1
Looking out of his window at the office in the afternoon, Luke Sharper
saw a motor-car stop in front of the draper's opposite. Lady Tyburn
got out and entered the shop. So she was back.
Putting on his hat, so far as his agitated ears would permit, Luke
rushed out into the street, crossed the road, and met her as she came
out.
"Jona," he panted.
"Lukie, at last," she gasped.
"You were not long in the shop!"
"Just the same length that I am outside. I have been there three times
to-day. Standing there, looking up at your window. Every time I bought
a yard of elastic. Do you want any elastic?"
"No, thank you. Will you have a cup of tea?"
Emotion would not permit her to speak. But she nodded and got into the
car. He followed her. On the way to the confectioner's neither of them
spoke a word.
At the tea-room the following conversation took place: "Tea?"
"Please."
"Milk?"
"Thanks."
"Sugar?"
"No."
"Buns?"
"One."
And then they sat and gazed at one another, slowly champing buns in
which they took no interest whatever. After twenty minutes Lady Tyburn
said: "My chauffeur has had no tea. He must drive to Gallows and have
tea at once. Will you come too?"
"As far as the gates," he said. "I'll walk back. I'm not coming in."
"Do," she said. "Bill has borrowed a panther from the Mammoth Circus,
and they're having larks with it in the billiard-room."
Luke shook his head. "I don't like panthers," he said wearily. "I
don't like anything much. Mabel looks like a panther sometimes."
During the twenty minutes' drive up to Gallows neither of them spoke.
When they reached the gate, Jona said: "Better come up to the house
and finish our talk."
"No," said Luke; "stay here a little. There's something I must say to
you. I've been trying to say it for the last hour. It gets stuck. I
shall pull it out somehow."
Lady Tyburn sent the car away, and they sat down on the trunk of a
fallen tree. He sat on one side, and she on the other, back to back.
They could not bear to look one another in the face. Presently she
said:
"You're trembling, Lukie. I can feel it. Trembling. Like a jelly."
"You're another," said Luke. "Oh, Jona. There's something I've been
trying to ask you for the last ten months, and perhaps there will
never be another opportunity. Do you remember when you came to my
office?"
She drove her elbow lightly into his ribs. It seemed to him to signify
she did remember.
"There were things you said--'Will you help yourself,' with your hands
out--'magnet and tin-tack'--'I made a mistake once.' You said those
things, Jona."
"What a memory the young man has got," said Jona, wistfully.
"Yes, but what did you mean?"
"Well, they were what is called conversation. You talk too, you know,
sometimes."
"But that doesn't tell me what you meant."
"They meant," she said in a plain, matter-of-fact way, "that I ought
not to have married Bill. I ought to have married you, Lukie. My
mistake entirely. Don't apologize."
She jerked herself backward, and he fell off the tree. He lay on the
grass moaning. "O crikey! O crikey! O crikey, crikey, crikey!"
2
He got up slowly. He was entirely covered with small pieces of dried
grass. Jona came round the end of the tree and began picking pieces of
grass off him.
"You're in a mess," she said.
"We're both in a mess," he said. "Right in. Up to the neck."
"I don't know how much longer I shall be able to stand it," said Jona.
"In London it was actresses. Down here it's ladies from the Mammoth
Circus. We have three equestriennes and a tight-rope dancer staying
with us, and he makes love to them all. He's not been sober--not
noticeably--for the last six weeks. I still keep up the bright
badinage, but it sometimes seems artificial. It's wearing thin.
Everything's wearing thin. Very thin. Oh Lukie!"
"Listen," said Luke resolutely. "I'm going to be noble. This is little
Lukie, underneath his straw hat, being noble. Some men would confess
their love for you. They would pour out in words the passion that was
consuming them. I shall not. In fact, you'll have to guess. Only, if
the time ever does come that you simply cannot stand it any longer,
apply to me. Applications should be sent to the office address in care
of Mabel. Write distinctly. Good-by, Jona."
He tore himself from her, and reeled away, not knowing what direction
he was taking.
After an hour he found himself standing in front of his own office.
It was just as well. He had left his bicycle there.
Diggle came down the stairs into the street, and Luke walked up to him
at once: "Can I have that partnership now?" said Luke.
Diggle glanced at his watch.
"Applications of this kind," he said, "should be made in office hours.
It is now after six. Good evening, Mr. Sharper."
Mechanically, automatically, not knowing what he did, Luke prepared
for his ride home to Jawbones. Then he became aware that he was
pushing something along on the pavement. What was it? It was a
bicycle. He pushed it into a policeman. The policeman asked him to
take it into the road.
He walked along in the road now, still wheeling his bicycle, and
looking all around him.
What a lot of shops seemed to be selling brooms. Yes, and soap. Long
bars of yellow soap. There were big advertisements on the boardings.
He read them aloud: "WASHO. WORKS BY ITSELF."
And again: "PINGO FOR THE PAINT. A PENNY PACKET OF PINGO DOES THE
TRICK." There was a picture of a beautiful lady using Pingo, her face
expressing rapture.
What did it all mean?
He did not know. But it meant that spring was coming. Spring, with its
daffodils, its pretty little birds and all the other things.
He mounted and rode away. A meaningless string of words seemed to
circle round and round in his brain.
"Jona. Washo. Crikey."
At dinner that night, Mabel said: "We shall begin our spring-cleaning
to-morrow. I intend that it shall be done particularly thoroughly this
year. It will take some weeks and will probably cause you
inconvenience. But you like suffering, don't you?"
"Spring," said Luke, thoughtfully. "Not all daffodils. No."
3
A little later Mr. Alfred Jingle, solicitor, talking to his friend the
artist, may be permitted to throw some light on events.
"Saw Sharper yesterday. Don't like it. Awful. Went to his house. What?
Yes, looking for lunch. Brass knob on the front door blazing fit to
blind you. No curtains at any of the windows. Sound like a carpet
being beaten from the garden at the back. Sharper himself leaning out
of upstairs window. Face ashen grey. Ears twitching. 'Don't come in,'
he calls out, 'I'll come down. Lunch in Dilborough.'
"Terrific noise of Sharper falling downstairs. Out he comes, rubbing
knee. Hat bashed in.
"'Had a little accident,' he says. 'They took out the stair rods.
Carpet loose. We'll go in by train. Wouldn't ask you to lunch here.
Had dinner in the bath-room last night. Mabel's got her head in a
duster.'
"I asked him what was the matter. And if he spent the entire day
leaning out of that window.
"'Yes, Jingle,' he said. 'I have to lean out. Do you know the smell of
size? They use it a good deal in spring-cleaning. It's like glue and
decayed fish. House is full of it. It hurts. Horribly. Damnably. I'm
glad you've come, Jingle. I was to have had lunch in the housemaid's
cupboard. But Mabel is an excellent housekeeper. Thorough.'
"Tried to cheer him up. Told him it would soon be over. And Summer
would come.
"'Ah,' he said, 'but if Summer don't! Size and spring-cleaning for
ever and ever. Do you believe in eternal punishment?'
"Lunched at the 'Crown.' Stuffed a whiskey into him. Had six myself.
No good. Said the cold beef tasted of size. Tried to switch him off;
on to politics. Hadn't anything to say on that subject, because there
was no room in his house in which there was enough space left to open
a paper.
"'Everything's put where everything else ought to be,' he said. 'Place
for everything, and my foot in a pail of soapsuds. Did you know that
Washo worked by itself? Have you tried Pingo for the paint? These
pickles taste of Pingo. Had to do the walls of my study-room with it.
Mabel made me. She's an excellent housekeeper. But the world does seem
to be entirely filled with dust, and the smell of decayed fish, don't
you think?'
"Cheerful talk for a luncheon party, wasn't it? That man's on the
verge of a breakdown. Don't like it at all. That wife of his is
overdoing it. Shall look him up again next week. His mind's not right.
He forgot to pay for the lunch. I suggested that I should do it, and
he let me. Something seriously wrong there. Seriously. Have a drink."
4
Three days later Mr. Alfred Jingle resumed the subject.
"I told you things were bad with Sharper. They're worse. Much. I was
there this morning. Enquired at his business place. They said their
Mr. Sharper had gone out. Took a cab to Halfpenny Hole. Halfway there
spotted Sharper sitting on a bank by the roadside with his bicycle
beside him. Face like a tortured hyena. I got out and asked him what
he was doing there.
"'Nowhere else to go,' he said. 'Spring-cleaning at home. And now
they've started spring-cleaning at the office. All my dear little
children piled up on the floor in the dust.'
"Told him I didn't know he had a family.
"'I mean my books. Lilac morocco. At my own expense. The firm wouldn't
stick it. Decorators were sending out for more size when I left. I
can't go back there. Even if there were no spring-cleaning I couldn't
go to Jawbones. Mabel gave me a list of things to buy in Dilborough.
Glass soap and soft paper. I mean soft soap and glass paper. Lots of
other things. I've forgotten to get any of them. All I can do is to
sit here until the world comes to an end.'
"Well, I shoved him into my cab, and drove back to the 'Crown' at
Dilborough. On the way I tried to buck him up a bit, but it was no
use. He was absolutely broken-down. I asked him whose turn it was to
pay for lunch, and he said he thought it was mine. Memory going. Well,
I stuffed a drink into him and took nine myself. I can tell you I
needed them. Then I got him to go back to business. Said he must save
those lilac-bound children of his. Bright idea, what? Then I told him
he could buy the things for his wife afterwards. He went like a lamb,
too broken to resist. I confess I am worried about him. I must try to
see him again if
5
a chance of doing so."
(And that shows you again, how the number of a chapter-section may be
used economically.)