* * * * *
Six people arrived by the train! Oh, dear! and we have only four rooms—whatever shall we do? Wait a minute; I’ll come and see. We mustn’t turn custom away if we can help it.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BILLIARD-MARKER.
I think I mentioned in a former “Memoir” that we had had a billiard-table put up. It was Harry’s idea. He is very fond of a game of billiards himself, and is not at all a bad player, so I have heard from the gentlemen who play with him. Of course, he didn’t go to the expense for himself, you may be sure of that, but as an improvement to the house.
The way it came about was this. There was an old fellow who used our house named Jim Marshall. He was quite a character in his way. He was very stout, and walked lame with one leg, and was full of queer sayings. Not a bad fellow; but he had to be kept in his place, or else he would presume. He was hand-and-glove, as the saying is, with almost everybody in the neighbourhood, rich and poor alike. He was a capital whist-player, knew all about horses and dogs, and could sing a good song. He was a bachelor, and lived all by himself in a tumbledown old house, where he had hundreds of pounds’ worth of curiosities, old pictures, old furniture, and old books, the place being so crammed from kitchen to attic that sometimes when he went home a little the worse for his evening’s amusement, he wasn’t able to steer himself, as Harry called it, across the things to get to bed, and would go to sleep in an old steel fender, with his head on a brass coal-scuttle for a pillow.
Jim Marshall was a broker—that is to say, he went all about the neighbourhood to sales and bought things for gentlemen, and sometimes for himself. All round our village there are old-fashioned houses and farms full of old-fashioned furniture and china, and things of that sort, that nowadays are very much run after, and fetch a good price. Old Jim knew everybody’s business and what everybody had got, because he used to do their business for them. These people, if they wanted anything, would tell Jim to look out for it for them, and if they wanted to sell anything they always sent for Jim, and he would find a purchaser for them on the quiet.
The neighbourhood round our place is full of people who have gone down since railways came in, because we are too near to London, and London has taken all the local trade. A lot of people lived and kept up appearances on what their fathers made before them—business people I mean—and when that was gone they had to give up their style and go into smaller houses, which, of course, they moved away to do, nobody who has been grand and looked up to for years in a place caring to look small there.
This gradual decay of the neighbourhood (not where we live—the railway has made us—but little towns and places round about) was a good thing for Jim, as there were lots of good old houses selling off their furniture and things, and he had lots of customers in London who wanted Chippendale and Sheraton and Adam’s furniture, and old books, and old clocks, and old china, and old silver ornaments; and these houses being in the country, there weren’t many brokers at the sales, so Jim was able to pick up plenty of bargains for his customers, and make a good thing for himself as well.
Plenty of ladies and gentlemen who came to our house, and got to know of Marshall being always at sales, would give him their address, and tell him always to send them a catalogue, if there was anything good going. Mr. Saxon, the author, I know, got a bookcase through Jim, a real old Chippendale for eleven pounds that was worth sixty pounds if it was worth a penny, and we have some fine old-fashioned things at the ‘Stretford Arms’ that Jim Marshall got us at sales.
You had only to say to Jim Marshall that you wanted a thing, and he would never rest till he got it for you. He would go into the grandest house in the neighbourhood and ask to see the gentleman, and say, “I say, sir, what will you take for your sideboard? I’ve a customer that wants one.”