"You can tell me everything," she whispered; and oh, the terrible things that fond heart of hers imagined! Terrible things they seemed to her, but they would have brought a smile into John's face despite himself, had he heard them. "You can tell me everything," she whispered again.
"There's nothing to tell, dearest," he replied.
For there was nothing to tell; nothing that she would understand. The pain of his losing Jill, would only become her pain as well, and could she ever judge rightly of Jill's marriage with another man, if she knew?
She would only take his side. That dear, good, gentle heart of hers was only capable of judging of things in his favour. She would form an utterly false opinion and, he could not bear that. Much as he needed sympathy, the want of it was better than misunderstanding.
"There's nothing to tell," he repeated.
Still she stroked his head. There was not even one thought of impatience in the touch of her fingers. It may be said without fear or hesitation that a mother at least knows her own child; and this is the way with children when they are in trouble. They will assure you there is nothing to tell. She did not despair at that. For as with John asking his question of Jill in Kensington Gardens, so she asked, because she knew.
"Isn't it about the Lady of St. Joseph?" she said presently. "Isn't that why you're unhappy?"
He rose slowly to his feet. She watched him as he moved aimlessly to the window. It was a moment of suspense. Then he would tell her, then at that moment, or he would close the book and she would not see one figure that was traced so indelibly upon its pages. She held her breath as she watched him. Her hands assumed unconsciously a pathetic gesture of appeal. If she spoke then, it might alter his decision; so she said nothing. Only her eyes begged mutely for his confidence.
Oh--it is impossible of estimate, the worlds, the weight of things infinite, that swung, a torturing balance, in the mind of the little old white-haired lady then. However much emotion may bring dreams of it to the mind of a man, his passion is not the great expression by which he is to be judged; is the woman who loves. It is the man who is loved.
He may believe a thousand times that he knows well of the matter; but the great heart, the patience, the forbearance, these are all the woman's and, from such are those little children who are of the kingdom of heaven.
If these qualities belonged to the man, if John had possessed them, he could not have resisted her tender desire for confidence. But when the heart of a man is hurt, he binds his wounds with pride and it is of pride, when one loves, that love knows nothing.
Turning round from the window, John met his mother's eyes.
"There's nothing to tell, dear," he said bitterly. "Don't ask me--there's nothing to tell."
Her hands dropped their pathetic gesture. She laid them quietly in her lap. If the suffering of pain can be reproach, and perhaps that is the only reproach God knows of in us humans, then, there it was in her eyes.
John saw it and he did not need for understanding to answer to the silence of its cry. In a moment he was by her side again, his arms thrown impulsively about her neck, his lips kissing the soft, wrinkled cheek. What did it matter how he disarranged the little lace cap set so daintily on her head, or how disordered he made her appearance in his sudden emotion? Nothing mattered so long as he told her everything.
"Don't think I'm unkind, little mother. I can't talk about it--that's all. Besides--there's nothing--absolutely nothing to say. I don't suppose I shall ever see her again. We were just friends, that's all--only friends."
Even this was more than he could bear to say. He stood up again quickly to force back the tears that were swelling in his throat. Tears do not become a man. It is the most reasonable, the most natural thing in the world that he should abominate them, and so he seldom, if ever, knows the wonderful moment it is in the life of a woman when he cries like a baby on her shoulder. It is only right that it should be so. Women know their power well enough as it is. And in such a moment as this, they realise their absolute omnipotence.
And this is just why nature decrees that it is weak, that it is foolish for a man to shed tears in the presence of a woman. Undoubtedly nature is right.
Before they had well risen to his eyes, John had left the room. In the shadows of the archway beneath the house, he was brushing them roughly from his cheek while upstairs the gentle old lady sat just where he had left her, thinking of the thousands of reasons why he would never see the lady of St. Joseph again.
She was going away. She did not love him. They had quarrelled. After an hour's contemplation, she decided upon the last. They had quarrelled.
Then she set straight her cap.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE TREASURE SHOP
At a quiet corner in the _Merceria_, stood the Treasure Shop. In every respect it had all the features which these little warehouses of the world's curiosities usually present. Long chains of old copper vessels hung down, on each side of the doorway, reaching almost to the ground.
Old brass braziers and incense burners stood on the pavement outside and, in the window, lay the oddest, the wildest assortment of those objects of antiquity--brass candlesticks, old fans, hour-glasses, gondola lamps, every conceivable thing which the dust of Time has enhanced in value in the eyes of a sentimental public.
At the back of the window were hung silk stuffs and satin, rich old brocades and pieces of tapestry--just that dull, burnished background which gives a flavour of age as though with the faint scent of must and decay that can be detected in its withering threads.
All these materials, hanging there, shut out the light from the shop inside. Across the doorstep, the sun shone brilliantly, but, as though there were some hand forbidding it, it advanced no further. Within the shop, was all the deepest of shadow--shadow like heavy velvet from which permeated this dry and dusty odour of a vanished multitude of years.
The Treasure Shop was a most apt name for it. In that uncertain light within, you could just imagine that your fingers, idly fumbling amongst the numberless objects, might chance upon a jewelled casket holding the sacred dust of the heart of some Roman Emperor or the lock of some dead queen's hair.
Atmosphere has all the wizardry of a necromancer. In this dim, faded light, in this faint, musty smell of age, the newest clay out of a living potter's hands would take upon itself the halo of romance. The touch of dead fingers would cling to it, the scent of forgotten rose leaves out of gardens now long deserted would hover about the scarce cold clay. And out of the sunshine, stepping into this subtle atmospheric spell, the eyes of all but those who know its magic are wrapt in a web of illusion; the Present slips from them as a cloak from the willing shoulders; they are touching the Past.
Just such a place was the Treasure Shop. Its atmosphere was all this and more. Sitting there on a stool behind his heaped-up counter, in the midst of this chaos of years, the old gentleman was no longer a simple painter of landscape, but an old eccentric, whose every look and every gesture were begotten of his strange and mysterious acquaintance with the Past.
It came to be known of him that he was loth to part with his wares. It came to be told of him in the hotels that he was a strange old man who had lived so long in his musty environment of dead people's belongings that he could not bring himself to sell them; as though the spirits of those departed owners abode with him as well, and laid their cold hands upon his heart whenever he would try to sell the treasures they once had cherished.
And all this was the necromancy of the atmosphere in that little curio shop in the _Merceria_. But to us, who know all about it, whose eyes are not blinded with the glamour of illusion, there is little or nothing of the eccentric about Thomas Grey.
It is not eccentric to have a heart--it is the most common possession of humanity. It is not eccentric to treasure those things which are our own, which have shared life with us, which have become a part of ourselves; it is not eccentric to treasure them more than the simpler necessities of existence. We all of us do that, though fear of the accusation of sentimentality will not often allow us to admit it. It is not eccentric to put away one's pride, to take a lower seat at the guest's table in order that those we love shall have a higher place in the eyes of the company. We all would do that also, if we obeyed the gentle voice that speaks within everyone of us.
But if by chance this judgment is all at fault; if by chance it is eccentric to do these things, then this was the eccentricity of that white-haired old gentleman--Thomas Grey.
Whenever a customer--and ninety per cent. of them were tourists--came into the shop, he treated them with undisguised suspicion. They had a way of hitting upon those very things which he valued most--those very things which he only meant to be on show in his little window.
Of course, when they selected something which he had only recently acquired, his manner was courtesy itself. He could not say very much in its favour, but then, the price was proportionately small. Under circumstances such as these, they found him charming. But if they happened to cast their eyes upon that Dresden-china figure which stood so boldly in the fore-front of the window; if by hazard they coveted the set of old ivory chess men, oh, you should have seen the frown that crossed his forehead then! It was quite ominous.
"Well--that is very expensive," he always said and made no offer to remove it from its place.
And sometimes they replied----
"Oh, yes--I expect so. I didn't think it would be cheap. It's so beautiful, isn't it? Of course--really--really old."
And it was so hard to withstand the flattery of that. A smile of pleasure would lurk for a moment about his eyes. He would lean forward through the dark curtains of brocades and tapestries and reach it down for inspection.
"It is," he would say in the gratified tone of the true collector--"It is the most perfect specimen I have ever seen. You see the work here--this glaze, that colour----" and in a moment, before he was aware of what he was doing, he would be pointing out its merits with a quivering finger of pride.
"Oh, yes--I think I must have it," the customer would suddenly say--"I can't miss the opportunity. It would go so well with the things in my collection."
Then the old gentleman realised his folly. Then the frown returned, redoubled in its forbidding scowl. He began putting the Dresden figure back again in the window from whence it had come.
"But I said I'd take it," the customer would exclaim more eager than ever for its possession.
"Yes--yes--I know--but the price is--well it's prohibitive. I want seventy-five pounds for that figure."
"Seventy-five!"
"Yes--I can't take anything less."
"Oh----" and a look of disappointment and dismay.
"You don't want it?" he would ask eagerly.
"No--I can't pay as much as that."