A Connoisseur's Case Read Free Page B

it was as a lad that I made it. Not overmuch skill had then come to me. And yet I like it well enough, and thank you for taking notice of it.’
    â€˜And you’ve always had it?’ Appleby asked. He had risen and strolled over too.
    â€˜Nay – that I haven’t. It was for the innkeeper’s lass that I fashioned it, and with love-liking enough in the making. But was she Bess or was she Kate? That, now, I disremember – although I well remember the working of the wood. It’s the craft that is long in this life, surely, and not how a boy’s fancy is moved for a girl.’ The old man was now dusting his barge with a clean but frayed and ancient handkerchief. ‘But the lass was careless of it, and set it straightway on tin chimney-piece in the public bar. So by that I knew she was not for me.’
    â€˜But you didn’t take back your love token?’ Judith asked. Appleby could see that his wife was much impressed by this Thomas Hardy-like rural character. ‘You let it be?’
    â€˜Yes, madam, I let it be. And there it rested, it seems, come many a year, while I myself was wandering. Yet some must have handled it – and let it fall too, which can’t, in a public, be thought of as surprising. The rudder is broken, as you can see, and I’d best fashion a new one.’
    â€˜Yes, I can see that. But have you the right sort of wood?’
    â€˜There’s always something in a man’s pocket, madam, if his fancy is for work of that kind.’ And at once the old man substantiated this claim by producing both a piece of wood and a pocket knife of the many-bladed variety. ‘Cedar, madam, will answer very well. And, by your leave, I’ll begin straightway. For there’s always hurt in the sight of a broken thing.’
    â€˜But you haven’t thought of mending it before now?’ Appleby asked.
    For a moment the old man seemed to hesitate, so that Appleby wondered whether he had been too curious. Then he spoke frankly enough.
    â€˜It was but yesterday, sir, that I returned to these parts – my native parts, as you’ll have gathered — on account of having a fancy to lay my bones here. Fifteen years I’ve been from home, working as a carpenter in the city of Spokane – which one of your knowledge won’t fail to know is in the state of Washington, and as far across America as a man may travel.’
    â€˜You’ve certainly come a long way home. And you’ve always been a carpenter by trade?’
    â€˜Never, sir, in a proper manner of speaking, seeing that I was never rightly apprenticed to the trade. Odd lad and handyman I was – that and no more until the sad fancy to emigrate laid hold on me. Yet that there were things above that that I could do is a word to be spoken without overmuch boasting.’
    â€˜Would it have been at the big house that you were first employed?’ It was with a sudden quickening of interest that Judith asked this.
    â€˜Yes, indeed, madam. At Scroop House, and in the old mistress’ time.’
    â€˜There have been changes since then?’
    â€˜Changes more than one, madam – as is but to be expected with time flowing by.’ The old man was now busily employed on his piece of cedarwood, using with a fine dexterity a single slender blade. His employment, Appleby reflected, had the odd effect of rendering entirely agreeable the rather sententious vein of talk he seemed to favour. Conceivably, since he had been away for so long, he was making a conscious effort to recover an almost forgotten manner of speaking. ‘Changes there have been, and changes there must be.’ It was almost as if the old man were obligingly confirming Appleby in this speculation. ‘But those to come will not be of my seeing.’ For a moment he put down his knife in order to touch with sensitive fingers the little barge on the bench beside him. ‘For as I was saying, sir,