Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"She misunderstood--when she came in. Quite natural. It was your touch
of pity that I couldn't bear. I wasn't repelling you, as she seemed to
think."

"It cut me to the heart to see you in such grief," said Jaffery. "I only
thought of comforting you."

"I know." She sat on a chair by the window and looked out at the pouring
rain.

"Tell me," she said, without turning round, "what did she mean by saying
she had the right to interfere in your affairs?"

"She saved my life at the risk of her own," replied Jaffery.

"I see. And you saved my life once; so perhaps you have rights over
me."

"That would be damnable!" he cried. "Such a thought has never entered my
head."

"It is firmly fixed in mine," said Doria.

She sat for a while, with knitted brows deep in thought. Jaffery stood
dejectedly by the fire, his hands in his pockets. Presently she rose.

"Besides saving my life and doing for me the things I know, there must
be many things you've done for me that I never heard of--like this
sacrifice of the Persian expedition. Liosha was right. I ought to go on
my knees to you. But I can't very well do that, can I?"

"No," replied Jaffery, scrabbling at whiskers and beard. "That would be
stupid. You mustn't worry about me at all. Whatever I did for you, my
dear, I'd do a thousand times over again!"

"You must have your reward, such as it is. God knows you have earned
it."

"Don't talk about rights or rewards," said he. "As I've said repeatedly
this afternoon, I've forfeited even your thanks."

"And I've said I forgive you--if there's anything to forgive," she
smiled, just a little wearily. "So that is wiped out. All the rest
remains. Let us bury all past unhappiness between us two."

"I wish we could. But how?"

"There is a way."

"What is that?"

"You make things somewhat hard for me. You might guess. But I'll tell
you. Liosha again was right. . . . If you want me still, I will marry
you. Not quite yet; but, say, in six months' time. You are a
great-hearted, loyal man"--she continued bravely, faltering under his
gaze--"and I will learn to love you and will devote my life to making
you happy."

She glanced downwards with averted head, awaiting some outcry of
gladness, surrendering herself to the quick clasp of strong arms. But
no outcry came, and no arms clasped. She glanced up, and met a stricken
look in the man's eyes.

For Jaffery could not find a word to utter. A chill crept about his
heart and his blood became as water. He could not move; a nightmare
horror of dismay held him in its grip. The inconceivable had happened.
He no longer desired her. The woman who had haunted his thoughts for
over two years, for whom he had made quixotic sacrifices, for whom he
had made a mat of his great body so that she should tread stony paths
without hurt to her delicate feet, was his now for the taking--nobly
self-offered--and with all the world as an apanage he could not have
taken her. The phenomenon of sex he could not explain. Once he had
desired her passionately. The ivory-white of her daintiness had fired
his blood. He had fought with beasts. He had wrestled with his soul in
the night watches. He had loved her purely and sweetly, too. But now, as
she stood before him, recoiling a little from his fixed stare of pain,
though she had suffered but little loss in beauty and in that of her
which was desirable, he realised, in a kind of paralysis, that he
desired her no more, that he loved her no more with the idealised love
he had given to the elfin princess of his dreams. Not that he would not
still do her infinite service. The pathos of her broken life moved him
to an anguish of pity. For her soothing he would give all that life held
for him, save one thing--which was no longer his to give. Another man
glib of tongue and crafty of brain might have lied his way out of an
abominable situation. But Jaffery's craft was of the simplest. He could
not trick the dead love into smiling semblance of life. His nature was
too primitive. He could only stare in spellbound affright at the icy
barrier that separated him from Doria.

"I see," she said tonelessly, moving slowly away from him. "Your
feelings have changed. I am sorry."

Then he found power of motion and speech. He threw out his arms. "My
God, dear, forgive me!" he groaned, and sat down and clutched his head
in his hands. She returned to the window and looked out at the rain. And
there she fought with her woman's indignant humiliation. And there was a
long, dead silence, broken only by the faintly heard notes of Susan's
piano in the nursery and the splash of water on the terrace.

Presently all that was good in Doria conquered. She crossed the room and
laid a light hand on Jaffery's head. It was the finest moment in her
life.

"One can't help these things. I know it too well. And no hearts are
broken. So it's all for the best."

He groaned again. "I didn't know. I'd like to shoot myself."

She smiled, conscious of feminine superiority. "If you did, I should
die, too. I tell you, it's all for the best. I love you as I never loved
you before. I usen't to love you a little bit. But I should have had to
learn to love you as a wife--and it might have been difficult."

A moment afterwards she appeared in the library, serenely
matter-of-fact. Liosha started round in her chair and looked defiantly
at her rival.

"Would both of you mind coming into the drawing-room for a minute?"

We followed her. She held the door, which I was about to shut, and left
it open. Before Jaffery had time to rise at our entrance, I caught sight
of him sitting as she had left him, great clumps of his red hair
sticking through his fingers. His face was a picture of woe. I can
imagine nothing more like it than that of a conscience smitten lion.
Doria ran her arm through mine and kept me near the doorway.

"I've asked Jaffery to marry me," she said, in a steady voice, "and he
doesn't want to. It's because he loves a much better woman and wants to
marry her."

Then while Jaffery and Liosha gasped in blank astonishment, she swung me
abruptly out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

"There," she said, and flung up her little bead, "what do you think of
that?"

"Magnificent," said I, "but bewildering. Did Jaffery really--?"

In a few words, she put me into possession of the bare facts.

"I'm not sorry," she added. "Sometimes I love Jaffery--because he's so
lovable. Sometimes I hate him--because--oh, well--because of Adrian. You
can't understand."

"I'm not altogether a fool," said I.

"Well, that's how it is. I would have worn myself to death to try to
make him happy. You believe me?"

"I do indeed, my dear," I replied. And I replied with unshakable
conviction. She was a woman who once having come under the domination of
an idea would obey it blindly, ruthlessly, marching straight onwards,
looking neither to right nor left. The very virtue that had made her
overcruel to him in the past would have made her overkind to him in the
future. Unwittingly she had used a phrase startlingly true. She would
have worn herself to death in her determination to please. Incidentally
she would have driven him mad with conscientious dutifulness.

"He would have found no fault with me that I could help," she said. "But
we needn't speak of it any more. I'm not the woman for him. Liosha is.
It's all over. I'm glad. At any rate, I've made atonement--at least,
I've tried--as far as things lay in my power."

I took both her hands, greatly moved by her courage.

"And what's going to happen to you, my dear?"

"Now that all this is straight," she replied, with a faint smile, "I can
turn round and remake my life. You and Barbara will help."

"With all our hearts," said I.

"It won't be so hard for you, ever again, I promise. I shall be more
reasonable. And the first favour I'll ask you, dear Hilary, is to let me
go this afternoon. It would be a bit of a strain on me to stay."

"I know, my dear," I said. "The car is at your service."

"Oh, no! I'll go by train."

"You'll do as you're told, young woman, and go by car."

At this rubbishy speech, the tears, for the first time, came into her
eyes. She pulled down my shoulders--I am rather lank and tall--and
kissed me.

"You're a dear," she said, and went off in search of Barbara.

I returned to my library, rang the bell, and gave orders for the
chauffeur to stand at Mrs. Boldero's disposal. Then I sat down at a
loose end, very much like a young professional man, doctor or
estate-agent, waiting for the next client. And like the young
professional man at a loose end, I made a pretence of looking through
papers. Presently I became aware that I only had to open a window in
order to summon a couple of clients at once. For there in the gathering
November dusk and in the rain--it had ceased pouring, but it was
drizzling, and therefore it was rain--I saw our pair of delectable
savages strolling across the wet, sodden lawn, in loverlike proximity,
for all the world as though it were a flowery mead in May. I might have
summoned them, but it would have been an unprofessional thing to do.
Instead, I drew my curtains and turned on the light, and continued to
wait. I waited a long time. At last Barbara rushed in.

"Doria's ready."

"You've heard all about it?" She nodded. "I said there would be no
marriage," I remarked blandly.

"You said she wouldn't marry him. I said she would. And so she would, if
he had let her. I know you're prepared to argue," she said, rather
excitedly, "but it's no use. I was right all the time."

I yielded.

"You're always right, my dear," said I.

* * * * *

That is practically all, up to the present, that I have to tell you
about Jaffery. What words passed between him and Liosha in the
drawing-room I have never known. Jaffery, with conscience still sore,
and childishly anxious that I should not account him a traitor and a
scoundrel, and a brute too despicable for human touch, told me, as I
have already stated, over and over again, until I yawned for weariness
in the small hours of the morning, what had taken place in his
staggering interview with Doria; but as regards Liosha, he was shyly
evasive. After all, I fancy, it was a very simple affair. She had told
me bluntly that when the two men, Jaffery and Prescott, rode into the
scene of Balkan desolation in which she was the central figure, Jaffery
was the one who caused her heart to throb. And in her chaste, proud way
she had loved him ever since that extraordinary moment. And though
Jaffery has never confessed it, I am absolutely certain that, just as
Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose, _sans le savoir_, so, without knowing it,
was Jaffery in love with Liosha when she drove away from Northlands in
Mr. Ras Fendihook's car. Perhaps before. _Quien sabe?_ But he imagined
himself to be in love with a moonbeam. And the moonbeam shot like a
glamorous, enchanted sword between him and Liosha, and kept them apart
until the moment of dazed revelation, when he saw that the moonbeam
was merely a pale, earnest, anxious, suffering little human thing, alien
to his every instinct, a firmament away, in every vital essential, from
the goddess of his idolatry.

[Illustration: There is war going on in the Balkans. Jaffery is there as
war correspondent. Liosha is there, too.]

That is how I explain--and I have puzzled my head into aching over any
other possible explanation--the attitude of Jaffery towards Liosha on
the _Vesta_ voyage. Well, my conjectures are of not much value. I have
done my best to put the facts, as I know them, before you; and if you
are interested in the matter you can go on conjecturing to your heart's
content. "Look here, my friend," said I, as soon as I could attune my
mind to new conditions, "what about your new novel?"

He frowned portentously. "It can go to blazes!" "Aren't you going to
finish it?"

"No."

"But you must. Don't you realise that you're a born novelist?"

"Don't you realise," he growled, "that you're a born fool?"

"I don't," said I.

He walked about the library in his space--occupying way.

"I'm going to tear the damned thing up! I'm never going to write a novel
again. I cut it out altogether. It's the least I can do for her."

"Isn't that rather quixotic?" I asked.

"Suppose it is. What have you to say against it?"

"Nothing," said I.

"Well, keep on saying it," replied Jaffery, with the steel flash in his
eyes.

* * * * *

They were married. Our vicar performed the ceremony. I gave the bride
away. Liosha revealed the feminine kink in her otherwise splendid
character by insisting on the bridal panoply of white satin, veil and
orange blossoms. I confess she looked superb. She looked like a Valkyr.
A leather-visaged war correspondent, named Burchester, whom I had never
seen before, and have not seen since, acted as best man. Susan, tense
with the responsibilities of office, was the only bridesmaid. Mrs. Jupp
(late Considine) and her General were our only guests. Doria excused
herself from attendance, but sent the bride a travelling-case fitted
with a myriad dazzling gold-stoppered bottles and a phantasmagoria of
gold-mounted toilette implements.

And then they went on their honeymoon. And where do you think they went?
They signed again on the steamship _Vesta_. And Captain Maturin gave
them his cabin, which is more than I would have done, and slept, I
presume, in the dog-hole. And they were as happy as the ship was
abominable.

Now, as I write, there is a war going on in the Balkans. Jaffery is
there as the correspondent of _The Daily Gazette_. Liosha is there, too,
as the inseparable and peculiarly invaluable companion of Jaffery
Chayne. They live impossible lives. But what has that got to do with you
or me? They like it. They adore it. A more radiantly mated pair the
earth cannot produce. Their two-year-old son is learning the practice of
the heroic virtues at Cettinje, while his parents loaf about
battlefields in full eruption.

"Poor little mite!" says Barbara.

But I say:

"Lucky little Pantagruel!"

THE END

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