In a few minutes Josiah returned in triumph with a small piece of unframed canvas in his hand. He rang the bell for a duster, of which it was much in need, and when the duster had been duly applied he held the picture up to the light. “It wants a frame.” The tone was indulgent but casual. “Looks like Dibley Chase to me.” He handed the landscape to the Corporal who gazed at it with wistful eagerness.
“Dibley Chase was always a favorite pitch for these artist chaps. See the Sharrow gleaming between the trees?” Josiah traced with his finger the line of the river. “I like that bit o’ sun creeping down the valley. Good work in it, I daresay ... but I don’t pretend to be up in such matters. Very small but it may be worth a frame. Been up in the attic at Waterloo Villa for years ... aye, long before Waterloo Villa....” Josiah took a loving puff of his cigar. “I must have had that picture when I first went to the Duke o’ Wellington in March, ’79. How time gets on! Had it of that lame chap who used to keep the Corfield Arms who went up the spout finally. Used to supply him with beer. Gave me this for a barrel he couldn’t pay for.” The Mayor laughed richly and put on his spectacles. “Can you see the name o’ the artist? What was the name o’ that old Soft Billy ... ha, there it is.” The Mayor brought his thumb to bear on the right-hand corner. “‘J. Torrington, 1854’ ... a long time ago. John Torrington, that was his name ... some of his work grew in value, I’ve heard say. A harmless old man!”
The Mayor sighed a little and gave himself up to old memories while the Corporal held the picture in his hand. “Soft Jack ... aye, that was his name.... I can see him now with his white beard and long hair ... I’m speakin’ of fifty years ago. Soft Jack, yes ... had been a good painter so they said ... but an old man, then. Used to sit by the Weir painting the sun on the water. I’ve pitched many a stone at his easel ... in the summertime after bathing.”
The Corporal was too absorbed in the picture to heed the Mayor’s reminiscences. Josiah laughed softly at his thoughts and chose a second cigar. “Too small to be worth much,” he said. “But Melia might like it. She was always a one for pictures. We’ll pop a bit o’ the Tribune round it and she can stick it in the front parlor up at Dibley where the old boy lived and died.”
XLVI
THE next morning, Monday, towards eleven o’clock, Sally dropped expertly off the municipal tram, without waiting for it to stop, at the second turn on the right past the Brewery, along the suburban end of the Corfield Road, and entered a street that she had never seen before.
Torrington Avenue was one of those thoroughfares on the edge of large cities that seem to spring into being in a day and a night. In spite of the obvious haste with which its small houses had been flung together it was not unpleasing. But when Sally was last in her native city, a year before the war, this area had been a market garden.
Number Fourteen was a well kept little dwelling in the middle of a neat row. Just as Sally reached it, an old woman with a wicker shopping basket came out of the iron gate.