Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"'Clear out. This is no place for you.'

"'I'm coming. Go along down.'

"She put her foot on the rung just below my face. I gripped as much
of her ankle as the stiff leather allowed.

"'Clear out. Don't be a fool.'

"Andrews, the first mate, poured out a flood of blasphemy. What the
this, that and the other were we waiting for?

"'Mr. Andrews,' I shouted, 'send this woman to her cabin.'

"'Oh, go to hell! Tumble down every one of you, or I'll damn soon
make you,' cried Andrews.

"He was in a vile temper, being responsible for the snugness of the
cargo, and the cargo lay about as snug as a dormitory of devils. He
was sorry afterwards, poor chap, for his lack of courtesy, but at
the moment he didn't care who went down into the hold, or who was
killed, so long as this infernal cargo was righted and the crazy
old tub didn't go down.

"So I descended. It was ordained. Liosha followed. And once down we
were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and
peril. Andrews and second were there yelling orders. We obeyed in
some subconscious way. How we heard I don't know. For peace and
quiet give me a battlefield. Twenty men in semi-darkness, scarce
able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a ton each. The
huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the
quay-side, but charging about that swaying, rocking lower deck,
they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of Hell's anger. I don't
know what I did. All I can say is that I never before felt my
muscles about to snap--queer feeling that--and I think I'm about as
tough as they make 'em.

"Liosha worked as well as any man in the bunch. I only caught sight
of her now and then . . . you see what we had to do, don't
you? . . . We had to secure all these infernal things that were
running amuck and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got
jammed on the port side. There were accidents. Three or four were
knocked out. Petersen, the Swede, had his leg crushed. I don't know
what was wrong at the time. He was working next me, and a roll of
the ship brought an ugly crate over him. He couldn't get up. He
looked ghastly. So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the
iron ladder and reached the deck somehow, and staggered along,
barging into everything--it was blowing half a gale--and once I
fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil. But I picked him up
and got him into the fo'c'sle and stuck him in a bunk. The Portugee
cook, sick of fever--I think he's a blighted malingerer--was the
only creature there. I routed him out, in the dim mephitic place
reeking of sour bedding, and put Petersen in his charge. Then I
went back through the drenching seas to the hatch. There was just
enough room for a man's body to squeeze through down the ladder. I
went down into the same hell-broth of sweat and confusion. The
ground you stood upon might have been the back of a super-Titanic
butterfly. Stability was a nonexistent term. It was a helpless
scuttering surge of men and vast wooden cubes. Most of the men had
torn off their upper garments and fought half naked, the sweat
glistening on their skins in the feeble light. Soon the heat became
unbearable and I too tore off jersey and shirt. Liosha joined me
and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had
come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might
tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody
else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's
called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of
covering her from her waist.

"You had to get like flies round these infernal things and wait
your time--if you could--for the roll, and push and then scramble
with ropes and make fast; awl at the same time dance out of the way
of the slithering hulks that bore down on you with fantastic
murderousness. And through it all thundered the roaring of the
storm, the grind of the engines, the shattering of the propeller
lifted above the waves, and the shrieks and creakings of every
plank and plate of this steam-driven old Noah's Ark.

"We had just, with exhausted muscles, made a whole stack fast, and
were standing by, panting, haggard eyed, the sweat running down
anyhow, twenty of us, Dagoes, Dutchmen, Englishmen, in the dim
twilight--just a shaft of pale illumination coming slick down the
ladder where the hatch was open,--hanging on to edges and corners
of cargo, when suddenly the ship, caught on top of a wave, vibrated
in a sickening shudder, plunged, and then with an impetus of
cataclysm wallowed to starboard. Andrews shrieked, 'Stand clear!'
Most of the men leaped and flung themselves away. But I stumbled
and fell. Before I realized the danger of a vast sliding crate,
two strong arms were curled round my waist and I was flung aside,
to slither and roll down the swaying deck until I was stopped by
the bulkhead. When I picked myself up, I saw half the men securing
the crate and the other half grovelling around something on the
deck. It was Liosha. She lay white and senseless with blood
streaming from her head.

[Illustration: Before I realized the danger . . . I was flung
aside.]

"In a mortal funk I took her up the ladder with the help of another
fellow, and carried her to her cabin. I never before realised the
appalling length of this vessel. We got her into her bunk aft; I
sent the other chap for brandy and first-aid appliances from the
ship's stores, and did what I could to discover how far she was
injured. . . .

"Thank God, nothing worse had happened than a nasty scalp wound.
But her escape had been miraculous. She had saved my life; for as I
lay on the deck, the crate charging direct would have squashed my
skull into jelly, and crushed my body against the side of the hold.
A fraction of a second later and it would have been her skull and
her body instead of mine; but she just managed to roll practically
clear until she got caught by the swerving side of the crate. I
hope you'll understand what a heroic thing she did. She faced what
seemed to be certain death for me; and it is thanks to Liosha that
I'm able to tell you that I'm alive. And she, God bless her, walks
about with her head bandaged, among an adoring ship's company, and
refuses to admit having done anything wonderful."

And, indeed, to confirm Jaffery's last statement, here is a bit of a
scrawl from Liosha--her complete account of the incident:

"We've just had the most awful storm I ever did see. The cargo go
loose in the hold and we had to fix it up. I got a cut on the head
and had to stay in bed till the storm finished. I must say it gave
me an awful headache, but there I guess I'm better now."

Well, that seems to be the most exciting thing that happened to them.
Afterwards, in the mind of each, it loomed as the great event in the
amazing voyage. A man does not forget having his life saved by a woman
at the risk of her own; and a woman, no matter how heroic in action and
how magnanimous in after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he
had been credited (to his ingenuous delight) by reviewers of "The
Greater Glory" with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's
nature, I have never met a more dunder-headed blunderer in his dealings
with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on
Liosha's part, but seems to have been absolutely fogged in diagnosis.

"Liosha flourishes," he writes in one of his last _Vesta_ letters,
"like a virgin forest of green bay trees. Gosh! She's splendid. I
take back and swallow every presumptuous word I've said about her.
And, I suppose, owing to our knockabout sort of intimacy, she has
adopted a protective, motherly attitude towards me. In her great,
spacious, kind way, she gives you the impression that she owns
Jaffery Chayne, and knows exactly what is for his good. Women's
ways are wonderful but weird."

He must have thought himself vastly clever with his alliterative
epigram. But he hadn't the faintest idea of the fount of Liosha's
motherliness.

"Owing to our knockabout sort of intimacy"! Oh, the silly ass!

CHAPTER XXII

It was not until the end of October that Doria completed her round of
country-house visits and returned to the flat in St. John's Wood. The
morning after her arrival in town she took my satirical counsel and
called at Wittekind's office, and, I am afraid, tried to bite that very
pleasant, well-intentioned gentleman. She went out to do battle,
arraying herself in subtle panoply of war. This I gather from Barbara's
account of the matter. She informs me that when a woman goes to see her
solicitor, her banker, her husband's uncle, a woman she hates, or a man
who really understands her, she wears in each case an entirely different
kind of hat. Judging from a warehouse of tissue-paper-covered millinery
at the top of my residence, which I once accidentally discovered when
tracking down a smell of fire, I know that this must be true. Costumes
also, Barbara implies, must correspond emotionally with the hats. I
recognised this, too, as philosophic truth; for it explained many
puzzling and apparently unnecessary transformations in my wee wife's
personal appearance. And yet, the other morning when I was going up to
town to see after some investments, and I asked her which was the more
psychological tie, a green or a violet, in which to visit my
stockbroker, she lost as much of her temper as she allows herself to
lose and bade me not he silly. . . . But this has nothing to do with
Doria.

Doria, I say, with beaver cocked and plumes ruffled, intent on striking
terror into the heart of Wittekind, presented herself in the outer
office and sent in her card. At the name of Mrs. Adrian Boldero, doors
flew open, and Doria marched straight away into Wittekind's comfortably
furnished private room. Wittekind himself, tall, loose-limbed,
courteous, the least tradesman-like person you can imagine, rose to
receive her. For some reason or the other, or more likely against
reason, she had pictured a rather soapy, smug little man hiding crafty
eyes behind spectacles; but here he was, obviously a man of good
breeding, who smiled at her most charmingly and gave her to understand
that she was the one person in the world whom he had been longing to
meet. And the office was not a sort of human _charcuterie_ hung round
with brains of authors for sale, but a quiet, restful place to which
valuable prints on the walls and a few bits of real Chippendale gave an
air of distinction. Doria admits to being disconcerted. She had come to
bite and she remained to smile. He seated her in a nice old armchair
with a beautiful back--she was sensitive to such things--and spoke of
Adrian as of his own blood brother. She had not anticipated such warmth
of genuine feeling, or so fine an appreciation of her Adrian's work.

"Believe me, my dear Mrs. Boldero," said he, "I am second only to you in
my admiration and grief, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep your
husband's memory green. But it is green, thank goodness. How do I know?
By two signs. One that people wherever the English language is spoken
are eagerly reading his books--I say reading, because you deprecate the
purely commercial side of things; but you must forgive me if I say that
the only proof of all their reading is the record of all their buying.
And when people buy and read an author to this prodigious extent, they
also discuss him. Adrian Boldero's name is a household word. You want
advertisement and an _edition de luxe_. But it is only the little man
that needs the big drum."

"But still, Mr. Wittekind," Doria urged, "an _edition de luxe_ would be
such a beautiful monument to him. I don't care a bit about the money,"
she went on with a splendid disregard of her rights that would have sent
a shiver down the incorporated back of the Incorporated Society of
Authors, "I'm only too willing to contribute towards the expense. Please
understand me. It's a tribute and a monument."

"You only put up monuments to those who are dead," said Wittekind.

"But my husband--"

"--isn't dead," said he.

"Oh!" said Doria. "Then--"

"The time for your _edition de luxe_ is not yet."

"Yet? But--you don't think Adrian's work is going to die?"

She looked at him tragically. He reassured her.

"Certainly not. Our future sumptuous edition will be a sign that he is
among the immortals. But an _edition de luxe_ now would be a wanton _Hic
jacet_."

All of this may have been a bit sophistical, but it was sound business
from the publisher's point of view, and conveyed through the medium of
Wittekind's unaffected urbanity it convinced Doria. I listened to her
account of it with a new moon of a smile across my soul--or across
whatever part of oneself one smiles with when one's face is constrained
to immobility.

"I'm so glad I plucked up courage to come and see you, Mr. Wittekind,"
she said. "I feel much happier. I'm quite content to leave Adrian's
reputation in your hands. I wish, indeed, I had come to see you before."
"I wish you had," said he.

"Mr. Chayne has been most kind; but--"

"Jaffery Chayne isn't you," he laughed. "But all the same, he's a
splendid fellow and an admirable man of business."

"In what way?" she asked, rather coldly.

"Well--so prompt."

"That's the very last word I should apply to him. He took an
unconscionable time," said Doria.

"He had a very difficult and delicate work of revision to do. Your
husband's work was a first draft. The novel had to be pulled together.
He did it admirably. That sort of thing takes time, although it was a
labour of love."

"It merely meant writing in bits of scenes. Oh, Mr. Wittekind," she
cried, reverting to an old grievance, "I do wish I could see exactly
what he wrote and what Adrian wrote. I've been so worried! Why do your
printers destroy authors' manuscripts?"

"They don't," said Wittekind. "They don't get them nowadays. They print
from a typed copy."

"'The Greater Glory' was printed from my husband's original manuscript."

Wittekind smiled and shook his head. "No, my dear Mrs. Boldero. From two
typed copies--one in England and one in America."

"Mr. Chayne told me that in order to save time he sent you Adrian's
original manuscript with his revisions."

"I'm sure you must have misunderstood him," said Wittekind. "I read the
typescript myself. I've never seen a line of your husband's manuscript."

"But 'The Diamond Gate' was printed from Adrian's manuscript."

"No, no, no. That, too, I read in type."

Doria rose and the colour fled from her cheeks and her great dark eyes
grew bigger, and she brought down her little gloved hand on the writing
desk by which the publisher, cross-kneed, was sitting. He rose, too.

"Mr. Chayne has definitely told me that both Adrian's original
manuscripts went to the printers and were destroyed by the printers."

"It's impossible," said Wittekind, in much perplexity. "You're making
some extraordinary mistake."

"I'm not. Mr. Chayne would not tell me a lie."

Wittekind drew himself up. "Neither would I, Mrs. Boldero. Allow me."

He took up his "house" telephone. "Ask Mr. Forest to come to me at
once." He turned to Doria. "Let us get to the bottom of this. Mr. Forest
is my literary adviser--everything goes through his hands."

They waited in silence until Mr. Forest appeared. "You remember the
Boldero manuscripts?"

"Of course."

"What were they, manuscript or typescript?"

"Typescript."

"Have you even seen any of Mr. Boldero's original manuscript?"

"No."

"Do you think any of it has ever come into the office?"

"I'm sure it hasn't."

"Thank you, Mr. Forest."

The reader retired.

"You see," said Wittekind.

"Then where are the original manuscripts of 'The Diamond Gate' and 'The
Greater Glory'?"

"I'm very sorry, dear Mrs. Boldero, but I have no means of knowing."

"Mr. Chayne said they were sent here, and used by the printers and
destroyed by the printers."

"I'm sure," said Wittekind, "there's some muddling misunderstanding.
Jaffery Chayne, in his own line, is a distinguished man--and a man of
unblemished honour. A word or two will clear up everything."

"He's in Madagascar."

"Then wait till he comes back."

Doria insisted--and who in the world can blame her for insisting?

"You may think me a silly woman, Mr. Wittekind; but I'm not--not to the
extent of an hysterical invention. Mr. Chayne has told me definitely
that those two manuscripts came to your office, that the books were
printed from them and that they were destroyed by the printers."

"And I," said Wittekind, "give you my word of honour--and I have also
given you independent testimony--that no manuscript of your husband's
has ever entered this office."

"Suppose they had come in his handwriting, would they have been
destroyed?"

"Certainly not. Every sheet would have been returned with the proofs.
Typed copy may or may not be returned."

"But autograph copy is valuable?"

"Naturally."

"The manuscripts of Adrian's novels might be worth a lot of money?"

"Quite a lot of money."

"So you don't think Mr. Chayne destroyed them?"

"It's an act of folly of which a literary man like Mr. Chayne would be
incapable."

"And you've never seen any of it?"

"I've given you my word of honour."

"Then it's very extraordinary," said Doria.

"It is," said Wittekind, stiffly.

She thrust out her hand and flashed a generous glance.

"Forgive me for being bewildered. But it's so upsetting. You have
nothing whatever to do with it. It's all Jaffery Chayne." She looked up
at the loosely built, kindly man. "It's for him to give explanations. In
the meanwhile, I leave my dear, dear husband's memory in your hands--to
keep green, as you say"--tears came into her eyes--"and you will, won't
you?"

The pathos of her attitude dissolved all resentment. He bent over her,
still holding her hand.

"You may be quite sure of that," said he. "Even we publishers have our
ideals--and our purest is to distribute through the world the works of a
man of genius."

So Doria having telephoned for permission to come and see us on urgent
business, arrived at Northlands late in the afternoon, full of the
virtues of Wittekind and the vices of Jaffery. She gave us a full
account of her interview and appealed to me for explanations of
Jaffery's extraordinary conduct. I upbraided myself bitterly for having
counselled her to bite Wittekind. I ought, instead, to have thrown every
possible obstacle in the way of her meeting him. I ought to have
foreseen this question of the manuscripts, the one weak spot in our web
of deception. Now I may be a liar when driven by necessity from the
paths of truth, but I am not an accomplished liar. It is not my fault.
Mere providence has guided my life through such gentle pastures that I
have had no practice worth speaking of. Barbara, too, is an amateur in
mendacity. Both of us were sorely put to it under Doria's indignant and
suspicious cross-examination.

"You saw the original manuscript of 'The Greater Glory'?"

"Yes," I lied.

"Did you see the original manuscript of 'The Diamond Gate'?"

"No," I lied again.

"Was it among Adrian's papers?"

"Not to my knowledge. Probably if Adrian didn't send it to the printers,
he destroyed it."

"I don't believe he destroyed it. Jaffery has got it, and he has also
got the manuscript of 'The Greater Glory.' What does he want them for?"

"That's a leading question, my dear, which I can't answer, because I
don't know whether he has them or not. In fact, I know nothing whatever
about them."

"It sounds horrid and ungracious, Hilary, after all you've done for me,"
said Doria, "but I really think you ought to know something."

From her point of view, and from any outside person's point of view, she
was perfectly right. My bland ignorance was disgraceful. If she had
brought an action against us for recovery of these wretched manuscripts
and we managed to keep the essential secret, both counsel and judge
would have flayed me alive. . . . Put yourself in her place for a
minute--God knows I tried to do so hard enough--and you will see the
logic of her position, all through. She was not a woman of broad human
sympathies and generous outlook; she was intense and narrow. Her whole
being had been concentrated on Adrian during their brief married life;
it was concentrated now on his memory. To her, as to all the world, he
flamed a dazzling meteor. Her faults, which were many and hard to bear
with, all sprang from the bigotry of love. Nothing had happened to cloud
her faith. She had come up against many incomprehensible things: the
delay in publication of Adrian's book; the change of title; the burning
of Adrian's last written words on the blotting pad; the vivid pictures
that were obviously not Adrian's; the consignment to a printer's Limbo
of the original manuscripts; my own placid disassociation from the
literary side of the executorship. She had accepted them--not without
protest; but she had in fact accepted them. Now she struck a reef of
things more incomprehensible still. Jaffery had lied to her
outrageously. I, for one, hold her justified in her indignation.

But what on earth could I do? What on earth could my poor Barbara do? We
sat, both of us, racking our brains for some fantastic invention, while
Doria, like a diminutive tragedy queen, walked about my library,
inveighing against Jaffery and crying for her manuscripts. And I dared
not know anything at all about them. She had every reason to reproach
me.

Barbara, feeling very uncomfortable, said: "You mustn't blame Hilary.
When Adrian died each of the executors took charge of a special
department. Jaffery Chayne did not interfere with Hilary's management of
financial affairs, and Hilary left Jaffery free with the literary side
of things. It has worked very well. This silly muddle about the
manuscripts doesn't matter a little bit."

"But it does matter," cried Doria.

And it did. Now that she knew that those sacred manuscripts written by
the dear, dead hand had not been destroyed by printers, every fibre of
her passionate self craved their possession. We argued futilely, as
people must, who haven't the ghost of a case.

"But why has Jaffery lied?"

"The manuscript of 'The Diamond Gate,'" I declared, again perjuring
myself, "has nothing whatever to do with Jaffery and me. As I've told
you it was not among Adrian's papers which we went through together.
We're narrowed down to 'The Greater Glory.' Possibly," said I, with a
despairing flash, "Jaffery had to pull it about so much and deface it
with his own great scrawl, that he thought it might pain you to see it,
and so he told you that it had disappeared at the printer's. Now that I
remember, he did say something of the kind."

"Yes, he did," said Barbara.

Doria brushed away the hypothesis. "You poor things! You're merely
saying that to shield him. A blind imbecile could see through you"--I
have already apologised to you for our being the unconvincing liars that
we were--"you know nothing more about it than I do. You ought to, as
I've already said. But you don't. In fact, you know considerably less.
Shall I tell you where the manuscripts are at the present moment?"

"No, my dear," said Barbara, in the plaintive voice of one who has come
to the end of a profitless talk; for you cannot imagine how utterly
wearied we were with the whole of the miserable business. "Let us wait
till Jaffery comes home. It won't be so very long."

"Yes, Doria," said I, soothingly. "Barbara's right. You can't condemn a
man without a hearing?"

Doria laughed scornfully. "Can't I? I'm a woman, my dear friend. And
when a woman condemns a man unheard she's much more merciful than when
she condemns him after listening to his pleadings. Then she gets really
angry, and perhaps does the man injustice."

I gasped at the monstrous proposition; but Barbara did not seem to
detect anything particularly wrong about it.

"At any rate," said I, "whether you condemn him or not, we can't do
anything until he comes home. So we had better leave it at that."

"Very well," said Doria. "Let us leave it for the present. I don't want
to be more of a worry to you dear people than I can help. But that's
where Adrian's manuscripts are, both of them"--and she pointed to the
key of Jaffery's flat hanging with its staring label against my library
wall.

Of course it was rather mean to throw the entire onus on to Jaffery. But
again, what could we do? Doria put her pistol at our heads and demanded
Adrian's original manuscripts. She had every reason to believe in their
existence. Wittekind had never seen them. Vandal and Goth and every kind
of Barbarian that she considered Jaffery to be, it was inconceivable
that he had deliberately destroyed them. It was equally inconceivable
that he had sold the precious things for vulgar money. They remained
therefore in his possession. Why did he lie? We could supply no
satisfactory answer; and the more solutions we offered the more did we
confirm in her mind the suspicion of dark and nefarious dealings. If it
were only to gain time in order to think and consult, we had to refer
her to the absent Jaffery.

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