Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"Rubbish!" said Barbara. "I'm talking to you for your good, and you know
it."

Meanwhile Jaffery lingered on in London, in the cheerless little eyrie
in Victoria Street, with no apparent intention of ever leaving it.
Arbuthnot of _The Daily Gazette_ satirically enquiring whether he wanted
a job or still yearned for a season in Mayfair he consigned, in his
grinning way, to perdition. Change was the essence of holiday-making,
and this was his holiday. It was many years since he had one. When he
wanted a job he would go round to the office.

"All right," said Arbuthnot, "and, in the meantime, if you want to keep
your hand in by doing a fire or a fashionable wedding, ring us up."

Whereat Jaffery roared, this being the sort of joke he liked.

The need of a holiday amid the bricks and mortar of Victoria Street may
have impressed Arbuthnot, but it did not impress me. I dismissed the
excuse as fantastic. I tackled him one day, at lunch, at the club,
assuming my most sceptical manner.

"Well," said he, "there's Doria. Somebody must look after her."

"Doria," said I, "is a young woman, now that she is in sound health,
perfectly capable of looking after herself. And if she does want a man's
advice, she can always turn to me."

"And there's Liosha."

"Liosha," I remarked judiciously, "is also a young woman capable of
looking after herself. If she isn't, she has given you very definitely
to understand that she's going to try. Have you had any more interesting
evenings out lately?"

"No," he growled. "She's offended with me because I warned her off that
low-down bounder."

"I think you did your best," said I, "to make her take up with him."

He protested. We argued the point, and I think I got the best of the
argument.

"Well, anyhow," he said with an air of infantile satisfaction, "she
can't marry him."

"Who's going to prevent her, if she wants to?"

"The law of England." He laughed, mightily pleased. "The beggar is
married already. I've found that out. He's got three or four wives in
fact--oh, a dreadful hound--but only one real one with a wedding ring,
and she lives up in the north with a pack of children."

"All the more dangerous for Liosha to associate with such a villain."

He waved the suggestion aside. No fear of that, said he. It was not
Liosha's game. Hers was an Amazonian kind of chastity. Here I agreed
with him.

"All the less reason," said I, "for you to stay in London, so as to look
after her."

"But I don't like her to be seen about in the fellow's company. She'll
get a bad name."

"Look here," said I, "the idea of a vast, hairy chap like you devoting
his life to keeping a couple of young widows out of mischief is too
preposterous. Try me with something else."

Then, being in good humour, he told me the real reason. He was writing
another book.

He was writing another novel and he did not want any one to know. He was
getting along famously. He had had the story in his head for a long
time. Glad to talk about it; sketched the outline very picturesquely.
Perhaps I was more vitally interested in the development of the man
Jaffery than in the story. A queer thing had happened. The born novelist
had just discovered himself and clamoured for artistic self-expression.
He was writing this book just because he could not help it, finding
gladness in the mere work, delighting in the mechanics of the thing, and
letting himself go in the joy of the narrative. What was going to become
of it when written, I did not enquire. It was rather too delicate a
matter. Jaffery Chayne could be nothing else than Jaffery Chayne. A new
novel published by him would resemble "The Greater Glory" as closely as
"Pendennis" resembles "Philip." And then there would be the deuce to
pay. If he published it under his own name, he would render himself
liable to the charge of having stolen a novel from the dead author of
"The Greater Glory," and so complicate this already complicated web of
literary theft; and if he threw sufficient dust into the eyes of Doria
to enable him to publish under Adrian's name, he would be performing the
task of the altruistic bees immortalised by Virgil.

Anyhow, there he was, perfectly happy, pegging away at his novel,
looking after Doria, pretending to look after Liosha, and enjoying the
society of the few cronies, chiefly adventurous birds of passage like
himself, who happened to be passing through London. Being a man of
modest needs, save need of mere bulk of simple food, he found his small
patrimony and the savings from his professional earnings quite adequate
for amenable existence. When he wanted healthy, fresh air he came down
to us to see Susan; when he wanted anything else he went to see Doria,
which was almost daily.

Doria was living now in the flat surrounded by the Lares and Penates
consecrated by Adrian. Now and then for purposes of airing and dusting,
she entered the awful room--neither servants nor friends were allowed to
cross the threshold; but otherwise it was always locked and the key lay
in her jewel case. Adrian was the focus of her being. She put heavy
tasks on Jaffery. There was to be a fitting monument on Adrian's grave,
over which she kept him busy. In her blind perversity she counted on his
cooeperation. It was he who carried through negotiations with an eminent
sculptor for a bust of Adrian, which in her will, made about that time,
she bequeathed to the nation. She ordered him to see to the inclusion of
Adrian in the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography. . . .
And all the time Jaffery obeyed her sovereign behests without a murmur
and without a hint that he desired reward for his servitude. But, to
those gifted with normal vision, signs were not wanting that he chafed,
to put it mildly, under this forced worship of Adrian; and to those who
knew Jaffery it was obvious that his one-sided arrangement could not
last forever. Doria remained blind, taking it for granted that every one
should kiss the feet of her idol and in that act of adoration find
august recompense. That the man loved her she was fully aware; she was
not devoid of elementary sense; but she accepted it, as she accepted
everything else, as her due, and perhaps rather despised Jaffery for his
meekness. Why, again, she disregarded what her instinct must have
revealed to her of the primitive passions lurking beneath the exterior
of her kind and tender ogre, I cannot understand. For one thing, she
considered herself his intellectual superior; vanity perhaps blinded her
judgment. At all events she did not realise that a change was bound to
come in their relations. It came, inevitably.

One day in June they sat together on the balcony of the St. John's Wood
flat, in the soft afternoon shadow, both conscious of queer isolation
from the world below, and from the strange world masked behind the vast
superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said
something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He
also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest
might he found true happiness. The pretty languor of early summer
laughed in the air. Their situation, 'twixt earth and heaven, had a
little sensuous charm. Doria replied sentimentally:

"Yes, a little house, covered with clematis, on a ledge of cliff, with
the sea-gulls wheeling about it--bringing messages from the sunset lands
across the blue, blue sea--" Poor dear! She forgot that sea lit by a
westering sun is of no colour at all and that the blue water lies to the
east; but no matter; Jaffery, drinking in her words, forgot it likewise.
"Away from everything," she continued, "and two people who loved--with a
great, great love--"

Her eyes were fixed on the motor omnibuses passing up and down Maida
Vale at the end of her road. Her lips were parted--the ripeness of youth
and health rendered her adorable. A flush stained her ivory cheek--you
will find the exact simile in Virgil. She was too desirable for
Jaffery's self-control. He bent forward in his chair--they were sitting
face to face, so that he had his back to the motor omnibuses--and put
his great hand on her knee.

"Why not we two?"

It was silly, sentimental, schoolboyish--what you please; but every
man's first declaration of love is bathos--the zenith of his passion
connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence. Anyhow the declaration
was made, without shadow of mistake.

Doria switched her knee away sharply, as her vision of sunset and gulls
and blue sea and a clematis-covered house vanished from before her eyes,
and she found herself on her balcony with Jaff Chayne.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You know very well what I mean."

He rose like a leviathan and made a step towards her. The three-foot
balustrade of the balcony seemed to come to his ankles. She put out a
hand.

"Oh, don't do that, Jaff. You might fall over. It makes me so nervous."

He checked himself and stood up quite straight. Again he felt as if she
had dealt him a slap in the face.

"You know very well what I mean," he repeated. "I love you and I want
you and I'll never be happy till I get you."

She looked away from him and lifted her slender shoulders.

"Why spoil things by talking of the impossible?"

"The word has no meaning. Doesn't exist," said Jaffery.

"It exists very much indeed," she returned, with a quick upward glance.

"Not with an obstinate devil like me."

He leaned against the low balustrade. She rose.

"You'll drive me into hysterics," she cried and fled to the
drawing-room.

He followed, impatiently. "I'm not such an ass as to fall off a footling
balcony. What do you take me for?"

"I take you for Adrian's friend," she said, very erect, brave elf facing
horrible ogre--and, either by chance or design, her hand touched and
held the tip of a great silver-framed photograph of her late husband.

"I think I've proved it," said Jaffery.

"Are you proving it now? What value can you attach to Adrian's memory
when you say such things to me?"

"I'm saying to you what every honest man has the right to say to the
free woman he loves."

"But I'm not a free woman. I'm bound to Adrian."

"You can't be bound to him forever and ever."

"I am. That's why it's shameful and dishonourable of you,"--his blue
eyes flashed dangerously and he clenched his hands, but heedless she
went on--"yes, mean and base and despicable of you to wish to betray
him. Adrian--"

"Oh, don't talk drivel. It makes me sick. Leave Adrian alone and listen
to a living man," he shouted, all the pent-up intellectual disgusts and
sex-jealousies bursting out in a mad gush. "A real live man who would
walk through Hell for you!" He caught her frail body in his great grasp,
and she vibrated like a bit of wire caught up by a dynamo. "My love for
you has nothing whatever to do with Adrian. I've been as loyal to him as
one man can be to another, living and dead. By God, I have! Ask Hilary
and Barbara. But I want you. I've wanted you since the first moment I
set eyes on you. You've got into my blood. You're going to love me.
You're going to marry me, Adrian or no Adrian."

He bent over her and she met the passion in his eyes bravely. She did
not lack courage. And her eyes were hard and her lips were white and her
face was pinched into a marble statuette of hate. And unconscious that
his grip was giving her physical pain he continued:

"I've waited for you. I've waited for you from the moment I heard you
were engaged to the other man. And I'll go on waiting. But, by
God!"--and, not knowing what he did, he shook her backwards and
forwards--"I'll not go on waiting for ever. You--you little bit of
mystery--you little bit of eternity--you--you--ah!"

With a great gesture he released her. But the poor ogre had not counted
on his strength. His unwitting violence sent her spinning, and she fell,
knocking her head against a sofa. He uttered a gasp of horror and in an
instant lifted her and laid her on the sofa, and on his knees beside
her, with remorse oversurging his passion, behaved like a penitent fool,
accusing himself of all the unforgivable savageries ever practised by
barbaric male. Doria, who was not hurt in the least, sat up and pointed
to the door.

"Go!" she said. "Go. You're nothing but a brute."

Jaffery rose from his knees and regarded her in the hebetude of
reaction.

"I suppose I am, Doria, but it's my way of loving you."

She still pointed. "Go," she said tonelessly. "I can't turn you out, but
if Adrian was alive--Ha! ha! ha!--" she laughed with a touch of
hysteria. "How do you dare, you barren rascal--how do you dare to think
you can take the place of a man like Adrian?"

[Illustration: "Go! You are nothing but a brute."]

The whip of her tongue lashed him to sudden fury. He picked her up
bodily and held her in spite of struggles, just as you or I would hold a
cat or a rabbit.

"You little fool," said he, "don't you know the difference between a man
and a--"

Realisation of the tragedy struck him as a spent bullet might have
struck him on the side of the head. He turned white.

"All right," said he in a changed voice. "Easy on. I'm not going to hurt
you."

He deposited her gently on the sofa and strode out of the room.

CHAPTER XVII

If the old song be true which says that it is not so much the lover who
woos as the lover's way of wooing, Jaffery seemed to have thrown away
his chances by adopting a very unfortunate way indeed. Doria proved to
Barbara, urgently summoned to a bed of prostration and nervous collapse,
that she would never set eyes again upon the unqualifiable savage by
whom her holiest sentiments had been outraged and her person
disgracefully mishandled. She poured out a blood-curdling story into
semi-sympathetic ears. Barbara made short work of her contention that
Jaffery ought to have respected her as he would have respected the wife
of a living friend, characterising it as morbid and indecent nonsense;
and with regard to the physical violence she declared that it would have
served her right had he smacked her.

"If you want to be faithful to the memory of your first husband, be
faithful," she said. "No one can prevent you. And if a good man comes
along with an honourable proposal of marriage, tell him in an honourable
way why you can't marry him. But don't accept for months all a man has
to give, and then, when he tells you what you've known perfectly well
all along, treat him as if he were making shameful proposals to
you--especially a man like Jaffery; I have no patience with you."

Doria wept. No one understood her. No one understood Adrian. No one
understood the bond there was between them. Of that she was aware. But
when it came to being brutally assaulted by Jaffery Chayne, she really
thought Barbara would sympathise. Wherefore Barbara, rather angry at
being brought up to London on a needless errand, involving loss of
dinner and upset of household arrangements, administered a
sleeping-draught and bade her wake in the morning in a less idiotic
frame of mind.

"Perhaps I behaved like a cat," Barbara said to me later--to "behave
like a cat" is her way of signifying a display of the vilest phases of
feminine nature--"but I couldn't help it. She didn't talk a great deal
of sense. It isn't as if I had never warned her about the way she has
been treating Jaffery. I have, heaps of times. And as for Adrian--I'm
sick of his name--and if I am, what must poor old Jaff be?"

This she said during a private discussion that night on the whole
situation. I say the whole situation, because, when she returned to
Northlands, she found there a haggard ogre who for the first time in his
life had eaten a canary's share of an excellent dinner, imploring me to
tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or
lie prone on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and
trample on him. He seemed rather surprised--indeed a trifle hurt--that
neither of us called him a Satyr. How could we take his part and not
Doria's--especially now that Barbara had come from the bedside of the
scandalously entreated lady? He boomed and bellowed about the
drawing-room, recapitulating the whole story.

"But, my good friend," I remonstrated, "by the showing of both of you,
she taunted you and insulted you all ends up. You--'a barren
rascal'--you? Good God!"

He flung out a deprecatory hand. What did it matter? We must take this
from her point of view. He oughtn't to have laid hands on her. He
oughtn't to have spoken to her at all. She was right. He was a savage
unfit for the society of any woman outside a wigwam.

"Oh, you make me tired," cried Barbara, at last. "I'm going to bed.
Hilary, give him a strait-waistcoat. He's a lunatic."

The household resources not including a strait-waistcoat, I could not
exactly obey her, but as he had come down luggageless, and with a large
disregard of the hours of homeward trains, I lent him a suit of my
meagre pyjamas, which must have served the same purpose.

He left the next morning. Heedless of advice he called on Doria and was
denied admittance. He wrote. His letter was returned unopened. He passed
a miserable week, unable to work, at a loose end in London during the
height of the season. In despair he went to _The Daily Gazette_ office
and proclaimed himself ready for a job. But for the moment the earth was
fairly calm and the management could find no field for Jaffery's special
activities. Arbuthnot again offered him reports of fires and fashionable
weddings, but this time Jaffery did not enjoy the fine humour of the
proposal. He blistered Arbuthnot with abuse, swung from the newspaper
office, and barged mightily down Fleet Street, a disturber of traffic.
Then he came down to Northlands for a while, where, for want of
something to do, he hired himself out to my gardener and dug up most of
the kitchen garden. His usual occupation of romping with Susan was gone,
for she lay abed with some childish ailment which Barbara feared might
turn into German measles. So when he was not perspiring over a spade or
eating or sleeping he wandered about the place in his most restless
mood. At nights he ransacked my library for gazetteers and atlases
wherein he searched for abominable places likely to afford the explorer
the most horrible life and the bleakest possible death. He was toying
with the idea of making a jaunt on his own account to Thibet, when a
merciful Providence gave him something definite to think about.

It was Saturday morning. I was shaving peacefully in my dressing-room
when Jaffery, after thunderously demanding admittance, rushed in, clad
in bath gown and slippers, flourishing a letter.

"Read that."

I recognised Liosha's handwriting. I read:

"Dear Jaff Chayne,

"As you are my Trustee, I guess I ought to tell you what I'm going
to do. I'm going to marry Ras Fendihook--"

I looked up. "But you told me the man was married already."

"He is. Read on."

"We are going to be married at once. We are going to be married at
Havre in France. Ras says that because I am a widow and an Albanian
it would be an awful trouble for me to get married in England, and
I would have to give up half my money to Government. But in France,
owing to different laws, I can get married without any fuss at all.
I don't understand it, but Ras has consulted a lawyer, so it's all
right. I suppose when I am married you won't be my trustee any
more. So, dear Jaff Chayne, I must say good-bye and thank you for
all your great kindness to me. I am sorry you and Barbara and
Hilary don't like Ras, which his real name really is Erasmus, but
you will when you know him better.

"Yours affectionately,

"LIOSHA PRESCOTT."

The amazing epistle took my breath away.

"Of all the infernal scoundrels!" I cried.

"There's going to be trouble," said Jaffery, and his look signified that
it was he who intended to cause it.

"But why Havre of all places in the world?" said I.

"I suppose it's the only one he knows," replied Jaffery. "He must have
once gone to Paris by that route. It's the cheapest."

I glanced through the letter again, and I felt a warm gush of pity for
our poor deluded Liosha.

"We must get her out of this."

"Going to," said Jaffery. "Let us have in Barbara at once."

I opened the communicating door and threw the letter into the room where
she was dressing. After a moment or two she appeared in cap and
peignoir, and the three of us in dressing-gowns, I with lather crinkling
over one-half of my face, held first an indignation meeting, and then a
council of war.

"I never dreamed the brute would do this," said Jaffery. "He couldn't
offer her marriage in the ordinary way without committing bigamy, and I
know she wouldn't consent to any other arrangement; so he has invented
this poisonous plot to get her out of England."

"And probably go through some fool form of ceremony," said Barbara.

"But how can she be such a thundering idiot as to swallow it?" asked
Jaffery.

I was going to remark that women would believe anything, but Barbara's
eye was upon me. Yet Liosha's unfamiliarity with the laws and
formalities of English marriage was natural, considering the fact that,
not so very long before, she was placidly prepared to be sold to a young
Albanian cutthroat who met his death through coming to haggle over her
price. I myself had found unworthy amusement in telling her wild fables
of English life. Her ignorance in many ways was abysmal. Once having
seen a photograph in the papers of the King in a bowler-hat she
expressed her disappointment that he wore no insignia of royalty; and
when I consoled her by saying that, by Act of Parliament, the King was
obliged to wear his crown so many hours a day and therefore wore it
always at breakfast, lunch and dinner in Buckingham Palace, she accepted
my assurance with the credulity of a child of four. And when Barbara
rebuked me for taking advantage of her innocence, she was very angry
indeed. How was she to know when and where not to believe me?

"She is fresh and ingenuous enough," said I, "to swallow any kind of
plausible story. And her ingenuousness in writing you a full account of
it is a proof."

"She has given the whole show away," said Jaffery. He smiled. "If
Fendihook knew, he would be as sick as a dog."

"And the poor dear is so honest and truthful," said Barbara. "She
thought she was doing the honourable thing in letting you know."

"No doubt modelling herself on Mrs. Jupp, late Considine," said I.

"Who let us know at the last minute," said Barbara with a quick knitting
of the brow.

"Precisely," said I.

"Good Lord!" cried Jaffery. "Do you think she's gone off with the fellow
already?"

"You had better ring up Queen's Gate and find out."

He rushed from the room. I hastily finished shaving, while Barbara
discoursed to me on the neglect of our duties with regard to Liosha.

Presently Jaffery burst in like a rhinoceros.

"She's gone! She went on Thursday. And this is Saturday. Fendihook left
last Sunday. Evidently she has joined him."

We regarded each other in dismay.

"They're in Havre by now," said Barbara.

"I'm not so sure," said Jaffery, sweeping his beard from moustache
downward. This I knew to be a sign of satisfaction. When he was puzzled
he scrabbled at the whisker. "I'm not so sure. Why should he leave the
boarding-house on Sunday? I'll tell you. Because his London engagement
was over and he had to put in a week's engagement at some provincial
music-hall. Theatrical folks always travel on Sunday. If he was still
working in London and wanted to shift his lodgings he wouldn't have
chosen Sunday. We can easily see by the advertisements in the morning
paper. His London engagement was at the Atrium."

"I've got the _Daily Telegraph_ here," said Barbara.

She fetched it from her room, in the earthquake-stricken condition to
which she, as usual, had reduced it, and after earnest search among the
ruins disinterred the theatrical advertisement page. The attractions at
the Atrium were set out fully; but the name of Ras Fendihook did not
appear.

"I'm right," said Jaffery. "The brute's not in town. Now where did she
write from?" He fished the envelope from his bath-gown pocket.
"Postmark, 'London, S.W., 5.45 p.m.' Posted yesterday afternoon. So
she's in London." He glanced at the letter, which was written on her own
note-paper headed with the Queen's Gate address, and then held it up
before us. "See anything queer about this?"

We looked and saw that it was dated "Thursday."

"There's something fishy," said he. "Can I have the car?"

"Of course."

"I'm going to run 'em both to earth. I want Barbara to come along. I can
tackle men right enough, but when it comes to women, I seem to be a bit
of an ass. Besides--you'll come, won't you?"

"With pleasure, if I can get back early this afternoon."

"Early this afternoon? Why, my dear child, I want you to be prepared to
come to Havre--all over France, if necessary."

"You've got rather a nerve," said I, taken aback by the vast coolness of
the proposal.

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