Читать книгу Jonah and Co - Yates Dornford - Страница 16

Five fat weeks had rolled by since Adèle had eased Jonah of sixty pounds, and the Antoinette ring we had given her to commemorate the feat was now for the first time in danger of suffering an eclipse. In a word, a new star had arisen.

"I dreamed about it," said Daphne. "I knew I should."

I knitted my brows.

"I wish," said I, "I could share your enthusiasm."

"Ah, but you haven't seen it."

"I know, but I don't even want to. If you'd come back raving about a piece of furniture or a jewel or a picture, I should have been interested. But a shawl … A shawl leaves me cold."

"I agree," said Jonah. "I've learned to appear attentive to the description of a frock. I keep a special indulgent smile for the incoherence inspired by a hat. But when you pipe to me the praises of a shawl—well, I'm unable to dance."

"Wait till you see it," said Adèle. "Besides, there were some lovely rugs."

"That's better," said I. "I like a good rug."

"Well, these were glorious," said Jill. "They had the most lovely sheen. But, of course, the shawl … "

"If anyone," said Jonah, "says that ugly word again, I shall scream."

It was half-past nine of a very beautiful morning, and we were breakfasting.

The last two days had been wet. In the night, however, the clouds had disappeared, leaving the great sky flawless, an atmosphere so rare as tempted shy Distance to approach, and the mountains in all the powdered glory of their maiden snow.

Seventy miles of magic—that is what Pau stares at. For the Pyrenees, viewed from this royal box, are purely magical. They do not rise so high—eleven thousand feet, as mountains go, is nothing wonderful. There is no might nor majesty about them—distant some thirty odd miles. They are just an exquisite wall, well and truly laid, and carved with that careless cunning of the great Artificer into the likeness of some screen in Heaven.

Where, then, is the magic? Listen. These mountains are never the same. To-day they are very nigh; to-morrow they will stand farther than you have ever seen them. On Monday they will lie a mere ridge above the foot-hills; on Tuesday they will be towering, so that you must lift up your eyes to find the summits. But yesterday you marvelled at their stablishment; this morning they will be floating above the world. One week the clear-cut beauty of their lines and curves gladdens your heart; the next, a mocking mystery of soft blurred battlements will tease your vision. Such shifting sorcery is never stale. Light, shade, and atmosphere play such fantastic tricks with Pau's fair heritage that the grey town, curled comfortably in the sunshine upon her plateau's edge, looks not on one, but upon many prospects. The pageant of the Pyrenees is never done.

As for the wedding garment which they had put on in the night—it made us all late for breakfast.

The door opened to admit Berry.

The look of resignation upon his face and the silence in which he took his seat where highly eloquent.

There was no need to ask what was the matter. We knew. Big with the knowledge, we waited upon the edge of laughter.

As he received his coffee—

"I'm not going on like this," he said shortly. "It's insanitary."

Adèle's lips twitched, and Jill put a hand to her mouth.

"I can't think how it is," said Daphne. "Mine was all right."

"Of course it was," retorted her husband. "So was Adèle's. So was Jill's. By the time you three nymphs are through, there's no hot water left."

"That," said I, "is where the geyser comes in. The agent was at some pains to point out that it was an auxiliary."

"Was he, indeed?" said Berry. "Well, if he'd been at some pains to point out that it leaked, stank, became white-hot, and was generally about the finest labour-wasting device ever invented, he'd 've been nearer the mark. If he'd added that it wasn't a geyser at all, but a cross between a magic lantern and a money-box——"

"Knack," said Jonah. "That's all it needs. You haven't got the hang of it yet."

The savagery with which my brother-in-law attacked a roll was almost frightening.

"W-why money-box?" said Jill tremulously.

"Because," said Berry, "it has to be bribed to devil you. Until you've put ten centimes in the metre, you don't get any gas. It's a pretty idea."

Adèle began to shake with laughter.

"You must have done something wrong," said I.

Berry shrugged his shoulders.

"Provided," he said, "that you are fairly active and physically fit, you can't go wrong. But it's a strain on one's sanity. … No, I don't think I'll have any omelet. They're so impatient."

I decided to apply the spur.

"But the agent showed us exactly——"

"Look here," said Berry, "you enter that bathroom, clothed—after a fashion—and in your right mind. Then you leave it for some matches. On your return you turn on the gas. After wasting four matches, you laugh pleasantly, put on your dressing-gown again, and go about the house asking everyone for a ten-centime piece … This you place in the slot. Then you go out again and try to remember where you put the matches. By the time you're back, the whole room is full of gas, so you open the window wide and clean your teeth to fill up the time. Long before it's safe you strike another match. The thing lights with an explosion that shortens your life. … In about two minutes it emits a roaring sound and begins to shake all over. By now all the taps are red-hot, and, by the time you've burnt yourself to hell, you're wondering whether, if you start at once, you'll have time to leave the house before the thing bursts. Finally, you knock the gas off with the cork mat. …

"After a decent interval you start again. This time you turn on the water first. Stone cold, of course. When you've used enough gas to roast an ox, you hope like anything and reduce the flow." He paused to pass a hand wearily across his eyes. "Have you ever seen Vesuvius in eruption?" he added. "I admit no rocks were discharged—at least, I didn't see any. There may be some in the bath. I didn't wait to look. … Blinded by the steam, deafened by the noise, you make a rush for the door. This seems to have been moved. You feel all over the walls, like a madman. In the frenzy of despair—it's astonishing how one clings to life—you hurl yourself at the bath and turn on both taps. … As if by magic the steam disappears, the roaring subsides, and two broad streams of pure cold water issue, like crystal founts, into the bath. Now you know why I'm so jolly this morning."

With tears running down her cheeks—

"You must have a bath in the dressing-room," wailed Daphne. "The others do."

"I won't," said Berry. "It faces North."

"Then you must have it at night."

"Not to-night," I interposed. "Nobby's bagged it."

With the laugh of a maniac, my brother-in-law requested that the facts should be laid before the Sealyham, and the latter desired to waive his rights.

"Of course," he concluded, "if you want me to become verminous, just say so."

There was a shriek of laughter.

"And now be quick," said Daphne, "or we shall be late for the meet.

And I particularly want to see Sally."

Sarah Featherstone was the possessor of the coveted shawl.

We had met her by chance upon the boulevard two days before. No one of us had had any idea that she was not in Ireland, whither she had retired upon her marriage, and where her passion for hunting kept her most of the year, and when we learned that she had already spent six months in the Pyrenees, and would be at Pau all the winter, we could hardly believe our ears. Her little son, it appeared, had been ailing, and the air of the Pyrenees was to make him well. So their summer had been passed in the mountains, and, with three good hunters from Ireland, the winter was to be supported under the shadow of the healing hills.

"It hurts me to think of Ireland, but I'm getting to love this place. I want the rain on my face sometimes, and the earth doesn't smell so sweet; but the sun's a godsend—I've never seen it before—and the air makes me want to shout. Oh, I've got a lot to be thankful for. Peter's put on a stone and a half to date, George'll be out for Christmas, and, now that you've come to stay … "

We were all glad of Sarah—till yesterday.

Now, however, she had set up a golden calf, which our womenkind were worshipping out of all reason and convenience.

At the mention of the false prophet's name, Jonah and I pushed back our chairs.

"Don't leave me," said Berry, "I know what's coming. I had it last night until I fell asleep. Then that harpy"—he nodded at Daphne—"dared to rouse me out of a most refreshing slumber to ask me whether I thought 'the Chinese did both sides at once or one after the other.' With my mind running on baths, I said they probably began on their feet and washed upwards. By the time the misunderstanding had been cleared up, I was thoroughly awake and remained in a hideous and agonising condition of sleepless lassitude for the space of one hour. The tea came sharp at half-past seven, and the shawl rolled up twenty seconds later. I tell you I'm sick of the blasted comforter."

A squall of indignation succeeded this blasphemy.

When order had been restored—

"Any way," said Jill, "Sally says the sailor who sold it her 'll be back with some more things next month, and she's going to send him here. He only comes twice a year, and——"

"Isn't it curious," said Jonah, "how a sailor never dies at sea?"

"Most strange," said Berry. "The best way will be to ask him to stay here. Then he can have a bath in the morning, and we can bury him behind the garage."

* * * * *

With that confident accuracy which waits upon a player only when it is uncourted, Jill cracked her ball across the six yards of turf and into the hole.

"Look at that," said Adèle.

Jonah raised his eyes to heaven.

"And the game," he said, "means nothing to her. It never has. Years ago she and I got into the final at Hunstanton. She put me dead on the green at the thirteenth, and I holed out. When I turned round to say we were three up, she wasn't there. Eventually I found her looking for her iron. She'd laid it down, to start on a daisy chain."

"I only put it down for a second," protested Jill, "and you must admit the daisies were simply huge."

"What happened?" said Adèle, bubbling.

"The daisy chain won us the match. She was much more interested in the former, and actually continued its fabrication between her shots."

We passed to the next tee.

As I was addressing the ball—

"Don't top it," said Jill.

"Have I been topping them to-day?".

"No, Boy. Only do be careful. I believe there's a lark's nest down there, and it'd be a shame——"

"There you are," said Jonah.

"Now," said I, "I'm dead certain to top it."

"Well, then, drive more to the right," said Jill. "After all, it's only a game."

"I'll take your word for it," said I.

Of course, I topped the ball, but at the next hole my grey-eyed cousin discovered that our caddie had a puppy in his pocket, so we won easily.

As we made for the club-house—

"Only ten days to Christmas," said Adèle. "Can you believe me?"

"With an effort," said I. "It's almost too hot to be true."

Indeed, it might have been a June morning.

The valley was sleepy beneath the mid-day sun; the slopes of the sheltering foot-hills looked warm and comfortable; naked but unashamed, the woods were smiling; southward, a long flash spoke of the sunlit peaks and the dead march of snow; and there, a league away, grey Pau was basking contentedly, her decent crinoline of villas billowing about her sides, lazily looking down on such a fuss and pother as might have bubbled out of the pot of Revolution, but was, in fact, the hospitable rite daily observed on the arrival of the Paris train.

"I simply must get some presents," continued my wife. "We'll start to-morrow."

I groaned.

"You can't get anything here," I protested. "And people don't expect presents when you're in the South of France."

"That's just when they do," said Adèle. "All your friends consider that it's a chance in a lifetime, and, if you don't take it, they never forgive you."

"Well, I haven't got any friends," said I. "So that's that. And you used to tell me you had very few."

"Ah," said Adèle, "that was before we were engaged. That was to excite your sympathy."

I appealed to my cousins for support.

"Nothing doing," said Jonah. "If you didn't want this sort of thing, what did you marry for? For longer than I can remember you've seen your brother-in-law led off like an ox to the shambles—he's there now—financially crippled, and then compelled to tie up and address innumerable parcels, for the simple reason that, when they're at the shops Daphne's faculty of allotment invariably refuses to function."

Jill slid an arm through her brother's, patted his hand affectionately, and looked at Adèle.

"If Boy breaks down," she said sweetly, "I'll lend you my ox. He's simply splendid at parcels."

"You've got to find something to do up first," said I. "This isn't

Paris."

A colour was lent to my foreboding within the hour.

As we sat down to luncheon—

"Yes," said Berry, "my vixen and I have spent a delightful morning.

We've been through fourteen shops and bought two amethyst necklets and

a pot of marmalade. I subsequently dropped the latter in the Place

Royale, so we're actually twelve down."

"Whereabouts in the Place Royale?" I inquired.

"Just outside the Club. Everybody I knew was either going in or coming out, so it went very well indeed."

There was a gust of laughter.

"N-not on the pavement?" whimpered Jill.

"On the pavement," said Daphne. "It was dreadful. I never was so ashamed. Of course I begged him to pick it up before it ran out. D'you think he'd do it? Not he. Said it was written, and it was no good fighting against Fate, and that he'd rather wash his hands of it than after it, and that sort of stuff. Then Nobby began to lick it up. … But for Fitch, I think we should have been arrested. Mercifully, we'd told him to wait for us by the bandstand, and he saw the whole thing."

"It's all very fine," said her husband. "It was I who furnished and suggested the use of the current issue of Le Temps, and, without that, Fitch couldn't have moved. As it was, one sheet made a shroud, another a pall, and Nobby's beard and paws were appropriately wiped upon the ever-burning scandal of 'Reparations.'"

"I gather," said Jonah, "that the dissolution of the preserve turned an indifferent success into a howling failure. Of course, I haven't seen the necklets but … "

"I can't pretend it's easy," said Daphne. "It isn't that there aren't any shops——"

"No," said Berry emphatically, "it isn't that."

"—but somehow … Still, if we go on long enough, we shall find something."

"That's it," said her husband. "We're going to put our backs into it this afternoon. After we've done another twelve shops without buying anything, we're going to have police protection. Not that we need it, you know, but it'll improve my morale."

"If only Sally was here," said Jill, "she could have told us where to go."

"If only her sailor would turn up," said Adèle, "we might be able to get all our presents from him."

"That's an idea," said Jonah. "What was the merchant's name?"

Amid a buzz of excitement, Daphne sent for the letter which had announced Sarah Featherstone's departure from Pau. When it arrived, she read the material portion aloud.

" … George, can't get away, so Peter and I are going home for Christmas. We'll be back the first week in January. I've told the Marats that if Planchet (the sailor who sold me the shawl, etc.) turns up before I get back, he's to be sent on to you. If he's got anything extra-special that you're not keen on, you might get it for me …"

"Well, I never thought I should live to say it," said Berry, "but, after what I've gone through this morning, if Planchet were to totter in this afternoon, laden with at once cheap and pretentious goods, I should fall upon his bull neck."

"Who," said I, "are the Marats?"

"They're the married couple who run the flat. I believe they're wonderful. Sally says she never knew what service was before."

"I do hope," said Jill, twittering, "they don't make any mistake."

"I've no fear of that," said Adèle. "I can't answer for the man, because we didn't see him, but Madame Marat's no fool."

"Incidentally," said I, "it's one thing giving Planchet our address, but it's quite another persuading him to fetch up. He may have other sheep to shear."

"We can only pray that he hasn't," said Daphne. "It's too much to expect him to have another shawl, but I should like the first pick of what he has."

Berry regarded his wife.

"If," he said, "you will swear to select from his wares all the blinkin' presents with which you propose to signalise this Yuletide, I'll—I'll tie them all up without a word."

"Same here," said I. "Our gifts will cost us more, but we shall live the longer."

"Ditto," said Jonah.

The girls agreed cheerfully, and, before luncheon was over, it had been decided to give Planchet three days in which to make his appearance, and that, if he had not arrived by that time, then and then only should we resort to the shops.

Less than an hour had elapsed, and we were just about to make ready to take the air by the simple expedient of proceeding at a high speed in the direction of Biarritz, when Falcon entered the room.

"There's an individual, madam, 'as come to the door——"

"Planchet? Is it Planchet?"

"I'm afraid I can 'ardly say, madam, but 'e 'as this address upon a piece of note-paper, madam, and——"

"All right, Falcon, I'll come."

The butler's valiant endeavours to cope with the heritage of Babel were better known to us than he imagined. More than once his efforts to extract from strangers that information which was his due, and at the same time, like a juggler of many parts, to keep the balls of Dignity and Courtesy rolling, had been overheard, and had afforded us gratification so pronounced as to necessitate the employment of cushions and other improvised gags if our faithful servant's feelings were to come to no harm.

"I'll go," said Jill and Adèle simultaneously.

We all went, and we were all just in time to see our visitor precede the Sealyham in the direction of the lodge.

Aghast at such ill-timed pleasantry, we erupted pellmell into the drive, all frantic by word or deed to distract the terrier from his purpose. Shrieks, curses, and a copy of La Fontaine's Fables were hurled simultaneously and in vain at our favourite, and it was Berry, to whom the fear of further acquaintance with the emporiums of Pau must have lent wings, who actually overtook and discomfited the pursuer some three yards from the road.

It was with feelings of inexpressible relief that we presently beheld the three returning—Berry alternately rebuking the Sealyham, who was under his arm, and apologising to his guest, the latter wide-eyed, something out of breath, and anything but easy, and Nobby apparently torn between an aggressively affectionate regard for his captor and a still furiously expressed suspicion of the stranger within our gates.

As the trio drew nigh—

"It is Monsieur Planchet," called Berry. "He's brought some things for us to see. His man's behind with a barrow."

With beating hearts we trooped back into the house. …

As I returned from thrusting Nobby into a bedroom, Monsieur Planchet's hireling staggered into the hall, a gigantic basket-trunk poised precariously upon his hunched shoulders.

The inspection was held in the drawing-room.

It was rather late in the day to assume that nonchalant air which has, from time immemorial, adorned the armouries of all accomplished hucksters.

Our instant recognition of the salesman, our energetic solicitude for his safety, and our obvious anxiety to dissociate ourselves from the policy of direct action adopted by the terrier, had not only betrayed, but emphasised, the fact that the sailor's arrival was very much to our taste. Clearly, if we did not wish to pay through the nose for what we purchased, our only course was to feign disappointment when the wares were produced.

For what it was worth I circulated a covert recommendation of this wile, which was acknowledged with sundry nods and inaudible assurances—the latter, so far as Jill was concerned, too readily given to inspire me with confidence.

Sure enough, when the lid of the trunk was lifted, and Planchet plucked forth a truly exquisite rug and flung it dexterously across a chair, my grey-eyed cousin let out a gasp which an infant in arms could not have misinterpreted.

There was only one thing to be done, and Daphne did it.

With a heroic disregard for her reputation, she shook her head.

"Too bright," she said shortly. "Don't you think so?" she added, turning to Berry.

The latter swallowed before replying.

"It's positively gaudy," he said gloomily.

Planchet shrugged his shoulders and began to unfasten a bale. …

By the time seven more Persian rugs—all old and all more than ordinarily pleasing in design and colouring—were sprawling about the chamber, any organised depreciation was out of the question. Where all were so beautiful, it required a larger output of moral courage than any one of us could essay to decry the whole pack. By way of doing his or her bit, everybody decided to praise one or two to the implied condemnation of the remainder. In the absence of collusion, it was inevitable that those rugs which somebody had thus branded as goats should invariably include somebody else's sheep. The result was that every single rug had its following. A glance at their owner, who was standing aside, making no offer to commend his carpets, but fingering his chin and watching us narrowly with quick-moving eyes, showed that he was solely engaged in considering how much he dared ask.

I moved across to him.

"You only come here twice a year?" I inquired.

"That is so, Monsieur."

"And how do you get these things? By barter?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

After a little encouragement, he explained that before each voyage he laid in a stock of knives, gramophones, mirrors, trinkets, and the like, these to exchange with the natives in the bazaars of the smaller Eastern ports at which his ship touched. From Bordeaux he used to set out, and to Bordeaux he as regularly returned. An aunt dwelling at Pau was responsible for his selection of the town as a market for his goods. I should not have taken him for a sailor, and said as much. With a shy smile, he confessed that he was a steward, adding that he was a landsman at heart, and that, but for the opportunities of trading which his occupation presented he should go to sea no more.

Suddenly—

"What else have you got?" said Daphne.

Six panels of Chinese embroidery—all powder-blue and gold, 'laborious Orient ivories,' a gorgeous hanging that had been the coat of a proud mandarin, three Chinese mats, aged and flawless, a set of silken doilies—each one displaying a miniature landscape limned with a subtlety that baffled every eye—one by one these treasures were laid before us.

Even Jonah went down before the ivories.

Ere the trunk was empty, we had, one and all, dropped our masks and were revelling openly.

"Now, isn't that beautiful?" "Sally's got a ball like that, but it isn't so big." "It's just as well she's in Ireland, or we shouldn't have had those mats." "You know, that rug on the chair's a devilish fine one." "They all are." "Yes, but that—my dear fellow, it's the sort of rug they put in the window and refuse to sell, because it's such an advertisement." "I'll tell you what, if we had those panels made into curtains, they'd look simply priceless in the drawing-room." "Give me the ivories."

It was Adèle who pulled the check-string.

"What's the price of this rug?" she said quietly.

There was an expectant and guilty hush.

With a careless flourish we had called the tune—clamoured for it. …

If the piper's fee was exorbitant, we had only ourselves to thank.

Planchet hesitated. Then—

"Five hundred francs, Madame."

Ten pounds.

You could have heard a pin drop.

The rug was worth sixty. In Regent Street or Fifth Avenue we should have been asked a hundred. If this was typical of Planchet's prices, no wonder Sally had plunged. …

I took out a pencil and picked up a pad of notepaper.

"And the other rugs?" I inquired.

"The same price, Monsieur."

The rugs went down.

Slowly, and without a shadow of argument, the prices of the other valuables were asked, received, and entered.

With a shaking hand I counted up the figures—eight thousand six hundred francs.

I passed the paper to Berry.

"Will you pay him?" I said. "I haven't got enough at the bank here, and you can't expect him to take a foreign cheque."

"Right oh!"

"He may not want to part with them all at one house," said Daphne.

"You'd better ask him."

Adèle smiled very charmingly.

"We like your pretty things very much," she said. "May we have what you've shown us?"

Planchet inclined his head.

"As Madame pleases."

I crossed to where he was standing and went through my list, identifying each article as I came to it, and making him confirm the price. When we had finished, I insisted upon him checking my figures. He did so with some show of reluctance. The total, seemingly, was good enough.

When the reckoning was over, I hesitated.

Then—

"You know," I said slowly, "we'd have to pay much more than this in the shops."

It seemed only fair.

Planchet spread out his hands.

"Monsieur is very kind: but for me, I should not obtain more from the merchants. I know them. They are robbers. I prefer infinitely to deal with you."

"All right. You don't mind a cheque?"

"A cheque, Monsieur?"

"Yes, on the bank here. We haven't so much money in the house."

The little man hesitated. Nervously the big brown eyes turned from me to fall upon his possessions. …

"That's all right," said Berry. "The bank's still open. Fitch can run up in the car and get the money. He's probably had a dud cheque some time or other. Anyway, considering he knows nothing of us, and Sally's out of reach, I don't blame him."

Such a way out of the difficulty was unanimously approved, and when I communicated our intention to Planchet, the latter seemed greatly relieved. It was not, he explained volubly, that he did not trust us, but when a poor sailor produced such a cheque to a bank. …

As Berry left to give the chauffeur his instructions—

"Last time you came," said Daphne, "you brought a beautiful shawl.

Mrs. Featherstone bought it."

Planchet frowned thoughtfully. Then his face lighted with recollection.

"Perfectly, Madame. I remember it. It was very fine. I have another like it at home."

My sister caught her breath.

"For sale?"

"If Madame pleases." Adèle and Jill clasped one another. "I will bring it to-morrow."

With an obvious effort Daphne controlled her excitement.

"I—we should like to have a look at it," she said.

Planchet inclined his head.

"To-morrow morning, Madame."

Without more ado he packed up his traps, announced that, as he was returning on the morrow, there was now no occasion for him to wait for his money, and, thanking us profusely for our patronage and assuring us that he was ever at our service, summoned his employee and withdrew humbly enough.

It was fully a quarter of an hour before the first wave of our pent-up enthusiasm had spent itself. After a positive debauch of self-congratulation, amicable bickering with regard to the precise order of precedence in which an antiquary would place our acquisitions, and breathless speculation concerning their true worth, we sank into sitting postures about the room and smiled affectionately upon one another.

"And now," said Berry, "what about tying them up?"

"What for?" said Jill.

"Well, you can't send them through the post as they are."

"You don't imagine," said Daphne, in the horrified tone of one who repeats a blasphemy, "you don't imagine that we're going to give these things away?"

Berry looked round wildly.

"D'you mean to say you're going to keep them?" he cried.

"Of course we are," said his wife.

"What, all of them?"

My sister nodded.

"Every single one," she said.

With an unearthly shriek, Berry lay back in his chair and drummed with his heels upon the floor.

"I can't bear it!" he roared. "I can't bear it! I won't. It's insufferable. I've parted with the savings of a lifetime for a whole roomful of luxuries, not one of which, in the ordinary way, we should have dreamed of purchasing, not one of which we require, to not one of which, had you seen it in a shop, you would have given a second thought, all of which are probably spurious——"

"Shame!" cried Jill.

"——only to be told that I've still got to prosecute the mutually revolting acquaintance with infuriated shopkeepers forced upon me this morning. It's cruelty to animals, and I shall write to the Y.M.C.A. Besides, it's more blessed——"

"I can't help it," said Daphne. "The man had absolutely nothing that would have done for anybody. If——"

"One second," said her husband. "I haven't parsed that sentence yet.

And what d'you mean by 'done for'? Because——"

"If," Daphne continued doggedly, "we sent one of those rugs to someone for Christmas, they'd think we'd gone mad."

Berry sighed.

"I'm not sure we haven't," he said. "Any way—" he nodded at Jonah and myself—"I'll trouble each of you gents for a cheque for sixty pounds. As it is, I shall have to give up paying my tailor again, and what with Lent coming on … " Wearily he rose to his feet. "And now I'm going to have a good healthy cry. Globules the size of pigeons' eggs will well from my orbs."

"I know," said Jill. "These things can be our Christmas presents to one another."

Berry laughed hysterically.

"What a charming idea!" he said brokenly. "And how generous! I shall always treasure it. Every time I look at my pass-book … "

Overcome with emotion he stepped out of the room.

A muffled bark reminded me that Nobby was still imprisoned, and I rose to follow my brother-in-law.

As I was closing the door, I heard my wife's voice.

"You know, I'm simply pining to see that shawl."

* * * * *

At ten o'clock the next morning the most beautiful piece of embroidery I have ever seen passed into our possession in return for the ridiculously inadequate sum of two thousand francs.

Obviously very old, the pale yellow silk of which the shawl was made was literally strewn with blossoms, each tender one of them a work of art. All the matchless cunning, all the unspeakable patience, all the inscrutable spirit of China blinked and smiled at you out of those wonderful flowers. There never was such a show. Daring walked delicately. Daintiness was become bold. Those that wrought the marvel—for so magnificent an artifice was never the work of one man—were painters born—painters whose paints were threads of silk, whose brushes, needles. Year after year they had toiled upon these twenty-five square feet of faded silk, and always perfectly. The thing was a miracle—the blazing achievement of a reachless ideal.

Upon both lovely sides the work was identical: the knotted fringe—itself bewildering evidence of faultless labour—was three feet deep, and while the whole shawl could have been passed through a bracelet, it scaled the remarkable weight of nearly six pounds.

Daphne, Adèle, and Jill with one voice declared that it was finer than Sally's. As for Berry, Jonah, and myself, we humbly withdrew such adverse criticism as we had levelled at the latter, and derived an almost childish glee from the possession of its fellow.

It was, indeed, our joy over this latest requisition that stiffened into resolution an uneasy feeling that we ought to give Sally a slice of our luck.

After considerable discussion we decided to make her a present of the three Chinese mats. She had bought three of Planchet upon his last visit, and those we had just purchased would bring her set up to six. Lest we should repent our impulse, we did them up there and then and sent them off by Fitch the same afternoon.

* * * * *

Christmas was over and gone.

In the three days immediately preceding the festival, such popularity with the tradesmen of the town as we had forfeited was more than redeemed at the expense, so far as I was concerned, of an overdraft at the bank. Absurdly handsome presents were purchased right and left. Adèle's acquaintance was extremely wide. Observing that it was also in every instance domiciled in the United States, with the density of a male I ventured to point out that upon the day which my wife's presents were intended to enrich, all of them would indubitably be lying in the custody of the French postal authorities. Thereupon it was gently explained to me that, so long as a parcel had been obviously posted before Christmas, its contents were always considered to have arrived "in time"—a conceit which I had hitherto imagined to be the property of bookmakers alone. In short, from first to last, my wife was inexorable. But for the spectacle of Berry and Jonah being relentlessly driven along the same track, life would have lost its savour. Indeed, as far as we three were concerned, most of the working hours of Christmas Eve were spent at the post office.