Jaffery by William J. Locke

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"The devil of it was," he declared that night, with a sweep of his arm
that sent a full glass of whiskey and soda hurtling across space to my
bookshelves and ruining some choice bindings--"the devil of it was,"
said he, after expressing rueful contrition, "that she treated him like
a dog, whereas I could do anything I liked with her. But she married
him."

Of course she married him. Most Albanian young women in her position
would have married a brave and handsome Englishman of incalculable
wealth--even if they had not Liosha's ulterior motives. And beyond
question Liosha had ulterior motives. Prescott espoused her cause hotly.
He convinced her that he was a power in Europe. As a Reuter
correspondent he did indeed possess power. He would make the civilised
world ring with this tale of bloodshed and horror. He would beard
Sultans in their lairs and Emperors in their dens. He would bring down
awful vengeance on the heads of her enemies. How Sultans and Emperors
were to do it was as obscure as at the horror-filled hour of their first
meeting. But a man vehemently in love is notoriously blind to practical
considerations. Prescott put his life into her hands. She accepted it
calmly; and I think it was this calmness of acceptance that infuriated
Jaffery. If she had been likewise caught in the whirlpool of a mad
passion, Jaffery would have had nothing to say. But she did not (so he
maintained) care a button for Prescott, and Prescott would not believe
it. She had promised to marry him. That ideal of magnificent womanhood
had promised to marry him. They were to be married--think of that, my
boy!--as soon as they got back to Scutari and found a British Consul and
a priest or two to marry them. "Then for God's sake," roared Jaffery,
"let us trek to Scutari. I'm fed up with playing gooseberry. The Giant
Gooseberry. Ho! ho! ho!"

So they shortened their projected journey and, making a circuit, picked
up the motor-car--a joy and wonder to Liosha. She wanted to drive
it--over the rutted wagon-tracks that pass for roads in Albania--and
such was Prescott's infatuation that he would have allowed her to do so.
But Jaffery sat an immovable mountain of flesh at the wheel and brought
them safely to Scutari. There arrangements were made for the marriage
before the British Vice-Consul. On the morning of the ceremony Prescott
fell ill. The ceremony was, however, performed. Towards evening he was
in high fever. The next morning typhoid declared itself. In two or three
days he was dead. He had made a will leaving everything to his wife,
with Jaffery as sole executor and trustee.

This sorry ending of poor Prescott's romance--I never knew him, but
shall always think of him as a swift and vehement spirit--was told very
huskily by Jaffery beneath the wistaria arbour. Tears rolled down
Barbara's and Doria's cheeks. My wife's sympathetic little hand slid
into Liosha's. With her other hand Liosha fondled it. I am sure it was
rather gratitude for this little feminine act than poignant emotion that
moistened Liosha's beautiful eyes.

"I haven't had much luck, have I?"

"No, my poor dear, you haven't," cried Barbara in a gush of kindness.

In the course of a few weeks to have one's affianced husband murdered
and one's legal though nominal husband spirited away by disease, seemed
in the eyes of my gentle wife to transcend all records of human tragedy.
Very soon afterwards she made a pretext for taking Liosha away from us,
and I had the extraordinary experience of seeing my proud little
Barbara, who loathes the caressive insincerities prevalent among women,
cross the lawn with her arm around Liosha's waist.

The rest of the bare bones of the story I have already told you.
Jaffery, after burying his poor comrade, took ship with Liosha and went
to Cettinje, where he entrusted her to the care of old friends of his,
the Austrian Consul and his wife, and made her known as the widow of
Prescott of Reuter's to the British diplomatic authorities. Then having
his work to do, he started forth again, a heavy-hearted adventurer, and,
when it was over, he picked up Liosha, for whom Frau von Hagen had
managed to procure a stock of more or less civilised raiment, and
brought her to London to make good her claim, under Prescott's will, to
her dead husband's fortune.

Now this is Jaffery all over. Put him on a battlefield with guns going
off in all directions, or in a shipwreck, or in the midst of a herd of
crocodiles, and he will be cool master of the situation, and will
telegraph to his newspaper the graphic, nervous stuff of the born
journalist; but set him a simple problem in social life, which a child
of fifteen would solve in a walk across the room, and he is scared to
death. Instead of sending for Barbara, for instance, when he arrived in
London, or any other sensible woman, say, like Frau von Hagen of
Cettinje, he drags poor Euphemia, a timid maiden lady of forty-five,
from her tea-parties and Bible-classes and Dorcas-meetings at Tunbridge
Wells, and plants her down as guide, philosopher and friend to this
disconcerting product of Chicago and Albania. Of course the poor lady
was at her wits' ends, not knowing whether to treat her as a new-born
baby or a buffalo. With equal inevitability, Liosha, unaccustomed to
this type of Western woman, summed her up in a drastic epithet. And in
the meanwhile Jaffery went about tearing hair and beard and cursing the
fate that put him in charge of a volcano in petticoats.

"I have a great regard for Euphemia," said Barbara, later in the
day--they were walking up and down the terrace in, the dusk before
dinner--"but I have some sympathy with Liosha. Tolstoi! My dear Jaffery!
And the City Temple! If she wanted to take the girl to church, why not
her own church, the Brompton Oratory or Farm Street?"

"Euphemia wouldn't attend a Popish place of worship--she still calls it
Popish, poor dear--to save her soul alive, or anybody else's soul,"
replied Jaffery.

"Then pack her off at once to Tunbridge Wells," said Barbara. "She's
even more helpless than you, which is saying a great deal. I'll see to
Liosha."

Jaffery protested. It was dear of her, sweet of her, miraculous of her,
but he couldn't dream of it.

"Then don't," she retorted. "Put it out of your mind. And there's
Franklin. Come to dinner."

"I'm not a bit hungry," he said gloomily.

We dined; as far as I was concerned, very pleasantly. Liosha, who sat on
my right, refreshingly free in her table manners (embarrassingly so to
my most correct butler), was equally free in her speech. She provided me
with excellent entertainment. I learned many frank truths about Albanian
women, for whom, on account of their vaccine subjection, she proclaimed
the most scathing contempt. Her details, in architectural phrase, were
full size. Once or twice Doria, who sat on my left, lowered her eyes
disapprovingly. At her age, her mother would have been shocked; her
grandmother would have blushed from toes to forehead; her
great-grandmother might have fainted. But Doria, a Twentieth Century
product, on the Committee of a Maternity Home and a Rescue Laundry,
merely looked down her nose . . . I gathered that Liosha, for all her
yearning to shoot, flay alive, crucify and otherwise annoy her enemies,
did not greatly regret the loss of the distinguished young Albanian
cutthroat who was her affianced. Had he lived she would have spent the
rest of her days in saying, like Melisande, "I am not happy." She would
have been an instrument of pleasure, a producer of children, a slaving
drudge, while he went triumphantly about, a predatory ravisher, among
the scattered Bulgarian peasantry. In fact, she expressed a
whole-hearted detestation for her betrothed. I am pretty sure, too, that
the death of her father did not leave in her life the aching gap that it
might have done.

You see, it came to this. Her father, an American-Albanian, wanted to
run with the hare of barbarism and hunt with the hounds of civilisation.
His daughter (woman the world over) was all for hunting. He had spent
twenty years in America. By a law of gravitation, natural only in that
Melting Pot of Nations, Chicago, he had come across an Albanian
wife. . . .

Chicago is the Melting Pot of the nations of the world. Let me tell you
a true tale. It has nothing whatever to do with Jaffery Chayne or
Liosha--except perhaps to shew that there is no reason why a Tierra del
Fuegan foundling should not run across his long-lost brother on Michigan
Avenue, and still less reason why Albanian male should not meet Albanian
female in Armour's stockyards. And besides, considering that I was egged
on, as I said on the first page, to write these memoirs, I really don't
see why I should not put into them anything I choose.

An English novelist of my acquaintance visiting Chicago received a
representative of a great daily newspaper who desired to interview him.
The interviewer was a typical American reporter, blue-eyed, high
cheekboned, keen, nervous, finely strung, courteous, intensely alive,
desirous to get to the heart of my friend's mystery, and charmingly
responsive to his frank welcome. They talked. My friend, to give the
young man his story, discoursed on Chicago's amazingly solved problem of
the conglomeration of all the races under Heaven. To point his remarks
and mark his contrasts he used the words "we English" and "you
Americans." After a time the young man smiled and said: "But am not an
American--at least I'm an American citizen, but I'm not a born
American."

"But," cried my friend, "you're the essence of America."

"No," said the young man, "I'm an Icelander."

Thus it was natural for Liosha's father to find an Albanian wife in
Chicago. She too was superficially Americanised. When they returned to
Albania with their purely American daughter, they at first found it
difficult to appear superficial Albanians. Liosha had to learn Albanian
as a foreign language, her parents and herself always speaking English
among themselves. But the call of the blood rang strong in the veins of
the elders. Robbery and assassination on the heroic scale held for the
man an irresistible attraction, and he acquired great skill at the
business; and the woman, who seems to have been of a lymphatic
temperament, sank without murmuring into the domestic subjection into
which she had been born. It was only Liosha who rebelled. Hence her
complicated attitude towards life, and hence her entertaining talk at
the dinner table.

I enjoyed myself. So, I think, did everybody. When the ladies rose,
Jaffery, who was nearest the door, opened it for them to pass out,
Barbara, the last, lingered for a second or two and laid her hand on
Jaffery's arm and looked up at him out of her teasing blue eyes.

"My dear Jaff," she said, "what kind of a dinner do you eat when you
_are_ hungry?"

CHAPTER VI

Barbara having freed Jaffery from immediate anxieties with regard to
Liosha, easily persuaded him to pay a longer visit than he had proposed.
A telephonic conversation with a first distracted, then
conscience-smitten and then much relieved Euphemia had for effect the
payment of bills at the Savoy and the retreat of the gentle lady to
Tunbridge Wells. Liosha remained with us, pending certain negotiations
darkly carried on by my wife and Doria in concert. During this time I
had some opportunity of observing her from a more philosophic standpoint
and my judgment was--I will not say formed--but aided by Barbara's
confidential revelations. When not directly thwarted, she seemed to be
good-natured. She took to Susan--a good sign; and Susan took to her--a
better. Finding that her idea of happiness was to sprawl about the
garden and let the child run over her and inveigle her into childish
games and call her "Loshie" (a disrespectful mode of address which I had
all the pains in the world in persuading Barbara to permit) and
generally treat her as an animate instrument of entertainment, we
smoothed down every obstacle that might lie in this particular path to
beatitude. So many difficulties were solved. Not only were we spared the
problem of what the deuce to do with Liosha during the daytime, but also
Barbara was able to send the nurse away for a short and much needed
holiday. Of course Barbara herself undertook all practical duties; but
when she discovered that Liosha experienced primitive delight in
bathing Susan--Susan's bath being a heathen rite in which ducks and fish
and swimming women and horrible spiders played orgiac parts, and in
getting up at seven in the morning--("Good God! Is there such an hour?"
asked Adrian, when he heard about it)--in order to breakfast with Susan,
and in dressing and undressing her and brushing her hair, and in
tramping for miles by her side while with Basset, her vassal, in
attendance, Susan rode out on her pony; when Barbara, in short, became
aware of this useful infatuation, she pandered to it, somewhat
shamelessly, all the time, however, keeping an acute eye on the zealous
amateur. If, for instance, Liosha had picked a bushel of nectarines and
had established herself with Susan, in the corner of the fruit garden,
for a debauch, which would have had, for consequence, a child's funeral,
Barbara, by some magic of motherhood, sprang from the earth in front of
them with her funny little smile and her "Only one--and a very ripe
one--for Susan, dear Liosha." And in these matters Liosha was as much
overawed by Barbara as was Susan.

This, I repeat, was a good sign in Liosha. I don't say that she would
have fallen captive to any ordinary child, but Susan being my child was
naturally different from the vulgar run of children. She was _rarissinia
avis_ in the lands of small girls--one of the few points on which
Barbara and I are in unclouded agreement. No one could have helped
falling captive to Susan. But, I admit, in the case of Liosha, who was
an out-of-the-way, incalculable sort of creature--it was a good sign.
Perhaps, considering the short period during which I had her under close
observation, it was the best sign. She had grievous faults.

One evening, while I was dressing for dinner, Barbara burst into my
dressing-room.

"Reynolds has given me notice."

"Oh," said I, not desisting (as is the callous way of husbands the world
over) from the absorbing and delicate manipulation of my tie. "What
for?"

"Liosha has just gone for her with a pair of scissors."

"Horrible!" said I, getting the ends even. "I can imagine nothing more
finnikin in ghastliness than to cut anybody's throat with nail scissors,
especially when the subject is unwilling."

Barbara pished and pshawed. It was no occasion for levity.

"I agree," said I. The dressing hour is the calmest and most philosophic
period of the day.

Barbara came up to me blue eyed and innocent, and with a traitorous
jerk, undid my beautiful white bow.

"There, now listen."

And I, dilapidated wretch, had to listen to the tale of crime. It
appeared that Reynolds, my wife's maid, in putting Liosha into a
ready-made gown--a model gown I believe is the correct term--insisted on
her being properly corseted. Liosha, agonisingly constricted, rebelled.
The maid was obdurate. Liosha flew at her with a pair of scissors. I
think I should have done the same. Reynolds bolted from the room. So
should I have done. I sympathised with both of them. Reynolds fled to
her mistress, and, declaring it to be no part of her duty to wait on
tigers, gave notice.

"We can't lose Reynolds," said I.

"Of course we can't."

"And we can't pack Liosha off at a moment's notice, so as to please
Reynolds."

"Oh, you're too wise altogether," said my wife, and left me to the
tranquil completion of my dressing.

Liosha came down to dinner very subdued, after a short, sharp interview
with Barbara, who, for so small a person, can put on a prodigious air of
authority. As a punishment for bloodthirsty behaviour she had made her
wear the gown in the manner prescribed by Reynolds; and she had
apologised to Reynolds, who thereupon withdrew her notice. So serenity
again prevailed.

In some respects Liosha was very childish. The receipt of letters, no
matter from whom--even bills, receipts and circulars--gave her
overwhelming joy and sense of importance. This harmless craze, however,
led to another outburst of ferocity. Meeting the postman outside the
gate she demanded a letter. The man looked through his bundle.

"Nothing for you this morning, ma'am."

"I wrote to the dressmaker yesterday," said Liosha, "and you've got the
reply right there."

"I assure you I haven't," said the postman.

"You're a liar," cried Liosha, "and I guess I'm going to see."

Whereupon Liosha, who was as strong as a young horse, sprang to
death-grapple with the postman, a puny little man, pitched him onto the
side of the road and calmly entered into felonious possession of His
Majesty's mails. Then finding no letter she cast the whole delivery over
the supine and gasping postman and marched contemptuously into the
house.

The most astonishing part of the business was that in these outbreaks of
barbarity she did not seem to be impelled by blind rage. Most people who
heave a postman about a peaceful county would do so in a fit of passion,
through loss of nerve-control. Not so Liosha. She did these things with
the bland and deadly air of an inexorable Fate.

The perspiration still beads on my brow when I think of the cajoling and
bribing and blustering and lying I had to practise in order to hush up
the matter. As for Liosha, both Jaffery and I rated her soundly. I
explained loftily that not so many years ago, transportation, lifelong
imprisonment, death were the penalties for the felony which she had
committed.

[Illustration: Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek.]

"You ought to have a jolly good thrashing," roared Jaffery.

At this Liosha, who had endured our abuse with the downcast eyes of
angelic meekness, took a golfclub from a bag lying on the hall table and
handed it to the red-bearded giant.

"I guess I do," she said. "Beat me."

And, as I am a living man, I swear that if Jaffery had taken her at her
word and laid on lustily she would have taken her thrashing without a
murmur. What was one to do with such a woman?

Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, fingered the cleek. Gradually she
raised her glorious eyes to him, and in them I was startled to see the
most extraordinary doglike submission. He frowned portentously and shook
his head. Her lips worked, and after a convulsive sob or two, she threw
herself on the ground, clasped his knees, and to our dismay burst into a
passion of weeping. Barbara, rushing into the hall at this juncture,
like a fairy tornado, released us from our embarrassing position. She
annihilated us with a sweeping glance of scorn.

"Oh, go away, both of you, go away!"

So we went away and left her to deal with Liosha.

Save for such little excursions and alarms the days passed very
pleasantly. Jaffery spent most of the sweltering hours of daylight (it
was a blazing summer) in playing golf on the local course. Adrian and
Doria trod the path of the perfect lovers, while I, to justify my
position as President of the Hafiz Society, worked hard at a Persian
Grammar. Barbara, the never idle, was in the meantime arranging for
Liosha's future. Her organising genius had brought Doria's suggestion as
to the First Class London Boarding House into the sphere of practical
things. The Boarding House idea alone would not work; but, combine it
with Mrs. Considine, and the scheme ran on wheels.

"Even you," said Barbara, as though I were a sort of Schopenhauer, a
professional disparager of her sex--"even you have a high opinion of
Mrs. Considine."

I had. Every one had a high opinion of Mrs. Considine. She was not very
beautiful or very clever or very fascinating or very angelic or very
anything--but she was one of those women of whom everybody has a high
opinion. The impoverished widow of an Indian soldierman, with a son
soldiering somewhere in India, she managed to do a great deal on very
small means. She was a woman of the world, a woman of character. She
knew how to deal with people of queer races. Heaven indicated her for
appointment by Barbara as Liosha's duenna in the Boarding House. Mrs.
Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless,
gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who
happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away,
so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the
programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha's
education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her
a sense of Western decorum, extend her acquaintance, and gradually root
out of her heart the yearning to do her enemies to death. It was a
capital programme; and I gave it the benediction of a smile, in which,
seeing Barbara's shrewd blue eyes fixed on me, I suppressed the irony.

When this was all settled Jaffery proclaimed himself the most care-free
fellow alive. His hitherto grumpy and resentful attitude towards Liosha
changed. He established himself as fellow slave with her under the whip
of Susan's tyranny. It did one good to see these two magnificent
creatures sporting together for the child's, and incidentally their own,
amusement. For the first time during their intercourse they met on the
same plane.

"She's really quite a good sort," said Jaffery.

But if it was pleasant to see him with Liosha, it was still more
touching to watch his protective attitude towards Doria. He seemed so
anxious to do her service, so deferential to her views, so
puzzle-headedly eager to reconcile them with his own. She took upon
herself to read him little lectures.

"Don't you think you're rather wasting your life?" she asked him one
day.

"Do you think I am?"

"Yes."

"Oh! But I work hard at my job, you know," he said apologetically--"when
there's one for me to do. And when there isn't I kind of prepare myself
for the next. For instance I've got to keep myself always fit."

"But that's all physical and outside." She smiled, in her little
superior way. "It's the inside, the personal, the essential self that
matters. Life, properly understood, is a process of self-development. If
a human being is the same at the end of a year as he was at the
beginning he has made no spiritual progress."

Jaffery pulled his red beard. "In other words, he hasn't lived," said
he.

"Precisely."

"And you think that I'm just the same sort of old animal from one year's
end to another and that I don't progress worth a cent, and so, that I
don't live."

"I don't want to say quite that," she replied graciously. "Every one
must advance a little bit unless they deteriorate. But the conscious
striving after spiritual progress is so necessary--and you seem to put
it aside. It is such waste of life."

"I suppose it is, in a way," Jaffery admitted.

She pursued the theme, a flattered Egeria. "You see--well, what do you
do? You travel about in out-of-the-way places and make notes about them
in case the knowledge may be useful to you in the future. When you come
across anything to kill, you kill it. It also pleases you to come across
anything that calls for an exercise of strength. When there is a war or
a revolution or anything that takes you to your real work, as you call
it, you've only got to go through it and report what you see."

"But that's just the difficulty," cried Jaffery. "It isn't every chap
that's tough enough to come out rosy at the end of a campaign. And it
isn't every chap that can _see_ the things he ought to write about.
That's when the training comes in."

Again she smiled. "I've no idea of belittling your profession, my dear
Jaffery. I think it's a noble one. But should it be the Alpha and Omega
of things? Don't you see? The real life is intellectual, spiritual,
emotional. What are your ideals?"

Jaffery looked at her ruefully. Beneath those dark pools of eyes lay the
spirituality that made her a mystery so sacred. He, great hulking
fellow, was a gross lump of clay. Ideals?

"I don't suppose I have any," said he.

"But you must. Everybody has, to a certain extent."

"Well, to ride straight and tell the truth--like the ancient Persians, I
suppose it was the Persians--anyway it's a sort of rough code I've got."

"Have you read Nietzsche?" she asked suddenly.

He frowned perplexedly. "Nietzsche--that's the mad superman chap, isn't
it? No. I've not read a word."

"I do wish you would. You'll find him so exhilarating. You might
possibly agree with a lot of what he says. I don't. But he sets you
thinking."

She sketched her somewhat prim conception of the Nietzschean philosophy,
and after listening to it in dumb wonder, he promised to carry out her
wishes. So, when I came down to my library that evening dressed for
dinner, I found him, still in morning clothes, with "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" on his knees, and a bewildered expression on his face.

"Have you read this, Hilary?" he asked.

"Yes," said I.

"Understand it?"

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