3
He recalled some of the things Jona had said to him in the tool-shed. She had been rather frank in speaking of her husband.
“Bill’s wonderful,” she said. “He caught the tiger last night. When the keeper couldn’t get it. He does everything well. He is the most fascinating man in the world—until you get used to him. I’ve got used to him. He fascinates all women. That would not matter so much, but nearly all women fascinate him. I pretend not to notice it. I think he does it partly to see how I will take it. I remain merry and bright. With a breaking heart, you understand. How much longer I shall be able to stand it, I do not know. Oh, my hands are so cold.”
He had noticed a pair of the gardener’s gloves lying on the lawn-mower. He handed them to her. She flung them away, a little petulantly it seemed to him.
He rose from the milestone and walked on. Certain words seemed to keep time with his footsteps. “She wants me to write to her. And I ought not. She wants me to write to her. And I ought not.”
He passed the post-office, and turned back to it again. Went on, and again turned back. This time he entered with his mind all bemused.
“Have you any nice stamps?” he asked.
CHAPTER VII
Mabel looked very enraged as she entered the house. “Anything the matter?” he enquired.
“Yes. You might not think so. As I do, probably you wouldn’t. But Ellen’s got a new parasol, and Kate’s got a swollen knee, and has got to have it up.”
“And I suppose it will be just the same with Ellen’s parasol. I suppose you wanted it the other way round—Dot to have the parasol and Ellen to have the——”
“I wanted nothing of the kind. Why should I want my cook to go peacocking about with a pink parasol, making a fool of herself, and bringing disgrace on the house? Why should I want Kate to be incapacitated from doing her proper work?”
“I think,” said Luke, “I must go and see it.”
“Go and see Kate’s knee? Don’t be indelicate.”
“No, I meant the parasol. I should imagine that Dot’s knee has solely a pathological interest at present. But I did mean the parasol—I swear it. How did it come about?”
“Love of finery. Vanity. Passion for wasting her money.”
“Oh, this time I meant the knee—not the parasol.”
“Well, that was just absolute selfishness. All servants love to get swollen knees, and chilblains and chapped hands. They like to make a fuss about themselves. And to make their employer pay a substitute to do their work. They’re all like that. It was just the same before I married. Yes, every housemaid I employ. Contracts these swollen kneeses. They only do it to annoy. Because they know it teases.”
“But what are you going to do about it? Have you got medical advice? Do you think a nurse will be needed? When I had the measles the only things I fancied were——”
“Kate has not got measles. She’s got a cold compress, and she’s got the entire contents of the plate-chest to clean. And when she’s finished that, I’ll find her something else. If she thinks she can’t work sitting down, she will discover that she is mistaken.”
“Wait a minute. I’ve got a joke. A real one this time. Dot with a swollen knee. We shall have to call her Dot-and-go-one. See? Well, why don’t you laugh? I must go into the kitchen and tell them at once.”
Mabel sighed deeply. There were simply no words for him. He was right away outside, beyond the limit. In a few minutes he came back again.
“It certainly does look very pink,” he said.
“That’s the effect of the cold compress. Though why on earth you should——”
“I didn’t mean the knee, I meant the parasol. I’ll swear I did.”
“Well, whatever you meant, I wish you would keep out of the kitchen. I wish you wouldn’t address the servants by nicknames. I wish you wouldn’t be so abominably familiar with them.”
“Familiar? Well, hang it all, when a poor girl’s got a swollen knee it’s unfriendly not to show a little sympathy. It does no harm. I just chatted her on the peak——”
“You——?”
“As I said, I just patted her on the cheek, and asked her how she was getting on. No harm in that.”
“And now perhaps you’ll tell me what on earth I’m to do for a substitute. I don’t know of a single girl in this neighborhood who could come in and help.”
“I have it. I can save the situation. I have an idea. On the 16th inst., at Jawbones, Halfpenny Hole, Surrey, Mr. Luke Sharper, of an idea. Both doing well.”
“Would you mind telling me what you are talking about?”
“I’m talking about old Vessunt. He’s a foreman. Up at the factory. Fine old chap. Religious but quite honest. He’s got a daughter, Effie. Very superior girl. And she’s looking for a job. I can get her for you to-morrow morning. Effie Vessunt. Rather bright and sparkling, what?”
“At any rate, I can see her.”
“You can, even with the naked eye. But I say, you know, she really is rather superior. She’ll have to have her meals with us.”
“If I engage her, she will feed in the kitchen.”
“Mabel, must you always disagree with me? Have you no spirit of compromise? Can’t you meet me half way in a little thing like this?”
“If I met you half way the girl would have her meals in the passage. And I don’t suppose she’d like it, and anyhow she’d be in everybody’s way.”
“And this when I’ve just been of real use to you.”
“So you ought to be. You were indirectly responsible for the accident that gave Kate the swollen knee. It was your wretched old push-bike that she fell over.”
Luke wagged his ears. “Indirectly,” he said. “There are many of us in it indirectly. Dunlop, for instance. Niggers in a rubber plantation. Factories in Coventry. A retail shop in High Holborn. And me. All working together. Combining and elaborating in order to give Dot a nasty one on the knee-cap. It’s rather a great thought when you come to think it out that way.”
“I can’t see why you want to ride that old job-lot of scrap-iron at all. You might just as well go by train, now that the new line is opened. All my friends do it. Why can’t you go by train?”
“I believe I know the answer to that one. Don’t tell me. I’ll go upstairs and think it out.”
He went up to the frowsty study-bedroom, and sat down at his table. Mechanically he drew from his pocket the sheet of thirty stamps with which, after a few disparaging remarks, the lady at the post-office had supplied him. He spread them out before him. Thirty stamps. Thirty letters to Jona. He felt inclined to kiss every one of them.
He did not do so. He reflected that in the ordinary course of affixing them to the envelope he would put them to his lips in any case. It was not sense to do the same piece of work twice over.
Jona.
Should he, or shouldn’t he? He knew that he shouldn’t. Mabel would not like it. He ought to put Jona out of his mind, and to burn those stamps. But that was not economical. It was possible to have thirty stamps, and yet to avoid writing thirty love-letters to Jona. He folded them up and put them back in his pocket.
What was it he had come up to do? He remembered. Mabel had asked him a question. He ran downstairs and rejoined her.
“Because of the season ticket,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you asked me why I couldn’t go by train. I could get a season ticket, but I should lose it the first day. Then they fine you forty shillings, and make you buy another. And that would go on, and on, and on until I was bankrupt and a beggar. And we should have to go down the High Street together, singing hymns. And you never did have any voice, and——”
“Oh, that’ll do,” said Mabel, wearily.
“Look here,” he said, brightly, “I’ve brought you a present, Mabel. I think you will find these useful.”
He produced the postage stamps from his pocket.
“Just a few stamps,” he said.
“All right,” said Mabel, not taking them. “Stick them down anywhere.”
“They should be stuck down in the top right-hand corner,” he said; “but I leave it all entirely to you.”
He went out. She had not even thanked him.
CHAPTER VIII
Effie Vessunt remained at Jawbones for a fortnight. At the end of that time Dot’s knee had, so to speak, submitted and returned to barracks, and she could resume her ordinary work. Effie went to Bournemouth, where she took a position as kennel maid.
Luke heard nothing from Jona. Occasionally he saw her name in the newspaper as one of those present at some social function. Twice he read that her husband had been fined for being drunk while driving a motor-car. Beyond this, nothing. Luke adhered to his resolution. He never sent her a letter. He wrote one. It was a long and passionate letter, full of poetry and beauty. But he never posted it.
He made a paper boat of it. And launched it on that old-world stream. It floated away under the bridge, and on and on for nearly twenty yards. Then an old-world cow came down to the edge of the stream and ate it. The cow died.
And so the months passed away. He completed another little monograph for the firm entitled “Pulp,” of which he said beautifully that it was the beginning of all jam and the end of all books. Then he remembered that Jona had rather seemed to encourage him in his idea of writing his biography. He planned it all out in his mind. He pictured himself wrongly suspected, loathed by everybody (except Jona), suffering horribly, terribly ill. He thoroughly enjoyed it.
He enjoyed it so much that he felt he had to tell Mabel about it. He did.
“Mabel,” he said, “have you ever realized that under certain circumstances the most awful things would happen to me that ever befell the hero of a melodrama? Just take the train of events. Effie has an illegitimate child. She writes and tells you about it.”
“But she wouldn’t,” said Mabel. “She was with me for a fortnight, and I always kept her in her place.”
“Well, she refuses to say who the father is.”
“Why?” asked Mabel.
“Because the story can’t possibly go on if she doesn’t. Please don’t interrupt me again until I’ve finished. Effie has no money. She goes to see her father, who will take her in, but not the child. It’s an accepted convention that the unmarried mother must be parted from her child. So Effie and the baby turn up here. I say that they shall stay. You say that in that case you’ll go, which you do, having previously dismissed Dot and Dash. In consequence, everybody in this neighborhood cuts me, I am turned out of my business, and as the dates agree, I am believed to be the father of the child. Effie has the housework to do as well as the baby to look after, and in consequence, I am horribly neglected. The handle of the front door is not polished, and when an old friend comes down from London to see me, I have nothing to give him for lunch except cold meat and a fruit tart that is no longer in its first youth. So I take a week-end at Brighton without Effie. She cleans my straw hat with oxalic acid, which I have bought for her. I throw away the hat and buy another. While I am at Brighton she kills herself and the baby with what is left of the oxalic acid. At the inquest I am unable to say anything except ‘Look here,’ am severely censured by the coroner’s jury, and nearly lynched by the crowd outside. I go back to the house and find a letter on the clock, which entirely clears me and tells me that the father of the child is the son of Dobson, the dirty dog who sneaked my partnership. So I go to see Dobson and find that he has just got the news that his son is dead. I therefore burn Effie’s letter so as to get the sole evidence of my innocence out of the way, and then have a hæmorrhage of the brain. And you divorce me, and then——”
“Look here, Luke, you’d better go and lie down for a little. You’ve been bicycling in the sun, you know.”
“What do you mean? Wouldn’t it happen so? Isn’t it all absolutely inevitable?”
“Not absolutely,” said Mabel. “The previous knowledge that one has of you would go for something. There was never any sign of an attachment of that kind between you and Effie. If you had been the father of the child you would most certainly not have left her alone, without any provision, at the time the child was born. I should be quite certain of that. So would the two maids here. Effie would apply to young Dobson, and failing him, to old Dobson. This is about the last house to which she would come. Her instinct would be to keep away from the neighborhood where she was known. If her own father agreed to take her in, it’s almost certain that he would take the baby as well. Your ideas about that convention are exaggerated, and old-fashioned. If she did come here, and you insisted on her staying, I should put up with it, though I should not like it, until some arrangement could be made for her to go elsewhere with her child. And that arrangement could be made easily and quickly. I do not see why I should dismiss the maids, and if I did they are paid with your money, and are much more devoted to you than they are to me. You would only have to speak and they would remain. No seducer would bring his victim and her child to the house where his wife was living. You would be thought quixotic but not guilty. If Effie saw that you were cut by everybody and that she had brought trouble on you, she would be particularly careful not to cause more serious trouble for you by committing suicide. And if she committed suicide, she would not implicate you in it by making you buy the poison. She would neither make fruit tart, nor clean a straw hat, because she simply would not have the time. You don’t know much about young babies, do you? I should not divorce you, and should have no evidence on which I could get a divorce. In fact, the whole thing’s skittles. By the way, when did Effie have her baby?”
“She never did,” said Luke despondently. “That’s always the way. Whenever I make a beautiful thing, some cow always gets it. It’s happened before. If I wrote my beautiful biography, some cow would parody it. The world’s full of cows.”
“Well, I’m sorry, of course,” said Mabel. “You can do most incredibly foolish things. You do frequently fail to say what you should say. But even with those advantages, I doubt if it would be possible for you to incur so much suffering and suspicion as you describe. I shall have to think out some other little martyrdom for you.”