by Lord Dunsany
THE OLD BROWN COAT
My friend, Mr. Douglas Ainslie, tells me that Sir James Barrie oncetold him this story. The story, or rather the fragment, was asfollows.
A man strolling into an auction somewhere abroad, I think it must havebeen France, for they bid in francs, found they were selling oldclothes. And following some idle whim he soon found himself biddingfor an old coat. A man bid against him, he bid against the man. Upand up went the price till the old coat was knocked down to him fortwenty pounds. As he went away with the coat he saw the other bidderlooking at him with an expression of fury.
That's as far as the story goes. But how, Mr. Ainslie asked me, didthe matter develop, and why that furious look? I at once madeenquiries at a reliable source and have ascertained that the man'sname was Peters, who thus oddly purchased a coat, and that he took itto the Rue de Rivoli, to a hotel where he lodged, from the little low,dark auction room by the Seine in which he concluded the bargain.There he examined it, off and on, all day and much of the nextmorning, a light brown overcoat with tails, without discovering anyexcuse, far less a reason, for having spent twenty pounds on so worn athing. And late next morning to his sitting room looking out on theGardens of the Tuileries the man with the furious look was ushered in.
Grim he stood, silent and angry, till the guiding waiter went. Nottill then did he speak, and his words came clear and brief, welling upfrom deep emotions.
"How did you dare to bid against me?"
His name was Santiago. And for many moments Peters found no excuse tooffer, no apology, nothing in extenuation. Lamely at last, weakly,knowing his argument to be of no avail, he muttered something to theintent that Mr. Santiago could have outbid him.
"No," said the stranger. "We don't want all the town in this. Thisis a matter between you and me." He paused, then added in his fierce,curt way: "A thousand pounds, no more."
Almost dumbly Peters accepted the offer and, pocketing the thousandpounds that was paid him, and apologizing for the inconvenience he hadunwittingly caused, tried to show the stranger out. But Santiagostrode swiftly on before him, taking the coat, and was gone.
There followed between Peters and his second thoughts another longafternoon of bitter reproaches. Why ever had he let go sothoughtlessly of a garment that so easily fetched a thousand pounds?And the more he brooded on this the more clearly did he perceive thathe had lost an unusual opportunity of a first class investment of aspeculative kind. He knew men perhaps better than he knew materials;and, though he could not see in that old brown coat the value of somuch as a thousand pounds, he saw far more than that in the man'seager need for it. An afternoon of brooding over lost opportunitiesled to a night of remorse, and scarcely had day dawned when he ran tohis sitting-room to see if he still had safe the card of Santiago. Andthere was the neat and perfumed _carte de visite_ with Santiago'sParisian address in the corner.
That morning he sought him out, and found Santiago seated at a tablewith chemicals and magnifying glasses beside him examining, as it layspread wide before him, the old brown coat. And Peters fancied hewore a puzzled air.
They came at once to business. Peters was rich and asked Santiago toname his price, and that small dark man admitted financial straits,and so was willing to sell for thirty thousand pounds. A littlebargaining followed, the price came down and the old brown coatchanged hands once more, for twenty thousand pounds.
Let any who may be inclined to doubt my story understand that in theCity, as any respectable company promoter will tell them, twentythousand pounds is invested almost daily with less return for it thanan old tail coat. And, whatever doubts Mr. Peters felt that day aboutthe wisdom of his investment, there before him lay that tangiblereturn, that something that may be actually fingered and seen, whichis so often denied to the investor in gold mines and other SelectedInvestments. Yet as the days wore on and the old coat grew noyounger, nor any more wonderful, nor the least useful, but more andmore like an ordinary old coat, Peters began once more to doubt hisastuteness. Before the week was out his doubts had grown acute. Andthen one morning, Santiago returned. A man, he said, had just arrivedfrom Spain, a friend unexpected all of a sudden in Paris, from whom hemight borrow money: and would Peters resell the coat for thirtythousand pounds?
It was then that Peters, seeing his opportunity, cast aside thepretence that he had maintained for so long of knowing something aboutthe mysterious coat, and demanded to know its properties. Santiagoswore that he knew not, and repeatedly swore the same by many sacrednames; but when Peters as often threatened not to sell, Santiago atlast drew out a thin cigar and, lighting it and settling himself in achair, told all he knew of the coat.
He had been on its tracks for weeks with suspicions growing all thetime that it was no ordinary coat, and at last he had run it to earthin that auction room but would not bid for it more than twenty poundsfor fear of letting every one into the secret. What the secret was heswore he did not know, but this much he knew all along, that theweight of the coat was absolutely nothing; and he had discovered bytesting it with acids that the brown stuff of which the coat was madewas neither cloth nor silk nor any known material, and would neitherburn nor tear. He believed it to be some undiscovered element. Andthe properties of the coat which he was convinced were marvellous hefelt sure of discovering within another week by means of experimentswith his chemicals. Again he offered thirty thousand pounds, to bepaid within two or three days if all went well. And then they startedhaggling together as business men will.
And all the morning went by over the gardens of the Tuileries and theafternoons came on, and only by two o'clock they arrived at anunderstanding, on a basis, as they called it, of thirty thousandguineas. And the old tail coat was brought out and spread on thetable, and they examined it together and chatted about its properties,all the more friendly for their strenuous argument. And Santiago wasrising up to go, and Peters pleasantly holding out his hand, when astep was heard on the stair. It echoed up to the room, the dooropened. And an elderly labouring man came stumping in. He walkedwith difficulty, almost like a bather who has been swimming andfloating all morning and misses the buoyancy of the water when he hascome to land. He stumped up to the table without speaking and there atonce caught sight of the old brown coat.
"Why," he said, "that be my old coat."
And without another word he put it on. In the fierce glare of hiseyes as he fitted on that coat, carefully fastening the buttons,buttoning up the flap of a pocket here, unbuttoning one there, neitherPeters nor Santiago found a word to say. They sat there wondering howthey had dared to bid for that brown tail coat, how they had dared tobuy it, even to touch it, they sat there silent without a singleexcuse. And with no word more the old labourer stumped across theroom, opened wide the double window that looked on the Tuileriesgardens and, flashing back over his shoulder one look that was full ofscorn, stumped away up through the air at an angle of forty degrees.
Peters and Santiago saw him bear to his left from the window; passingdiagonally over the Rue de Rivoli and over a corner of the Tuileriesgardens; they saw him clear the Louvre, and thence they dumbly watchedhim still slanting upwards, stepping out with a firmer and moreconfident stride as he dwindled and dwindled away with his old browncoat.
Neither spoke till he was no more than a speck in the sky far awayover Paris going South Eastwards.
"Well I am blowed," said Peters.
But Santiago sadly shook his head. "I knew it was a good coat," hesaid. "I _knew_ it was a good coat."