Part 2

“Picture, eh?” S. Gedge Antiques dubiously scratched a scrub of whisker with the nail of his forefinger. “Don’t fancy pictures myself. Chancey things are pictures. Never brought _me_ much luck. However, I’ll have a look at it. Take off the paper.”

William took off the paper and handed to his master the article it had contained. With a frown of petulant disgust the old man held an ancient and dilapidated daub up to the light. So black it was with grime and age that to his failing eyes not so much as a hint of the subject was visible.

“Nothing to write home about anyhow,” was the sour comment. “Worth nothing beyond the price of the frame. And I should put that”--S. Gedge pursed a mouth of professional knowledge--“at five shillings.”

“Five shillings, sir, is what I paid for it.”

“Not worth bringing home.” S. Gedge shook a dour head. Somehow he resented his assistant making a private purchase, but that may have been because there was nothing in the purchase when made. “Why buy a thing like that?”

William took the picture gravely from his master and held it near the window.

“I have an idea, sir, there may be a subject underneath.”

“Don’t believe in ideas myself,” snapped S. Gedge, taking a microscope from the counter. After a brief use of it he added, “There may be a bit o’ badly painted still life, but what’s the good o’ that.”

“I’ve a feeling, sir, there’s something below it.”

“Rubbish anyhow. It’ll be a fortnight’s job to get the top off and then like as not you’ll have wasted your time. Why buy a pig in a poke when you might have invested your five shillings in a bit more china? However, it’s no affair of mine.”

“There’s something there, sir, under those flowers, I feel sure,” said the young man taking up the microscope and gazing earnestly at the picture. “But what it is I can’t say.”

“Nor can anyone else. However, as I say, it’s your funeral. In our trade there’s such a thing as being too speculative, and don’t forget it, boy.”

“I might find a thing worth having, sir,” William ventured to say.

“Pigs might fly,” snapped S. Gedge Antiques, his favourite formula for clinching an argument.

The mention of pigs, no doubt again by an association of ideas, enabled S. Gedge to notice, which he might have done any time for two minutes past, that his niece had emerged from the back premises, and that she was regarding William and the picture with frank curiosity.

“Well, niece,” said the old man sharply. “What do you want now?”

“Is the cold mutton in the larder for dinner, Uncle Si?” said June with a slight but becoming blush at being called upon to speak in the presence of such a very nice looking young man.

“What else do you think we are going to have? Truffles in aspic or patty de four grass?”

“No, Uncle Si,” said June gravely.

“Very well then,” growled S. Gedge Antiques.

IV

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.

VI

THE next morning saw the beginning of a chain of epoch-making events in the history of S. Gedge Antiques.

Shortly before eight o’clock Mrs. Runciman turned up as usual after her day off. With a most businesslike promptitude, however, she was given her quietus. In dispensing with her services, from now on, Uncle Si took a real pleasure in what he called “telling her off.” Many times had he warned her that she would play the trick once too often. And now that his prophecy had come true, he was able to say just what he thought of her, of her ancestry, and of her sex in general. She would greatly oblige him by not letting him see her face again.

Mrs. Runciman, for her part, professed a cheerful willingness to take her late employer at his word. There was plenty of work to be had; and she departed on a note of dignity which she sustained by informing him in a voice loud enough for the neighbours to hear that “he was a miser, and a screw, and that he would skin a flea for its feathers.”

On the top of this ukase to the char, the old man held a short private conversation with his niece. June had begun very well; and if she continued to behave herself, got up in the morning without being called, was not afraid of hard work, and had the breakfast ready by a quarter to eight she would receive, in addition to board and lodging, two shillings a week pocket money, and perhaps a small present at Christmas.

As far as it went this was very well. “But,” said June, “there’s my clothes, Uncle Si.”

“Clothes!” The old man scratched his cheek. “You’ve money of your own, haven’t you?”

“Only twenty pounds.”

“We’ll think about clothes when the time comes to buy some.”

S. Gedge, however, admitted to William privately that he had hopes of the niece. “But let me tell you this, boy: it’s asking for trouble to have a young female sleeping in the house. Old ones are bad enough, even when they sleep out; young ones sleeping in may be the very mischief.”

In fact, the old man deemed it wise to reinforce these observations with a solemn warning. “Understand, boy, there must be no carrying on between you and her.”

“Carrying on, sir!” Such innocence might have touched the heart of King Herod.

“That’s what I said. I can trust you; in some ways you hardly know you’re born; but with a woman, and a young one at that, it’s another pair o’ shoes. Women are simply the devil.”

William’s blank face showed a fleck of scarlet; yet the true inwardness of these Menander-like words were lost upon him; and he was rebuked for being a perfect fool in things that mattered. However, the arrangement was merely temporary. If the girl behaved herself, well and good; if she didn’t behave herself, niece or no niece, she would have to go. But--touching wood!--there was nothing to complain of so far.

William quite agreed, yet he dare not say as much to his master. In his opinion, there was no ground for comparison between the dethroned goddess of whom he had always been a little in awe, and the creature of grace and charm, of fine perception and feminine amenity who slept the other side the “studio” wall. For all that, in the sight of this young man, one aspect of the case was now a matter of concern.

“Miss June,” he said on the evening of the second day, “do you mind if I get up early to-morrow and do a few odd jobs about the house?”

“What sort of jobs?” Miss June’s air of suspicion was tinged with sternness. Now that she reigned in Mrs. Runciman’s stead she could not help feeling rather important.

“If you’ll show me where the brushes are kept, I’ll blacklead the kitchen grate.”

“Please don’t come interfering.” In June’s manner was a touch of hauteur.

Beneath the tan of East Anglia, the young man coloured. “But you’ll spoil your hands,” he ventured.

“My hands are no affair of yours,” said June, a little touched, and trying not to show it.

“Let me take over the kitchen grate for the future. And if you don’t mind, I’ll scrub the shop floor.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to do?” said June, with amused scorn.

“I’d like to do all the really rough jobs if I may.”

“For why?”

The Sawney had given his reason already, and, in spite of a growing embarrassment, he stuck to his guns.

Said June sternly: “You mustn’t come interfering.” Yet the light in her eyes was not anger. “You’ve got your department and I’ve got mine. Windmills are your department. Blackleading kitchen grates and cleaning floors won’t help you to find windmills. Besides, you have the shop to look after, and you have to go out and find things for Uncle Si, and study art, and talk to customers, and goodness knows what you haven’t got to do.”

“Well, if you don’t mind,” said William tenaciously, “I’ll get in the coal, anyway.”

June shook her head. “No interference,” was her last word.

Nevertheless, the following morning saw a division of labour within the precincts of No. 46, New Cross Street. When June came downstairs at a quarter to seven, she found a young man on his knees vigorously polishing the kitchen grate. He was sans coat, waistcoat and collar; there was a smudge on the side of his nose, and as the temper of a lady is apt to be short at so early an hour, it was no wonder that he was rebuked crushingly.

“Didn’t I say I wouldn’t have interference? I don’t come into your studio and look for windmills, do I?”

William, still on his knees, had penitently to own that she didn’t.

“It’s--it’s a great liberty,” said June, hotly.

He looked up at her with an air to disarm the Furies. “Oh--please--no!”

“What is it then?” Secretly she was annoyed with herself for not being as much annoyed as the case demanded. “What is it then? Coming into my kitchen with your interference.”

“I’m ever so sorry, but----”

“But what?”

“I simply can’t bear to think of your spoiling your beautiful hands.”

June’s eyes were fire; her cheek flamed like a peony. “Go and look for your beautiful windmills, and leave my hands alone.”

But the owner of the beautiful hands was now fettered by the knowledge that she was beginning to blush horribly.

VII

IN the evening of the next day, about half an hour before supper, June climbed the attic stairs and knocked boldly upon the studio door.

“Come in,” a gentle voice invited her.

William, a lump of cotton wool in one hand, the mysterious bottle in the other, was absorbed in the task of looking for a windmill. He had to own, the queer fellow, that so far success had not crowned his search.

“I should think not,” said June, uncompromisingly.

“But there are the trees.” William took up a knife and laid the point to a canvas that was already several tones lighter than of yore.