Barry Pain

“ 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.” ”

“ CHAPTER XI 1
“We shall dine in the kitchen,” said Mabel. “The dining-room and drawing-room are finished, but I am keeping them locked up until the workmen are out of the house, and all the mess is cleared away.”
“You are an excellent housekeeper,” said Luke. “Won’t it be jolly to dine in the kitchen with Dot and Dash?”
“Ellen will sit in the garden while we are at dinner. Kate will wait on us as usual. I am sorry to say that a workman spilt a pail of whitewash in your room. Most of it went over your books. After dinner we will sit in the den.” ”

“ I told him I’d chance it, and asked him again what he was doing at Brighton.
“‘I’ve eloped,’ he said.
“‘With whom?’ I asked.
“‘Nobody. She never turned up. That’s not my fault. In the sight of Heaven we are all equal, and I’m an eloper. I’m a faithless hound. That’s not all, Jingle. They’ve thrown me out of the business. And that’s not all. I bought four packets of oxalic acid. I’ve put them down where Mabel is bound to see them. There’s one on her pillow, one on the clock, one on the piano, and one on the mantelpiece. You see? I’m a murderer. ”

“ Why on earth should I? He had a glass of beer in the kitchen.”
“People dine with me sometimes,” said Luke, “who are neither nice nor intelligent. Oh, can’t you see, Mabel, that we are all equal in the sight of Heaven?”
“Yes,” said Mabel, “but you’re not in sight of Heaven—not by a long way. I don’t suppose you ever will be. Besides, if he had stayed, the dinner could not have gone on.”
Luke’s ears twitched convulsively. “I can’t see that,” he said. “It is unthinkable. How can you say that?”
“Well,” said Mabel, “one of the vegetables we are [Pg 9] to eat to-night happens to be leeks. ”

“ You’ve never been inside the factory in your life. Diggle hardly ever goes, except to make a fool of himself by some damn silly suggestion. No, he keeps to the financial side. He’s got a whole pack of doubtful financial dodges, and he’ll get seven years for one of them some day. All I did was to tell Diggle that I was applying for the post of manager in a certain rival firm, having had twenty years’ experience here. And I asked him if he would give me a testimonial. He said: ‘No, but I will give you a partnership.’ You don’t seem to get hold of the right way of doing things, Sharper. ”

“ I seem to be almost always in the way. It happens at home. It happens at the office. I say, I wonder what you two would have done if you’d met a cart?”
“Jumped it,” said Jona, and laughed again.
“Sorry,” said Lord Tyburn, “but I must rush off. I’ve just spotted my agent, five fields away. So long, Sharper. Come up and inspect us soon.”
He drove the car up the grassy slope, smashed a way through the hedge—after all, it was his own hedge—and vanished.
“He drives wonderfully,” said Luke.
“He’s that kind,” said Jona. “He does everything well. He does himself well. ”

“ Luke knocked at the door of Mr. Diggle’s room, and entered.
“I’m back,” he said. “Been lunching with a man. Can I have a partnership?”
“Not to-day, Mr. Sharper,” said Diggle. “You should be more reasonable. The whole office is more or less disorganized by the spring-cleaning. It seems to me that you try to make more trouble. You go out a great deal for a business man.” ”

“ She would neither make fruit tart, nor clean a straw hat, because she simply would not have [Pg 59] 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Its appeal will be to the unconscious rather than to the conscious mind. Freud never thought of that. I did it myself. I am a genius. Potatoes.”
After lunch it was suggested that Mr. Doom Dagshaw should take Mabel up to the Garden Settlement to see the progress that was being made in the building of the Mammoth Circus.
“You won’t care to come?” said Mabel to her husband. And it seemed less like a question than a command.
“No, not in my line,” said Luke, still doing his best. “Hope you’ll enjoy yourselves.”
When they had gone, Luke retired to his study-bedroom. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Driving the team of zebras he got from Doom Dagshaw. The horses don’t seem to like it. There’s a cart and horse just gone in at that draper’s window. Quite a number of horses seem to have fallen down on the pavement. There’s a policeman with a note-book. He seems to be asking Bill questions. And Bill’s making him laugh. He manages those zebras perfectly. He does everything well.”
Luke had joined her at the window. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Dagshaw added, turning to Mabel. [Pg 28] “I’ll do any talking that has to be done. I’m here to talk about my circus. Yes, and to eat ham. Isn’t any? Ought to be. Give me three of those cutlets. You don’t realize what a circus is, you people. It’s a church. It’s a cathedral. It’s more.”
“I hope,” said Luke, “that it’s getting on nicely, and will be a great success.”
“Bound to be. Can’t help it. When I bought the land from the Garden Settlement Syndicate I made it a condition that there should be a clause in every lease granted that a year’s season ticket should be taken for the Mammoth Circus.” ”

“ You don’t seem to know anything about business. You never do any work. You’re playing about with Lady Tyburn in a way that’ll bring scandal on the firm. But we don’t want to turn you out. We don’t want to do anything harsh. All we say is that we think it would be better for all concerned if you don’t come here again. I think that will be all. Good evening, Mr. Sharper.”
Luke went out and purchased the articles Mabel had asked him to buy. He then went to four different chemists, and at each one purchased a little oxalic acid, saying in each case that he wanted it to clean a straw hat. ”

“ Yes, we have a certain amount of business in Dilborough. I’m generally down there once or twice a year. I walk over to Halfpenny Hole and lunch with Sharper. It’s a seven mile walk. But lunch at the hotel is seven-and-six. Doing uncommonly well, is Sharper. He’s in Pentlove, Postlethwaite and Sharper. You know. The only jams that really matter. Pickles, too. Chutney. Very hot stuff. Oh, yes, Sharper’s all right.
“You ought to run down and see Halfpenny Hole. What is it the agents say? Old-world. It’s very old-world. ”

“ Mabel will take the hint, and will commit suicide. That will upset Dot and Dash, and they will [Pg 78] commit suicide too. I only hope the man who spilt whitewash over my bookcase will commit suicide as well. Don’t come and see me in the condemned cell. I don’t want to see anybody any more. That’s why I’m sitting on Brighton pier on a warm Sunday morning.’
“‘You’ve got this wrong, Sharper,’ I said. ‘I know your wife. She won’t commit suicide because you’ve gone. She possibly might have done it if you had stopped. So your maids won’t be upset, and they won’t commit suicide either. ”

“ Especially Mabel. She seemed to be enjoying herself at the other side of the table, laughing at the stories that Major Capstan was telling her. From the Major’s expression, Luke diagnosed that the stories were not quite—well, [Pg 45] not exactly—oh, you know. Would it be Doom Dagshaw or Major Capstan? Oh, what was he thinking of?
Why had he not been put next to Jona? Why did the girl on his right, whom he had never met before, persist in addressing him as Funnyface? Why is a mouse when it spins? The world was full of conundrums.
In the garden after lunch, Jona came straight up to him. ”

“ Would Jona be there?
Apparently not. He caught a distant glimpse of Lord Tyburn, but it was not with him that he was proposing to elope. Besides, Tyburn was accompanied by a somewhat highly painted and decorated young lady. Luke waited till the last moment, and waited in vain. He stepped into the train just as it was moving off.
2
At this point we will ask our Mr. Alfred Jingle to oblige again.
“Tell you what,” he said to his artist friend. “I was wrong about Sharper again. I thought he’d reached the limit of human mess and martyrdom. He hadn’t. He’d not got within a street of it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rest of the dinner, which was brief, passed in complete silence. Then Mabel went into the drawing-room, and Luke remained behind and lit a cigarette.
“This will never do,” he said to himself. “I must keep it up. I must be pleasant. I must say number one of those six sentences about Doom Dagshaw and the Mammoth Circus, even it if splits my palate and my tongue drops out.”
He threw down his cigarette, walked firmly into the drawing-room, and closed the door. “Mabel,” he said, [Pg 31] “I hope you enjoyed your visit to the Doom Circus with Mr. Mammoth Dagshaw.” ”

“ 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 [Pg 17] things. ”

“ Firstly, though Nona is a real creation, Effie is an incredible piece of novelist’s machinery. Secondly, I detest the utilization of the Great War at the present day for the purposes of fiction. It is altogether too easy. It buys the emotional situation ready-made. It asks the reader’s memory to supplement the writer’s imagination. ”

“ You’re the least little bit in the way at this tea party.”
4
Seated on the edge of the bath, Luke read as follows:
“You could always see every point of view except one, and that was your wife’s.
“Once or twice the sting of your jelly-fish of a conscience made you try to be nice to me. There are words and acts from a man to a woman which may be [Pg 81] lovely to the woman if they come spontaneously and naturally. If they are produced as by a force-pump, they are an insult. ”

“ MABEL. 2. DOOM. 3. CAPSTAN. Also ran. Luke Sharper, Esq. 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. ”