Hagar of the Pawn-Shop

by Fergus Hume

  HAGAR OF THE PAWN-SHOP

  Fergus Hume

  CHAPTER I. THE COMING OF HAGAR.

  CHAPTER II. THE FIRST CUSTOMER AND THE FLORENTINE DANTE.

  CHAPTER III. THE SECOND CUSTOMER AND THE AMBER BEADS.

  CHAPTER IV. THE THIRD CUSTOMER AND THE JADE IDOL.

  CHAPTER V. THE FOURTH CUSTOMER AND THE CRUCIFIX.

  CHAPTER VI. THE FIFTH CUSTOMER AND THE COPPER KEY.

  CHAPTER VII. THE SIXTH CUSTOMER AND THE SILVER TEAPOT.

  CHAPTER VIII. THE SEVENTH CUSTOMER AND THE MANDARIN.

  CHAPTER IX. THE EIGHTH CUSTOMER AND THE PAIR OF BOOTS.

  CHAPTER X. THE NINTH CUSTOMER AND THE CASKET.

  CHAPTER XI. THE TENTH CUSTOMER AND THE PERSIAN RING.

  CHAPTER XII. THE PASSING OF HAGAR.

  CHAPTER I. THE COMING OF HAGAR.

  JACOB DIX was a pawnbroker, but not a Jew, notwithstanding his occupation and the Hebraic sound of his baptismal name. He was so old that no one knew his real age; so grotesque in looks that children jeered at him in the streets; so avaricious that throughout the neighborhood he was called “Skinflint.” If he possessed any hidden good qualities to counterbalance his known bad ones, no person had ever discovered them, or even had taken the trouble to look for them. Certainly Jacob, surly and uncommunicative, was not an individual inclined to encourage uninvited curiosity. In his pawn-shop he lived like an ogre in a fairy-tale castle, and no one ever came near him save to transact business, to wrangle during the transaction thereof, and to curse him at its conclusion. Thus it may be guessed that Jacob drove hard bargains.

  The pawn-shop—situated in Carby’s Crescent, Lambeth—furthermore resembled an ogre’s castle inasmuch as, though not filled with dead men’s bones, it contained the relics and wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam, of many lives, of many households. Placed in the center of the dingy crescent, it faced a small open space, and the entrance of the narrow lane which led therefrom to the adjacent thoroughfare. In its windows—begrimed with the dust of years—a heterogeneous mixture of articles was displayed, ranging from silver teapots to well-worn saucepans; from gold watches to rusty flatirons; from the chisel of a carpenter to the ivory framed mirror of a fashionable beauty. The contents of Dix’s window typified in little the luxury, the meanness, the triviality and the decadence of latter-day civilization.

  There was some irony, too, in the disposition of incongruous articles; for the useful and useless were placed significantly in proximity, and the trifles of frivolity were mingled with the necessaries of life. Here a Dresden china figure, bright-hued and dainty, simpered everlastingly at a copper warming-pan; there a silver-handled dagger of the Renaissance lay with a score of those cheap dinner-knives whose bluntness one execrates in third-rate restaurants. The bandaged hand of a Pharaohonic mummy touched an agate saucer holding defaced coins of all ages, of all nations. Watches, in alternate rows of gold and silver, dangled over fantastic temples and ships of ivory carved by laborious Chinese artificers. On a square of rich brocade, woven of silks, multi-colored as a parrot’s plumage, were piled in careless profusion medals, charms, old-fashioned rings set with dim gems, and the frail glass bangles of Indian nautch-girls. A small cabinet of Japanese lacquer, black, with grotesque gilded figures thereon; talismans of coral from Southern Italy, designed to avert the evil eye; jeweled pipes of Turkey, set roughly with blue turquoise stones; Georgian caps with embroideries of tarnished gold; amulets, earrings, bracelets, snuff-boxes and mosaic brooches from Florence— all these frivolities were thrown the one on top of the other, and all were overlaid with fine gray dust. Wreckage of many centuries; dry bones of a hundred social systems, dead or dying! What a commentary on the durability of empire—on the inherent pride of pigmy man!

  Within doors the shop was small and dark. A narrow counter, running lengthways, divided the whole into two parts. On the side nearest the entrance three wooden screens by their disposition formed four sentry-boxes, into which customers stepped when bent on business. Jacob, wizen, cunning, and racked by an eternal cough, hovered up and down the space within the counter, wrangling incessantly with his customers, and cheating them on every occasion. He never gave the value of a pawned article: he fought over every farthing; and even when he obtained the goods at his own price he grudged payment; for every coin he put down was a drop of blood wrung from his withered heart. He rarely went outside the shop; he never mingled with his fellow-creatures; and, the day’s chicanery ended, he retired invariably into a gloomy back parlor, the principal adornment of which was a gigantic safe built into the wall. Here he counted his gains, and saw doubtful customers not receivable in the shop, who came by stealth to dispose of stolen goods. Here, also, in his lighter moments, he conversed with the only friend he possessed in Carby’s Crescent—or, indeed, in London. Jacob was in no danger of becoming a popular idol.

  This particular friend was a solicitor named Vark, who carried on a shady business, in a shady manner, for shady clients. His name—as he declared himself—proved him to be of Polish descent; but it was commonly reported in the neighborhood that Vark was made to rhyme with shark, as emblematic of the estimation in which he was held. He was hated only one degree less than Jacob, and the two,—connected primarily as lawyer and client,—later on, had struck up a mistrustful friendship by reason of their mutual reputation and isolation. Neither one believed in the other; each tried to swindle on his own account, and never succeeded; yet the two met nightly and talked over their divers rascalities in the dingy parlor, with a confidence begotten by an intimate knowledge of each other’s character. The reputations of both were so bad that the one did not dare to betray the other. Only on this basis is honor possible among thieves.

  Late one foggy November night Jacob was seated with his crony over a pinched little fire which burnt feebly in a rusty iron grate. The old pawnbroker was boiling some gruel, and Vark, with his own private bottle of gin beside him, was drinking a wineglass of it, mixed sparingly with water. Mr. Dix supplied this latter beverage, as it cost nothing, but Vark—on an understanding which dated from the commencement of their acquaintance—always brought his own liquor. A gutterring candle in a silver candlestick—a pawned article—was placed on the deal table, and gave forth a miserable light. The fog from without had percolated into the room, so that the pair sat in a kind of misty atmosphere, hardly illuminated by the farthing dip. Such discomfort, such squalor, was only possible in a penurious establishment like that of Jacob.

  Vark was a little, lean, wriggling creature, more like a worm than a man made in the image of his Creator. He had a sharp nose, a pimply face, and two shifty, fishy eyes, green in hue like those of a cat. His dress was of rusty black, with a small—very small—display of linen; and he rubbed his hands together with a cringing bow every time Jacob croaked out a remark between his coughs. Mr. Dix coughed in a rich but faded dressing-gown, the relic of some dandy of the Regency; and every paroxysm threatened to shake his frail form to pieces. But the ancient was wonderfully tough, and clung to life with a kind of desperate courage—though Heaven only knows what attraction the old villain found in his squalid existence. This tenacity was not approved of by Vark, who had made Jacob’s will, and now wished his client to die, so that he, as executor, might have the fingering of the wealth which Dix was reported to possess. The heir to these moneys was missing, and Vark was determined that he should never be found. Meanwhile, with many schemes in his head, he cringed to Jacob, and watched him cough over his gruel.

  “Oh, dear, dear!” sighed Mr. Vark, speaking of his client in the third person, as he invariably did, “how bad Mr. Dix’s cough is to-night! Why doesn’t he try a taste of gin to moisten his throat?”

  “Can’t afford it!” croaked Ja
cob, pouring the gruel into a bowl. “Gin’s worth money, and money I ain’t got. Make me a little present of a glass, Mr. Vark, just to show that you’re glad of my company.”

  Vark complied very unwillingly with this request, and poured as little as he well could into the proffered bowl. “What an engaging man he is!” said the lawyer, smirking—“so convivial, so full of spirits!”

  “Your spirits!” retorted Jacob, drinking his gruel.

  “What wit!” cried Vark, slapping his thin knees. It’s better than Punch!”

  “Gin-punch! gruel-punch!” said Dix, encouraged by this praise.

  “He, he! I shall die with laughing! I’ve paid for worse than that at the theater!”

  “More fool you!” growled Jacob, taking up the tongs. “You shouldn’t pay for anything. Here, get out! I’m going to put out the fire. I ain’t going to burn this expensive coal to warm you. And the candle’s half-burnt too!” concluded Jacob, resentfully.

  “I’m going—I’m going,” said dark, slipping his bottle into his pocket. “But to leave this pleasant company—what a wrench!”

  “Here, stop that stuff, you inkpot! Has my son answered that advertisement yet?”

  “Mr. Dix’s son hasn’t sent a line to his sorrowing parent,” returned the lawyer. “Oh, what a hard-hearted offspring!”

  “You’re right there, man,” muttered Jacob, gloomily. “Jimmy’s left me to die all alone, curse him!”

  “Then why leave him your money?” said Vark, changing into the first person, as he always did when business was being discussed.

  “Why, you fool?—‘cause he’s Hagar’s son—the bad son of a good mother.”

  “Hagar Stanley—your wife—your gipsy wife! Hey, Mr. Dix?”

  Jacob nodded. “A pure-blooded Romany. I met her when I was a Crocus.”

  “Crocus for Cheap Jack!” whined Vark; “the wit this man has!”

  “She came along o’ me to London when I set up here,” continued Jacob, without heeding the interruption, “and town killed her; she couldn’t breathe in bricks and mortar after the free air of the road. Dead—poor soul!—dead; and she left me Jimmy—Jimmy, who’s left me.”

  “What a play of fancy ——” began Vark; when, seeing from the fierce look of Jacob that compliments on the score of the dead wife were not likely to be well received, he changed his tone. “He’ll spend your money, Mr. Dix.”

  “Let him! Hagar’s dead, and when I die—let him.”

  “But, my generous friend, if you gave me more power as executor ——”

  “You’d take my money to yourself,” interrupted Dix with irony. “Not if I know it, you shark! Your duty is to administer the estate by law for Jimmy. I pay you!”

  “But so little!’ whined Vark, rising; “if you ——”

  At this moment there came a sharp knock at the door of the shop, and the two villains, always expectant of the police, stared at one another, motionless with terror for the moment. Vark, who always took care of his skin, snatched up his hat and made for the back-door, whence, in the fog, he could gain his own house unquestioned and unseen. Like a ghost he vanished, leaving Jacob motionless until aroused by a repetition of the knock.

  “Can’t be peelers,” he muttered, taking a pistol out of a cupboard, “but it might be thieves. Well, if it is ——” He smiled grimly, and without finishing his sentence he shuffled along to the door, candle in hand. A third knock came, as the clock in the shop struck eleven.

  “Who is there, so late?” demanded Jacob, sharply.

  “I am—Hagar Stanley!”

  With a cry of terror, Mr. Dix let the candle fall, and in the darkness dropped also. For the moment,—so much had his thoughts been running on the dead wife,—the unexpected mention of her name made him believe that she was standing rigid in her winding-sheet on the other side of the door. One frail partition between the living and the dead! It was terrible!

  “The ghost of Hagar!” muttered Dix, white and shaking. “Why has she come out of her grave?—and so expensive it was; bricked; with a marble tombstone.”

  “Let me in! let me in, Mr. Dix!” cried the visitor, again rapping.

  “She never called me by that name,” said Jacob, reassured, and scrambling for the candle; then, having lighted it, he added aloud: “I don’t know any one called Hagar Stanley.”

  “Open the door, and you will. I’m your wife’s niece.”

  “Flesh and blood!” said the old man, fumbling at the lock—“I don’t mind that.”

  He flung wide the door, and out of the fog and darkness a young girl of twenty years stepped into the shop. She was dressed in a dark red garment made of some coarse stuff, and over this she wore a short black cloak. Her hands were bare, and also her head, save for a scarlet handkerchief, which was carelessly twisted round her magnificent black hair. The face was of the true Romany type Oriental in its contour and hue, with arched eyebrows over large dark eyes, and a thin-lipped mouth beautifully shaped, under a delicately-curved nose. Face and figure were those of a woman who needed palms and desert sands and golden sunshine, hot and sultry, for an appropriate background; yet this Eastern beauty appeared out of the fog like some dead Syrian princess, and presented herself in all her rich loveliness to the astonished eyes of the old pawnbroker.

  “So you are the niece of my dead Hagar?” he said, staring earnestly at her in the thin yellow light of the candle. “Yes, it’s true. She looked like you when I met her in the New Forest. What d’ye want?”

  “Food and shelter,” replied the girl, curtly. “But you’d better shut the door; it might be bad for your reputation if any passer-by saw you speaking to a woman at this time of night.”

  “My reputation!” chuckled Jacob, closing end bolting the door. “Lord! that’s past spoiling. If you knew how bad it is, you wouldn’t come here.”

  “Oh, I can look after myself, Mr. Dix, especially as you’re old enough to be my great-grandfather twice over.”

  “Come, come! Civil words, young woman!”

  “I’m civil to those who are civil to me,” retorted Hagar, taking the candle out of her host’s hands. “Go on, Mr. Dix, show me in; I’m tired, and want to sleep. I’m hungry, and wish food. You must give me bed and board.”

  “Infernal insolence, young woman! Why?”

  “Because I’m kin to your dead Hagar.”

  “Aye, aye, there’s something in that,” muttered Dix, and dominated, in spite of his inherent obstinacy, by the imperious spirit of the girl, he led her into the dingy parlor. Here she removed her cloak and sat down, while Jacob, in an unusual spirit of hospitality, induced by the mention of his late wife, produced some coarse victuals.

  Without a word he placed the food before his guest; without a word she ate, and was refreshed. Jacob marveled at the self-possession of the gipsy, and was rather pleased than otherwise with her bold coolness. Only when she had finished the last scrap of bread and cheese did he speak. His first remark was curt and rude—designedly so.

  “You can’t stay here!” said the amiable old man

  The girl retorted in kind: “I can, and I shall, Mr. Dix.”

  “For what reason, you jade?”

  “For several—and all good ones,” said Hagar leaning her chin on her hands and looking steadily at his wrinkled face. “I know all about you from a Romany chal who was up here six months ago. Your wife is dead; your son has left you; and here you live alone, disliked and hated by all. You are old and feeble and solitary; but you are by marriage akin to the gentle Romany. For that reason, and because I am of your dead rani’s blood, I have come to look after you.”

  “Jezebel! That is, if I’ll let you!”

  “Oh, you’ll let me fast enough,” replied the woman, carelessly. “You are a miser, I have heard; so you won t lose the chance of getting a servant for nothing.”

  “A servant! You?” said Dix, admiring her imperial air.

  “Even so, Mr. Dix. I’ll look after you and your house. I’ll scrub and cook and m
end. If you’ll teach me your trade, I’ll drive a bargain with any one—and as hard and fast a one as you could drive yourself. And all these things I’ll do for nothing.”

  “There’s food and lodging, you hussy.”

  “Give me dry bread and cold water, your roof to cover me, and a bundle of straw to sleep on. These won’t cost you much, and I ask for nothing more—Skinflint.”

  “How dare you call me that, you wild cat!”

  “It’s what they call you hereabouts,” said Hagar with a shrug. “I think it suits you. Well, Mr. Dix, I have made my offer.”

  “I haven’t accepted it yet,” snapped Jacob, puzzled by the girl. “Why do you come to me? Why don’t you stay with your tribe?”

  “I can explain that in five minutes, Mr. Dix. We Stanleys are just now in the New Forest. You know it?”

  “Truly lass” said Dix, sadly. “‘Twas there I met my Hagar.”

  “And it is from there that I, the second Hagar, come,” replied the girl. “I was with my tribe’ and I was happy till Goliath came.”

  “Goliath?” inquired Jacob, doubtfully.

  “He is half a Gorgio and half Romany—a red-haired villain, who chose to fall in love with me. I hated him. I hate him still!”—the woman’s bosom rose and fell in short, hurried pantings—and he would have forced me to be his wife. Pharaoh—our king, you know—would have forced me also to be this man’s rani, so I had no one to protect me, and I was miserable. Then I recalled what the chal had told me about you who wed with one of us; so I fled hither for your protection, and to be your servant.”

  “But Goliath—this red-haired brute?”

  “He does not know where I have gone, he will never find me here. Let me stay, Mr. Dix, and be your servant. I have nowhere to go to, no one to seek, save you, the husband of the dead Hagar, after whom I am named. Am I to stay or go, now that I have told you the truth?”

  Jacob looked thoughtfully at the girl, and saw tears glistening in her heavy eyelashes, although her pride kept them from falling. Moved by her helplessness, mindful of the wife whom he had loved so well, and alive to the advantage of possessing a white slave whom he could trust the astute ancient made up his mind.