“You’ve touched there on a thing that always irritates me. I’ve got rather a bad reputation over it. They call me a skinflint. There’s an American phrase for that, isn’t there?”
“You mean a tight-wad, perhaps. Yes, that would be it, a tight-wad.”
He dismissed the subject, seeming to think of something else.
“A minute or two back you were saying you wanted to get away from humanity now and again. I sympathise with you there. I can understand the feeling. I open the newspaper in the morning and it says a new fibre has made finer lingerie possible. I don’t use lingerie. Further on, there’s something else about floor stains. That lacks the personal appeal. So does the one about candies. My digestion’s too poor for candies. Then I come across ‘Buy Jones’s Razors.’ I don’t buy Jones’s razors. Perhaps my man buys them. I don’t know. But you see how it is. Everywhere one goes these things hit the retina. There’s no escape from this modern way of pushing things. My own company does it. I get tired of it. I want to forget Jones’s razors, and Smith’s Confected Candies, and . . . and . . . dollars, and cents, and the whole twentieth century. I want to blot it all out of my mind. I want to get among old things, things that were made long before dollars were thought of. That’s restful. That’s the kind of thing I like. Something that looks as if your Queen Elizabeth might have used it, or one of your Henries. If it’s got a history attached to it, I like it all the more.”
Mrs. Brent’s face showed a blend of sympathy and amusement.
“So that’s how you became a collector?”
Wraxall smiled also.
“Well, Mrs. Brent, that’s part of the truth. That certainly is a factor. But there’s more to it than that. You may laugh at me if you like. You may certainly laugh. But I love these old things for themselves. It gives me a real pleasure to handle them, just to turn them over and over and look at them. And to wonder about the people who wore them. These things mean more to me than all the history-books. Much more.”
Mrs. Brent’s white-framed face became more sympathetic. She recognised a kindred spirit in the American, although his line of escape from the modern world was not the same as her own.
“Don’t forget to see the Dangerfield Talisman before you go, Mr. Wraxall. They’ll be glad to show it to you and tell you the legend. There are some photographs of it, too. You might be able to take one of them back for your collection.”