Jonah and Co Part 16

"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 pa.r.s.ed 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 pa.s.s-book..."

Overcome with emotion he stepped out of the room.

A m.u.f.fled bark reminded me that n.o.bby 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed through a bracelet, it scaled the remarkable weight of nearly six pounds.

Daphne, Adele, 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.

Adele'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.

The registration of a postal packet in France is no laughing matter.

When a coloured form has to be obtained, completed, and deliberately scrutinised before a parcel can be accepted, when there is only one pen, where there are twenty-seven people in front of you--each with two or more packages to be registered--when there is only one registration clerk, when mental arithmetic is not that clerk's _forte_, when it is the local custom invariably to question the accuracy first of the postage demanded and then of the change received, when the atmosphere of the post office is germane to poison-gas, and when, you are bearing twelve parcels and leading a Sealyham, the act of registration and its preliminaries are conducive to heart-failure.

The miniature of herself, however, with which my wife presented me on Christmas Day atoned for everything....

And now--Christmas was over and gone.

The New Year, too, had come in with a truly French explosion of merriment and good-will.

It was, in fact, the fourth day of January, and, with the exception of my cousins, who were upon the links, we were proceeding gingerly down the Rue du Lycee, en route for Lourdes, when my sister gave a cry and called upon me to stop.

As I did so, I saw Mrs. Featherstone stepping towards us across the open s.p.a.ce which fronts the market.

Berry climbed out of the d.i.c.key, and Adele and Daphne got out of the car.

As I followed them--

"Sally, my dear," said Daphne, "I never knew you were back."

"I wasn't, till this morning," panted Sally. "I only arrived at eight.

For the last three hours I've been----"

"Before you tell us anything," said Daphne, "we want to thank you.

Since you've been away, Planchet's been. He's sold us the most lovely things I've ever seen. We're so grateful to you, we don't know what to do."

"Well, for goodness' sake," rejoined Sally, "insure them to-day. I've just been cleaned out of everything I've got."