Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  “So they settled to make a bolt of it one night after market-day. Jim Bates chose that night for reasons. ’Twas only to be supposed that both cashbox and brothers would be fullest after market-day; an’ if absent-mindedness be to be took advantage of, when was an Essex farmer likely to hey more of it than on market-night? So ‘twere settled to do so. Jim Bates were to come into the yard at midnight an’ tip the whistle. Jane were to be all ready, an’ pitch out o’ winder the key o’ the stable-door, which she’d hey to get from Tom Brewitt’s room. This was another thing easier done on market-night. Then, while Jim Bates set about harnessin’ the mare to the dogcart, Jane was to go into Bob’s room, get his keys, unlock the safe, and bring out the cashbox. That was another thing only safely to be done on market-night, an’, market-night an’ all, poor Jane Brewitt felt mighty trembly about doin’ it. After that she were to gather up all three pairs o’ topboots, where the brothers had a-left ‘em outside the bedroom doors — for she kep’ her brothers up to gentry ways, did Jane — an’ pitch ‘em away somewheres, to keep Tom, Bob, an’ Sam indoors for a bit, in case they got roused, an’ give the loviers true a good clear start. That was Jane’s department, an’ so much done, she were to mount the dogcart with her lovin’ Jim and the cashbox, an’ live happy ever arter.

  “But there ain’t no dependin’ on plans with absent-minded men about. Poor Jane Brewitt got frightender an’ frightender every minute arter her brothers had gone to bed, an’ she hadn’t the pluck to go into Tom’s room for the stable-key before she heard Jim Bates in the yard. ‘Twere a fine moonlight night, an’ she peeped an’ saw him.

  “‘Be that you, Jim?’ says she, whisperin’ out o’ winder.

  “‘Ay,’ says he, whisperin’ back. ‘’Tis arl right. I don’t want the stable-key.’

  “He said he den’t want the stable-key,” Dan said, turning to the company; “an’ I’d bet a piece you won’t guess why. Tom Brewitt, so fresh from market as he were, had wound his watch an’ hung it on the stable-door, an’ took the padlock up to bed with him; an’ now that watch were tickin’ away safe in Jim Bates’s pocket I D’ye cap that, Abel Pennyfather?”

  Abel said not a word, and Dan went on.

  “Well, that looked like good luck, and a watch in extry, for poor Jane, but it weren’t; you can’t make no counts with absent-minders. But there were more to come. Jim Bates looked up again, and he said: ‘Hey ye been to the safe?’

  “‘No,’ says poor Jane. ‘I aren’t been; an’ I’m ready to faint with fear at the thought. I count it be robbery!’

  “‘Stay a bit,’ says Jim Bates to her. ‘What’s that black thing I see in the rosebush under Bob’s winder?’

  “Well, neighbors,” Dan went on, turning again to the company at large, “if Abel Penny-father told you what I’m goin’ to tell you, you mightn’t believe it; but, seein’ I say it myself, there’s no question. Bob Brewitt had finished his market-day so chock full of absent-mindedness that he’d opened the casement instead o’ the safe-door, an’ shoved the cashbox out o’ winder! Can ye cap that?

  “Well, now, that looked as if the course o’ true love were runnin’ smoother than ever, den’t it? But I tell ‘ee again, ye can’t make no count with absent-minders. The absence o’ mind proper to market-night had helped the loviers true as regards two brothers, but it ruined an’ shipwrecked the whole venture in the case o’ the third. There was nothin’ to do now for Jane, but to gather up the boots, an’ pelt off for a weddin’ licence; but that she never did, for something occurred.

  “Jim Bates, when he found hisself out in the yard with the cashbox an’ Tom Brewitt’s watch, began to think things over very sudden. He changed his mind about separatin’ Jane an’ the cashbox, an’ he started off to part ‘em just as far as possible in the longest jumps he could make. An’ poor Jane, she couldn’t go after him because of what occurred in the meantime; an’ so she lost the only man that ever came a-courtin’ to her, an’ died an old maid at last.”

  “What was it as occurred in the meantime?” asked somebody.

  “It’s all very well for you to laugh, neighbors,” proceeded Dan, ignoring the interruption; “but I count ’tis a bitter thing for a poor gal to live her life through, young at first an’ old at last, an’ die, an’ never get the kindness a woman looks for, and that she sees the others getting. You laugh at poor Jane Brewitt with her ugly face, but she’s the same under her skin as the handsomest gal in Essex. An’ that’s the same with all of us. Abel Penny-father ‘ud look quite decent if you skinned him. Well, well!”

  “But you ha’n’t told us what occurred that stopped her,” protested Prentice.

  “Den’t I? Well there now It caused a rare fanteeg, though, the hullabaloo after Jim Bates. When they all woke up, Tom Brewitt wasted ten minutes tryin’ to tell the time o’ night by the padlock; an’ Bob, not quite awake and still mixin’ up the safe-door an’ the casement in his mind, shoved his head into the safe an’ bawled, ‘Stop thief!’ till he nigh deaf-an’-dumbed hisself. But they caught Jim Bates in the mornin’, though, an’ he went to Springfield gaol once more. Here’s better luck to us. ’Tis a dry oad tale.”

  Dan reached for Abel Pennyfather’s new-filled mug, and Abel, loudly protesting, recovered it empty.

  “Your mug? Well there,” said Dan, with his hand on the door-knob as he rose. “There be nothing so catchin’ in the world as that there absence o’ mind. It’ll be Banham’s turn next.”

  “But what was’t occurred to stop Jane Brewitt?” cried everybody, except Pennyfather.

  “Oh, that?” Dan answered, turning the doorknob and pulling the door conveniently ajar. “Well, you see, she picked up two pairs o’ top-boots all right, but when she got to Sam’s door — you see he’d come home from market as full of absence o’ mind as any man could carry, an’ you know they brew it strong at Rochford. So, natural enough, he tucked up his boots in bed an’ went asleep outside hisself. So that when his sister came along in the dark with two pair o’ boots an’ fell over him, he jumps up an’—”

  But the empty mug hit the door as it closed, and it cost Abel Pennyfather eighteen pence.

  THE STOLEN BLENKINSOP

  I

  IF it had been necessary for Mr. Hector Bushell to make a fortune for himself there can be little doubt that he would have done it. fortunately or unfortunately — just as you please — the necessity did not exist, for his father had done it for him before he was born. Consequently, Hector, who was a genial if somewhat boisterous young man, devoted his talents to the service of his friends, whose happiness he insisted on promoting, with their concurrence or without it, by the exercise of his knowledge of the world and whatever was in it, his businesslike acumen, his exuberant animal spirits, and his overflowing, almost pestilential, energy. Quiet-mannered acquaintances who spied him afar dodged round corners and ran, rather than have their fortunes made by his vigorously-expressed advice, enforced by heavy slaps on the shoulder and sudden digs in the ribs, and sometimes punctuated with a hearty punch in the chest. For he was a large and strong, as well as a noisy, young man, accurately, if vulgarly, described by his acquaintance as perpetually “full of beans.”

  He had given himself a reputation as an art critic, on the strength of a year or two’s attendance at an art school in Paris; and, indeed, he maintained a studio of his own, expensively furnished, where he received his friends and had more than once begun a picture. But his energies in this matter were mainly directed to the good of painters among his acquaintances, who were under the necessity of living by their work. He told them how their pictures should be painted, and how they could certainly be sold. Indeed, in this latter respect he did better than advise the painter — he advised the buyer, when he could seize one, and trundled him captive in the studio of his nearest friend with great fidelity and enthusiasm.

  “The chance of your life, my dear sir!” he would say, snatching at the lapel of some wealthy friend’s coat, and raising the other hand with an immi
nent threat of a slap on the shoulder. “The chance of your life! The coming man, I assure you! Something like an investment. A picture they’ll offer you thousands for some day, and I do believe I can get it for you for a couple of hundred! Come and see it before some dealer gets in!”

  It was with some such speech as this that he interrupted Mr. Higby Fewston, the margarine magnate, full of the report of the robbery a day before of a Gainsborough portrait from a house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square. Mr. Fewston was not the sort of man to take a deal of interest in pictures for their own sake, but the newspapers estimated the money value of the missing picture at twenty thousand pounds, and he found that very touching. He had the same respect for that Gainsborough, which he had never seen, that he would have had for a cheque for the sum signed by the firm of Rothschild; rather more, in fact, for if the cheque were stolen it might be stopped, and so rendered valueless; but there was no stopping the Gainsborough till you had caught the thief. So that Mr. Fewston found himself taking an unwonted interest in art; and when Hector Bushell, seizing the opportunity and pulling at his arm, drew him in the direction of Sydney Blenkinsop’s studio, he offered less resistance than otherwise he might have done.

  “Man named Blenkinsop,” declaimed the zealous Hector. “Capital chap, and paints like — like a double archangel. His studio’s close by — come and look for yourself. Of course, nothing need be said about buying the picture, if you don’t want to. But just come and see it — I’ll pretend we were passing and just dropped in. You’ll have the sort of chance that people had in Gainsborough’s own time. Why, I don’t suppose he got more than a couple of hundred or so for the very picture the papers are so full of to-day!”

  Mr. Fewston suffered himself to be dragged through many streets — the studio was not so near as Hector’s enthusiasm made it seem — and finally into the presence of Mr. Sydney Blenkinsop, the painter. Blenkinsop was, by the side of Bushell, a comparatively quiet young man, not without apprehension of the possible consequences of his friend’s devotion; for one never could tell what wild things Bushell might have been saying about one.

  “Ah, Sydney, old boy!” cried that enthusiast. “How have you been all this time?” They had last met the day before, when Hector had hauled in some other possible patron. “How have you been? Just looked in as we were passing, you know — just looked in! This is my friend, Mr. Higby Fewston, much interested in art, and what he don’t know about a picture — well, there! Working on anything just now, eh? I say” — this with a start of apprehension— “you haven’t sold that picture yet, have you? The stunner, you know, the Keston?”

  “Oh, that?” responded Blenkinsop, who had never sold a picture in his life. “No, I haven’t. Not that one.”

  “Ah, plain enough Agnew hasn’t been here lately. I’d like to have another look at it, old chap; probably sha’n’t have another chance, unless it goes somewhere where I know the people. Ah, there now; look at that now!”

  Mr. Fewston looked at it blankly. “It — it’s a landscape,” he said, presently, after consideration. The stolen Gainsborough had been a portrait, and Mr. Fcwston liked things up to sample.

  “Rather!” replied Hector. “It is a landscape, as you say, and no mistake! Something like a landscape that, eh? I knew you’d like it, of course, having an eye for such a thing. Ah, it’s a topper!”

  He fell back by the side of the man of margarine, and the two inspected the marvel in silence, the one with head aside and a smile of ecstasy, and the other with all the expression of a cow puzzled by a painted field with nothing to eat on it. Sydney Blenkinsop shuffled uneasily.

  Presently Mr. Fewston thought of something to say. “Where was it taken?” he asked.

  “Keston Common,” murmured Sydney faintly and “Keston Common” repeated Hector loudly, making the title sound like a fresh merit. He also drew attention to the wonderful effects of light in the picture, the extraordinary painting of the sky, the subtle suggestion of atmosphere, and the marvellous “values.” Mr. Fewston listened patiently to the end. There was another pause longer and more awkward than the last; it seemed likely to endure till something burst in Sydney Blenkinsop. Then, at last, Mr. Higby Fewston spoke, weightily.

  “Keston,” he said, with solemn conviction, “is a place I don’t like. There’s a bad train service.”

  Such a criticism as this even Hector Bushell could not readily answer. He attempted to evade the point and returned again to his “values.” But any reference to values unsupported by definite figures made little impression on the commercial mind of Mr. Fewston, and in a very few minutes more he drifted out, with Hector Bushell still in close attendance.

  Hector, however, remained with the margarine Maecenas only long enough to discharge another volley of admiration for the picture, and took his leave at the first convenient corner. As a consequence he was back in five minutes, to discover Sydney Blenkinsop vengefully kicking a lay figure.

  “Don’t bring another chap like that to this place,” cried the painter savagely, “or I’ll pitch him out o’ window!”

  “My dear chap, don’t be an ass! You’ve got no business instincts. A man like that’s invaluable, if you can only kid him on. He’ll buy any old thing, if he buys at all.”

  “If!”

  “You’re an ungrateful infidel. I tell you I’m going to sell that ‘Keston Common’ for you. What could you do with it by yourself?”

  “Put a stick through it — burn it — anything! I’m sick of the whole business.”

  “Just what I expected. You could put a stick through it or burn it — and what’s the good of that?”

  “What’s the harm? I can’t sell it and they won’t hang it at the shows; I know that before I send it.”

  “You know everything that’s no use to you, and nothing that pays. You can burn a picture, but you can’t sell it. Now, I’m going to sell that picture for you, if you’ll let me. Will you?”

  “You can do what you like with it.”

  “Done with you, my boy! I’ll make you famous with it, and I’ll get you money for it. I’ve an idea such as you couldn’t invent in a lifetime. Shut up the shop now and we’ll talk it over at the Café Royal. Come along. We’ll have a little dinner out of the money I’m going to make for you. But you’ve to take orders from me, mind!”

  II

  THE evening papers flamed with the tale of the lost Gainsborough, as the morning papers had done before them, and the morning papers of the next day kept up the flame with scarcely diminished violence. Sydney Blenkinsop rose with nothing but a headache to distinguish him from the other unknown people about him, but by lunch-time he was as famous as Gainsborough himself. For another picture had been stolen. The evening papers came out stronger than ever, giants refreshed by a new sensation, with the blinding headline, ANOTHER PICTURE ROBBERY! Sub-headings sang of A DANGEROUS GANG AT WORK, and deplored A YOUNG PAINTER’S MISSING MASTERPIECE. Sydney Blenkinsop was the young painter, and the view of Keston Common was the missing masterpiece. In the eyes of thousands of worthy people Mr. Sydney Blenkinsop became an artist second only in importance to Gainsborough, if second to anybody; and Mr. Sydney Blenkinsop, himself appalled by the overwhelming success of Mr. Hector Bushell’s scheme, would have fled the country, but for the superior will-power of that same Hector Bushell, who never left his side.

  For journalists haunted the studio and “wrote up” the whole business afresh for every edition of all the daily newspapers in England. Sydney would have bolted the door and fled from the rear, but Hector ordered in caviare sandwiches and oyster patties and a case of champagne, and was the life and soul of the party. When Sydney seemed at a loss for a judicious answer — which occurred pretty often — Hector was instantly equal to the occasion. The main story was simple enough, and was cunningly left to rest entirely on the word of the police. The constable on the beat had perceived, in the gray of the morning, that a window of the studio had been opened, and a pane broken in the process. Nobody seemed
to be in the place, so the policeman kept watch by the window till assistance arrived, when it was found that obviously a thief had entered the studio, and had got safely away. It was not found possible to communicate with Mr. Blenkinsop till the morning was well advanced and somebody was found who knew the address of his lodgings; and then he was met as he was leaving home for the studio, in company with his friend, Mr. Bushell. Things in the studio had been much disarranged, and the picture, a view of Keston Common, had been cut from its frame and taken.

  So much for the simple facts as observed by the police; but the frills, embroideries, tassels, tinsels, and other garnishings, which lent variety and interest to the narrative came in an inexhaustible and glorious torrent from Hector Bushell. He took each separate journalist aside and gave him the special privilege of some wholly new and exclusive information as to the surprising genius of Sydney Blenkinsop, and the amazing prices his pictures were worth and would certainly fetch, some day. Doubtless the thief was a knowing file, and was laying up for the future— “saving his stake,” as it were. Any possible slump in Gainsboroughs — of course, nobody expected it, but such a thing might happen — would be compensated by the certain rise in Blenkinsops. And with this astute suggestion Hector shut one eye, tapped the side of his nose, and surprised the favored reporter with one of his celebrated digs in the ribs.

  The newspapers on their part neglected nothing. Gainsborough and Blenkinsop had a column apiece, side by side, in most of them, and in the rest they had more, or were fraternally mingled together. “Is no masterpiece safe?” asked the Press. And, answering its own question with no more than a paragraph’s delay, the Press gave its opinion that no masterpiece was. To have put in question the new-born eminence of Blenkinsop would have been to spoil the boom in the most unbusinesslike way. Of course, a Turner, or a Raeburn, or another Gainsborough would have been preferable, but as it was the Press had to do its best with the materials to hand, and so it did, to the glory of Blenkinsop. The notion of a thief or a gang of thieves going about after valuable pictures was too good to waste, and every newspaper expressed the sage conjecture that, where one picture was, there would the other be found. One scribbling cynic managed to squeeze in a hint that this might suggest the valuable clue of lunacy in the culprit; though nobody noticed that in the general flood of Blenkinsoppery.