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Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper occupied a large factory, with
offices and showroom attached, in Dilborough. They had no address.
The name of the firm alone was quite sufficient to find them. Some
people added the word Dilborough; some simply put Surrey; some merely
England. They were known to everybody. Their motto--"Perfect
Purity"--was in every daily paper every day. And during those weeks
when the pickle manufacturing was going on, every little hamlet within
a radius of twenty miles was aware of the fact if the wind set in that
direction.
There was no Pentlove in the firm, and no Postlethwaite, and hardly
any Sharper. An ex-schoolmaster, Diggle by name, had secured the
entire control of the business. He had no partners, though Sharper had
a small interest in the firm. He had achieved this position by
unscrupulousness and low cunning. For of real ability he had not a
trace. In fact, the staff mostly called him Cain, because he was not
able. Another point of resemblance was that he was not much of a hand
at a sacrifice. He looked after the financial side of the business,
and did a good deal of general interference in every branch of it.
The manufacturing side was under the control of Arthur Dobson, a
red-faced man who had been with the firm for twenty years. He very
wisely maintained its tradition of the very highest quality coupled
with the very highest prices. "Perfect Purity." It was an admitted
fact that Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper actually used limes in
the manufacture of lime juice. Another startling innovation was the
use of calves' feet in the preparation of calf's-foot jelly. This was
the more extravagant because, of course, only the front feet of the
calf may be used for this purpose. Three back feet make one back-yard.
Naturally the price was ruinous. But it all added to the reputation of
the firm. And the best hotels thought it worth while to advertise that
the pickles and preserves they provided were by Messrs. Pentlove,
Postlethwaite and Sharper. It may be as well to add that Arthur Dobson
was a knave. When he was talking to Cain he always slated Sharper.
When he was talking to Sharper he always slated Cain. His specialty
was the continuous discovery of some cheaper place in which to lunch.
He would ask Luke Sharper to join him in these perilous adventures,
but Luke, in his sunny way, always refused.
"Standoffish," said Dobson. "Damn standoffish."
Luke Sharper represented the literary side of the business. He
wrote all the advertisements. It was a rule of the firm that the
advertisements should be scholarly, and that none should appear which
did not contain at least one quotation from a classical language. Luke
had also initiated the production of various booklets dealing with the
materials and the methods of business. Nominally they were published;
practically they were given away to any considerable purchaser. Some
of these were written by Sharper himself. There was, for example, "The
Romance of the Raspberry," of which the _Dilborough Gazette_ had said:
"An elegant little brochure." This was a great triumph. Even Diggle
had to admit it. He had gone so far as to say that one of these fine
days he would really have to think about making Sharper a partner.
Other of the booklets were written in collaboration. For instance, in
the composition of "Thoughts on Purity," Sharper had the assistance of
the Reverend Noel Atall.
Luke kept a set of these booklets, bound in lilac morocco, in his room
at the office. He loved them. He was proud of them. He regarded them
as his children, and would sit for hours patting them gently. As the
issue of each booklet was limited to one hundred copies, and it was
customary to present one of them with each order of L20 or upwards,
some of them were out of print, and difficult to obtain. This had been
enough to start the collectors. In book catalogues there would
sometimes appear a complete set of the Pentlove, Postlethwaite and
Sharper booklets. And the price asked was gratifying. Luke fainted
with joy the first time he saw this in the catalogue.
At one time he had been in the habit of taking the booklet home in
order to read it aloud to Mabel. He never did it now. It was hopeless.
No insight. No sympathy. No appreciation. No anything. Blind and deaf
to beauty. But she really was a good housekeeper.
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Luke bicycled from home to business every morning, and from business
to home every evening. He enjoyed this immensely. Every morning as he
rode off he said to himself: "Further from Mabel. Further and further
from Mabel. Every day, in every way, I'm getting further and further."
On his return journey in the evening he experienced the same relief in
getting further from old Cain, and further from the office.
At the middle point of his journey it always seemed to him that he did
not belong to the office any more, and that he did not belong to Mabel
either. He was all his own, in a world by himself. He would go on in a
snow-white ecstasy. Then he would get up, dust his clothes, and
re-mount.
He had some habits, which, to the stupid and censorious, might almost
seem childish. He cut for himself with his little hatchet a number of
pegs, and always carried some of them in his pocket. At every point on
the road where he fell off, he drove in a peg. It seemed to him a
splendid idea. In a wave of enthusiasm he told Mabel all about it.
"Isn't it absolutely splendid?" he asked.
"Dotty," said Mabel, briefly.
He went out into the woodshed and cut more pegs.
One Monday morning as he started on his ride he saw before him at
intervals all down the road little white specks. Yes, every one of
those pegs had been painted white by somebody.
Who could have done it? He decided at once that it must be Mabel. She
had repented of her harshness. She had made up her mind to try to
enter more into his secret soul. This was her silent way of showing
it. He determined that if this were so he would start kissing her
again that evening. It overcame him completely. He drove in one more
peg, and re-mounted.
"Mabel," he said that night at dinner, "It's good and sweet of you to
have painted all those pegs white. It must have taken you a long
time."
"Never touched your rotten old pegs," said Mabel. "Pass the salt."
His ears twitched.
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Later that evening he sat alone in his bedroom. He also used this room
as a study. He had been driven to this somewhat frowsty practice by
the fact that he could not possibly sit in any room that had ever been
called a den.
A tap at the door. Ellen Morse entered to turn the bed down. A bright
idea flashed across Luke's mind. His ears positively jumped.
He believed in liberty, equality and familiarity, especially
familiarity. So did Ellen Morse.
"Dot," he said, "was it you who painted my fall-pegs white?"
"Well, old bean," said Dot, "it was like this. I'll tell you."
She seated herself on the bed. "You see, this house has only got
four reception-rooms and eight bedrooms, and all the washing's done
at home, and all the dressmaking, and there's a good deal of
entertaining, mostly when you're not there, and everything has to be
right up to the mark. Well, as there were the whole two of us to do
it, your old woman thought time would be hanging heavy on our hands,
so now we do the garden as well. The other day Mr. Doom Dagshaw was
lunching here, and they were going to play tennis afterwards. Your bit
of skirt has some proper games with that Dagshaw. I watch them out of
the pantry window in my leisure moments. Well, anyhow, I'd to mark out
the tennis court, and I mixed up a bit more of the stuff than was
needed, and I thought I might as well use it up on your pegs. You see,
I get a half-Sunday off every three months, and it was only a
fourteen-mile walk there and back. And I'm sure I didn't know what
else to do with my holiday."
"Dot," said Luke, "you seem to be able to enter into things. You get
the hang of my ideas. Some do, some don't. If you can sneak off for
half-an-hour to-morrow evening we'll go and play at boats together."
"Boats?"
"Yes. You know the bridge. We get two pieces of wood, throw them in
the stream on one side, then run across and watch them come out on the
other. And the one that comes out first, wins. Won't that be
glorious?"
"Well, you are one to think of things," said Dot.
(And now we'll have a little novelty. The Great Novelists of to-day
number their sections. We'll have a number without any section. This
has never been done be----
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