Jaffery by William J. Locke

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Susan emerged from my study door on to the terrace.

"My good fellow," said I, "yonder is the daughter of the house,
evidently at a loose end. Go and entertain her. I'm going to read this
wonderful novel and don't want to be disturbed till lunch."

The good-humoured giant lumbered away, and Susan finding herself in
undisputed possession took him off to remote recesses of the kitchen
garden, far from casual intruders. Meanwhile I went on reading, very
much puzzled. Naturally the style was not that of "The Diamond Gate,"
which was the style of Tom Castleton and not of Adrian Boldero. But was
what I read the style of Adrian Boldero? This vivid, virile opening?
This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously
meeting on the old tramp steamer? This cunning, evocation of smells,
jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room? This expert
knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship? How
had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his
life, gained the knowledge? The people too were lustily drawn. They had
a flavour of the sea and the breeziness of wide spaces; a deep-lunged
folk. So that I should not be interrupted I wandered off to a secluded
nook of the garden down the drive away from the house and gave myself up
to the story. From the first it went with a rare swing, incident
following incident, every trait of character presented objectively in
fine scorn of analysis. There were little pen pictures of grim scenes
faultless in their definition and restraint. There was a girl in it, a
wild, clean-limbed, woodland thing who especially moved my admiration.
The more I read the more fascinated did I become, and the more did I
doubt whether a single line in it had been written by Adrian Boldero.

After a long spell, I took out my watch. It was twenty past one. We
lunched at half-past. I rose, went towards the house and came upon
Jaffery and Susan. The latter I despatched peremptorily to her
ablutions. Alone with Jaffery, I challenged him.

"You hulking baby," said I, "what's the good of pretending with me? Why
didn't you tell me at once that you had written it yourself?"

He looked at me anxiously. "What makes you think so?"

"The simple intelligence possessed by the average adult. First," I
continued, as he made no reply but stood staring at me in ingenuous
discomfort, "you couldn't have got this out of poor Adrian's mush;
secondly, Adrian hadn't the experience of life to have written it;
thirdly, I have read many brilliant descriptive articles in _The Daily
Gazette_ and have little difficulty in recognising the hand of Jaffery
Chayne."

"Good Lord!" said he. "It isn't as obvious as all that?"

I laughed. "Then you did write it?"

"Of course," he growled. "But I didn't want you to know. I tried to get
as near Tom Castleton as I could. Look here"--he gripped my
shoulder--"if it's such a transparent fraud, what the blazes is going
to happen?"

To some extent I reassured him. I was in a peculiar position, having
peculiar knowledge. Save Barbara, no other soul in the world had the
faintest suspicion of Adrian's tragedy. The forthcoming book would be
received without shadow of question as the work of the author of "_The
Diamond Gate_." The difference of style and treatment would be
attributed to the marvellous versatility of the dead genius. . . .
Jaffery's brow began to clear.

"What do you think of it--as far as you've gone?"

My enthusiastic answer expressed the sincerity of my appreciation. He
positively blushed and looked at me rather guiltily, like a schoolboy
detected in the act of helping an old woman across the road.

"It's awful cheek," said he, "but I was up against it. The only
alternative was to say the damn thing had been lost or burnt and take
the consequences. Somehow I thought of this. I had written about half of
it all in bits and pieces about three or four years ago and put it
aside. It wasn't my job. Then I pulled it out one day and read it and it
seemed rather good, so, having the story in my head, I set to work."

"And that's why you didn't go to Persia?"

"How the devil could I go to Persia? I couldn't write a novel on the
back of a beastly camel!"

He walked a few steps in silence. Then he said with a rumble of a laugh.

"I had an awful fright about that time. I suddenly dried up; couldn't
get along. I must have spent a week, night after night, staring at a
blank sheet of paper. I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew
and was going the way of Adrian. By George, it taught me something of
the Hades the poor fellow must have passed through. I've been in pretty
tight corners in my day and I know what it is to have the cold fear
creeping down my spine; but that week gave me the fright of my life."

"I wish you had told me," said I, "I might have helped. Why didn't you?"

"I didn't like to. You see, if this idea hadn't come off, I should have
looked such a stupendous ass."

"That's a reason," I admitted.

"And I didn't tell you at first because you would have thought I was
going off my chump. I don't look the sort of chap that could write a
novel, do I? You would have said I was attempting the impossible, like
Adrian. You and Barbara would have been scared to death and you would
have put me off."

Franklin came from the house. Luncheon was on the table. We hurried to
the dining-room. Jaffery sat down before a gigantic crab.

"Is it all right?" he asked.

"Doria has interceded for you," said Barbara. "You owe her your life."

Doria smiled. "It's the least I could do for you."

Jaffery grinned by way of delicate rejoinder and immersed himself in
crab. From its depths, as it seemed, he said:

"Hilary has read half the book."

"What do you think of it?" Barbara asked.

I repeated my dithyrambic eulogy. Doria's eyes shone.

"I do wish you could see your way to read it," said Jaffery.

"I would give my heart to," said Doria. "But I've told you why I can't."

"Circumstances alter cases," said I, platitudinously. "In happier
circumstances you would have been presented with the novelist's fine,
finished product. As it happens, Jaffery has had to fill up little gaps,
make bridges here and there. I'm sure if you had been well enough," I
added, with a touch of malice, for I had not quite forgiven his leaving
me in the dark, "Jaffery would have consulted you on many points."

I was very anxious to see what impression the book would make upon her.
Although I had reassured Jaffery, I could, scarcely conceive the
possibility of the book being taken as the work of Adrian.

"Of course I would," said Jaffery eagerly. "But that's just it. You
weren't equal to the worry. Now you're all right and I agree with
Hilary. You ought to read it. You see, some of the bridges are so jolly
clumsy."

Doria turned to my wife. "Do you think I would be justified?"

"Decidedly," said Barbara. "You ought to read it at once."

So it came to pass that, after lunch, Doria came into my study and
demanded the set of proofs. She took them up to her bedroom, where she
remained all the afternoon. I was greatly relieved. It was right that
she should know what was going to be published under Adrian's name.

In Jaffery's presence, I disclosed to Barbara the identity of the
author. He said to her much the same as he had said to me before lunch,
with, perhaps, a little more shamefacedness. Were it not for reiteration
upon reiteration of the same things in talk, life would be a stark
silence broken only by staccato announcement of facts. At last Barbara's
eyes grew uncomfortably moist. Impulsively she flew to Jaffery and put
her arms round his vast shoulders--he was sitting, otherwise she could
not have done it--and hugged him.

"You're a blessed, blessed dear," she said; and ashamed of this
exhibition of sentiment she bolted from the room.

Jaffery, looking very shy and uncomfortable, suggested a game of
billiards.

To Barbara and myself awaiting our guests in the drawing-room before
dinner, the first to come was Doria, whom we hadn't seen since lunch; an
arresting figure in her low evening dress; you can imagine a Tanagra
figure in black and white ivory. Her face, however, was a passion of
excitement.

"It's wonderful," she cried. "More than wonderful. Even I didn't know
till to-day what a great genius Adrian was. All these things he
describes--he never saw them. He imagined, created. Oh, my God! If only
he had lived to finish it." She put her two hands before her eyes and
dashed them swiftly away--"Jaffery has done his best, poor fellow. But
oh! the bridges he speaks of--they're so crude, so crude! I can see
every one. The murder--you remember?"

It occurred in the first part of the novel. I had read it. Three or four
splashes of blood on the page instead of ink and the thing was done.
Admirable. The instinctive high light of the artist.

"I thought it one of the best things in the book," said I.

"Oh!" she waved a gesture of disgust. "How can you say so? It's
horrible. It isn't Adrian. I can see the point where he left it to the
imagination. Jaffery, with no imagination, has come in and spoiled it.
And then the scene on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco, where Fenton
finds Ellina Ray, the broken-down star of London musical comedy. Adrian
never wrote it. It's the sort of claptrap he hated. He has often told me
so. Jaffery thought it was necessary to explain Ellina in the next
chapter, and so in his dull way, he stuck it in."

That scene also had I read. It was a little flaming cameo of a low dive
on the Barbary Coast, and a presentation of the thing seen, somewhat
journalistic, I admit--but such as very few journalists could give.

"That's pure Adrian," said I brazenly.

"It isn't. There are disgusting little details that only a man that had
been there could have mentioned. Oh! do you suppose I don't know the
difference between Adrian's work and that of a penny-a-liner like
Jaffery?"

The door opened and Jaffery appeared. Doria went up to him and took him
by the lapels of his dress coat.

"I've read it. It's a work of genius. But, oh! Jaffery, I do want it to
be without a flaw. Don't hate me, dear--I know you've done all that
mortal man could do for Adrian and for me. But it isn't your fault if
you're not a professional novelist or an imaginative writer. And you,
yourself, said the bridges were clumsy. Couldn't you--oh!--I loathe
hurting you, dear Jaffery--but it's all the world, all eternity to
me--couldn't you get one of Adrian's colleagues--one of the famous
people"--she rattled off a few names--"to look through the proofs and
revise them--just in honour of Adrian's memory? Couldn't you, dear
Jaffery?" She tugged convulsively at the poor old giant's coat. "You're
one of the best and noblest men who ever lived or I couldn't say this to
you. But you understand, don't you?"

Jaffery's ruddy face turned as white as chalk. She might have slapped it
physically and it would have worn the same dazed, paralysed lack of
expression.

"My life," said he, in a queer toned voice, that wasn't Jaffery's at
all, "my life is only an expression of your wishes. I'll do as you say."

"It's for Adrian's sake, dear Jaffery," said Doria.

Jaffery passed his great glazed hand over his stricken face, from the
roots of his hair to the point of his beard, and seemed to wipe
therefrom all traces of day-infesting cares, revealing the sunny
Reubens-like features that we all loved.

"But apart from my amateur joining of the flats, you think the book's
worthy of Adrian?"

"Oh, I do," she cried passionately. "I do. It's a work of genius. It's
Adrian in all his maturity, in all his greatness!"

The door opened.

"Dinner is served, madam," said Franklin.

CHAPTER XV

When, by way of comforting Jaffery, I criticised Doria's outburst, he
fell upon me as though about to devour me alive. After what he had done
for her, said I, given up one of the great chances of his career,
carried her bodily from London to Nice, and made her a present of a
brilliant novel so as to save Adrian's memory from shame, she ought to
go on her knees and pray God to shower blessings on his head. As it was,
she deserved whipping.

Jaffery called me, among other things, an amazing ass--he has an Eastern
habit of, facile vituperation--and roared about the drawing-room. The
ladies, be it understood, had retired.

"You don't seem to grip the elements of the situation. You haven't the
intelligence of a rabbit. How in Hades could she know I've written the
rotten book? She thinks it's Adrian's. And she thinks I've spoiled it.
She's perfectly justified. For the little footling services I rendered
her on the journey, she's idiotically grateful--out of all proportion.
As for Persia, she knows nothing about it--"

"She ought to," said I.

"If you tell her, I'll break your neck," roared Jaffery.

"All right," said I, desiring to remain whole. "So long as you're
satisfied, it doesn't much matter to me."

It didn't. After all, one has one's own life to live, and however
understanding of one's friends and sympathetically inclined towards
them one may be, one cannot follow them emotionally through all their
bleak despairs and furious passions. A man doing so would be dead in a
week.

"It doesn't seem to strike you," he went on, "that the poor girl's
mental and moral balance depends on the successful carrying out of this
ghastly farce."

"I do, my dear chap."

"You don't. I wrote the thing as best I could--a labour of love. But
it's nothing like Tom Castleton's work--which she thinks is Adrian's. To
keep up the deception I had to crab it and say that the faults were
mine. Naturally she believes me."

"All right," said I, again. "And when the book is published and Adrian's
memory flattered and Doria is assured of her mental and moral
balance--what then?"

"I hope she'll be happy," he answered. "Why the blazes do you suppose
I've worried if it wasn't to give her happiness?"

I could not press my point. I could not commit the gross indelicacy of
saying: "My poor friend, where do you come in?" or words to that effect.
Nor could I possibly lay down the proposition that a living second
husband--stretching the imagination to the hypothesis of her taking
one--is but an indifferent hero to the widow who spends her life in
burning incense before the shrine of the demigod husband who is dead. We
can't say these things to our friends. We expect them to have common
sense as we have ourselves. But we don't, and--for the curious reason,
based on the intense individualism of sexual attraction, that no man can
appreciate, save intellectually, another man's desire for a particular
woman--we can't realize the poor, fool hunger of his heart. The man who
pours into our ears a torrential tale of passion moves us not to
sympathy, but rather to psychological speculation, if we are kindly
disposed, or to murderous inclinations if we are not. On the other
hand, he who is silent moves us not at all. In any and every case,
however, we entirely fail to comprehend why, if Neaera is obdurate, our
swain does not go afield and find, as assuredly he can, some complaisant
Amaryllis.

I confess, honestly, that during this conversation I felt somewhat
impatient with my dear, infatuated friend. There he was, casting the
largesse of his soul at the feet of a blind woman, a woman blinded by
the bedazzlement of a false fire, whose flare it was his religion to
intensify. There he was doing this, and he did not see the imbecility of
it! In after time we can correlate incidents and circumstances, viewing
them in a perspective more or less correct. We see that we might have
said and done a hundred helpful things. Well, we know that we did not,
and there's an end on't. I felt, as I say, impatient with Jaffery,
although--or was it because?--I recognised the bald fact that he was in
love with Doria to the maximum degree of besottedness.

You see, when you say to a man: "Why do you let the woman kick you?" and
he replies, with a glare of indignation: "She has deigned to touch my
unworthy carcass with her sacred boot!" what in the world are you to do,
save resume the interrupted enjoyment of your cigar? This I did. I also
found amusement in comparing his meek wooing, like that of an early
Italian amorist, with his rumbustious theories as to marriage by capture
and other primitive methods of bringing woman to heel.

Doria, seeing him unresentful of kicking, continued to kick (when
Barbara wasn't looking--for Barbara had read her a lecture on the polite
treatment of trustees and executors) and made him more her slave than
ever. He fetched and carried. He read poetry. He was Custodian of the
Sacred Rubbers, when the grass was damp. He shielded her from over-rough
incursions on the part of Susan. He chanted the responses in her Litany
of Saint Adrian. He sacrificed his golf so that he could sit near her
and hold figurative wool for her to unwind. It was very pretty to watch
them. The contrast between them made its unceasing appeal. Besides,
Doria did not kick all the time; there were long spells during which,
touched by the giant's devotion, she repaid it in tokens of tender
regard. At such times she was as fascinating an elf as one could wish to
meet on a spring morning. He could bring, like no one else, the smile
into her dark, mournful eyes. There is no doubt that, in her way and as
far as her Adrian-bound emotional temperament permitted, she felt
grateful to Jaffery. She also felt safe in his company. He was like a
great St. Bernard dog, she declared to Barbara.

These idyllic relations continued unruffled for some days, until a
letter arrived from the eminent novelist to whom, with Doria's approval,
Jaffery had sent the proofs.

"A marvellous story," was the great man's verdict; "singularly different
from 'The Diamond Gate,' only resembling it in its largeness of
conception and the perfection of its kind. The alteration of a single
word would spoil it. If an alien hand is there, it is imperceptible."

At this splendid tribute Jaffery beamed with happiness. He tossed the
letter to Barbara across the breakfast table.

"No alien hand perceptible. Ho! ho! ho! But it's stunning, isn't it? I
do believe the old fraud of a book is going to win through. This ought
to satisfy Doria, don't you think so?"

"It ought to," said Barbara. "I'll send it up to her room."

But Doria with Adrian's impeccability on the brain--and how could a work
of Adrian's be impeccable when an alien hand, however imperceptible,
had touched it?--was not satisfied. Towards noon, when she came
downstairs, she met Jaffery on the terrace, with a familiar little
knitting of the brow before which his welcoming smile faded.

"It's all right up to a point," she said, handing him back the letter.
"Nobody with the rudiments of a brain could fail to recognise the merits
of Adrian's work. But no novelist is possessed of the critical faculty."

"Then why," asked Jaffery, after the way of men, "did you ask me to send
him the novel?"

"I took it for granted he had common sense," replied Doria, after the
way of women.

"And he hasn't any?"

"Read the thing again."

Jaffery scanned the page mechanically and looked up: "Well, what's to be
done now?"

"I should like to compare the proofs with Adrian's original manuscript.
Where is it?"

Here was the question we had all dreaded. Jaffery lied convincingly.

"It went to the printers, my dear, and of course they've destroyed it."

"I thought everything was typed nowadays."

"Typing takes time," replied Jaffery serenely. "And I'm not an advocate
of feather-beds and rose-water baths for printers. As I wanted to rush
the book out as quickly as possible, I didn't see why I should pamper
them with type. Have you the original manuscript of 'The Diamond Gate'?"

"No," said Doria.

"Well--don't you see?" said Jaffery, with a smile.

For the first time I praised Old Man Jornicroft. He had brought up his
daughter far from the madding mechanics of the literary life. To my
great relief, Doria swallowed the incredible story.

"It was careless of you not to have given special instructions for the
manuscript to be saved, I must say. But if it's gone, it's gone. I'm not
unreasonable."

"I think you are," said Barbara, who had been arranging flowers in the
drawing-room, and had emerged onto the terrace. "You made Jaffery submit
his careful editing to an expert, and you're honourably bound to accept
the expert's verdict."

"I do accept it," she retorted with a toss of her head and a flash of
her eyes. "Have I ever said I didn't? But I'm at liberty to keep to my
own opinion."

Jaffery scratched his whiskers and beard and screwed up his face as he
did in moments of perplexity.

"What exactly do you want changed?" he asked.

"Just those few coarse touches you admit are yours."

"Adrian wanted to get an atmosphere of rye-whisky and bad tobacco--not
tea and strawberries." The eminent novelist's encomium had aroused the
artist's pride in his first-born. An altered word would spoil the book.
"My dear girl," said he, stretching out his great hand, from beneath
which she wriggled an impatient shoulder, "my dear Doria," said he, very
gently, "the possessor of the Order of Merit is both a critic and a man
of common sense. Anyway, he knows more about novels than either of us
do. If it weren't for him I would give you the proofs to blue pencil as
much as you liked. But I'm sure you would make a thundering mess of it."

Doria made a little gesture--a bit of a shrug--a bit of a resigned
flicker of her hands.

"Of course, do as you please, dear Jaffery. I'm quite alone, a woman
with nobody to turn to"--she smiled with her lips, but there was no
coordination of her eyes--"as I said before, I pass the proofs."

She went quickly through the drawing-room door into the house, leaving
Jaffery still scratching a red whisker.

"Oh, Lord!" said he, ruefully, "I've gone and done it now!"

He turned to follow her, but Barbara interposed her small body on the
threshold.

"Don't be a silly fool, Jaff. You've pandered quite enough to her morbid
vanity. It's your book, isn't it? You have given it birth. You know
better than anybody what is vital to it. Just you send those proofs
straight back to the publisher. If you let her persuade you to change
one word, as true as I'm standing here, I'll tell her the whole thing,
and damn the consequences!"

My exquisite Barbara's rare "damns" were oaths in the strictest sense.
They connoted the most irrefragable of obligations. She would no more
think of breaking a "damn" than her marriage vows or a baby's neck.

"Of course, I'm not going to let her touch the thing," said Jaffery.
"But I don't want her to look on me as a bullying brute."

"It would be better, both for you and her, if she did," snapped Barbara.
"The ordinary woman's like the dog and the walnut tree. It's only the
exceptional woman that can take command."

I, who had been sitting calm, on the low parapet beneath the tenderly
sprouting wistaria arbour, broke my philosophic silence.

"Observe the exceptional woman," said I.

* * * * *

For a day or so Doria stood upon her dignity, treating Jaffery with cold
politeness. In the mornings she allowed him to wrap her up in her garden
chair and attend to her comforts, and then, settled down, she would open
a volume of Tolstoi and courteously signify his dismissal. Jaffery with
a hang-dog expression went with me to the golf-course, where he drove
with prodigious muscular skill, and putted execrably. Had it not been a
question of good taste, to say nothing of human sentiment, I would have
reminded him that the thing he was hitting so violently was only a
little white ball and not poor Adrian's skull. If ever a man was loyal
to a dead friend Jaffery Chayne was loyal to Adrian Boldero. But poor
old Jaffery was being checked in every vital avenue, not by the memory
of the man whom he had known and loved, but by his cynical and
masquerading ghost. It is not given to me, thank God! to know from
direct speech what Jaffery thought of Adrian--for Jaffery is too
splendid a fellow to have ever said a word in depreciation of his once
living friend and afterward dead rival; but both I, who do not aspire to
these Quixotic heights and only, with masculine power of generalisation,
deduce results from a quiet eye's harvest of mundane phenomena, and
Barbara, whose rapier intuition penetrates the core of spiritual things,
could, with little difficulty, divine the passionate struggle between
love and hatred, between loyalty and tenderness, between desire and duty
that took place in the soul of this chivalrous yet primitive and vastly
appetited gentleman.

You may think I am trying to present Jaffery as a hero of romance. I am
not. I am merely trying to put before you, in my imperfect way, a
barbarian at war with civilised instincts; a lusty son of Pantagruel
forced into the incongruous role of Sir Galahad. . . . During the term
of his punishment he behaved in a bearish and most unheroic manner. At
last, however, Doria forgave him, and, smiling on him once more,
permitted him to read Tolstoi aloud to her. Whereupon he mended his
manners.

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