Jaffery by William J. Locke

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It was very mysterious; all the more so because Jaffery had never been a
man of mystery, like Adrian. I went away wondering. If it had occurred
to me at the time that I was destined to play Boswell to Jaffery's
Johnson, perhaps I might have gone straight to him and demanded a
solution of my difficulties. As it was, in my unawakened condition, I
did nothing of the kind. I spent an hour or two looking up something in
the British Museum, stopped at the bootmaker's to give an order
concerning Susan's riding-boots (_vide_ diary) and drove home to dinner,
to a comfortable chat with Barbara, during which I gave her an account
of the day's doings, and eventually to the peaceful slumber of the
contented and inoffensive man.

A fortnight or so passed before I saw Jaffery again. Happening to be in
Westminster in the forenoon--I had come up to town on business--I
mounted to his cheerless eyrie in Victoria Street, and rang the bell. A
dingy servitor in a dress suit, on transient duty, admitted me, and I
found Jaffery collarless and minus jacket and waistcoat, smoking a pipe
in front of the fire. It wasn't even a good coal fire. Some austere
former tenant had installed an electric radiator in the once
comfort-giving grate. But Jaffery did not seem to mind. The remains of
breakfast were on the table which the dingy servitor began to clear.
Jaffery rose from the depths of his easy chair like an agile mammoth.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo!"

His usual greeting. We shook hands and commended the weather. When the
alien attendant had departed, he began to curse London. It was a hole
for sick dogs, not for sound men. He loathed its abominable suffocation.

"Then why the deuce do you stay in it?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I can't do anything else."

This gave me an opening to satisfy my curiosity.

"I understood you could have gone to Persia."

He frowned and tugged his red beard. "How did you know that?"

"Arbuthnot--" I began.

"Arbuthnot?" he boomed angrily. "What the blazes does he mean by telling
you about my affairs? I'll punch his damned head!"

"Don't," said I. "Your hands are so big and he's so small. You might
hurt him."

"I'd like to hurt him. Why can't he keep his infernal tongue quiet?"

He proceeded to wither up the soul of Arbuthnot with awful anathema.
Then in his infantile way he shouted: "I didn't want any of you to know
anything about it."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I didn't."

"But I suppose you wanted to go to Persia?"

He paused in his lumbering walk about the little room and collecting a
litter of books and papers and a hat or two and a legging from a sofa,
pitched it into a corner.

"Here. Sit down."

I had been warming my back at the fire hitherto and surveying the
half-formal, half-unkempt sitting-room. It was by no means the
comfortable home from Harrod's Stores that Barbara had prescribed; and
he had not attempted to furnish it in slap-up style with the heads of
game and skins and modern weapons which lay in the London Repository. It
was the impersonal abode of the male bird of passage.

"Sit down," said he, "and have a drink."

I declined, alleging the fact that a philosophically minded country
gentleman of domestic habits does not require alcohol at half past
eleven in the morning, except under the stress of peculiar
circumstances.

"I'm going to have one anyway!"

He disappeared and presently reentered with a battered two-handled
silver quart pot bearing defaced arms and inscription, a rowing trophy
of Cambridge days, which he always carried about with him on no matter
what lightly equipped expedition--it is always a matter of regret to me
that Jaffery, as I have mentioned before, missed his seat in the
Cambridge boat; but when one despoils a Proctor of his square cap and it
is found the central feature of one's rooms beneath a glass shade such
as used to protect wax flowers from the dust, what can one expect from
the priggish judgment of university authority?--he reentered, with this
vessel full of beer. He nodded, drank a huge draught and wiped his
moustache with his hand.

"Better have some. I've got a cask in the bedroom."

"Good God!" said I, aghast. "What else do you keep there? A side of
bacon and a Limburger cheese and Bombay duck?"

Now just imagine a civilised gentleman keeping a cask of beer in his
bedroom.

Jaffery laughed and took another swig and called me a long, lean,
puny-gutted insect; which was not polite, but I was glad to hear the
deep "Ho! ho! ho!" that followed his vituperation.

"All the same," said I, reclining on the cleared sofa and lighting a
cigarette, "I should like to know why you missed one of the chances of
your life in not going out to Persia."

He stood, for a moment or two, scrabbling in whisker and beard; and,
turning over in his mind, I suppose, that Barbara was my wife, and Susan
my child, and I myself an inconsiderable human not evilly disposed
towards him, he apparently decided not to annihilate me.

"It was hell, Hilary, old chap, to chuck the Persian proposition," said
he, his hands in his trouser pockets, looking out of the window at the
infinitely reaching landscape of the chimney pots of south London, their
grey smoke making London's unique pearly haze below the crisp blue of
the March sky. "Just hell!" he muttered in his bass whisper, and craning
round my neck I could, with the tail of my eye, catch his gaze, which
was very wistful and seemed directed not at the opalescent mystery of
the London air, but at the clear vividness of the Persian desert. Away
and away, beyond the shimmering sand, gleamed the frosted town with
white walls, white domes, white minarets against the horizon band of
topaz and amethystine vapours. And in his nostrils was the immemorable
smell of the East, and in his ears the startling jingle of the harness
and the pad of the camels, and the guttural cries of the drivers, and in
his heart the certainty of plucking out the secret from the soul of this
strange land. . . .

At last he swung round and throwing himself into the armchair enquired
politely after the health of Barbara and Susan. As far as the Persian
journey was concerned the palaver was ended. He did not intend to give
me his reasons for staying in England and I could not demand them more
insistently. At any rate I had discovered the cause of his grumpiness.
What creature of Jaffery's temperament could be contented with a soft
bed in the centre of civilisation, when he had the chance of sleeping in
verminous caravanserais with a saddle for pillow? In spite of his
amazing predilections, Jaffery was very human. He would make a great
sacrifice without hesitation; but the consequences of the sacrifice
would cause him to go about like a bear with a sore head.

And the cause of the sacrifice? Obviously Doria. Once having been
admitted to her bedside, he went there every day. Flowers and fruit he
had sent from the very beginning in absurd profusion; a grape for Doria
failed in adequacy unless it was the size of a pumpkin. Now he brought
the offerings personally in embarrassing bulk. One offering was a
gramophone which nearly drove her mad. Even in its present stage of
development it offends the sensitive ear; but in its early days it was
an instrument of torturing cacophony. And Jaffery, thinking the brazen
strains music of the spheres, would turn on the hideous engine, when he
came to see her, and would grin and roar and expect her to shew evidence
of ravished senses. She did her best, poor child, out of politeness and
recognition of his desire to alleviate her lot; but I don't think the
gramophone conveyed to her heart the poor dear fellow's unspoken
message. But gently criticising the banality of the tunes the thing
played and sending him forth in quest of records of recondite and
"unrecorded" music, she succeeded in mitigating the terror. To the
present moment, however, I don't think Jaffery has realised that she had
a higher aesthetic equipment than the hypnotised fox-terrier in the
advertisement. . . . Jaffery also bought her puzzles and funny penny
pavement toys and gallons of eau-de-cologne (which came in useful), and
expensive scent (which she abominated), and stacks of new novels, and a
fearsome machine of wood and brass and universal joints, by means of
which an invalid could read and breakfast and write and shave all at the
same time. The only thing he did not give her--the thing she craved more
than all--was a fresh-bound copy of Adrian's book.

Obviously, as I have remarked, it was Doria that kept him out of Persia.
But I could not help thinking that this same Persian journey might have
afforded a solution of the whole difficulty. Despatched suddenly to that
vaguely known country, he could have taken the mythical manuscript to
revise on the journey: the convoy could have been attacked by a horde of
Kurds or such-like desperadoes, all could have been slain save a
fortunate handful, and the manuscript could have been looted as an
important political document and carried off into Eternity. Doria would
have hated Jaffery forever after; but his chivalrous aim would have been
accomplished. Adrian's honour would have been safe. But this simple way
out never occurred to him. Apparently he thought it wiser to sacrifice
his career and remain in London so as to buoy Doria up with false hope,
all the time praying God to burn down St. Quentin's Mansions (where he
lived) and Adrian's portmanteau of rubbish and himself all together.

Suddenly, as soon as Doria could be moved, Mr. Jornicroft stepped in and
carried her to the south of France. Barbara and Jaffery and myself saw
her off by the afternoon train at Charing Cross. She was to rest in
Paris for the night and the next day, and proceed the following night to
Nice. She looked the frailest thing under the sun. Her face was
startling ivory beneath her widow's headgear. She had scarcely strength
to lift her head. Mr. Jornicroft had made luxurious arrangements for her
comfort--an ambulance carriage from St. John's Wood, a special invalid
compartment in the train; but at the station, as at Doria's wedding,
Jaffery took command. It was his great arms that lifted her
feather-weight with extraordinary sureness and gentleness from the
carriage, carried her across the platform and deposited her tenderly on
her couch in the compartment. Touched by his solicitude she thanked him
with much graciousness. He bent over her--we were standing at the door
and could not choose but hear:

"Don't you remember what I said the first day I met you?"

"Yes."

"It stands, my dear; and more than that." He paused for a second and
took her thin hand. "And don't you worry about that book. You get well
and strong."

He kissed her hand and spoiled the gallantry by squeezing her
shoulder--half her little body it seemed to be--and emerging from the
compartment joined us on the platform. He put a great finger on the arm
of the rubicund, thickset, black-moustached Jornicroft.

"I think I'll come with you as far as Paris," said he. "I'll get into a
smoker somewhere or the other."

"But, my dear sir"--exclaimed Mr. Jornicroft in some amazement--"it's
awfully kind, but why should you?"

"Mrs. Boldero has got to be carried. I didn't realise it. She can't put
her feet to the ground. Some one has got to lift her at every stage of
the journey. And I'm not going to let any damned clumsy fellow handle
her. I'll see her into the Nice train to-morrow night--perhaps I'll go
on to Nice with you and fix her up in the hotel. As a matter of fact, I
will. I shan't worry you. You won't see me, except at the right time.
Don't be afraid."

Mr. Jornicroft, most methodical of Britons, gasped. So, I must confess,
did Barbara and I. When Jaffery met us at the station he had no more
intention of escorting Doria to Nice than we had ourselves.

"I can't permit it--it's too kind--there's no necessity--we'll get on
all right!" spluttered Mr. Jornicroft.

"You won't. She has got to be carried. You're not going to take any
risks."

"But, my dear fellow--it's absurd--you haven't any luggage."

"Luggage?" He looked at Mr. Jornicroft as if he had suggested the
impossibility of going abroad without a motor veil or the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. "What the blazes has luggage got to do with it?" His roar
could be heard above the din of the hurrying station. "I don't want
_luggage_." The humour of the proposition appealed to him so mightily
that he went off into one of his reverberating explosions of mirth.

"Ho! ho! ho!" Then recovering--"Don't you worry about that."

"But have you enough on you--it's an expensive journey--of course I
should be most happy--"

Jaffery stepped back and scanned the length of the platform and beckoned
to an official, who came hurrying towards him. It was the station
master.

"Have you ever seen me before, Mr. Winter?"

The official laughed. "Pretty often, Mr. Chayne."

"Do you think I could get from here to Nice without buying a ticket
now?"

"Why, of course, our agent at Boulogne will arrange it if I send him a
wire."

"Right," said Jaffery. "Please do so, Mr. Winter. I'm crossing now and
going to Nice by the Cote d'Azur Express to-morrow night. And see after
a seat for me, will you?"

"I'll reserve a compartment if possible, Mr. Chayne."

The station master raised his hat and departed. Jaffery, his hands
stuffed deep in his pockets, beamed upon us like a mountainous child. We
were all impressed by his lordly command of the railway systems of
Europe. It was a question of credit, of course, but neither Mr.
Jornicroft, solid man that he was, nor myself could have undertaken that
journey with a few loose shillings in his possession. For the first time
since Adrian's death I saw Jaffery really enjoying himself.

And that is how Jaffery without money or luggage or even an overcoat
travelled from London to Nice, for no other purpose than to save Doria's
sacred little body from being profaned by the touch of ruder hands.

Having carried her at every stage beginning with the transfer from train
to steamer at Folkestone and ending with a triumphant march up the
stairs to the third floor of the Cimiez hotel, he took the first train
back straight through to London.

He returned the same old grinning giant, without a shadow of grumpiness
on his jolly face.

CHAPTER XIII

About this time a bolt came from the blue or a bomb fell at our
feet--the metaphor doesn't matter so long as it conveys a sense of an
unlooked-for phenomenon. True, in relation to cosmic forces, it was but
a trumpery bolt or a squib-like bomb; but it startled us all the same.
The admirable Mrs. Considine got married. A retired warrior, a recent
widower, but a celibate of twenty years standing owing to the fact that
his late wife and himself had occupied separate continents (_on avait
fait continent a part_, as the French might say) during that period, a
Major-General fresh from India, an old flame and constant correspondent,
had suddenly swooped down upon the boarding-house in Queen's Gate and,
in swashbuckling fashion, had abducted the admirable and unresisting
lady. It was a matter of special license, and off went the tardily happy
pair to Margate, before we had finished rubbing our eyes.

It was grossly selfish on the part of Mrs. Considine, said Barbara. She
thought her--no; perhaps she didn't think her--God alone knows the
convolutions of feminine mental processes--but she proclaimed her
anyhow--an unscrupulous woman.

"There's Liosha," she said, "left alone in that boarding-house."

"My dear," said I, "Mrs. Jupp--I admit it's deplorable taste to change a
name of such gentility as Considine for that of Jupp, but it isn't
unscrupulous--Mrs. Jupp did not happen to be charged with a mission
from on High to dry nurse Liosha for the rest of her life."

"That's where you're wrong," Barbara retorted. "She was. She was the one
person in the world who could look after Liosha. See what she's done for
her. It was her duty to stick to Liosha. As for those two old faggots
marrying, they ought to be ashamed of themselves."

Whether they were ashamed of themselves or not didn't matter. Liosha
remained alone in the boarding-house. Not all Barbara's indignation
could turn Mrs. Jupp into the admirable Mrs. Considine and bring her
back to Queen's Gate. What was to be done? We consulted Jaffery, who as
Liosha's trustee ought to have consulted us. Jaffery pulled a long face
and smiled ruefully. For the first time he realised--in spite of tragic
happenings--the comedy aspect of his position as the legal guardian of
two young, well-to-do and attractive widows. He was the last man in the
world to whom one would have expected such a fate to befall. He too
swore lustily at the defaulting duenna.

"I thought it was all fixed up nicely forever," he growled.

"Everything is transitory in this life, my dear fellow," said I.
"Everything except a trusteeship. That goes on forever."

"That's the devil of it," he growled.

"You must get used to it," said I. "You'll have lots more to look after
before you've done with this existence!"

His look hardened and seemed to say: "If you go and die and saddle me
with Barbara, I'll punch your head."

He turned his back on me and, jerking a thumb, addressed Barbara.

"Why do you take him out without a muzzle? Now you've got sense. What
shall I do?"

Then Liosha superb and smiling sailed into the room.

I ought to have mentioned that Barbara had convened this meeting at the
boarding-house. The room into which Liosha sailed was the elegant
"_bonbonniere_" of a chamber known as the "boudoir." There was a great
deal of ribbon and frill and photograph frame and artful feminine touch
about it, which Liosha and, doubtless, many other inmates thought
mightily refined.

Liosha kissed Barbara and shook hands with Jaffery and me, bade us be
seated and put us at our ease with a social grace which could not have
been excelled by the admirable Mrs. Considine (now Jupp) herself. That
maligned lady had performed her duties during the past two years with
characteristic ability. Parenthetically I may remark that Liosha's
table-manners and formal demeanour were now irreproachable. Mrs.
Considine had also taken up the Western education of the child of twelve
at the point at which it had been arrested, and had brought Liosha's
information as to history, geography, politics and the world in general
to the standard of that of the average schoolgirl of fifteen. Again, she
had developed in our fair barbarian a natural taste in dress, curbing,
on her emergence from mourning, a fierce desire for apparel in primary
colours, and leading her onwards to an appreciation of suaver harmonies.
Again she had run her tactful hand over Liosha's stockyard vocabulary,
erasing words and expressions that might offend Queen's Gate and
substituting others that might charm; and she had done it with a touch
of humour not lost on Liosha, who had retained the sense of values in
which no child born and bred in Chicago can be deficient.

"I suppose you're all fussed to death about this marriage," she said
pleasantly. "Well, I couldn't help it."

"Of course not, dear," said Barbara.

"You might have given us a hint as to what was going on," said Jaffery.

"What good could you have done? In Albania if the General had interfered
with your plans, you might have shot him from behind a stone and
everyone except Mrs. Considine would have been happy; but I've been
taught you don't do things like that in South Kensington."

"Whoever wanted to shoot the chap?"

"I, for one," said Barbara. "What are we to do now?"

"Find another dragon," said Jaffery.

"But supposing I don't want another dragon?"

"That doesn't matter in the least. You've got to have one."

"Say, Jaff Chayne," cried Liosha, "do you think I can't look after
myself by this time? What do you take me for?"

I interposed. "Rather a lonely young woman, that's all. Jaffery, in his
tactless way, by using the absurd term 'dragon,' has missed the point
altogether. You want a companion, if only to go about with, say to
restaurants and theatres."

"I guess I can get heaps of those," said Liosha, a smile in her eyes.
"Don't you worry!"

"All the more reason for a dragon."

"If you mean somebody who's going to sit on my back every time I talk to
a man, I decidedly object. Mrs. Considine was different and you're not
going to find another like her in a hurry. Besides--I had sense enough
to see that she was going to teach me things. But I don't want to be
taught any more. I've learned enough."

"But it's just a woman companion that we want to give you, dear," said
Barbara. "Her mere presence about you is a protection against--well, any
pretty young woman living alone is liable to chance impertinence and
annoyance."

Liosha's dark eyes flashed. "I'd like to see any man try to annoy me. He
wouldn't try twice. You ask Mrs. Jardine"--Mrs. Jardine was the keeper
of the boarding-house--"she'll tell you a thing or two about my being
able to keep men from annoying me."

Barbara did, afterwards, ask Mrs. Jardine, and obtained a few sidelights
on Liosha's defensive methods. What they lacked in subtlety they made up
in physical effectiveness. There were not many spruce young gentlemen
who, after a week's residence in that establishment, did not adopt a
peculiarly deferential attitude towards Liosha.

"Still," said Jaffery, "I think you ought to have somebody, you know."

"If you're so keen on a dragon," replied Liosha defiantly, "why not take
on the job yourself?"

"I? Good Lord! Ho! ho! ho!"

Jaffery rose to his feet and roared with laughter. It was a fine joke.

"There's a lot in Liosha's suggestion," said Barbara, with an air of
seriousness.

"You don't expect me to come and live here?" he cried, waving a hand to
the frills and ribbons.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," said I. "You would get all the advantages
and refining influences of a first-class English home."

He pivoted round. "Oh, you be--"

"Hush," said Barbara. "Either you ought to stay here and look after
Liosha more than you do--"

He protested. Wasn't he always looking after her? Didn't he write?
Didn't he drop in now and then to see how she was getting on?

"Have you ever taken the poor child out to dinner?" Barbara asked
sternly.

He stood before her in the confusion of a schoolboy detected in a lapse
from grace, stammering explanations. Then Liosha rose, and I noticed
just the faintest little twitching of her lip.

"I don't want Jaff Chayne to be made to take me out to dinner against
his will."

"But--God bless my soul! I should love to take you out. I never thought
of it because I never take anybody out. I'm a barbarian, my dear girl,
just like yourself. If you wanted to be taken out, why on earth didn't
you say so?"

Liosha regarded him steadily. "I would rather cut my tongue out."

Jaffery returned her gaze for a few seconds, then turned away puzzled.
There seemed to be an unnecessary vehemence in Liosha's tone. He turned
again and approached her with a smiling face.

"I only meant that I didn't know you cared for that sort of thing,
Liosha. You must forgive me. Come and dine with me at the Carlton this
evening and do a theatre afterwards."

"No, I wont!" cried Liosha. "You insult me."

Her cheeks paled and she shook in sudden wrath. She looked magnificent.
Jaffery frowned.

"I think I'll have to be a bit of a dragon after all."

I recalled a scene of nearly two years before when he had frowned and
spoken thus roughly and she had invited him to chastise her with a
cleek. She did not repeat the invitation, but a sob rose in her throat
and she marched to the door, and at the door, turned splendidly,
quivering.

"I'm not going to have you or any one else for a dragon. And"--alas for
the superficiality of Mrs. Considine's training--"I'm going to do as I
damn well like."

Her voice broke on the last word, as she dashed from the room. I
exchanged a glance with Barbara, who followed her. Barbara could convey
a complicated set of instructions by her glance. Jaffery pulled out
pouch and pipe and shook his head.

"Woman is a remarkable phenomenon," said he.

"A more remarkable phenomenon still," said I, "is the dunderheaded
male."

"I did nothing to cause these heroics."

"You asked her to ask you to ask her out to dinner."

"I didn't," he protested.

I proved to him by all the rules of feminine logic that he had done so.
Holding the match over the bowl of his pipe, he puffed savagely.

"I wish I were a cannibal in Central Africa, where women are in proper
subjection. There's no worry about 'em there."

"Isn't there?" said I. "You just ask the next cannibal you meet. He is
confronted with the Great Conundrum, even as we are."

"He can solve it by clubbing his wife on the head."

"Quite so," said I. "But do you think the poor fellow does it for
pleasure? No. It worries him dreadfully to have to do it."

"That's specious rot, and platitudinous rubbish such as any soft idiot
who's been glued all his life to an armchair can reel off by the mile. I
know better. A couple of years ago Liosha would have eaten out of my
hand, to say nothing of dining with me at the Canton. It's all this
infernal civilisation. It has spoiled her."

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