Chapter D: Appleton and Company (3)

It was a glorious September afternoon. And for June it was an exquisite if brief escape from servitude. She had yet to see William apart from the shop, yet now, as she came upon him standing by the post office, she was quite struck by his appearance. Tall and slight of form, he carried himself well, his neat suit of blue serge, old though it was in the revealing light of the sun, was brushed with scrupulous care, and his large flowing tie which he had the art of tying in a way of his own, made him look so interesting that June secretly was rather proud of being seen in his company. For undeniably he was handsome. In fact, standing there straight, alert and smiling upon the world, he had a look of mysterious charm which in the eye of one beholder raised him above the run of men.

At the sight of June, he lifted his old straw hat with a little air of homage, and also with a slight blush that became him adorably. And in his mood there was a poetry that delighted her, although she was careful not to let him know it.

“How wonderful it all is!” He waved his hand gaily to the sky. “And to think that every bit of it belongs to you and me!”

June, as matter-of-fact a young woman as the city of Blackhampton had ever produced, felt bound to ask what William meant by this extravagant remark. Charmed she was, and yet she was a little scandalised too.

“Beauty, beauty everywhere,” said the young man, letting his voice take its delicious fall. “There was an old Frenchman who said, that to see Beauty is to possess it. Look, Miss June, at that marvellous blue, and those wonderful, wonderful clouds that even Van Roon himself could hardly have painted. It is all ours, you know, all for our enjoyment, all for you and me.”

“But you are speaking of the world, aren’t you?” There was a slight note of protest in June’s solemn tone.

“If you fall in love with beauty, all the world is yours. There’s no escape from beauty so long as the sky is above us. No matter where we walk we are face to face with beauty.”

June was afraid that a girl who looked so smart in a lilac silk dress and a picture hat that she had the air of a fashion plate must have caught William’s injudicious observation. At any rate, she smiled at him as they passed. But then arose the question, had he not first smiled at her? Certainly, to be up against that intriguing frock, to say nothing of the hat, must have meant rare provocation for such an out-and-out lover of the ornamental.

Miss Grandeur, no doubt, had caught the look in his eyes which a minute ago June herself had surprised there. He simply could not help paying tribute to such radiance.

But was the girl beautiful? There was no doubt that William thought so. Still, the worst of it was that in his eyes everything under the sun was beautiful.

“She’d be nothing at all if it were not for the money she spends on herself,” June remarked, with more severity than relevance.

All the same it was a rare experience to walk abroad with William. He had an eye for all things and in all things he found the thing he sought.

On the steps of the National Gallery was a majestic policeman. To June he was but an ordinary symbol of the law, but for William he had a different message.

“Good morning, sir!”

At the compliment of this unwonted style of address, Constable X drew himself up, and returned the greeting with a proud smile.

“I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you,” said William, “for taking such care of our treasures.”

The policeman seemed rather amused. “It’s my job,” he said, training, at the same time, upon June an eye of quizzical intelligence. It was odd, yet all in a moment Constable X had ceased to be a stern-looking fellow.

As soon as William crossed the threshold of his treasure house, a kind of rapture came upon him. His voice grew hushed. And to June it seemed doubtful whether he would ever get beyond the Hermes on the main staircase. Once within this palace of many enchantments, he began to lose all sense of time and place; and, in spite of the fact that he was the soul of chivalry, he even seemed in danger of forgetting that he was accompanied by a lady.

Troubled at last by the silence of her escort, June gently observed: “This place seems nearly as big as the Blackhampton Art Museum.”

To William’s fine perception it was a delicate reminder that art is eternal, and that in the month of September the National Gallery closes at six.

The young man sighed deeply and turned away from the Hermes. Up the main staircase they walked side by side.

“Keep straight on, Miss June. If we glance to the right or the left, we may not get to the Van Roon before next Saturday.”

“We!” was June’s thought. “Better speak for yourself. In the Blackhampton Art Museum we have things far nicer than a few old chipped statues.” Happily, for the time being at least, it remained a thought without words.

They went through a room on the right, and then into an inner room. June was led to its farthest corner, and proudly marshalled into the presence of an object so small, and so insignificant, that she felt it was really surprising that even William should attach the least importance to it.

However, a mere glance proved that it was not so surprising after all. The picture contained a cloud, a tree, some water and a windmill. And these objects in themselves so trivial, yet sufficed, as June had learned already, to raise William at any time to the seventh heaven of bliss.

A moment’s inspection of the picture was enough for June. To her mind the work was quite commonplace. Yet William stood in front of it in an attitude of silent adoration, his head a little to one side, and apparently holding his breath for such a long period that June began to wonder how the trick was done. She was bound in honour to share this silent ecstasy, but having varied the proceedings a little by standing first on her right foot, and then on her left, she decided at last to throw up her part.

Very gently she put an end to William’s reverie.

“I think I will sit down,” said June.

“Please, please do!” The queer fellow came back with a start to the world of reality. “Let us sit over there on the corner of that sofa. Perhaps we may be able to see it even better then than we do now.”

To the sofa they went accordingly and to June’s discomfiture her mentor was at pains to dispose them both in a way that should enable them to keep the picture in their eye. June had no wish to keep the picture in her eye. She had had more than enough of it already. Besides, the large room was full of things vastly more imposing, much better worth looking at. But William, even seated on the sofa by her side, was still in thrall to this remarkable work.

There is no saying how long June’s trial would have lasted, but after it had gone on for a length of time that began to seem interminable, it came to an end in the most abrupt and dramatic way. Without any kind of warning, a strange appearance swam into their ken. Uncle Si, looking spruce and businesslike, and much better dressed than usual, entered the room through the door behind them.

XIII

JUNE held her breath, while S. Gedge Antiques with thought for nothing save the object that had brought him there, made a bee-line for the picture at which William was still solemnly staring. The old man put on his spectacles. Whether they were his “buying” or his “selling” ones, June was unable to decide, but whichever they might be they had an important function to perform. Uncle Si’s long and foxlike nose bent so close to the paint that it might have been smelling it.

June’s instinct was to flee before they were discovered. And perhaps she would have urged this course upon William had not pride said no. She was in mortal fear of the old man, yet she despised herself for that emotion. After all, they were doing no wrong in spending Saturday afternoon in such a very elevated form of amusement. Surely it devolved upon her to stand up to this tyrant.

William, for his part, was without misgiving. Thinking evil of none, least of all his master, he was a little awed by that odd arrival, and yet he was unfeignedly glad of his presence. The simpleton regarded it as a compliment to himself that S. Gedge Antiques should take the trouble to come in his own person to look at the Van Roon.

At last S. Gedge Antiques turned away from the Van Roon, and little suspecting who were so near to him, came full upon William and June seated together upon the adjacent sofa. For a moment it was as if a feather would have knocked him down. He could trust his eyes so little that he hastily changed his spectacles.

“What!” His brow was thunder. “You! Here!”

June, ready to carry the war into the country of the enemy, was prepared to offer a cool “Why not?” Happily, a second and wiser thought led her to await developments. Secretly, Uncle Si was in a pretty rage as June could tell by the look of him. But he was not one to let his feelings override his judgment. Whatever they were, they could keep. He had come there for a particular purpose; this afternoon he was bent on business only.

In the rasping voice which made June think of a file and sandpaper, S. Gedge Antiques remarked: “Still Hobbemaising, eh?”

William modestly admitted that he hoped Miss June would have a look at The Avenue.

“Let’s hope she’ll be the better for it.” The old man did his best to be polite. “It will improve her mind, no doubt.”

“But we have come to see the Van Roon, sir,” said William impulsively.

“Oh, you have.” There was a sudden narrowing of foxy eyes. “Seems to me, boy, you’ve got Van Roon on the brain.”

William could not help laughing at his master’s tone of playfulness, but June did not laugh. She knew but too well that as far as Uncle Si was concerned, Van Roon was an exceedingly serious matter.

“You are wise, boy”--the old man tried very hard to keep the sneer out of his voice--“to come and find out what a Van Roon really looks like.”

William modestly said that he thought he knew that already.

His master shook the head of wisdom. “Judging by the way you’ve been going on lately I take leave to doubt it. If you can trace the slightest resemblance to that thing of ours”--as Uncle Si half turned to point to the picture, June noticed that he was careful to say “ours”--“I’m afraid, boy, you’re qualifying for Colney Hatch.”

William laughed gaily at his master’s humour. He felt bound in honour to do so, since the jokes from that quarter were thin and few. But June did not laugh. Something cold, subtle, deadly, was creeping into her heart.

The old fox struck an attitude before the Van Roon. “How a man who has his wits can compare that daub of ours with this acknowledged masterpiece passes me altogether.”

As a fact, William had not exactly compared his Crowdham Market purchase with Number 2020 in the official catalogue. He had merely affirmed that it was by the same hand.

June was privileged to hear great argument. And as at her birth a kind fairy had bestowed the gift of penetration upon her, she listened to all that passed with a fixity of mind that was almost painful. Carefully weighing the pros and the cons as they were advanced, she was fully determined to get a real insight into the merits of a most singular and perplexing matter.

Who was in the right? It was the opinion of William against the opinion of Uncle Si. From the first she had had horrid doubts of the old man’s sincerity, yet she must not prejudge so grave an issue. Account must be taken, moreover, of the entire range of William’s fantastic ideas. The thought was not pleasant, but on the face of it, Uncle Si was likely to be far the safer guide of the two.

As June listened, however, to the wheedling sneers of the one and the forthright tone of the other, almost too transparent in its honesty, she could only conclude that Uncle Si was deliberately cheapening William’s discovery for purposes of his own.

Looking at the masterpiece on the opposite wall, with what June was only too keenly aware were the eyes of ignorance, it was impossible to deny an extraordinary similarity of subject and treatment. And this, as she perceived at once, was where Uncle Si overdid it. He would not allow that to the vision of a technical expert, the possession of which he did not scruple now to claim for himself, there was the slightest resemblance. Such similarities as might exist on the surface to delude the untutored eye he explained away in a flood of words whose force was intended to convince them both. But he convinced neither. June, pinning her wits to a plain argument, smiled secretly as more than once he contradicted himself. William on the other hand, was not permitted by the love and reverence he bore his master, to submit his speeches to the scale. He took his stand upon the divine instinct that was his by right of birth. Such being the case he could but gently dissent from the old man. It was one of his peculiarities that the surer he was, the more gentle he grew. And therein, as June perceived, he differed strangely from Uncle Si who could only render conviction in terms of vehemence.

Finally, as a clincher, S. Gedge Antiques growled: “Boy, you talk like a fool!” and head in air, marched with the aid of his knobby walking stick out of William’s treasure house.

William and June having stood to talk with the old man, now sat down again.

“Thank goodness he’s gone!” said June.

William confessed that the master had puzzled him considerably.

“’Tisn’t like him to close his eyes to the facts of a case. I can’t think what has happened to the master. He hardly ever makes a mistake.”

Said June sagaciously: “Uncle Si being so wise about most things, isn’t it likely that the mistake is yours?”

“It may be so,” William allowed. But at once he added, with a divine simplicity: “I will stake my life, all the same, Miss June, that our picture is a Van Roon.”

“Or a clever forgery, perhaps.”

“No, no. As sure as you and I sit here, only one hand painted that little thing of ours.”

“Then why should Uncle Si declare that it doesn’t in the least resemble a Van Roon?”

“Ah, that I don’t know. It is very strange that he should be so blind to the truth. As I say, it is the first time I have known it to happen.”

“It may be,” said June, “that this is the first time there has been so much money in the case.”

William dissented gravely. “The master would never let money influence him in a matter of this kind.”

“Uncle Si lets money influence him in matters of every kind.”

William shook his head. “I am afraid you don’t quite understand the master,” he said, with a wonderful look in his deep eyes.

June was too wise to contest the point. He might know more about pictures than did she, but when it came to human nature it was another pair of shoes. It made her quite hot with anger to feel how easily he could be taken in.

Sitting by William’s side on the edge of the sofa she made a vow. From now on it should be her aim in life to see that Uncle Si did not get the better of this young man. She had made a good and wise beginning by inducing him to bestow the picture upon herself, instead of giving it, as so easily might have happened, to the Old Crocodile. She knew that some bad quarters of an hour lay ahead, in the course of which she and her box might easily find themselves in the street; but come what might, let her cherish that picture as if it were life itself. For she saw with a startling clearness that William’s future, and perhaps her own, was bound up in its fortunes.

This surmise as to trouble ahead was borne out very exactly by events. When accompanied by William she returned to tea in a state as near positive happiness as she had ever known, Uncle Si’s aspect was so hostile that it would not have been surprising had she been sent packing there and then. The presence of William helped to restrain the anger of S. Gedge Antiques, since there was more to lose than to gain just now by fixing a quarrel upon him; but it was clear that the old man did not intend to pass over the incident lightly.

“Niece,” he began the moment his cup had been handed to him, “kindly tell me what you mean by gallivanting about London.”

A hot flame of resentment ran in June’s cheek. But she was too proud to express it otherwise than by rather elaborately holding her peace. She continued to pour out tea just as if not a word had been said on the subject.

“It’s my fault, sir,” said William, stepping into the breach chivalrously, but with an absence of tact. “Miss June very kindly consented to come and look at the Van Roon.”

“There must be no more of it.” Miss June received the full benefit of a north eye. “I will not have you going about with a young man, least of all a young man earning fifteen shillings a week in my employ.”

It was now the turn of William’s cheek to feel the flame, but it was not in his nature to fight over a thing of that kind, even had he been in a position to do so. Besides, it hardly needed his master to tell him that he had been guilty of presumption.

Indeed, the circumstances of the case made it almost impossible for either of the culprits to defend such conduct in the other’s presence. Yet June, to the intense astonishment of Uncle Si, and no doubt to her own, contrived to give battle in hostile territory.

“I can only say,” she remarked, with a fearlessness so amazing that Uncle Si scalded his mouth by drinking out of his cup instead of out of his saucer, “that if fifteen shillings a week is all that William gets, it is just about time he had a rise in his wages.”

For a moment Uncle Si could only splutter. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them fiercely.

“Gracious goodness me! God bless my body and my soul!” June would not have been at all surprised had the old slave-driver “thrown a fit.”

“William is very clever,” she said undaunted.

“Niece, hold your tongue.” The words came through clenched teeth. “And understand, once for all, that I’ll have no more carryings-on. If you don’t look out, you’ll find your box in the street.”

Having put June out of action, the old man turned his attention to William. But with him he walked more delicately. There must be no more Van Rooning, but the ukase was given in a tone so oily that June just had to smile.

In spite of his own edict, however, it was clear that Van Roon continued much in the mind of William’s master. The next day, Sunday, instead of taking the air of the west central postal district, his custom as a rule, when the forenoon was fine, he spent most of the morning with the young man in the studio. June felt this boded so ill that she went about her household chores in a fever of anxiety. She was sure that Uncle Si had fully made up his mind to have the picture; he meant, also, to have it at his own price. However, she had fully made up hers that this tragedy simply must not occur.

XIV

JUNE, preparing for dinner a Yorkshire pudding, brought an acute mind to bear on the still graver problem before it. What would happen when Uncle Si found out that William had been persuaded to give her the picture? It was a question she was bound to ask, yet she dare not foretell the answer. William and she were completely in his power. Wholly dependent upon the food and lodging the old man provided and the few shillings a week with which he grudgingly supplemented them, they could not afford to come to an open breach with him; at the same time to June’s practical mind, it would be an act of sheer madness to give up the rare thing that fortune had put into their hands.

Her need just then was the advice of some able and disinterested friend. There was only her power of putting two and two together to tell her that the picture might be worth a large sum. And even that did not allow her to know for certain; she must find a means of making sure. Unhappily, there was not one person in the world to whom she could turn for advice, unless it was William himself; and in plain matters of business he seemed so hopelessly at sea--if they involved dealings with his master at all events--that June was convinced he would be no use at all.

Beating up an egg for the Yorkshire pudding, she felt a deep concern for what was now taking place up that second pair of stairs in the garret next the tiles. Vainly she wished that she had had the sense to ask William to keep back as long as possible the fact that he had given the picture to her. But the mere request would have opened the door to another anxiety. If the picture was what he thought it was, could such a gift, made in such circumstances, be regarded as irrevocable? That must be left to the giver himself to decide: assuming the simpleton had enough strength of mind to prevent Uncle Si deciding it for him.

The pudding was just ready for the oven when she heard Uncle Si come downstairs. He went into the parlour, where every Sunday morning, with the help of the _Exchange and Mart_ and half an ounce of shag, he spent an hour in meditation. As soon as the door closed upon the old man, June ran attic-wards to confer with William.

There was no beating about the bush. Bursting in upon him breathlessly, she cried: “I hope you have not told Uncle Si the picture is mine. I had meant to warn you not to do so on any account--not for the present, at least.”

William looked up from the treasure with his absorbed air; but it appeared that as yet he had not let the cat out of the bag.

“I am very glad.” June breathed freely again.

“I thought,” said William sadly, “it would be best not to tell the master until after his dinner. But I fear that whenever he knows it will upset him terribly.”

“Why should it?”

“It’s like this, Miss June--the master is fairly setting his heart upon this picture.”

“Then he’d better unset it,” said June harshly.

Trouble came unmistakably into the expressive face of the picture’s late owner.

“I am afraid it will be quite a blow to him if he doesn’t get this beautiful thing,” he said, gazing affectionately at what he held in his hand.

“And yet he thinks so little of it?”

“Oh no! Not now. This morning after a careful examination he’s changed his mind.”

June was not impressed by this face-about on the part of S. Gedge Antiques. “If you ask me,” she declared scornfully, “he changed his mind some time ago. But he’s a bit too artful to let you know that.”

“But why?” said William perplexedly.

“Don’t you see that he thinks the more he cheapens it the easier it will be to get it from you?”

William could not bring himself to take so harsh a view.

“What does he offer for it now?” the new owner of the Van Roon sternly inquired.

“You are not fair to the dear old master, believe me, Miss June.” The young man spoke with charming earnestness. “He has such a reverence for beauty that he cannot reckon it in terms of money. This morning I have brought him to see with my eyes.” Pride and affection deepened in the voice of the simpleton. “He has now such a regard for this lovely thing that he will not be happy until he possesses it, and I shall not be happy until you have given it to him.”

June was simply aghast.

“But--but it was given to me!”

“I know--I know.” The giver was pink with confusion. “But you see, Miss June, your uncle has quite set his heart on it. And I am wondering if you will return it to me, so that I may offer it to him, as a token of my love. No one could have had a better or kinder master. I owe everything to him.” Suddenly, however, the young man was aware of her dismay. “I do hope you will not mind too much,” he said, anxiously. “If you will allow me, I will give you something else.”

June averted her eyes. “You gave me this. And you can’t believe how much it means to me.”

“Yes, I know you have a great feeling for it. To part with it will hurt you, I can see that. But please think of the dear old master’s disappointment if he doesn’t get it.”

“He merely wants it to sell again.”

“You are unjust to yourself, Miss June, in thinking so. Money does not enter into your feeling about this beautiful thing; it doesn’t enter into mine. Why should it enter into the master’s, whose love of art is so intense?”

“Because his love of money is intenser. It’s his ruling passion. Where are your eyes that they can’t see a thing as plain as that?”

She must be as gentle as she could with this absurd fellow, yet she feared that such words must cause a wound. And the wound was wilfully dealt. It was so important that he should be made to see the whole thing as really and truly it was. But her hope was slight that he would ever be brought to do so.

“I beg you,” he said, almost with passion, “to let me have it back, so that I may give it to the dear old master.”

“It is madness,” said June bitterly. “He has no true feeling for the picture at all.”

She saw that her words were unwise. They made her own position worse. But faced by such an appeal she had to do her best on the spur of the moment.

“I know how much it means to you.” Pain was clouding the eyes of this dreamer. “I know your love for it is equal to mine, but that will make our joy in giving it to your uncle so much the greater.”

“But why to Uncle Si--of all people?”

“He wants it.” William’s voice was low and solemn. “At this moment, I believe he wants it more than anything else in the world.”

June said with scorn: “He wants it as much as he wants a thousand pounds. And he doesn’t want it more. I believe money is his god. Think of the fifteen shilling he pays you a week. It makes my blood boil.”

A quick flush sprang to the young man’s cheek. “Money has nothing to do with this, Miss June.”

“It has to do with everything.”

Delicately he ventured to contradict. “Where love is, money doesn’t come in. I simply want to offer this priceless thing to the old master out of a full heart, as you might say.”

“Then you shouldn’t have parted with it.” She hated herself for her words, but she was not in a mood to soften them. “You have already had the pleasure of giving it to me, therefore it is only right that you should now deny yourself the pleasure of giving it to Uncle Si. It is like eating your cake and having it.”

William was not apt in argument, and this was cogent reasoning. He lacked the wit to meet it, yet he stuck tenaciously to his guns. “When you realize what this rare treasure means to the old man, I’m sure you’ll change your mind.”

June shook her head. Secretly, however, she felt like weakening a bit. In the wistful voice was a note that hurt. But she could not afford to yield; there was far too much at stake. “I shall have to think the matter over very carefully,” she temporised. “And, in the meantime, not a word to Uncle Si that the picture’s mine.”

She mustered the force of will to exact a promise. Bewildered, sad, a little incredulous, he gave it.

“_I hope he doesn’t hate me half as much as I hate myself_,” was the swift and sickening thought that annihilated June, as she ran from the studio, having recollected with a pang of dismay that she had not put in the pudding for dinner.

XV

DINNER was a miserable meal. The Yorkshire pudding was light, the roast sirloin was done to a turn, the potatoes were white and floury, the kidney beans were tender, but June could find nothing in the way of appetite. The mere presence of William at the other side of the table was almost more than she could bear. So keen was her sense of a terribly false position that she dare not look at him. What did he think of her? How must she appear to one all high-minded goodness and generosity?

Surely he must know, after what had just passed, that her love of the picture was mere base deceit. Surely he must hold such an opinion of her now that he would never believe or trust her again. And the tragedy of it was that she could not hope to make him see the real motive which lay behind it all.

Seated at the table, making only a pretence of eating, but listening with growing anger and disgust to the artful change she now detected in the tone of Uncle Si, it was as if the chair in which she sat was poised on the edge of an abyss. William must despise her quite as much as she despised the Old Crocodile, was the thought which turned her heart to stone.

S. Gedge Antiques having had the wit to discover the set of the wind, had begun most successfully to trim his sails. An hour’s careful examination of the picture that morning had convinced him that he had underrated its merits. There was very good work in it, and as a lifelong lover of art--with a devout glance at William--good work always appealed to him. But whether the thing, as a whole, was to be rated as highly as William put it, was decidedly an open question. Still the picture had merit, and personally he should treasure it as much for William’s sake as for its own.

June realized that it was now the turn of this cunning old fox to make love to the Van Roon’s owner. But was he cunninger than she? Yet what concerned her more than anything just now was the plain fact that he had already managed to persuade himself that the treasure was his property.

This was not the hour to disabuse his mind. And no matter when that hour came she foresaw a dire quarrel. She was now involved in a business to strain all the resources of her diplomacy. But William needed help. Cost what it might the task devolved upon her of looking after his affairs.

William, meanwhile, in his own peculiar way, seemed not averse from looking after hers. After dinner her first duty was to clear the table and wash up; and he simply insisted upon bearing a hand. He carried the tray into the back kitchen, and then, almost with defiance, presided at the washing of the crockery, while she had to be content with the humbler office of drying it.

“It’s your hands I’m thinking of, Miss June.”

“My hands are no affair of yours,” was the terse reply.

The lover of beauty shyly declared that such hands were not meant for such a task.

“Nothing to write home about--my hands aren’t.”

Politely sceptical, William drew from his pocket a bit of pumice stone.

“It is to take the soils out of your fingers,” he said, offering this talisman shyly.

June’s face was now a tawny scarlet. She did not know whether to laugh or to be angry. Yet how was it possible to be angry with a creature who was so charmingly absurd?

“May I take them out for you?”

The answer was “no.”

But somehow her face must have said “yes.” For without more ado, the amazing fellow took one of her hands and with nice discretion began to apply the pumice stone.

“There, now,” he said finally.

A stern rebuke trembled upon her lips, yet with the best will in the world it could not find a form of words whereby to get itself uttered.

XVI

A LITTLE later in the day Uncle Si came into the back kitchen where June was at work. It seemed that he had an announcement to make.

“Niece, there’s a piece of news for you. I’ve decided to take Mrs. Runciman back.”

June saw no reason why Mrs. Runciman should not be taken back. Indeed, she would welcome the return of the charwoman. It would certainly reduce the burden of her own labours which was by no means light.

“You and I are not going to hit it off, I can see that. Already there’s been too much of your interference. Next thing you’ll upset that boy. And I wouldn’t have that happen--not for a thousand pounds. So I think the best thing I can do is to take Mrs. Runciman back, and get her to find you a job.”

“For me!” said June slowly. “Mrs. Runciman find a job for me!”

“If she comes you’ll have to go. I can’t afford to keep a couple o’ women eating their heads off. The times don’t run to it.”

“What sort of a job do you expect a charwoman to find for me?” June asked, biting her lip.

“She may know of somebody who wants a domestic help. As far as I can see, you are not fitted for anything else.”

That was true enough, as June felt with a sharp pang. She was a girl without any sort of training except in the tedium of housework. No other career was open to her and she was going to be turned adrift. There came a hot flame to her cheeks, a sting of quick tears to her eyes. She was a proud and ambitious girl; never had she felt so keenly humiliated.

“If you stay here,” said Uncle Si, “you’re sure to upset that boy. And, as I say, rather than that should happen I’d pay a thousand pounds to a hospital.”

June didn’t reply. But in a surge of feeling she went up to her attic, and with rage in her heart flung herself full length on the bed.

The blow was fully expected, yet that hardly made the weight of it less. Soon or late this miser was bound to turn her out of doors; yet coming at such a time “the sack” was in the nature of a calamity.

Well, she must face it! Domestic service was the only thing to which she could turn her hand, and that, she foresaw, was likely to prove a form of slavery. A future, hard, confined and miserable, lay in front of her.

Bitterly she regretted now that she had not been able to fit herself for some other way of life. She had had a reasonably good education, as far as it went, in her native town of Blackhampton, where her father at one time had been in a moderately good position. But he had died when she was fourteen. And her mother, with health completely broken several years before her death had been left so badly off that June, perforce, had to give up all thoughts of a wider field. Stifling vague ambitions, she had bravely submitted to the yoke but, in spite of a sense of duty honestly, even nobly done, the sequel was a grim distaste of household drudgery. And this had not been made less by a month under the roof of S. Gedge Antiques.

With a gnawing sense of misery that was like a toothache, June slid off the bed and looked at herself in the cracked mirror which adorned the crazy dressing-table. Her only assets were comprised in her personal appearance. Instinctively she took stock of them. Alas, as she beheld them now, they were pretty much a “washout.”

First to strike her was the tell-tale redness of her eyelids, and that disgusted her to begin with. But, apart from that, she felt in her own mind that her personality was not really attractive. Her education was small, her life had been restricted and narrow; and now there seemed no way out.

Honestly she was not pretty, she was not clever, and she knew next to nothing of the world. Even at Blackhampton, where the supply of smart girls was strictly limited, she had never passed for anything out of the common. She had felt sometimes that her nature was too serious. In a girl a serious nature was a handicap, she had once heard Mr. Boultby, the druggist at the corner of Curzon Street, remark. One “asset,” however, she certainly had. The mop of golden-brown hair had always been her stand-by, and Mr. Boultby, that man of the world, had paid her compliments upon it. An artist would revel in it, he had said. Certainly there was a lot of it, and the colour having aroused comment even in her early days at the High School among her form-mates, it was no doubt rather striking. She was also inclined to be tall and long in the leg, she knew that her shoulders and chest were good, she prided herself upon the neatness of her ankles, yet at the back of her shrewd mind lurked the fear that the general effect must be plainness, not beauty. She had heard Mr. Boultby, always a friend, describe her as “unusual,” but she had felt that it was his polite way of saying she was not so good-looking as she might be.

No, wherever her fortune might lie, it was not in her face. Once or twice, in her romantic Blackhampton phases, which at best were very brief and few, she had thought of the stage. But one month of London had convinced her that it was not her line. Considering her inexperience of life her fund of horse sense was rather remarkable. She was a great believer in the doctrine of “looking facts in the face.” And the fact she had to meet now was that she was not in any way pretty or talented. Unless you were one or the other, and London teemed with girls who were both, the doors of the theatre were locked and barred.

Back on the edge of the bed, she began to consider the question of learning shorthand and typing, so that she might become a clerk in an office. But her means were so scant that the plan was hardly feasible. Really it seemed that no career was open to her, other than the one she loathed. And then the thought of William came. At once, by a strange magic, it eased the pressure. Heart, brain and will were merged in an immediate task; she must stand between this child of nature and the avarice of his master.

The sudden thought of William brought courage, tenacity, fighting power. She knew that at this moment he was the other side the wall. An impelling need urged her to go to him. Forgetful of red and swollen lids she got up at once and went and knocked on the studio door.

A familiar voice said, “Come in!”

William, as usual in that room, was pottering about amid oils, canvasses and varnish. He was in shirt sleeves, he wore a large apron, his shock of fair hair, which gave him the look of a poet, was rumpled, there was a smudge on his cheek, but the absorption of his eyes, their look of intensity, half filled her with awe.

She had really come to tell him that she was going to be sent away. But as soon as she found herself in his presence she was overcome by sheer pride. From the first this young man had treated her with a deference which implied that she was of a clay superior to his own. His bearing towards her always stressed the fact that she was the niece of his good master, and that he was a servant humbly grateful for his fifteen shillings a week.

At first this attitude had fed her vanity in a subtle way. But now, in present circumstances, it seemed almost to enrage her. It was quite absurd that a man of such distinguished talent should place her upon a pedestal. The truth of the matter was she was unfit to lace his shoes, and it was amazing that he did not know it.

Upon her entrance William had immediately risen from his stool, and had bowed slightly over the pot of varnish he held in his hand, with a half-humorous air of homage, as some famous chemist might have done when disturbed by a great lady in the midst of his wonderful researches. “I know it’s not me you have come to see,” his gentle manner seemed to say; “it is this marvellous thing on the easel at my elbow.”

All the same it was William she had come to see. She had come to him for countenance and sympathy. And it did not help her at all that she should be treated with a shy reserve. She craved to be told that she had come to mean something to him; she craved to be told that his fastidious concern for her hands, and the regard he had for a beauty in which she herself did not believe was more than mere chivalry towards women in general. Alas, in spite of the eager friendliness of her reception this was not apparent. In the eyes of William she was just the master’s niece, and the incident of the pumice stone was without significance, beyond the fact that he was no more than the least of her servants.

It was very exasperating.

“But if you are wise,” said a voice within, “you will not let this Gaby know that you think so.”

XVII

JUNE spent a worried and disconsolate night. She had very little sleep. Time and again she listened to the melancholy drip-drip of rain on the eaves just over her head. Never in her life had she felt so wretched. She was horribly lonely, without resources or friends. How she was to live through the endless years of servitude and dependence on the will of others that lay ahead she did not know.

To keep on telling oneself to bear up seemed of little use. She had had to do that each hour of each day since her mother’s death. The prospect of being cast upon the world was indeed dispiriting, yet in the end it might turn out better than to sacrifice one’s youth upon the altar of such a Moloch as Uncle Si.

As people who sleep ill are apt to do, she fell into a comfortable doze just about the time she ought to be getting up. Thus, to her dismay, she entered upon the trying institution known as Monday morning at a quarter past seven instead of half past six.

“Uncle Si will be growling for his breakfast in another quarter of an hour,” was the thought that urged her into her clothes with a frantic haste. One twist she gave and no more, without so much as a glance in the glass, at the mane of brown gold hair, and then she flew downstairs, buttoning the front of her dress.

A fire was burning in the kitchen grate, and upon it slices of bacon were sizzling in a frying-pan; the cloth was laid for breakfast; moreover, the parlour was already swept and dusted. In fact, at the precise moment of June’s belated appearance upon the scene, William, with a businesslike air, was returning from a visit to the dustbin.

When they met in the passage by the scullery she came within an ace of rebuking him. “Even if I oversleep myself you’ve no right to be so officious,” was the sharp phrase which rose to her lips. But a saving sense of justice, not always at the service of the female soul, held it back. After all, such kindness and devotion were worthy of respect; he had saved, besides, an unpleasant scene with Uncle Si.

“Oh, thank you, William, ever so much,” she had the grace to murmur, hoping as she hastily disposed of the last button of her dress, that he wouldn’t notice she had come down, “half undone.”

“Please don’t mention it, Miss June,” he said, with the politeness of a courtier, as he returned the empty dustpan to its home beneath the scullery sink. “As you didn’t seem quite yourself last night I was hoping you would not get up at all this morning. I was going to bring your breakfast up to you, and set it outside your door.”

“Oh, but you are much too kind.” A sudden fierce rush of colour made her cheeks burn horribly. He was a very nice fellow, even if he was not so bright in some things as he ought to be.

Uncle Si, by the grace of providence, was a few minutes late for his breakfast. This seldom happened for, as a rule, he was the soul of punctuality. However, he was going down to Newbury by the nine o’clock from Paddington to attend a sale; in consequence, he had bestowed far more pains upon his appearance than was usual at this early hour. He was in a fairly good humour. The fact that the charwoman’s return would enable him “to fire” his niece had cheered him so much that for once he had slept like a just man.

“Don’t expect me until supper time,” he said to June, as he put on his high felt hat and his macintosh, and grasped the knobbed stick, as ugly as himself, which invariably accompanied his travels. “And my advice to you, my girl, is to think over very carefully what I said to you last night.”

With an air of quiet satisfaction, S. Gedge Antiques stepped briskly forth into a soft autumn day where the sun as yet could not quite make up its mind to greet him.

It was to be a day of great events. And the first of these began to materialise shortly before eleven when June chanced to enter the shop. William, just at that moment, was fathoms deep in conversation with a customer. The customer was very tall, she was strikingly distinguished and, in the opinion of June, she was dressed exquisitely. Soft silk and faint blue Chinese embroidery clothed her with a dangerous beauty. But it was the coquetry of her hat, an artful straw wreathed wonderfully in flowers of many a subtle shade that gave the crowning touch.

The hat it was, no doubt, that completed William’s overthrow. There was a look of rapture in the eyes with which the vain fellow regarded its wearer, for which June could have found it in her heart to slay him on the spot.

That tell-tale look was really a little too much. June could not help lingering on the threshold to watch these two. So shamelessly was William engrossed with this vision of pure beauty that there was not a chance of his eyes straying to look at her. And she would not have cared if they had. Such an irrational surge of jealousy was now in her heart that she would have welcomed his seeing what she thought of his gazing like that, even upon the grandest young woman in the land.

“So nice of you to take so much trouble,” the fair customer said in a voice of such melody that June had to own that the celebrated Miss Banks, the daughter of Blackhampton’s chief physician, whose charm of manner had ever remained in her mind as the high-water mark of human amenity, would now have to take second place.

“Not at all, madam,” said William, in the William way. Even June had to admit that such fine courtesy, a little excessive, no doubt, was far removed from mere sycophancy. Had he not practised on her? For that reason she had a perfect right to feel furious; William’s homage was far too inclusive. At the same time, there was no gainsaying that in this case he had every excuse. Regarded as the mirror of fashion and the mould of form, Miss Banks of Blackhampton was now a back number.

“The friend I sent it to liked it very much indeed,” said the Super-girl. “It was so exactly what she wanted. And if by chance you are able to match it, I shall be most grateful.”

William, with that divine air of his, promised quite simply and sincerely to do his best.

“The price, too, was very moderate,” said the Super-girl with the geniality of one who owns a province. Then suddenly she half turned, and her merry glance, assisted by a Miss Banksian stick-eyeglass was trained full upon the Hoodoo. “What a delicious monster!” The voice had quite a Brahms trill in it, not that June had ever heard of Brahms. “It reminds one of Edgar Allan Poe or the Grand Guignol.”

Unabashed by culture, William stood to his full height. June could only marvel at his coolness.

“So Oriental. So grotesque. Makes one think of Ali Baba and the Cave of the Forty Robbers. Very valuable, of course?”

“No, I wouldn’t exactly call it valuable.” June hardly knew whether to admire or to deplore this candour. “And it takes up a lot of room, and absorbs a lot of light. Almost needs the British Museum, as you might say, to show it to advantage.”

Again the Brahms trill, as the eye of the Super-girl travelled from the Hoodoo to William. “Those fearful eyes and those grinning jaws studded with crocodile’s teeth make it look absolutely alive. And it’s so perfectly hideous that one feels sure there must be a curse on it.”

“Mr. Gedge declares there is.”

“Really?” The eyes, the blue eyes of the Super-girl grew round and merry. “I’d love to have a thing with a curse on it--if it’s a real one?”

“Mr. Gedge would part with it for a very reasonable sum I feel sure,” said William, with a judicious air that June admired the more for being hardly able to credit it in him.

With the casual air so becoming to riches, the young woman asked the price.

“Twenty pounds would buy it,” she was informed.

“Curse and all?”

“Curse and all, madam.” William had a nice sense of humour, which June had discovered before she had known him an hour, but in this big moment he did not relax a muscle.

For about a quarter of a minute the Super-girl looked again at the Hoodoo. And then with the air of one who takes a great decision, she gave the ugly chin a playful tap and said: “I believe the long gallery at Homefield is the very place for you, my friend. You may not be a thing of beauty, but at the far end I am sure you would be a joy for ever!” She made then such fine play with her stick-eyeglass, that Miss Banks was put off the map altogether. “And a real live curse given in, I think you said?”

William bowed a grave affirmative.