The Bradlock Chest

I

IN the old horse-and-buggy days, Gardner Hollow had been a favorite drive for summer people. They liked to picnic in the Peck sheep pasture, draped like a green velvet scarf high over the shoulder of the mountain. But the steep road is too narrow for automobiles to pass safely and is corrugated with the bumpy thank-youma’ams that knock the stuffing out of low-hung modern cars, so for some years Gardner Hollow people had been left to themselves. You did n’t see them hanging any crape on their well-painted front doors about this, either.

But of course accidents will happen. One did happen to Mrs. W. AtkinsSmythe, or rather to a guest of hers. The two middle-aged ladies had gone up to the Woodward lot above Ashford looking for azaleas, had taken the wrong turning, and after some wanderings had come out on the wrong slope of the mountain. By that time the other lady had turned her ankle and they were in a hurry to get home. Coming straight downhill across the old sheep pasture, they found themselves at the top of Gardner Hollow Road in Miss Philinda Peck’s back yard. Living on nothing a year as old Miss Philinda did, she had no telephone, so Mrs. Atkins-Smythe (most local people called her just Mrs. Smith) left her friend there in Miss Philinda’s sitting room, her ankle soaking in a hospitable pail of hot water, while she hurried on down to the Merritts’ at the lower end of the Hollow.

After she had telephoned to her chauffeur to come for them in the old Ford station wagon, she found that although her ankles were all right the rest of her was extremely tired, and decided to wait for the car at the Merritts’ instead of plodding back on foot uphill all the way to the Peck house. She did not know the Merritts, but they knew her. A niece of theirs, now a teacher in a New York City school, had earned her way through Normal College by waiting on the Atkins-Smythes’ table, summers. If they’d cared to, they could have told the lady a thing or two about what went on in her house that would have surprised her a good deal. But they also knew that she paid bills promptly, gave fair wages, and that her treatment of her help was approximately civilized. So, noting how used-up and all-gone she looked, poor old thing, they made her a cup of good hot tea and put some raisin cookies on the saucer. While she ate, Gramma Merritt, too old to work, sat down in a rocking-chair to keep her company. She was too old to work, but not at all too old to talk. Long before the Ford came boiling up the hill, rebounding from the water bars, Mrs. Atkins-Smythe had heard t he life history of most of the five Gardner Hollow families; indeed, had heard some of them, like the story of Miss Philinda’s lost savings, twice.

She thanked her hosts, did not offer to pay them (she was really a nice person, if she did hyphenate her name), was hoisted up into the Ford by her chauffeur, and drove on to the Peck house. Miss Philinda was out back, leaning on her crutch and feeding the hens; the lady with the ankle was indoors, still steeping one foot in a steaming pail. The moment Mrs. Atkins-Smythe appeared she pointed with vehemence to a large dark boxlike piece of furniture between the front windows. Drawing Mrs. AtkinsSmythe down, she whispered sibilantly to her, ‘ See that? It’s a Bradlock Chest. Came straight down in her family. She’s been telling me about it.’

Mrs. Atkins-Smythe did not know much about old furniture, but she knew enough to know what a Bradlock Chest is, although she had never seen one before, except in illustrations of books on antique furniture. She looked, she saw, she gave a little cry of astonishment. And then because, through Gramma Merritt’s chatter, she had just learned how desperate was old Miss Philinda’s economic situation, she gave a second cry of excited pleasure. ‘ Don’t they sell for really a great deal of money?’ she asked eagerly, running her fingers over the incised carving on the front of the old chest. To which her friend answered with assurance, ‘That’s worth a thousand dollars if it’s worth a penny.’

II

Mrs. Smythe’s first thought was that they must tell Miss Philinda. ‘Some sharper might come along and buy it for a song. That would be too awful, when she needs the money so terribly. I’ve just been hearing about her. The bank she had her savings in — enough to pay her entrance to that nice Old Ladies’ Home in Ashford — went broke. She has nothing, they tell me, but what she gets off this rundown place. At seventy-six! Why, this will absolutely save her!’

So they did tell her, enjoying as though it were something good to eat the chance to burst a bombshell of surprise which, unlike most surprises, had nothing in it but joy. All the way home they talked about how the old woman took it, how for a moment she forgot her decorous traditions of selfcontrol, flushed, paled, cried a little, had to sit down. ‘Will you ever forget how she stroked the top of the chest! Her hand was trembling with joy. And no wonder. How much does it cost to get into the Old Ladies’ Home? Not so much as a thousand dollars, does it? Not more than seven hundred, seems to me. Well, she’s safe, then. Is n’t it like a fairy story? How does your ankle feel now?’ They repeated all this as they told the fairy story at dinner that evening. It was not long before everybody in their circle knew about their discovery. And sure enough, when they inquired how much entrance to the Old Ladies’ Home cost, it was only seven hundred dollars.

Everybody up in Gardner Hollow knew at once about the value of the chest, too. Before she could sleep that night Miss Philinda had hobbled down the road, stopping at each house to reëxplode her proud bomb. ‘A thousand dollars! Not a cent less, those ladies said. I wish Grandfather was here. He set such store by that chest — used to keep it so nice, oiled it all over every spring, the way his grandfather showed him how to. He was bom in 1791, Grandfather was, the year Vermont voted to join the United States. It was his grandfather that bought it when he was to be married — in 1740, long before any settlers come up into Vermont at all. Grandfather used to show me where they broke one leg off, getting it up here on an oxcart. His father mended it with an old piece of wood he got from an Indian — of course they did n’t have any seasoned lumber at first up here, and he was bound he would n’t mend it with green wood that’d warp. A thousand dollars! My! I do wish Mother could know. She wanted to trade it off once when I was a little girl, for a new sideboard, but I told her Grandfather had given it to me, and she could n’t have it. I thought a great deal of my grandfather. I think about him every time I dust The Chest. Well, I must be going on; I want to tell the Kents.’

III

Her bubble had been quickly blown; so quickly did it burst. A fine long lowhung car made a foolhardy attempt to get up the road, dented a hub cap on a rock at the hairpin turn, lost traction on the greasy clay of the steepest slope, slid back, and let out its passengers to walk. There were two of them, both stoutish middle-aged men. But one was stout and ordinary, and the other, although stout, wore spats and carried a cane. At the first house they stopped to ask where Miss Philinda Peck lived, so of course everybody knew who they were and what they wanted. A boy was dispatched the short-cut path through the sugarbush to Miss Philinda’s to give her time to wash her hands and put on a clean apron. She was, so they all knew, canning raspberries that day.

Presently the men went back. They trod heavily down the steep hill, silent, each with a cigar. Nothing was to be learned, not from the sharpest stare at their impassive faces. But the boy soon came running in and he brought news enough, in all conscience. ‘They took it out on the front porch to git a good light on it. Miss Philinda went back into the kitchen and went right on pickin’ over raspberries. No, I did n’t hear what they said. She would n’t let me hang around front. Said ’t would n’t be manners to. So, first thing we knew, we heard ’em luggin’ it back into the settin’ room, and then the common-looking one come to the door of the kitchen and says, “I’m sorry to have to inform you, madam, that your chest is a modern imitation, not more than twenty-five years old, and of no value.” And then he turned around and walked away real quick.’

‘For heaven’s sakes!’ cried his audience in a unanimous passion of astonishment. When his mother had her breath back enough to speak she cried, ‘What did Miss Philinda say?’

‘Well, she did n’t say anything for a minute. She looked as though you could ha’ knocked her over with a feather. Then she got her breath and rose right up, raspberries and all, and said, “What are you talkin’ about! That belonged to my grandfather, and he was born in . . .” But the man was out front by that time. She run out to the front porch and saw ’em startin’ down the hill and hollered, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! There’s some mistake.” They stopped and turned around, and she told ’em, “That chest can’t be a new one. It belonged to my grandfather, and he got it from his . . .” She was so flustered that she did n’t hardly know what she was say in’ and she broke out laughing at the idea it wa’n’t more than twentyfive years old. “Mercy to goodness, I’ve put things away in it for seventy years, myself,” she told ’em.’

‘What did they say to that?’

‘Oh, they just looked at each other kinda queer, and the one with the cane took off his hat. “It’s always very painful, madam,” he says, “to make a discovery of this kind, as painful to the specialist who makes it as to the owner of the piece.” He talked kinda booktalk like that. And he told her he’d expected to buy it for the Westfield Museum, and that the other fellow knew all about old furniture, and could tell absolutely for sure when something was an imitation. And Miss Philinda cut in, “ But how could that chest be an imitation? I’m seventy-six years old and I’ve . . . ” Well, they shook their heads, and put their hats back on and went along down the hill. And I lit out the back way. I kinda thought Miss Philinda would n’t want anybody around.’

IV

A foaming spate of talk poured along the Gardner Hollow Road, that afternoon, like a spring freshet. It was followed early the next morning by Miss Philinda herself, hobbling slowly but steadily down. ‘No, thank you, I can’t stop. I’ve got to git to Moffat Corner by nine. To catch the bus. I got business to do in Ashford.’ Not another word out of her. She looked, so they all said compassionately, simply terrible, like a person that had ‘had a shock.’

Well, of course, she had had, in a way. What could be at the bottom of this funny business about that old chest of hers? Could it really be an imitation ? ‘ Have n’t you always seen it there, Mother, in her settin’ room?’ ‘Well, yes, seems as though I had. I never took any special notice of it, of course, but seems as though I always had. Still I could n’t be sure that it had been there every single time I went to the house. How could anybody be sure of that?’ But of course twentyfive years was ridiculous! There was n’t a stick of furniture in anybody’s house as new as that. ‘Nobody need n’t try to tell me she sold the old one and got her a new one. We’d all know about that!’ And after a pause, more cautiously, ‘Seems as though we would, anyhow.’

The two kind-hearted ladies were talking about it in Ashford, too, shaking their heads sadly, grieved and disillusioned about all nice-looking country women. How innocent she had looked! How surprising the whole thing was. How ever could she have got hold of such a good imitation, back there in the woods?

They put this question to Mr. Hillyard, the expert, who was staying on in Ashford a day longer to look around. He smiled kindly at their simplicity and explained that people without experience simply could not imagine the double-dyed deceit practised in the antique business. ‘There are all sorts of tricks. This is a very well known one. Probably someone who knew values stopped in there some five or ten years ago by accident, as you did, told her he’d give her a nice new chest for that old one, and something to boot. When you came in and said so much about it, she just thought she could repeat that deal. You say she needed the money for something special.’

So that was the way of it! Human nature was certainly a deep, dark well, mostly filled with iniquity, thought the two kind-hearted ladies.

They were somewhat shaken in this conviction that afternoon when the owner of the chest rang the Smythe bell. Her eyes were burning as though she had not slept the night before, her face was ash-gray as though she had not eaten anything that day. They tried to make her come in to rest and for a cup of tea, but no, she would not so much as put a foot over their threshold. All she wanted of them was to tell her where that man lived that had come to look at her chest yesterday. ‘He said my grandfather’s chest is an imitation! A new one. He’s got to take that back!’

But when she found him, taking tea with his wealthy patron, it was not so easy. Not that he was rough with her.

No, he was very polite, he was not at all surprised by her excitement, he resigned himself to listen with patience — well, with a modern imitation of patience, at least — while she told him the old stories about the chest, explained how this and that old mark came to be on it, while she brought out from her handbag a sheaf of yellowed letters dated more than a century ago, with mentions here and there of ‘Grandfather’s Bradlock chest.’ When she stopped for breath, he pointed out to her, delicately, — reluctantly as it were, — that she could bring no proof that those stories and letters referred to the particular piece of furniture he had seen in her living room, which was, much as he regretted to repeat it, simply a very modern imitation.

She started as though a snake had stung her; she drew herself up to a height she had not had for fifty years; she looked piercingly into his eyes. ‘Are you trying to say that I’m not telling the truth?’ she asked in a low, fierce tone. She turned around to look for the door. ‘Have I lived long enough,’ she asked herself with horror, ‘to have a York-State man call me a liar?’

It was really a very uncomfortable profession, his was, Mr. Hillyard told Mrs. Atkins-Smythe. ‘I don’t know why it should be so, but nothing makes people more furious than to be found out in a deception about the age of a piece of furniture. Well, of course there often is a large sum of money involved, as in this case.’

‘Isn’t there any possibility that somehow she herself may not have known? She does seem so hurt and surprised!’

‘Oh, they always act that way,’ said the experienced Mr. Hillyard. He added, ‘I tell you what we sometimes do to save people’s faces. When they insist, we tell them probably sometime when the article was sent to be repaired the repairer substituted some modern parts — perhaps all modern parts, before sending it home. That really has been known to happen. Men who repair antiques know their market value, of course, usually better than the owners do, and with the original right there as a model it is possible to manufacture an imitation so good that the unsuspicious owner does not notice it. I won’t say this often happens. But it’s a convenient formula to smooth down excited owners.’

‘Oh, that’s what I’ll tell her,’ cried Mrs. Atkins-Smythe. ‘ If I ever see her again, that is.’

But the very next day, when Mrs. Smythe was cutting roses in her garden, Miss Philinda, who never left Gardner Hollow except to attend funerals, came hobbling up the front walk. ‘Do you know where a lawyer lives?’ she called. ‘I got to see a lawyer.’

‘Well, my husband is a lawyer,’ admitted Mrs. Atkins-Smythe, her eyes going to a massive bald gentleman in golf clothes practising putting at the other end of the lawn. At that moment she was called into the house to the telephone, and by the time she came out the old woman had told Mr. Smythe her long story, and he, who of course knew it already, was saying warmly, ‘Well, it’s a darned shame. If there was anything a lawyer could do about it, I’d be glad to. But there is n’t.’

‘Oh, I could get proof!’ cried Miss Philinda. ‘I could get any amount of proof. Everybody up there knows all about . . .’

Now was the time for Mrs. AtkinsSmythe to bring out the antique expert’s face-saving formula. So she did. Old Miss Philinda listened attentively. At the end she laughed — not mirthfully — and said, ‘The person that made that up did pretty good. The only trouble with his idee is that The Chest never was sent out to be repaired.

Never! It’s never been out of the house I live in. And my father before me. And his father before him.’ She pulled her shawl straight, said with dignity, ‘Well, I won’t need to bother you any more till I git some proofs,’ nodded, and hitched herself away.

‘Good gosh, my dear!‘ said Mr. Atkins-Smythe, wiping his bald head. ‘I wish you’d kept out of Gardner Hollow.’

Mrs. Atkins-Smythe mourned over that as heartily as he. ‘To think I had to go out of my way to bring temptation to the poor old thing!’

‘What did you say she needs the money for? A mortgage on her home? Maybe I could do something about that at the bank.’

‘No, no, her home is n’t worth mortgaging. It was to get into the Old Ladies’ Home here. She had saved enough, had it in the bank, would n’t touch it for anything in the world — and then the bank broke. You can’t blame her for jumping at a chance to make up for that. Anybody would.’

The lawyer demurred, ‘My guess is that she believes her own story. If she were a witness in the stand, I’d have a hunch that she was n’t consciously making anything up. Maybe the sideboard is old. Maybe whatever-hisname-is, the expert, maybe he made a mistake. People do.’

His distressed wife clutched at this. ‘Oh, do you think he might be wrong?’

‘I don’t say I think it. What I don’t know about antiques! It’s a regular tulip craze, anyhow. No sense to it?

I just say it’s possible that he was wrong. But how could you prove it? What evidence could prove the old lady never sold the old chest and put an imitation in its place? Evidence never can prove a negative thing like that. Looks to me as though the age of an antique and a woman’s reputation were in the same boat. One accusation against them turns the trick. There’s no way of proving, you know, where a woman’s been, every half hour of her life, once somebody tells a nasty story about her.’

Having a professional interest in the nature of evidence, and how far it can go, he was rather interested in the case, speaking of it at dinner once or twice to a legal colleague. But before his vacation was over his interest had become exasperation. It seemed to him he and his wife could not drive anywhere without seeing a feeble old figure, hobbling through the summer dust. What could they do but offer her lifts? And she always accepted lifts with exhausted gratitude. ‘I’m on my way to Stony Brook Hollow,’ she would explain. ‘My mother had a first cousin lived there. I want to see what she remembers about The Chest.’ Or, ‘ One of the Merritts told me an old man over Winchester way used to work for Father years ago, before I was born, and remembered something Father told him about the carving on the front of the drawer.’ She was writing it all down, she told them, in a book, which she carried with her in a green bag with a draw string. Every time they saw her she was whiter, thinner, more stooped. Mr. Smythe always meant — when he was away from her — to keep on explaining the point to her, till he had pounded it into her head. ‘ It ’ll do you no good to get a million witnesses, can’t you see that, if you can’t prove it’s the same chest!’ But when she sat, pale and bent, beside him in the car he could never bring himself to say this.

Instead, ‘See here,’ he said to his wife, one time after they had let her out and watched her begin feebly to trudge up a steep hill, ‘how much was it she needed? Seven hundred dollars? Oh, let’s get up a benefit or a collection or something, and give it to her. She’ll drop dead on the road some of these days.’

They meant to. They really did mean to. But seven hundred dollars is a lot of money; all their friends had lost a good deal in the stock-market collapse; so had they, of course. The project never got beyond words. And, like most plans for good works which do not get beyond words, it stuck heavily in the crop of the people who had spoken the words. Like sensible people they kept telling each other that it was absolutely no responsibility of theirs; and, like decent folks, continued to feel that it was. And when, just before they were to start back to the city after the vacation that had been so clouded by this affair, they found Miss Philinda unconscious, lying beside a back road, her skeleton hands clutching at her green bag, they stopped trying to be sensible and became helplessly decent. ‘Something’s got to be done,’ said Mr. Smythe resolutely, after they had revived her and taken her home.

He was an experienced man, and well knew which springs of action can be counted on to stir a modern brain into creative thought. ‘Suppose she were rich,’ he put the hypothetical case to himself, ‘suppose a rich woman had consulted me about this. What would I have advised her to do?’ When the question was put in that way it answered itself. He would have advised her to call in another expert on antique furniture. A brilliant idea. But, returning to reality from his hypothesis, he perceived that an expert would ask a large fee, and that his client was not rich. The brilliant idea was not so brilliant.

But Mrs. Atkins-Smythe, her heart ploughed and harrowed by the misery she had unwittingly caused, cried out that she herself would pay an expert for coming. ‘I’ll take that instead of a Christmas present! It’d be such a relief to know. If he said it was an imitation, then we could stop being sorry for her. And oh, think what it would mean if he said it really is genuine and she could get into the Home!’ After a moment’s thought she went on, ‘And I know who we can get. Anita Frank’s son-in-law has a brother who’s the old-American expert for the ElliottCary Museum. He’d know. And I don’t care what it costs to have him come.’

V

When they told Miss Philinda about this plan they looked at her very hard, but they saw nothing in her face except a relief as great as their own. And gratitude! She too had been ploughed to the depths. For a moment she quite lost the bearings by which she usually steered her reserved course between self-control and self-expression. Selfcontrol went overboard. ‘I can’t ever thank you enough!’ she said over and over, blowing her nose and choking. ‘I never heard of anybody that was so good to anybody.’

They were rather abashed by her thanks and rather alarmed by her relief. She took it so for granted that the verdict would be in her favor. Suppose it wasn’t! By the time the expert had arrived in Ashford, Mrs. Atkins-Smyths had worked herself up to a state of real panic at the thought of how awful that would be! When the car was brought around to take the expedition to Gardner Hollow Hill she cravenly stayed in her bedroom and sent her protesting husband up with the expert. ‘I can’t,’ she told him, wringing her hands. ‘I’d simply expire if I had to be the one to tell her that she’s got to give up hoping for the Home.’

So the two men, leaving their car at the bottom, walked up the long hill by themselves, unaware that they were observed and recognized, and quite naïvely surprised when they reached the Peck house to see that Miss Philinda, standing on the porch, a clean white apron over her full skirts, evidently expected them. Mr. AtkinsSmythe did not wring his hands, but he felt very ill at ease as he bade her good day. ‘This is going to be damned uncomfortable,’ he thought, ‘looking the thing over with her standing right there.’ But Miss Philinda knew better than that. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, after taking them in to her sitting room, ‘but I’ve got to go git some clothes in off the line. So if you’ll just excuse me . . .’ She melted away.

‘They haven’t any formal manners at all, these plain old mountain-farm people,’ thought Mr. Smythe, ‘but I wish I could be sure I had as good breeding as theirs.’

He thought his wife had been slightly silly to get so wrought up about this little matter, but when the expert, after a few minutes’ examination of the chest, tapped it lightly and said, ‘Why it’s quite genuine. A remarkably fine specimen. What made you think it was n’t?’ Mr. Smythe found that he could not speak. He swallowed, wiped his forehead, drew on his cigar, and waited a moment before he said, ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it.’

His second emotion was wrath. He thought of his spoiled vacation, his wife’s distress, Miss Philinda’s misery. ‘What in hell would make anybody say it was n’t?’ he cried, and told the story with indignation. The expert was not so indignant as all that. ‘Oh, anybody’s likely to make a mistake, once in a while. He probably got the notion in the first place from the color. You don’t often see genuine ones of that color. I should say this had been oiled pretty steadily. And that mended leg probably made him think it had been sent away for repairs. Though any modern repairer that wanted to put over a trick on an owner would have taken more pains than that, of course, to make it match the other. See, it’s not even the same wood. The chest is oak, and that leg is yellow birch. It looks to me as though your man just gave a snap judgment, as many another has done before him.’

’For God’s sake,’ said Mr. Smythe, ‘ when he knew that the comfort of the poor old owner’s last years depended on it, would n’t you think he’d have taken the trouble to look at it again and make sure?’

‘Maybe he did n’t want to go back on a judgment he’d passed in the hearing of a wealthy patron. Did you never hear of human nature?’ asked the expert.

Mr. Atkins-Smythe realized now with compunction that Miss Philinda herself did not yet know the good news. But before he called her in he asked anxiously, ‘Look here, it is worth a good deal of money, is n’t it? I don’t want any more mistakes made about it. She’s absolutely got to have seven hundred, I believe.’

‘Oh, I’ll pay twelve hundred for it this minute,’ said the other, taking out his checkbook. ‘If the Museum doesn’t want it I’ll make money reselling it.’

Light-footed and light-hearted as a boy the stout Mr. Atkins-Smythe ran to the door. ‘Miss Philinda, do come in,’ he called. His radiant face told her the verdict before his words. For a second time an Atkins-Smythe had the pleasure of exploding a bomb of joy in that room. For a second time the withered old face flushed and paled. Miss Philinda had to sit down, her knees and hands trembling. She had lost her breath, but her shaking lips noiselessly shaped the words, ‘I’m so glad!’ He gave her a glass of water. After she had drunk half of it she was able to say, ‘I just can’t thank you enough!’ He put his hand on her shoulder. He had not been so happy in years. He drank up what was left of the water in the glass and, setting it down with a triumphant bang, said exultantly, ‘As a matter of fact, it’ll bring you more than my wife told you. This gentleman will give twelve hundred dollars for it this minute. Like that!’ He snapped his fingers joyfully.

He felt Miss Philinda stiffen. She shook his hand off. She hauled herself to her feet. She was not trembling now. With intense, seeking seriousness she looked at her benefactor and from him to the other visitor, his checkbook in his hand. Her face hardened. She looked back at Mr. Smythe. In a voice that brought the gooseflesh out on him she asked, ‘Did you think I wanted to sell my grandfather’s chest?’ She took a step toward him, as if to look more deeply into his heart, and horrified him beyond measure by suddenly pushing her face close to his with an ugly gesture, shouting, ‘Did you think all this time that what I was after was just to get more money out of . . .’

But she had horrified herself as well as her visitor. She drew back, ashamed. There was a moment of intimidating silence while she confronted a situation far beyond her powers to cope with. What could she do? She had never ordered anyone out of her house in all her life. What phrases, what actions were possible for her to use with selfrespect? For she must not forget her manners again. Once was bad enough! No matter what the provocation, it would be beneath her to let it happen twice.

It came to her — what she could do.

Addressing the universe at large, she hobbled to the front door and threw it open. ‘I make a mistake,’ she said seriously, with the accent of one admitting a regretted error, ‘I make a great mistake ever to let a York-State person into my house at all. And I guess I better not, from now on.’

The men moved silently toward the door.

’I don’t say it’s their fault,’ she conceded to the air over their heads. ‘I don’t say but what it’s mine. I always heard that I was born dumb, and I s’pose I git dumber as I git older.’ The men passed through the door. She reached for the latch and, her eyes fixed earnestly on the maple tree across the road, explained, ’I know they mean all right, York-State folks do,’ — the door was all but closed, — ‘but somehow I just don’t know how to git along with ’em,’ she concluded, and dropped the latch firmly into place.