Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"But you must go back to Euphemia till Monday, at any rate."

"And she has arranged such a nice little programme for you," said
Adrian. "A lecture on Tolstoi to-night and the City Temple to-morrow.
Pity to miss 'em."

"If I saw any more of Euphemia, I might hurt her," said Liosha.

"Oh, Lord!" said Jaffery. "But you must go somewhere." He turned to me
with a groan. "Look here, old chap. It's awfully rough luck, but I must
take her back to the Savoy and mount guard over her so that she doesn't
break my poor sister's neck."

"I wouldn't go so far as that," said Liosha.

"How far would you go?" Adrian asked politely, with the air of one
seeking information.

"Oh, shut up, you idiot," Jaffery turned on him savagely. "Can't you see
the position I'm in?"

"I'm very sorry you're angry, Jaff Chayne," said Liosha with a certain
kind dignity. "But these are your friends. Their house is yours. Why
should I not stay here with you?"

"Here? Good God!" cried Jaffery.

"Yes, why not?" said Barbara, who had set out to teach this lady
manners.

"The very thing," said I.

Jaffery declared the idea to be nonsense. Barbara and I protested,
growing warmer in our protestations as the argument continued. Nothing
would give us such unimaginable pleasure as to entertain Mrs. Prescott.
Liosha laid her hand on Jaffery's arm.

"But why shouldn't they have me? When a stranger asks for hospitality in
Albania he is invited to walk right in and own the place. Is it refused
in England?"

"Strangers don't ask," growled Jaffery.

"It would make life much more pleasant if they did," said Barbara,
smiling. "Mrs. Prescott, this bear of a guardian or trustee or whatever
he is of yours, makes a terrible noise--but he's quite harmless."

"I know that," said Liosha.

"He does what I tell him," the little lady continued, drawing herself up
majestically beside Jaffery's great bulk. "He's going to stay here, and
so will you, if you will so far honour us."

Liosha rose and bowed. "The honour is mine."

"Then will you come this way--I will shew you your room."

She motioned to Liosha to precede her through the French window of the
drawing-room. Before disappearing Liosha bowed again. I caught up
Barbara.

"My dear, what about clothes and things?"

"My dear," she said, "there's a telephone, there's a taxi, there's a
maid, there's the Savoy hotel, and there's a train to bring back maid
and clothes."

When Barbara takes command like this, the wise man effaces himself. She
would run an Empire with far less fuss than most people devote to the
running of a small sweet-stuff shop. I smiled and returned to the
others. Jaffery was again filling his huge pipe.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man," he said gloomily.

Adrian burst out laughing "But she's immense, your widow! The most
refreshing thing I've seen for many a day. The way she clears the place
of the cobwebs of convention! She's great. Isn't she, Doria?"

"I can quite understand Mr. Chayne finding her an uncomfortable charge."

"Thank you," said Jaffery, with rather unnecessary vehemence. "I knew
you would be sympathetic." He dropped into a chair by her side. "You
can't tell what an awful thing it is to be responsible for another human
being."

"Heaps of people manage to get through with it--every husband and
wife--every mother and father."

"Yes; but not many poor chaps who are neither father nor husband are
responsible for another fellow's grown-up widow."

Doria smiled. "You must find her another husband."

"That's a great idea. Will you help me? Before I knew of Adrian's great
good fortune, I wrote to Hilary--ho! ho! ho! But we must find somebody
else."

"Has she any money?" asked Doria, who smiled but faintly at the jocular
notion of a Liosha-bound Adrian.

"Prescott left her about a thousand a year. He was pretty well off, for
a war-correspondent."

"I don't think she'll have much difficulty. Do you know," she added,
after a moment or two of reflection, "if I were you, I would establish
her in a really first-class boarding-house."

"Would that be a good way?" Jaffery asked simply.

She nodded. "The best. She seems to have fallen foul of your sister."

"The dearest old soul that ever lived," said Jaffery.

"That's why. I'm sure I know your sister perfectly. The daughter of an
Albanian patriot who used to kill pigs in Chicago--why, what can your
poor sister do with her? Your sister is much older than you, isn't she?"

"Ten years. How did you guess?"

Doria smiled with feminine wisdom. "She's the gentlest maiden lady that
ever was. It's only a man that could have thought of saddling her with
our friend. Well--that's impossible. She would be the death of your
sister in a week. You can't look after her yourself--that wouldn't be
proper."

"And it would be the death of me too!" said Jaffery.

"You can't leave her in lodgings or a flat by herself, for the poor
woman would die of boredom. The only thing that remains is the
boarding-house."

Jaffery regarded her with the open-eyed adoration of a heathen Goth
receiving the Gospel from Saint Ursula.

"By Jove!" he murmured. "You're wonderful."

"Let us stretch our legs, Hilary," said Adrian, who had not displayed
enthusiastic interest in the housing of Liosha.

So we went off, leaving the two together, and we discoursed on the
mystic ways of women, omitting all reference, as men do, to the
exceptional paragon of femininity who reigned in our respective hearts.
Perhaps we did a foolish thing in thus abandoning saint and hungry
convert to their sympathetic intercourse. The saint could hold her own;
she had vowed herself to Adrian, and she belonged to the type for whom
vows are irrefragable; but poor old Jaffery had made no vows, save of
loyalty to his friends; which vows, provided they are kept, are
perfectly consistent with a man's falling hopelessly, despairingly in
love with his friend's affianced bride. And, as far as Barbara and
myself have been able to make out, it was during this intimate talk that
Jaffery fell in love with Doria. Of course, what the French call _le
coup de foudre_, the thunderbolt of love had smitten him when he had
first beheld Doria alighting from the motor-car. But he did not realise
the stupefying effect of this bang on the heart till he had thus sat at
her little feet and drunk in her godlike wisdom.

The fairy tales are very true. The rumbustious ogre has a hitherto
undescribed, but quite imaginable, gap-toothed, beetle-browed ogress of
a wife. Why he married her has never been told. Why the mortal male whom
we meet for the first time at a dinner party has married the amazing
mortal female sitting somewhere on the other side of the table is an
insoluble mystery, and if we can't tell even why men mate, what can we
expect to know about ogres? At all events, as far as the humdrum of
matrimony is concerned, the fairy tales are truer than real life. The
ogre marries his ogress. It is like to like. But when it comes to
love--and if love were proclaimed and universally recognised as humdrum,
there would never be a tale, fairy or otherwise, ever told again in the
world worth the hearing--we have quite a different condition of affairs.
Did you ever hear of an ogre sighing himself to a shadow for love of a
gap-toothed ogress? No. He goes out into the fairy world, and, sending
his ogress-wife to Jericho, becomes desperately enamoured of the elfin
princess. There he is, great, ruddy, hairy wretch: there she is, a
wraith of a creature made up of thistledown and fountain-bubbles and
stars. He stares at her, stretches out his huge paw to grab a fairy,
feathery tress of her dark hair. Defensive, she puts up her little hand.
Its touch is an electric shock to the marauder. He blinks, and rubs his
arm. He has a mighty respect for her. He could take her up in his
fingers and eat her like a quail--the one satisfactory method of eating
a quail is unfortunately practised only by ogres--but he does not want
to eat her. He goes on his knees, and invites her to chew any portion of
him that may please her dainty taste. In short he makes the very
silliest ass of himself, and the elfin princess, who of course has come
into contact with the Real Beautiful Young Man of the Story Books, won't
have anything to do with the Ogre; and if he is more rumbustious than he
ought to be, generally finds a way to send him packing. And so the poor
Ogre remains, planted there. The Fairy Tales, I remark again, are very
true in demonstrating that the Ogre loves the elf and not the Ogress.
But all the same they are deucedly unsympathetic towards the poor Ogre.
The only sympathetic one I know is Beauty and the Beast; and even that
is a mere begging of the question, for the Beast was a handsome young
nincompoop of a Prince all the time!

Barbara says that this figurative, allusive adumbration of Jaffery's
love affair is pure nonsense. Anything less like an ogre than our
overgrown baby of a friend it would he impossible to imagine. But I hold
to my theory; all the more because when Adrian and I returned from our
stroll round the garden, we found Jaffery standing over her, legs apart,
like a Colossus of Rhodes, and roaring at her like a sucking dove. I
noticed a scared, please-don't-eat-me look in her eyes. It was the ogre
(trying to make himself agreeable) and the princess to the life.

Presently tea was brought out, and with it came Barbara, a quiet laugh
about her lips, and Liosha, stately and smiling. My wife to put her at
her ease (though she had displayed singularly little shyness), after
dealing with maid and taxi, had taken her over the house, exhibited
Susan at tea in the nursery, and as much of Doria's trousseau as was
visible in the sewing-room. The approaching marriage aroused her keen
interest. She said very little during the meal, but smiled
embarrassingly on the engaged pair. Jaffery stood glumly devouring
cucumber sandwiches, till Barbara took him aside.

"She's rather a dear, in spite of everything, and I think you're
treating her abominably."

Jaffery grew scarlet beneath the brick-coloured glaze.

"I wouldn't treat any woman abominably, if I could help it."

"Well, you can help it--" and taking pity on him, she laughed in his
face. "Can't you take her as a joke?"

He glanced quietly at the lady. "Rather a heavy one," he said.

"Anyhow come and talk to us and be civil to her. Imagine she's the
Vicar's wife come to call."

Jaffery's elementary sense of humour was tickled and he broke out into a
loud guffaw that sent the house cat, a delicate mendicant for food,
scuttling across the lawn. The sight of the terror-stricken animal
aroused the rest of the party to harmless mirth.

"Tell me, Mrs. Prescott," said Adrian, "was he allowed to do that in
Albania?"

"I guess there aren't many things Jaff Chayne can't do in Albania,"
replied Liosha. "He has the _bessas_ that carry him through and he's as
brave as a lion."

"I suppose you like brave men?" said Doria.

"A woman who married a coward would be a damn fool--especially in
Albania. I guess there aren't many in my mountains."

"I wish you would tell us about your mountains," said Barbara
pleasantly.

"And at the same time," said I, "Jaff might let us hear his story. That
is to say if you have no objection, Mrs. Prescott."

"With us," said Liosha, "the guest is expected to talk about himself;
for if he's a guest he's one of the family."

"Shall I go ahead then?" asked Jaffery, "and you chip in whenever you
feel like it?"

"That would be best," replied Liosha.

And having lit a cigarette and settled herself in her deck-chair, she
motioned to Jaffery to proceed. And there in the shade of the old
wistaria arbour, surrounded by such dainty products of civilisation as
Adrian (in speckless white flannels and violet socks) and the tea-table
(in silver and egg-shell china) this pair of barbarians told their tale.

CHAPTER V

It is some years now since that golden August afternoon, and my memory
of the details of the story of Liosha as told by Jaffery and illustrated
picturesquely by the lady herself is none of the most precise.
Incidentally I gathered, then and later in the smoking-room from Jaffery
alone, a prodigious amount of information about Albania which, if I had
imprisoned it in writing that same evening as the perfect diarist is
supposed to do, would have been vastly useful to me at the present
moment. But I am as a diarist hopelessly imperfect. I stare, now, as I
write, at the bald, uninspiring page. This is my entry for Aug. 4th,
19--.

"Weighed Susan. 4 st. 3.

"Met Jaffery at station.

"Albanian widow turned up unexpectedly after lunch. Fine woman. Going to
be a handful. Staying week-end. Story of meeting and Prescott marriage.

"Promised Susan a donkey ride. Where the deuce does one get donkeys
warranted quiet and guaranteed to carry a lady? _Mem:_ Ask Torn
Fletcher.

"_Mem:_ Write to Launebeck about cigars."

Why I didn't write straight off to Launebeck about the cigars, instead
of "mem-ing" it, may seem a mystery. It isn't. It is a comfortable habit
of mine. Once having "mem-ed" an unpleasant thing in my diary, the
matter is over. I dismiss it from my mind. But to return to Liosha--I
find in my entry of sixty-two words thirty-five devoted to Susan, her
donkey and the cigars, and only twenty-seven to the really astonishing
events of the day. Of course I am angry. Of course I consult Barbara. Of
course she pats the little bald patch on the top of my head and laughs
in a superior way and invents, with a paralysing air of verity, an
impossible amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott
marriage." And of course, the frivolous Jaffery, now that one really
wants him, is sitting astride of a cannon, and smoking a pipe and,
notebook and pencil in hand, is writing a picturesque description of the
bungling decapitation by shrapnel of the general who has just been
unfolding to him the whole plan of the campaign, and consequently is
provokingly un-getatable by serious persons like myself[A].

[Footnote A: Hilary is writing at the end of the late Balkan
war.--W.J.L.]

So for what I learned that day I must trust to the elusive witch,
Memory. I have never been to Albania. I have never wanted to go to
Albania. Even now, I haven't the remotest desire to go to Albania. I
should loathe it. Wherever I go nowadays, I claim as my right bedroom
and bath and viands succulent to the palate and tender to the teeth. My
demands are modest. But could I get them in Albania? No. Could one
travel from Scutari to Monastir in the same comfort as one travels from
London to Paris or from New York to Chicago? No. Does any sensible man
of domestic instincts and scholarly tastes like to find himself halfway
up an inaccessible mountain, surrounded by a band of moustachioed
desperadoes in fustanella petticoats engirdled with an armoury of
pistols, daggers and yataghans, who if they are unkind make a surgical
demonstration with these lethal implements, and if they are smitten with
a mania of amiability, hand you over, for superintendence of your
repose, to an army of satellites of whom you are only too glad to call
the flea brother? I trow not. Personally, I dislike mountains. They were
made for goats and cascades and lunatics and other irresponsible
phenomena of nature. They have their uses, I admit, as windscreens and
water-sheds; and beheld from the valley they can assume very pretty
colours, owing to varying atmospheric conditions; and the more jagged
and unenticing they are, the greater is their specious air of
stupendousness. . . . At any rate they are hindrances to convenient
travel and so I go among them as little as possible.

To judge from the fervid descriptions given us by Jaffery and Liosha,
Albania must be a pestilentially uncomfortable place to live in. It is
divided into three religious sects, then re-divided into heaven knows
how many tribes. What it will be when it gets autonomy and a government
and a parliament and picture-palaces no one yet knows. But at the time
when my two friends met it was in about as chaotic a condition as a
jungle. Some tribes acknowledged the rule of the Turk. Others did not.
Every mountainside had a pretty little anarchical system of its own.
Every family had a pretty little blood feud with some other family.
Accordingly every man was handy with knife and gun and it was every
maiden's dream to be sold as a wife to the most bloodthirsty scoundrel
in the neighbourhood. At least that was the impression given me by
Liosha.

When the tragedy occurred she herself was about to be sold to a
prosperous young cutthroat of whom she had seen but little, as he lived,
I gathered, a couple of mountains off. They had been betrothed years
before. The price her father demanded was high. Not only did he hold a
notable position on his mountain, but he had travelled to the fabulous
land of America and could read and write and could speak English and
could handle a knife with peculiar dexterity. Again, Liosha was no
ordinary Albanian maiden. She too had seen the world and could read and
write and speak English. She had a will of her own and had imbibed
during her Chicago childhood curiously un-Albanian notions of feminine
independence. Being beautiful as well, she ranked as a sort of prize
bride worth (in her father's eyes) her weight in gold.

It was to try to reduce this excessive valuation that the young
cutthroat visited his father's house. During the night two families, one
of whom had a feud with the host and another with the guest, each
attended by an army of merry brigands, fell upon the sleeping homestead,
murdered everybody except Liosha, who managed to escape, plundered
everything plunderable, money, valuables, household goods and live
stock, and then set fire to the house and everything within sight that
could burn. After which they marched away singing patriotic hymns. When
they had gone Liosha crept out of the cave wherein she had hidden, and
surveyed the scene of desolation.

"I tell you, I felt just mad," said Liosha at this stage of the story.

* * * * *

I remember Barbara and Doria staring at her open-mouthed. Instead of
fainting or going into hysterics or losing her wits at the sight of the
annihilation of her entire kith and kin--including her bridegroom to
be--and of her whole worldly possessions, Liosha "felt just mad," which
as all the world knows is the American vernacular for feeling very
angry.

"It was enough to turn any woman into a raving lunatic," gasped Barbara.

"Guess it didn't turn me," replied Liosha contemptuously.

"But what did you do?" asked Dora.

"I sat down on a stone and thought how I could get even with that
crowd." She bit her lip and her soft brown eyes hardened.

[Illustration: Where the lonely figure in black and white sat
brooding.]

"And that's where we came in, don't you see?" interposed Jaffery
hastily.

You can imagine the scene. The two Englishmen, one gigantic, red and
hairy, the other wiry and hawk-like, jogging up the mountain path on
ragged ponies and suddenly emerging onto that plateau of despair where
the lonely figure in black and white sat brooding.

Under such unusual conditions, it was not difficult to form
acquaintance. She told her story to the two horror-stricken men. British
instinct cried out for justice. They would take her straight to the Vali
or whatever authority ruled in the wild land, so that punishment should
be inflicted on the murderers. But she laughed at them. It would take an
army to dislodge her enemies from their mountain fastnesses. And who
could send an army but the Sultan, a most unlikely person to trouble his
head over the massacre of a few Christians? As for a local government,
the _mallisori_, the mountain tribes, did not acknowledge any. The
Englishmen swore softly. Liosha nodded her head and agreed with them.
What was to be done? The Englishmen, alter giving her food and drink
which she seemed to need, offered their escort to a place where she
could find relations or friends. Again she laughed scornfully.

"All my relations lie there"--she pointed to the smoking ruins. "And I
have no friends. And as for your escorting me--why I guess it would be
much more use my escorting you."

"And where would you escort us?"

"God knows," she said.

Whereupon they realised that she was alone in the wide world, homeless
and penniless, and that for a time, at least, they were responsible to
God and man for this picturesque Albanian damsel who spoke the English
of the stockyards of Chicago. Again what was to be done? They could take
her back to Scutari, whence they had come, in the hope of finding a
Roman Catholic sisterhood. The proposal evoked but lukewarm enthusiasm.
Liosha being convinced that they would turn her into a nun--the last
avocation in the world she desired to adopt. Her simple idea was to go
out to America, like her father, return with many bags of gold and
devote her life to the linked sweetness of a gradual extermination of
her enemies. When asked how she would manage to amass the gold she
replied that she would work in the packing-houses like her mother. But
how, they asked, would she get the money to take her to Chicago? "It
must come from you!" she said. And the men looked at each other, feeling
mean dogs in not having offered to settle her there themselves. Then,
being a young woman of an apparently practical mind, she asked them what
they were doing in Albania. They explained. They were travellers from
England, wandering for pleasure through the Balkans. They had come from
Scutari, as far as they could, in a motor-car. Liosha had never heard of
a motor-car. They described it as a kind of little railway-engine that
didn't need rails to run upon. At the foot of the mountains they had
left it at a village inn and bought the ragged ponies. They were just
going ahead exploring.

"Do you know the way?" she asked with a touch of contempt.

They didn't.

"Then I guess I'll guide you. You pay me wages every day until you're
tired and I'll use the money to go out to Chicago." And seeing them
hesitate, she added: "No one's going to hurt me. A woman is safe in
Albania. And if I'm with you, no one will hurt you. But if you go on by
yourselves you'll very likely get murdered."

Fantastic as was her intention, they knew that, as far as they
themselves were concerned, she spoke common-sense. So it came to pass
that Liosha, having left them for a few moments to take grim farewell of
the charred remains of her family lying hidden beneath the smouldering
wreckage, returned to them with a calm face, mounted one of the ponies
and pointing before her, led the way into the mountains.

Now, if old Jaff would only sit down and write this absurd Odyssey in
the vivid manner in which he has related bits of it to me, he would
produce the queerest book of travel ever written. But he never will. As
a matter of fact, although he saw Albania as few Westerners have done
and learned useful bits of language and made invaluable friends, and
although he appreciated the journey's adventurous and humorous side, it
did not afford him complete satisfaction. A day or two after their
start, Prescott began to shew signs of peculiar interest in their guide.
In spite of her unquestioning readiness to shoulder burdens, Prescott
would run to relieve her. Liosha has assured me that Jaffery did the
same--and indeed I cannot conceive Jaffery allowing a female companion
to stagger along under a load which he could swing onto his huge back
and carry like a walnut. To go further--she maintains that the two
quarrelled dreadfully over the alleviation of her labours, so much so,
that often before they had ended their quarrel, she had performed the
task in dispute. This of course Jaffery has blusteringly denied. She was
there, paid to do certain things, and she had to do them. The way
Prescott spoiled her and indulged her, as though she were a little
dressed-up cat in a London drawing-room, instead of a great hefty woman
accustomed to throw steers and balance a sack of potatoes on her head,
was simply sickening. And it became more sickening still as Prescott's
infatuation clouded more and more the poor fellow's brain. Jaffery
talked (not before Liosha, but to Adrian and myself, that night, after
the ladies had gone to bed) as if the girl had woven a Vivien spell
around his poor friend. We smiled, knowing it was Jaffery's way. . . .

At all events, whether Jaffery was jealous or not, it is certain that
Prescott fell wildly, blindly, overwhelmingly in love with Liosha.
Considering the close intimacy of their lives; considering that they
were in ceaseless contact with this splendid creature, untrammelled by
any convention, daughter of the earth, yet chaste as her own mountain
winds; and considering that both of them were hot-blooded men, the only
wonder is that they did not fly at each other's throats, or dash in each
other's heads with stones, after the fashion of prehistoric males. It is
my well-supported conviction, however, that Jaffery, honest old bear,
seeing his comrade's very soul set upon the honey, trotted off and left
him to it, and made pretence (to satisfy his ursine conscience) of
growling his sarcastic disapproval.

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