Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"You began this argument," said I, "with the proposition that woman was
a remarkable phenomenon--a generalisation which includes woman in
fig-leaves and woman in diamonds."

"Oh, dry up," said Jaffery, "and tell me what I ought to do. I didn't
want to hurt the girl's feelings. Why should I? In fact I'm rather fond
of her. She appeals to me as something big and primitive. Long ago, if
it hadn't been that poor old Prescott--you know what I mean--I gave up
thinking of her in that way at once--and now I just want to be
friends--we have been friends. She's a jolly good sort, and, if I had
thought of it, I would have taken her about a bit. . . . But what I
can't stand is these modern neurotics--"

"You called them heroics--"

"All the same thing. It's purely artificial. It's cultivated by every
modern woman. Instead of thinking in a straight line they're taught it's
correct to think in a corkscrew. You never know where to have 'em."

"That's their artfulness," said I. "Who can blame them?"

Meanwhile Liosha, pursued by Barbara, had rushed to her bedroom, where
she burst into a passion of tears. Jaff Chayne, she wailed, had always
treated her like dirt. It was true that her father had stuck pigs in the
stockyards; but he was of an old Albanian family, quite as good a family
as Jaff Chayne's. It had numbered princes and great chieftains, the
majority of whom had been most gloriously slain in warfare. She would
like to know which of Jaff Chayne's ancestors had died out of their
feather beds.

"His grandfather," said Barbara, "was killed in the Indian Mutiny, and
his father in the Zulu War."

Liosha didn't care. That only proved an equality. Jaff Chayne had no
right to treat her like dirt. He had no right to put a female policeman
over her. She was a free woman--she wouldn't go out to dinner with Jaff
Chayne for a thousand pounds. Oh, she hated him; at which renewed
declaration she burst into fresh weeping and wished she were dead. As a
guardian of young and beautiful widows Jaffery did not seem to be a
success.

Barbara, in her wise way, said very little, and searched the
paraphernalia on the dressing table for eau-de-cologne and such other
lotions as would remove the stain of tears. Holding these in front of
Liosha, like a stern nurse administering medicine, she waited till the
fit had subsided. Then she spoke.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Liosha, going on like a silly
schoolgirl instead of a grown-up woman of the world. I wonder you didn't
announce your intention of assassinating Jaffery."

"I've a good mind to," replied Liosha, nursing her grievance.

"Well, why don't you do it?" Barbara whipped up a murderous-looking
knife that lay on a little table--it was the same weapon that she had
lent the Swiss waiter. "Here's a dagger." She threw it on the girl's
lap. "I'll ring the bell and send a message for Mr. Chayne to come up.
As soon as he enters you can stick it into him. Then you can stick it
into me. Then if you like you can go downstairs and stick it into
Hilary. And having destroyed everybody who cares for you and is good to
you, you'll feel a silly ass--such a silly ass that you'll forget to
stick it into yourself."

Liosha threw the knife into a corner. On its way it snicked a neat
little chip out of a chair-back.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Clean your face," said Barbara, and presented the materials.

Sitting on the bed and regarding herself in a hand-mirror Liosha obeyed
meekly. Barbara brought the powder puff.

"Now your nose. There!" For the first time Barbara smiled. "Now you look
better. Oh, my dear girl!" she cried, seating herself beside Liosha and
putting an arm round her waist. "That's not the way to deal with men.
You must learn. They're only overgrown babies. Listen."

And she poured into unsophisticated but sympathetic ears all the
duplicity, all the treachery, all the insidious cunning and all the
serpent-like wisdom of her unscrupulous sex. What she said neither I nor
any of the sons of men are ever likely to know! but so proud of
belonging to that nefarious sisterhood, so overweening in her
sex-conceit did she render Liosha, that when they entered the little
private sitting-room next door whither, according to the instructions
conveyed by Barbara's parting glance downstairs, I had dragged a softly
swearing Jaffery, she marched up to him and said serenely:

"If you really do want me to dine with you, I'll come with pleasure. But
the next time you ask me, please do it in a decent way."

I saw mischief lurking in my wife's eye and shook my head at her
rebukingly. But Jaffery stared at Liosha and gasped. It was all very
well for Doria and Barbara to be ever putting him in the wrong: they
were daughters of a subtle civilisation; but here was Liosha, who had
once asked him to beat her, doing the same--woman was a more curious
phenomenon than ever.

"I'm sorry if my manners are not as they should be," said he with a
touch of irony. "I'll try to mend 'em. Anyhow, it's awfully good of you
to come."

She smiled and bowed; not the deep bow of Albania, but the delicate
little inclination of South Kensington. The quarrel was healed, the
incident closed. He arranged to call for her in a taxi at a quarter to
seven. Barbara looked at the clock and said that we must be going. We
rose to take our leave. Maliciously I said:

"But we've settled nothing about a remplacante for Mrs. Considine."

"I guess we've settled everything," Liosha replied sweetly. "No one can
replace Mrs. Considine."

I quite enjoyed our little silent walk downstairs. Evidently Jaffery's
theory of primitive woman had been knocked endways; and, to judge by the
faint knitting of her brow, Barbara was uneasily conscious of a mission
unfulfilled. Liosha had gained her independence.

* * * * *

Our friends carried out the evening's programme. Liosha behaved with
extreme propriety, modelling her outward demeanour upon that of Mrs.
Considine, and her attitude towards Jaffery on a literal interpretation
of Barbara's reprehensible precepts. She was so dignified that Jaffery,
lest he should offend, was afraid to open his mouth except for the
purpose of shovelling in food, which he did, in astounding quantity.
From what both of us gathered afterwards--and gleefully we compared
notes--they were vastly polite to each other. He might have been
entertaining the decorous wife of a Dutch Colonial Governor from whom he
desired facilities of travel. The simple Eve travestied in guile took
him in completely. Aware that it was her duty to treat him like an
overgrown baby and mould him to her fancy and twist him round her finger
and lead him whithersoever she willed, making him feel all the time that
he was pointing out the road, she did not know how to begin. She sat
tongue-tied, racking her brains to loss of appetite; which was a pity,
for the maitre d'hotel, given a free hand by her barbarously ignorant
host, had composed a royal menu. As dinner proceeded she grew shyer than
a chit of sixteen. Over the quails a great silence reigned. Hers she
could not touch, but she watched him fork, as it seemed to her, one
after the other, whole, down his throat: and she adored him for it. It
was her ideal of manly gusto. She nearly wept into her _Fraises
Diane_--vast craggy strawberries (in March) rising from a drift of snow
impregnated by all the distillations of all the flowers of all the
summers of all the hills--because she would have given her soul to sit
beside him on the table with the bowl on her lap and feed him with a
tablespoon and, for her share of it, lick the spoon after his every
mouthful. But it had been drummed into her that she was a woman of the
world, the fashionable and all but incomprehensible world, the English
world. She looked around and saw a hundred of her sex practising the
well-bred deportment that Mrs. Considine had preached. She reflected
that to all of those women gently nurtured in this queer English
civilisation, equally remote from Armour's stockyards and from her
Albanian fastness, the wisdom that Barbara had imparted to her a few
hours before was but their A.B.C. of life in their dealings with their
male companions. She also reflected--and for the reflection not Mrs.
Considine or Barbara, only her woman's heart was responsible--that to
the man whom she yearned to feed with great tablespoonfuls of delight,
she counted no more than a pig or a cow--her instinctive similes, you
must remember, were pastoral--or that peculiar damfool of a sister of
his, Euphemia.

When I think of these two children of nature, sitting opposite to one
another in the fashionable restaurant trying to behave like
super-civilised dolls, I cannot help smiling. They were both so
thoroughly in earnest; and they bored themselves and each other so
dreadfully. Conversation patched sporadically great expanses of silence
and then they talked of the things that did not interest them in the
least. Of course they smiled at each other, the smirk being essential to
the polite atmosphere; and of course Jaffery played host in the orthodox
manner, and Liosha acknowledged attentions with a courtesy equally
orthodox. But how much happier they both would have been on a bleak
mountain-side eating stew out of a pot! Even champagne and old brandy
failed to exercise mellowing influences. The twain were petrified in
their own awful correctitude. Perhaps if they had proceeded to a musical
comedy or a farce or a variety entertainment where Jaffery could have
expanded his lungs in laughter, their evening as a whole might have been
less dismal. But a misapprehension as to the nature of the play had
caused Jaffery to book seats for a gloomy drama with an ironical title,
which stupefied them with depression.

When they waited for the front door of the house in Queen's Gate to open
to their ring, Liosha in her best manner thanked him for a most
enjoyable evening.

"Most enjoyable indeed," said Jaffery. "We must have another, if you
will do me the honour. What do you say to this day week?"

"I shall be delighted," said Liosha.

So that day week they repeated this extraordinary performance, and the
week after that, and so on until it became a grim and terrifying
fixture. And while Jaffery, in a fog of theory as to the Eternal
Feminine, was trying to do his duty, Liosha struggled hard to smother
her own tumultuous feelings and to carry out Barbara's prescription for
the treatment of overgrown babies; but the deuce of it was that though
in her eyes Jaffery was pleasantly overgrown, she could not for the life
of her regard him as a baby. So it came to pass that an unnatural pair
continued to meet and mystify and misunderstand each other to the great
content of the high gods and of one unimportant human philosopher who
looked on.

"I told you all this artificiality was spoiling her," Jaffery growled,
one day. "She's as prim as an old maid. I can't get anything out of
her."

"That's a pity," said I.

"It is." He reflected for a moment. "And the more so because she looks
so stunning in her evening gowns. She wipes the floor with all the other
women."

I smiled. You can get a lot of quiet amusement out of your friends if
you know how to set to work.

CHAPTER XIV

It was a gorgeous April day--one of those days when young Spring in
madcap masquerade flaunts it in the borrowed mantle of summer. She could
assume the deep blue of the sky and the gold of the sunshine, but
through all the travesty peeped her laughing youth, the little tender
leaves on the trees, the first shy bloom of the lilac, the swelling of
the hawthorn buds, the pathetic immature barrenness of the walnuts.

And even the leafless walnuts were full of alien life, for in their
hollow boles chippering starlings made furtive nests, and in their
topmost forks jackdaws worked with clamorous zeal. A pale butterfly here
and there accomplished its early day, and queen wasps awakened from
their winter slumber in cosy crevices, the tiniest winter-palaces in the
world, sped like golden arrow tips to and from the homes they had to
build alone for the swarms that were to come. The flower beds shone gay
with tulips and hyacinths; in the long grass beyond the lawn and under
the trees danced a thousand daffodils; and by their side warmly wrapped
up in furs lay Doria on a long cane chair.

She could not literally dance with the daffodils as I had prophesied,
for her full strength had not yet returned, but there she was among
them, and she smiled at them sympathetically as though they were dancing
in her honour. She was, however, restored to health; the great circles
beneath her eyes had disappeared and a tinge of colour shewed beneath
her ivory cheek. Beside her, in the first sunbonnet of the year, sat
Susan, a prim monkey of nine. . . . Lord! It scarcely seemed two years
since Jaffery came from Albania and tossed the seven year old up in his
arms and was struck all of a heap by Doria at their first meeting. So
thought I, looking from my study-table at the pretty picture some thirty
yards, away. And once again--pleasant self repetition of
history--Jaffery was expected. Doria, fresh from Nice, had spent a night
at her father's house and had come down to us the evening before to
complete her convalescence. She had wanted to go straight to the flat in
St. John's Wood and begin her life anew with Adrian's beloved ghost, and
she had issued orders to servants to have everything in readiness for
her arrival, but Barbara had intervened and so had Mr. Jornicroft, a man
of limited sympathies and brutal common sense. All of us, including
Jaffery, who seemed to regard advice to Doria as a presumption only
equalled by that of a pilgrim on his road to Mecca giving hints to Allah
as to the way to run the universe, had urged her to give up the abode of
tragic memories and find a haven of quietude elsewhere. But she had
indignantly refused. The home of her wondrous married life was the home
of her widowhood. If she gave it up, how could she live in peace with
the consciousness ever in her brain that the Holy of Holies in which
Adrian had worked and died was being profaned by vulgar tread? Our
suggestions were callous, monstrous, everything that could arise from
earth-bound non-percipience of sacred things. We could only prevail upon
her to postpone her return to the flat until such time as she was
physically strong enough to grapple with changed conditions.

The pink sunbonnet was very near the dark head; both were bending over a
book on Doria's knee--_Les Malheurs de Sophie_, which Susan, proud of
her French scholarship, had proposed to read to Doria, who having just
returned from France was supposed to be the latest authority on the
language. I noticed that the severity of this intellectual communion was
mitigated by Susan's favourite black kitten, who, sitting on its little
haunches, seemed to be turning over pages rather rapidly. Then all of a
sudden, from nowhere in particular, there stepped into the landscape
(framed, you must remember, by the jambs of my door) a huge and familiar
figure, carrying a great suit-case. He put this on the ground, rushed up
to Doria, shook her by both hands, swung Susan in the air and kissed
her, and was still laughing and making the welkin ring--that is to say,
making a thundering noise--when I, having sped across the lawn, joined
the group.

"Hello!" said I, "how did you get here?"

"Walked from the station," said Jaffery. "Came down by an earlier train.
No good staying in town on such a morning. Besides--" He glanced at
Doria in significant aposiopesis.

"And you lugged that infernal thing a mile and a half?" I asked,
pointing to the suit-case, which must have weighed half a ton. "Why
didn't you leave it to be called for?"

"This? This little _sachet_?" He lifted it up by one finger and grinned.

Susan regarded the feat, awe-stricken. "Oh, Uncle Jaff, you are strong!"

Doria smiled at him admiringly and declared she couldn't lift the thing
an inch from the ground with both her hands.

"Do you know," she laughed, "when he used to carry me about, I felt as
if I had been picked up by an iron crane."

Jaffery beamed with delight. He was just a little vain of his physical
strength. A colleague of his once told me that he had seen Jaffery in a
nasty row in Caracas during a revolution, bend from his saddle and
wrench up two murderous villains by the armpits, one in each hand, and
dash their heads together over his horse's neck. But that is the sort of
story that Jaffery himself never told.

Barbara, who, flitting about the house on domestic duty, had caught
sight of him through a window, came out to greet him.

"Isn't it glorious to have her back?" he cried, waving his great hand
towards Doria. "And looking so bonny. Nothing like the South. The
sunshine gets into your blood. By Jove! what a difference, eh? Remember
when we started for Nice?"

He stood, legs apart and hands on hips, looking down on her with as much
pride as if he had wrought the miracle himself.

"Get some more chairs, dear," said Barbara.

By good fortune seeing one of the gardeners in the near distance, I
hailed him and shouted the necessary orders. That is the one
disadvantage of summer: during the whole of that otherwise happy season,
Barbara expects me to be something between a scene-shifter and a
Furniture Removing Van.

The chairs were fetched from a far-off summer house and we settled down.
Jaffery lit his pipe, smiled at Doria, and met a very wistful look. He
held her eyes for a space, and laid his great hand very gently on hers.

"I know what you're thinking of," he said, with an arresting tenderness
in his deep voice. "You won't have to wait much longer."

"Is it at the printer's?"

"It's printed."

Barbara and I gave each a little start--we looked at Jaffery, who was
taking no notice of us, and then questioningly at each other. What on
earth did the man mean?

"From to-morrow onwards, till publication, the press will be flooded
with paragraphs about Adrian Boldero's new book. I fixed it up with
Wittekind, as a sort of welcome home to you."

"That was very kind, Jaffery," said Doria; "but was it necessary? I
mean, couldn't Wittekind have done it before?"

"It was necessary in a way," said Jaffery. "We wanted you to pass the
proofs."

Doria smiled proudly. "Pass Adrian's proofs? I? I wouldn't presume to do
such a thing."

"Well, here they are, anyway," said Jaffery.

And to the bewilderment of Barbara and myself, he snapped open the hasps
of his suit-case and drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs
fastened by a clip at the left hand top corner, which he deposited on
Doria's lap. She closed her eyes and her eyelids fluttered as she
fingered the precious thing. For a moment we thought she was going to
faint. There was breathless silence. Even Susan, who had been left out
in the cold, let the black kitten leap from her knee, and aware that
something out of the ordinary was happening, fixed her wondering eyes on
Doria. Her mother and I wondered even more than Susan, for we had more
reason. Of what manuscript, in heaven's name, were these the printed
proofs? Was it possible that I had been mistaken and that Jaffery, in
the assiduity of love, had made coherence out of Adrian's farrago of
despair?

Jaffery touched Doria's hand with his finger tips. She opened her eyes
and smiled wanly, and looked at the front slip of the long proofs. At
once she sat bolt upright.

"'_The Greater Glory_.' But that wasn't Adrian's title. His title was
'_God_.' Who has dared to change it?"

[Illustration: He drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs.]

Her eyes flashed; her little body quivered. She flamed an incarnate
indignation. For some reason or other she turned accusingly on me.

"I knew nothing of the change," said I, "but I'm very glad to hear of it
now."

Many times before had I been forced to disclaim knowledge of what
Jaffery had been doing with the book.

"Wittekind wouldn't have the old title," cried Jaffery eagerly. "The
public are very narrow minded, and he felt that in certain quarters it
might be misunderstood."

"Wittekind told dear Adrian that he thought it a perfect title."

"Our dear Adrian," said I, pacifically, "was a man of enormous
will-power and perhaps Wittekind hadn't the strength to stand up against
him."

"Of course he hadn't," exclaimed Doria. "Of course he hadn't when Adrian
was alive: now Adrian's dead, he thinks he is going to do just as he
chooses. He isn't! Not while I live, he isn't!"

Jaffery looked at me from beneath bent brows and his eyes were turned to
cold blue steel.

"Hilary!" said he, "will you kindly tell Doria what we found on Adrian's
blotting pad--the last words he ever wrote?"

What he desired me to say was obvious.

"Written three or four times," said I, "we found the words: 'The Greater
Glory: A Novel by Adrian Boldero.'"

"What has become of the blotting pad?"

"The sheet seemed to be of no value, so we destroyed it with a lot of
other unimportant papers."

"And I came across further evidence," said Jaffery, "of his intention to
rename the novel."

Doria's anger died away. She looked past us into the void. "I should
like to have had Adrian's last words," she whispered. Then bringing
herself back to earth, she begged Jaffery's pardon very touchingly.
Adrian's implied intention was a command. She too approved the change.
"But I'm so jealous," she said, with a catch in her voice, "of my dear
husband's work. You must forgive me. I'm sure you've done everything
that was right and good, Jaffery." She held out the great bundle and
smiled. "I pass the proofs."

Jaffery took the bundle and laid it again on her lap. "It's awfully good
of you to say that. I appreciate it tremendously. But you can keep this
set. I've got another, with the corrections in duplicate."

She looked at the proofs wistfully, turned over the long strips in a
timid, reverent way, and abruptly handed them back.

"I can't read it. I daren't read it. If Adrian had lived I shouldn't
have seen it before it was published. He would have given me the finally
bound book--an advance copy. These things--you know--it's the same to me
as if he were living."

The tears started. She rose; and we all did the same.

"I must go indoors for a little. No, no, Barbara dear. I'd rather be
alone." She put her arm round my small daughter. "Perhaps Susan will see
I don't break my neck across the lawn."

Her voice ended in a queer little sob, and holding on to Susan, who was
mighty proud of being selected as an escort, walked slowly towards the
house. Susan afterwards reported that, dismissed at the bedroom door,
she had lingered for a moment outside and had heard Auntie Doria crying
like anything.

Barbara, who had said absolutely nothing since the miraculous draught of
proofs, advanced, a female David, up to Goliath Jaffery.

"Look here, my friend, I'm not accustomed to sit still like a graven
image and be mystified in my own house. Will you have the goodness to
explain?"

Jaffery looked down on her, his head on one side.

"Explain what?"

"That!"

She pointed to the proofs of which I had possessed myself and was
eagerly scanning. Unblenching he met her gaze.

"That is the posthumous novel of Adrian Boldero, which I, as his
literary executor, have revised for the press. Hilary saw the rough
manuscript, but he had no time to read it."

They looked at one another for quite a long time.

"Is that all you're going to tell me?"

"That's all."

"And all you're going to tell Hilary?"

"Telling Hilary is the same as telling you."

"Naturally."

"And telling you is the same as telling Hilary."

"By no manner of means," said Barbara tartly. She took him by the
sleeve. "Come and explain."

"I've explained already," said Jaffery.

Barbara eyed him like a syren of the cornfields. "I'm going to dress a
crab for lunch. A very big crab."

Jaffery's face was transfigured into a vast, hairy smile. Barbara could
dress crab like no one else in the world. She herself disliked the taste
of crab. I, a carefully trained gastronomist, adored it, but a Puckish
digestion forbade my consuming one single shred of the ambrosial
preparation. Doria would pass it by through sheer unhappiness. And it
was not fit food for Susan's tender years. Old Jaff knew this. One
gigantic crab-shell filled with Barbara's juicy witchery and flanked by
cool pink, meaty claws would be there for his own individual
delectation. Several times before had he taken the dish, with a "One
man, one crab. Ho! ho! ho!" and had left nothing but clean shells.

"I'm going to dress this crab," said Barbara, "for the sake of the
servants. But if you find I've put poison in it, don't blame me."

She left us, her little head indignantly in the air. Jaffery laughed,
sank into a chair and tugged at his pipe.

"I wish Doria could be persuaded to read the thing," said he.

"Why?" I asked looking up from the proofs.

"It's not quite up to the standard of 'The Diamond Gate.'"

"I shouldn't suppose it was," said I drily.

"Wittekind's delighted anyhow. It's a different _genre_; but he says
that's all the better."

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