "And for three days, at least, Mr. Cohen seems to have been grossly misinformed about his own movements. Perhaps he's deceived himself again."
At eight o'clock the following morning Clem served my breakfast for the first time since his illness, and I approached it with thanksgiving for his recovery.
A knock at the door took him from me just as he had poured the first cup of real coffee I had seen for nearly three months. He came back with the card of one James Walsingham Price, whom I did not know; whereas I did know the coffee.
"Fetch him here," I said. "He can't expect me to leave this coffee, whoever he is."
Into my dining room was then ushered a tall, smartly dressed, smooth-faced man of perhaps middle age, with yellowish hair compactly plastered to his head. He became, I thought, suddenly alert as he crossed my threshold. I arose to greet him.
"This is—" I had to glance at the card.
"Yes—and you're Major Blake? I regret to disturb you, Major,"—here his glance rested blankly upon the rich golden-brown surface of Clem's omelette, and it seemed to me that the thread of his intention was broken for an instant by a fit of absentmindedness. He resumed his speech only after an appreciable pause, as if the omelette had reminded him of something.
"The hour is untimely, but I'm told that you're a friend of a Mrs. Lansdale, who has some pieces of Colonial furniture she wishes to let go. I wondered, you know, if you'd be good enough to introduce me. I rather thought some such formality might be advisable—I understand that a shark named Cohen has already approached her."
Even as he spoke I recalled that Mr. Cohen's face, in profile, might provoke the vision of a shark to a person of lively imagination.
"I shall be glad," I said, "to present you to Mrs. Lansdale."
Again had my caller's glance trailed across the breakfast table, where the omelette, the muffins, and the coffee-urn waited. The glance was politely unnoting, but in it there yet lurked, far back, the unmistakable quality of a caress. In an instant I remembered, and, with a pang of sympathy, I became his hungered brother.
"By the way, Mr. Price, are you staying at the City Hotel?"
"The man said it was the only place, you know."
"You had breakfast there this morning?" He bowed his assent eloquently, I thought.
"Then by all means sit down and have breakfast."
"Oh, really, no—by no means—I assure you I'd a capital breakfast—"
"Clem!"
Clem placed a chair, into which Mr. Price dropped without loss of time, though protesting with polished vehemence against the imposition.
His eyes shone, nevertheless, as Clem set a cup of coffee at his elbow and brought a plate.
"May I ask when you arrived?" I questioned.
"Only last evening."
"Then you dined at the City Hotel?"
"Major Blake, I will be honest with you—I did!"
"Clem, another omelette, quick—but first fetch some oranges, then put on a lot more of that Virginia ham and mix up some waffles, too. Hurry along!"
"Really, you are very good, Major."
"Not that," I answered modestly; "I've merely eaten at the City Hotel." But I doubt if he heard, for he lovingly inhaled the aroma of his coffee with half-shut eyes.
"I am delighted to have met you," he said. "If ever you come to New York—" He tore himself from the omelette long enough to scribble the name of a club on the card by my plate.
"I rarely crave more than coffee and a roll in the morning," he continued, after the second omelette, the ham, the waffles, and more coffee had been consumed. "I fancy it's your bracing air."
I fancied it was only the City Hotel, but I did not revert to that.
When at last Mr. Price lighted a cigar which I had procured at an immense distance from Slocum County, he spoke of furniture, also of Cohen.
Beheld through the romantic mist of after-breakfast, Cohen was, perhaps, not wholly a shark; at least not more than any dealer in old furniture. Really, they were almost forced to be sharks. It was not in the nature of the business that they should lead honest lives. Mere collectors—of which class my guest was—were bad enough. Still, if you could catch a collector in one of his human moments—
He blew forth the smoke of my cigar with a relish so poignant that I suspected he had already tried one of Jake Kilburn's best, the kind concerning which Jake feels it considerate to warn purchasers that they are "five cents straight" and not six for a quarter. I saw that if the collector before me were subject to human moments, he must be suffering one now. So, while he smoked, I told him freely of Miss Caroline, of her furniture and her plight.
He commended the tale.
"One of the best I ever heard," he declared. "Only, if you'll pardon me, it sounds too good to be true. It sounds, indeed, like a 'plant,'—fine old Southern family, impoverished by war—faithful body-servant—old Colonial mansion despoiled of its heirlooms—rare opportunities for the collector. Really, Major, you should see some of the stuff that was landed on me when I began, years ago, with a story almost as good. Reproductions, every piece of it, with as fine an imitation of worm-eaten backs as you could ever wish to see."
I had never wished to see any worm-eaten backs whatever, but I sought to betray regret that I had not encountered this surpassing lot of them.
"Of course," he continued, "you will understand that I am speaking now as a hardened collector, whose life is beset with pitfalls and with gins—not as a starved wretch to the saver of his life."
"You shall see the stuff," I said.
"Oh, by all means, and the quicker the better. Cohen is waiting at the hotel for me now—at the foot of the front stairway, and he may suspect any minute that I was mean enough to slink down the back stairs and out through an alley. In fact, I'm rather excited at the prospect of seeing that furniture—Cohen condemned it so bitterly."
"He sent an offer of six hundred dollars for it last night," I said. Hereupon my guest became truly excited.
"He did—six hundred—Cohen did? I don't wish to be rude, old chap, but would you mind hastening? That is more eloquent than all your story."
For half an hour, notwithstanding his eagerness, Mr. James Walsingham Price succumbed to the manner of Miss Caroline. Noting the lack of compunction with which she played upon him before my very eyes, I divined that the late Colonel Lansdale had not found the need of pistols entirely done away with even by the sacrament of marriage.
Not until Clem announced "Mr. Cohen" did the self-confessed collector cease to be a man.
"Not at home," said Miss Caroline, crisply. Price grinned with appreciation and fell to examining the furniture in strange ways.
It was a busy day for him, but I could see that he found it enjoyable, and strangely was it borne in upon me that Miss Caroline's ancient stuff was in some sense desirable.
More than once did Price permit some sign of emotion to be read in his face—as when the sixth chair of a certain set was at last found supporting a water-pail in the kitchen. The house was not large, but it was crowded, and Price was frankly surprised at the number of things it held.
At six o'clock he went to dine with me, Miss Caroline having told him that I was authorized to act for her on any proposal he might have to make.
"You have saved me again," he said warmly, in the midst of Clem's dinner. "I assure you, Major, that hotel is infamous. I'm surprised, you know, that something isn't done about it by the authorities."
I had to confess that the City Hotel was very highly regarded by most of our citizens.
Again, after a brief interval of stupefaction, did James Walsingham Price call upon his Maker. "And yet," he murmured, "we are spending millions annually to impose mere theology upon savages far less benighted. Think for a moment what a tithe of that money would do for these poor people. Take the matter of green salads alone—to say nothing of soups—don't you have so simple a thing as lettuce here?"
"We do," I said, "but it's regarded as a trifle. They put vinegar and sugar on it and cut it up with their knives."
My guest shuddered.
"I dare say it's hopeless, but I shall always be glad to remember that you exist away from your City Hotel."
Thus did we reach the coffee and some cognac which the late L. Q. Peavey had gifted me with by the hands of his estimable kinswoman.
"And now to business," said my guest. His whimsical gray eyes had become studious and detached from our surroundings. He had a generous mouth, which he seemed habitually to sew up in a close-drawn seam, but this would suddenly and pleasantly rip in moments of forgetfulness. Being the collector at this moment, the mouth was tightly stitched.
"Let me begin this way," he said. "There are exactly six pieces in that house that will prevent my being honest so long as they are not mine. I am not unmindful of your succor, Major. I'll prove that to you if you look me up in town, send me a wire and a room shall be waiting for you,—and I am enraptured by that small and lively brown lady. Nevertheless I shall remain a collector and, humanly speaking, an ingrate, a wolf, a caitiff, until those six articles are mine. Make them mine, and for the remainder of that stuff you shall have the benefit of an experience that has been of incredible cost. Accept my figure, and I promise you as man to man to de-Cohenize myself utterly."
"They are yours," I said—"what are they and what is the figure? Clem—Mr. Price's glass."
"There—you disarm me. One bit of haggling or hesitation might have hardened me even now; the serpent within me would have lifted its head and struck. But you have saved yourself—and very well for that! The articles are those six ball-and-claw-foot chairs with violin backs. I will pay fifty dollars apiece for those. Remember—it is the voice of Cohen. The chairs are worth more—some day they'll fetch twice that; but, really, I must throw a sop to that collector-Cerberus within me. He's entitled to something. He had the wit to fetch me here."
"The chairs are yours," I said, wondering if I had not mistaken his offer, but determining not to betray this.
"A little memorandum of sale, if you please—and I'll give you my check. That larger sideboard would also have stood in the way, but those glass handles aren't the originals."
The formality was soon despatched, and my curious friend became truly human.
"Now, Blake, this is from the grateful wretch whose life you have not only saved but enriched. Well, there's an excellent lot of stuff there. I've got the pick, from a collector's standpoint—though not from a money valuation. I can't tell what it will bring, but enough to put our youngish old friend easy for some time to come. You box it up, as much as she wants to let go, and send it to the Empire Auction Rooms—here's the card. They're plain auction-room people, you understand,—wouldn't hesitate to rob you in a genteel, auction way,—but I'll be there and see that they don't. Some of those other pieces I may want, but I'll take a bidding chance on them like a man, and I'll watch the whole thing through and see that it's straight."
Billy Durgin told me that Cohen and James Walsingham Price left on the night train going East. Billy noticed that Cohen seemed morose, and heard him exclaim something that sounded like "Goniff! " under his breath, as Price turned away from him after a brief chat.
For Little Arcady the appalling wonder was still to dawn. Load after load of the despised furniture went into freight-cars, until the home of Miss Caroline was only comfortably furnished. This was sensational enough—that the things should be thought worth shipping about the country with freights so high.
But after a few weeks came tales that atrophied belief—tales corroborated by a printed catalogue and by certain deposits of money in our bank to the account of Miss Caroline. That six wretched chairs, plain to ugliness, had sold for three hundred dollars spread consternation. The plain old sideboard for a hundred and ten dollars only fed the flames. But there had been sold what the catalogue described as "A Colonial sofa with carved dolphin arms, winged claw feet, and carved back" for two hundred and ten dollars, and after that the emotions aroused in Little Arcady were difficult to classify. Upon that very sofa most of the ladies of Little Arcady had sat to pity Miss Caroline for being "lumbered " with it. Again, a "Colonial highboy, hooded," recalled as an especially awkward thing, and "five mahogany side chairs" had gone for three hundred and eighty dollars. A "Heppelwhite mahogany armchair," remembered for its faded red satin, had veritably brought one hundred and sixty dollars; and a carved rosewood screen, said to be of Empire design, but a shabby thing, had sold astonishingly for ninety dollars. A "Hogarth chair-back settee" for two hundred and ten dollars, and "four Hogarth side chairs" for three hundred and fifteen dollars only darkened our visions still further. Some of us had known that Hogarth was an artist, but not that he had found time from his drawing to make furniture. Of Heppelwhite we had heard not at all, although twelve arm-chairs said to be his had been by some one thought to be worth around seven hundred dollars. Nor of any Sheraton did we know, though one of his sideboards and a "pair of Sheraton knife urns" fetched the incredible sum of five hundred and fifty dollars. Chippendale was another name unfamiliar in Slocum County, but Chippendale, it seemed, had once made a wing book-case which was now worth two hundred and forty dollars of some enthusiast's money. After that a Chippendale settee for a hundred and forty dollars and an "Empire table with 1830 base" for ninety-three dollars seemed the merest trifles of this insane outbreak.
The amount netted by the late owner of these things was reported with various exaggerations, which I never saw any good reason to correct. As I have said, the thing was, and promises to remain forever in Little Arcady, a phenomenon to be explained by no known natural laws. For a long time our ladies were too aghast even to marvel at it intelligibly. When Aunt Delia McCormick in my hearing said, "Well, now, what a world this is!" and Mrs. Westley Keyts answered, "That's very true!" I knew they referred to the Lansdale furniture. It was typical of the prevailing stupefaction.
"It seems that a collector may be a gentleman," said Miss Caroline, "but Mr. Cohen wasn't even a collector!"
Then I told her the considerable sum now to her credit. She drew a long breath and said, "Now!" and Clem, who stood by, almost cried, "Now, Little Miss!"