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 gra.s.s moaning. "O crikey! O crikey! O crikey, crikey, crikey!"

2

He got up slowly. He was entirely covered with small pieces of dried gra.s.s. Jona came round the end of the tree and began picking pieces of gra.s.s 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 n.o.ble. This is little Lukie, underneath his straw hat, being n.o.ble. Some men would confess their love for you. They would pour out in words the pa.s.sion 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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. Bra.s.s k.n.o.b 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.'