Jaffery / Locke, William John, 1863-1930

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jaffery, by William J. Locke

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: Jaffery

Author: William J. Locke

Release Date: January 11, 2005 [EBook #14669]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAFFERY ***




Produced by Rick Niles, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.






[Illustration: It was his great arms that lifted her feather-weight with
extraordinary sureness and gentleness. (_See page 165_)]




JAFFERY

BY

WILLIAM J. LOCKE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY
F. MATANIA

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY

1915

Press of
J.J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U.S.A.




TO MY WIFE


This book on which it has pleased you to bestow your especial affection
I dedicate to you with my love. It is a memory of many happy hours and
many dreams that we have shared.

You remember how it was begun, one spring morning two years ago, with
the opening scene of the first chapter gay before my eyes as I wrote.
You remember the excitement of ending it before the Christmas of 1913;
so that we could start with free consciences, early in the New Year, on
our Egyptian journey.

_C'est bien loin, tout cela_! War overtook it in its serial course; and
now, in book form, it must go out to the world as an expression of the
moods and fancies almost of a past incarnation.

These dream figures with whom we delighted, like children, to people our
home, are now replaced by other guests tragically real, as big-hearted
as those most loved of our shadow-folk. Yet sometimes they seem still to
live. . . . While correcting the final proofs we have been tempted to
modify the end, to bring the story of Jaffery more or less up to date;
but we have felt that any addition would be out of key, so far are we
from that happy Christmastide when, in gaiety of heart, I wrote the last
words.

Yet we know, you and I, that Jaffery Chayne is even now over there,
across the Channel; no longer writing of war, but doing his soldier's
work in the thick of it, like a gallant gentleman. And don't you feel
that one day he will come again and we shall hear his mighty voice
thundering across the lawn. . . ?

W.J.L.




ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                         FACING
                                                          PAGE

It was his great arms that lifted her feather-weight with
extraordinary sureness and gentleness             _Frontispiece_

Where the lonely figure in black and white sat brooding      64

Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek        78

He drew out a great thick clump of galley-proofs            186

"Go! You're nothing but a brute"                            228

Before I realized the danger . . . I was flung aside        300

And there, in a wilderness of ransacked drawers and
strewn papers, . . . lay a tiny, black, moaning
heap of a woman                                             316

There is war going on in the Balkans. Jaffery is there
as war correspondent. Liosha is there, too                  350




THE
WILLIAM J. LOCKE
YEAR-BOOK

A _bon-mot_ for each day in
every year, selected from
this popular author's works.

_Decorated Cloth. $1.00 net_




CHAPTER I


I received a letter the day before yesterday from my old friend, Jaffery
Chayne, which has inspired me to write the following account of that
dear, bull-headed, Pantagruelian being. I must say that I have been
egged on to do so by my wife, of whom hereafter. A man of my somewhat
urbane and dilettante temperament does not do these things without being
worried into them. I had the inspiration, however. I told Barbara (my
wife), and she agreed, at the time, dutifully, that I ought to record
our friend Jaffery's doings. But now, womanlike, she declares that the
first suggestion, the root germ of the idea, came from her; that the
"egging on" is merely the vain man's way of misdefining a woman's serene
insistence; that she has given me, out of her intimate knowledge, all
the facts of the story--although Jaffery Chayne and Adrian Boldero and
poor Tom Castleton, and others involved in the imbroglio, counted
themselves as my bosom cronies, while she, poor wretch (a man must get
home somewhere), was in the nursery; and that, finally, if she had been
taught English grammar and spelling at school, she would have dispensed
entirely with my pedantic assistance and written the story herself.
Anyhow, man-like, I am broad minded enough to proclaim that it doesn't
very much matter. Man and wife are one. She thinks they are one wife. I
know they are one husband. Between speculation and knowledge why so
futile a thing as a quarrel? I proceed therefore to my originally
self-appointed and fantastic task.

But on reflection, before beginning, I must honestly admit that if it
had not been for Barbara I should write of these things with
half-knowledge. Sex is a queer and incalculable solvent of human
confidence. There are certain revelations that men will make only to a
man, certain revelations likewise that women will make only to a man. On
the other hand, a woman is told things by her sister women and her
brother men which, but for her, would never reach a man's ears. So by
combining the information obtained from our family encyclopaedia under
the feminine heading of China with that obtained under the masculine
heading of Philosophy, I can, figuratively speaking, like the famous
student, issue my treatise on Chinese Philosophy.

       *       *       *       *       *

One miraculous morning in late May, not so very many years ago, when the
parrot-tulips in my garden were expanding themselves wantonly to the
sun, and the lilac and laburnum which I caught, as I sat at my table,
with the tail of one eye, and the pink may which I caught with the tail
of the other, bloomed in splendid arrogance, my quiet outlook on
greenery and colour was obscured by a human form. I may mention that my
study-table is placed in the bay of a window, on the ground floor. It is
a French window, opening on a terrace. Beyond the parapet of the
terrace, the garden, with its apple and walnut trees, its beeches, its
lawn, its beds of tulips, its lilac and laburnum and may and all sorts
of other pleasant things, slopes lazily upwards to a horizon of iron
railings separating the garden from a meadow where now and then a cow,
when she desires to be peculiarly agreeable to the sight, poses herself
in silhouette against the sky. I like to gaze on that adventitious cow.
Her ruminatory attitude falls in with mine. . . . But I digress. . . .

I glanced up at the obscuring human form and recognized my wife. She
looked, I must confess, remarkably pretty, with her fair hair _blond
comme les bles_, and her mocking cornflower blue eyes, and her mutinous
mouth, which has never yet (after all these years) assumed a responsible
parent's austerity. She wore a fresh white dress with coquettish bits of
blue about the bodice. In her hand she grasped a dilapidated newspaper,
the _Daily Telegraph_, which looked as if she had been to bed in it.

"Am I disturbing you, Hilary?"

She was. She knew she was. But she looked so charming, a petal of
spring, a quick incarnation of pink may and forget-me-not and laburnum,
that I put down my pen and I smiled.

"You are, my dear," said I, "but it doesn't matter."

"What are you doing?" She remained on the threshold.

"I am writing my presidential address," said I, "for the Grand Meeting,
next month, of the Hafiz Society."

"I wonder," said Barbara, "why Hafiz always makes me think of sherbet."

I remonstrated, waving a dismissing hand.

"If that's all you've got to say--"

"But it isn't."

She crossed the threshold, stepped in, swished round the end of my long
oak table and took possession of my library. I wheeled round politely in
my chair.

"Then, what is it?" I asked.

"Have you read the paper this morning?"

"I've glanced through the _Times_," said I.

She patted her handful of bedclothing and let fall a blanket and a
bed-spread or two--("Look at my beautifully, orderly folded _Times_,"
said I, with an indicatory gesture) She looked and sniffed--and shed
Vallombrosa leaves of the _Daily Telegraph_ about the library until she
had discovered the page for which she was searching. Then she held a
mangled sheet before my eyes.

"There!" she cried, "what do you think of that?"

"What do I think of what?" I asked, regarding the acre of print.

"Adrian Boldero has written a novel!"

"Adrian?" said I. "Well, my dear, what of it? Poor old Adrian is capable
of anything. Nothing he did would ever surprise me. He might write a
sonnet to a Royal Princess's first set of false teeth or steal the tin
cup from a blind beggar's dog, and he would be still the same beautiful,
charming, futile Adrian."

Barbara pished and insisted. "But this is apparently a wonderful novel.
There's a whole column about it. They say it's the most astounding book
published in our generation. Look! A work of genius."

"Rubbish, darling," said I, knowing my Adrian.

"Take the trouble to read the notice," said Barbara, thrusting the paper
at me in a superior manner.

I took it from her and read. She was right. Somebody calling himself
Adrian Boldero had written a novel called "The Diamond Gate," which a
usually sane and distinguished critic proclaimed to be a work of genius.
He sketched the outline of the story, indicated its peculiar wonder. The
review impressed me.

"Barbara, my dear," said I, "this is somebody else--not our Adrian."

"How many people in the world are called Adrian Boldero?"

"Thousands," said I.

She pished again and tossed her pretty head.

"I'll go and telephone straight away to Adrian and find out all about
it."

She departed through the library door into the recesses of the house
where the telephone has its being. I resumed consideration of my
presidential address. But Hafiz eluded me, and Adrian occupied my
thoughts. I took up the paper and read the review again; and the more I
read, the more absurd did it seem to me that the author of "The Diamond
Gate" and my Adrian Boldero could be one and the same person.

You see, we had, all four of us, Adrian, Jaffery Chayne, Tom Castleton
and myself, been at Cambridge together, and formed after the manner of
youth a somewhat incongruous brotherhood. We knew one another's
shortcomings to a nicety and whenever three of the quartette were
gathered together, the physical prowess, the morals and the intellectual
capacity of the absent fourth were discussed with admirable lack of
reticence. So it came to pass that we gauged one another pretty
accurately and remained devoted friends. There were other men, of
course, on the fringe of the brotherhood, and each of us had our little
separate circle; we did not form a mutual admiration society and
advertise ourselves as a kind of exclusive, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and
d'Artagnan swashbucklery; but, in a quiet way, we recognised our
quadruple union of hearts, and talked amazing rubbish and committed
unspeakable acts of lunacy and dreamed impossible dreams in a very
delightful, and perhaps unsuspected, intimacy. We were now in our middle
and late thirties--all save poor Tom Castleton, over whom, in an alien
grave, the years of the Lord passed unheeded. Poor old chap! He was the
son of the acting-manager of a well-known theatre and used to talk to us
of the starry theatre-folk, his family intimates, as though they were
haphazard occupants of an omnibus. How we envied him! And he was forever
writing plays which he read to us; which plays, I remember, were always
on the verge of being produced by Irving. We believed in him firmly. He
alone of the little crew had a touch of genius.

Blond, bull-necked Jaffery who rowed in the college boat, and would
certainly have got his blue if he had been amenable to discipline and,
because he was not, got sent down ingloriously from the University at
the beginning of his third year, certainly did not show a sign of it.
Adrian was a bit unaccountable. He wrote poems for the Cambridge Review,
and became Vice-President of the Union; but he ran disastrously to fancy
waistcoats, and shuddered at Dickens because his style was not that of
Walter Pater. For myself, Hilary Freeth--well--I am a happy nonentity. I
have a very mild scholarly taste which sufficient private means,
accruing to me through my late father's acumen in buying a few founder's
shares in a now colossal universal providing emporium, enable me to
gratify. I am a harmless person of no account. But the other three
mattered. They were definite--Jaffery, blatantly definite; Adrian
Boldero, in his queer, silky way, incisively definite; Tom Castleton,
romantically definite. And poor old Tom was dead. Dear, impossible,
feckless fellow. He took a first class in the Classical Tripos and we
thought his brilliant career was assured--but somehow circumstances
baffled him; he had a terrible time for a dozen years or so, taking
pupils, acting, free-lancing in journalism, his father having, in the
meanwhile, died suddenly penniless; and then Fortune smiled on him. He
secured a professorship at an Australian University. The three of
us--Jaffery and Adrian and I--saw him off at Southampton. He never
reached Australia. He died on the voyage. Poor old Tom!

So I sat, with the review of Adrian's book before me, looking out at my
Pleasant garden, and my mind went irresistibly back to the old days and
then wandered on to the present. Tom was dead: I flourished, a
comfortable cumberer of the earth; Jaffery was doing something
idiotically desperate somewhere or the other--he was a war-correspondent
by trade (as regular an employment as that of the maker of hot-cross
buns), and a desperado by predilection--I had not heard from him for a
year; and now Adrian--if indeed the Adrian Boldero of the review was
he--had written an epoch-making novel.

But Adrian--the precious, finnikin Adrian--how on earth could he have
written this same epoch-making novel? Beyond doubt he was a clever
fellow. He had obtained a First Class in the Law Tripos and had done
well in his Bar examination. But after fourteen years or so he was
making twopence halfpenny per annum at his profession. He made another
three-farthings, say, by selling elegant verses to magazines. He dined
out a great deal and spent much of his time at country houses, being a
very popular and agreeable person. His other means of livelihood
consisted of an allowance of four hundred a year made him by his mother.
Beyond the social graces he had not distinguished himself. And now--

"It _is_ Adrian," cried my wife, bursting into the library. "I knew it
was. He has had several other glorious reviews which we haven't seen.
Isn't it splendid?"

Her eyes danced with loyalty and gladness. Now that I too knew it was
our Adrian I caught her enthusiasm.

"Splendid," I echoed. "To think of old Adrian making good at last! I'm
more than glad. Telephone at once, dear, for a copy of the book."

"Adrian is bringing one with him. He's coming down to dine and stay the
night. He said he had an engagement, but I told him it was rubbish, and
he's coming."

Barbara had a despotic way with her men friends, especially with Adrian
and Jaffery, who, each after his kind, paid her very pretty homage.

"And now, I've got a hundred things to do, so you must excuse me," said
Barbara--for all the world as if I had invited her into my library and
was detaining her against her will.

My reply was smilingly ironical. She disappeared. I returned to Hafiz.
Soon a bumble-bee, a great fellow splendid in gold and black and
crimson, blundered into the room and immediately made furious racket
against a window pane. Now I can't concentrate my mind on serious
things, if there's a bumble-bee buzzing about. So I had to get up and
devote ten minutes to persuading the dunderhead to leave the glass and
establish himself firmly on the piece of paper that would waft him into
the open air and sunlight. When I lost sight of him in the glad greenery
I again came back to my work. But two minutes afterwards my little seven
year old daughter, rather the worse for amateur gardening, and holding a
cage of white mice in her hand, appeared on the threshold, smiled at me
with refreshing absence of apology, darted in, dumped the white mice on
an open volume of my precious Turner Macan's edition of Firdusi, and
clambering into my lap and seizing pencil and paper, instantly ordained
my participation in her favourite game of "head, body and legs."

An hour afterwards a radiant angel of a nurse claimed her for purposes
of ablution. I once more returned to Hafiz. Then Barbara put her head in
at the door.

"Haven't you thought how delighted Doria will be?"

"I haven't," said I. "I've more important things to think about."

"But," said Barbara, entering and closing the door with soft
deliberation behind her and coming to my side--"if Adrian makes a big
success, they'll be able to marry."

"Well?" said I.

"Well," said she, with a different intonation. "Don't you see?"

"See what?"

It is wise to irritate your wife on occasion, so as to manifest your
superiority. She shook me by the collar and stamped her foot.

"Don't you care a bit whether your friends get married or not?"

"Not a bit," said I.

Barbara lifted the Macan's Firdusi, still suffering the desecration of
the forgotten cage of white mice, onto my manuscript and hoisted herself
on the cleared corner of the table.

"Doria is my dearest friend. She did my sums for me at school, although
I was three years older. If it hadn't been for us, she and Adrian would
never have met."

"That I admit," I interrupted. "But having started on the path of crime
we're not bound to pursue it to the end."

"You're simply horrid!" she cried. "We've talked for years of the sad
story of these two poor young things, and now, when there's a chance of
their marrying, you say you don't care a bit!"

"My dear," said I, rising, "what with you and Adrian and a bumble-bee
and the child and two white mice, and now Doria, my morning's work is
ruined. Let us go out into the garden and watch the starlings resting in
the walnut trees. Incidentally we might discuss Doria and Adrian."

"Now you're talking sense," said Barbara.

So we went into the garden--and discussed the formation next autumn of a
new rose-bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the afternoon train came Adrian, impeccably vestured and feverish
with excitement. Two evening papers which he brandished nervously,
proclaimed "The Diamond Gate" a masterpiece. The book had been only out
a week--(we country mice knew nothing of it)--and already, so his
publisher informed him, repeat orders were coming in from the libraries
and distributing agents.

"Wittekind, my publisher, declares it's going to be the biggest thing in
first novels ever known. And though I say it as shouldn't, dear old
Hilary,"--he clapped me on the shoulder--"it's a damned fine book."

I shall always remember him as he said this, in the pride of his
manhood, a defiant triumph in his eyes, his head thrown back, and a
smile revealing the teeth below his well-trimmed moustache. He had
conquered at last. He had put poor old Jaffery and fortune-favoured me
in the shade. At one leap he had mounted to planes beyond our dreams.
All this his attitude betokened. He removed the hand from my shoulder
and flourished it in a happy gesture.

"My fortune's made," he cried.

"But, my dear fellow," I asked, "why have you sprung this surprise on
us? I had no idea you were writing a novel."

He laughed. "No one had. Not even Doria. It was on her account I kept it
secret. I didn't want to arouse possible false hopes. It's very simple.
Besides, I like being a dark horse. It's exciting. Don't you remember
how paralysed you all were when I got my First at Cambridge? Everybody
thought I hadn't done a stroke of work--but I had sweated like mad all
the time."

This was quite true, the sudden brilliance of the end of Adrian's
University career had dazzled the whole of his acquaintance. Barbara,
impatient of retrospect, came to the all-important point.

"How does Doria take it?"

He turned on her and beamed. He was one of those dapper, slim-built men
who can turn with quick grace.

"She's as pleased as Punch. Gave it to old man Jornicroft to read and
insisted on his reading it. He's impressed. Never thought I had it in
me. Can't see, however, where the commercial value of it comes in."

"Wait till you show him your first thumping cheque," sympathised my
wife.

"I'm going to," he exclaimed boyishly. "I might have done it this
afternoon. Wittekind was off his head with delight and if I had asked
him to give me a bogus cheque for ten thousand to show to old man
Jornicroft, he would have written it without a murmur."

"How much did he really write a cheque for this afternoon?" I asked,
knowing (as I have said before) my Adrian.

Barbara looked shocked. "Hilary!" she remonstrated.

But Adrian laughed in high good humour. "He gave me a hundred pounds on
account."

"That won't impress Mr. Jornicroft at all," said I.

"It impressed my tailor, who cashed it, deducting a quarter of his
bill."

"Do you mean to say, my dear Adrian," I questioned, "that you went to
your tailor with a cheque for a hundred pounds and said, 'I want to pay
you a quarter of what I owe you, will you give me change?'"

"Of course."

"But why didn't you pass the cheque through your banking account and
post him your own cheque?"

"Did you ever hear such an innocent?" he cried gaily. "I wanted to
impress him, I did. One must do these things with an air. He stuffed my
pockets with notes and gold--there has never been any one so all over
money as I am at this particular minute--and then I gave him an order
for half-a-dozen suits straight away."

"Good God!" I cried aghast. "I've never had six suits of clothes at a
time since I was born."

"And more shame for you. Look!" said he, drawing my wife's attention to
my comfortable but old and deliberately unfashionable raiment. "I love
you, my dear Barbara, but you are to blame."

"Hilary," said my wife, "the next time you go to town you'll order
half-a-dozen suits and I'll come with you to see you do it. Who is your
tailor, Adrian?"

He gave the address. "The best in London. And if you go to him on my
introduction--Good Lord!"--it seemed to amuse him vastly--"I can order
half-a-dozen more!"

All this seemed to me, who am not devoid of a sense of humour and an
appreciation of the pleasant flippancies of life, somewhat futile and
frothy talk, unworthy of the author of "The Diamond Gate" and the lover
of Doria Jornicroft. I expressed this opinion and Barbara, for once,
agreed with me.

"Yes. Let us be serious. In the first place you oughtn't to allude to
Doria's father as 'old man Jornicroft.' It isn't respectful."

"But I don't respect him. Who could? He is bursting with money, but
won't give Doria a farthing, won't hear of our marriage, and practically
forbids me the house. What possible feeling can one have for an old
insect like that?"

"I've never seen any reason," said Barbara, who is a brave little woman,
"why Doria shouldn't run away and marry you."

"She would like a shot," cried Adrian; "but I won't let her. How can I
allow her to rush to the martyrdom of married misery on four hundred a
year, which I don't even earn?"

I looked at my watch. "It's time, my friends," said I, "to dress for
dinner. Afterwards we can continue the discussion. In the meanwhile I'll
order up some of the '89 Pol Roger so that we can drink to the success
of the book."

"The '89 Pol Roger?" cried Adrian. "A man with '89 Pol Roger in his
cellar is the noblest work of God!"

"I was thinking," Barbara remarked drily, "of asking Doria to spend a
few days here next week."

"All I can say is," he retorted, with his quick turn and smile, "that
you are the Divinity Itself."

So, a short time afterwards, a very happy Adrian sat down to dinner and
brought a cultivated taste to the appreciation of a now, alas!
historical wine, under whose influence he expanded and told us of the
genesis and the making of "The Diamond Gate."

Now it is a very odd coincidence, one however which had little, if
anything, to do with the curious entanglement of my friend's affairs
into which I was afterwards drawn, but an odd coincidence all the same,
that on passing from the dining room with Adrian to join Barbara in the
drawing room, I found among the last post letters lying on the hall
table one which, with a thrill of pleasure, I held up before Adrian's
eyes.

"Do you recognise the handwriting?"

"Good Lord!" cried he. "It's from Jaffery Chayne. And"--he scanned the
stamp and postmark--"from Cettinje. What the deuce is he doing there?"

"Let us see!" said I.

I opened the letter and scanned it through; then I read it aloud.

     "Dear Hilary,

     "A line to let you know that I'm coming back soon. I haven't quite
     finished my job--"

     "What was his job?"

     "Heaven knows," I replied. "The last time I heard from him he was
     cruising about the Sargasso Sea."

     I resumed my reading.

     "--for the usual reason, a woman. If it wasn't for women what a
     thundering amount of work a man could get through. Anyhow--I'm
     coming back, with an encumbrance. A wife. Not my wife, thank
     Olympus, but another man's wife--"

     "Poor old devil!" cried Adrian. "I knew he would come a mucker one
     of these days!"

     "Wait," said I, and I read--

     "--poor Prescott's wife. I don't think you ever knew Prescott, but
     he was a good sort. He died of typhoid. Only quaggas and yaks and
     other iron-gutted creatures like myself can stand Albania. I'm
     escorting her to England, so look out for us. How's everybody? Do
     you ever hear of Adrian? If so, collar him. I want to work the
     widow off on him. She has a goodish deal of money and is a kind of
     human dynamo. The best thing in the world for Adrian."

     Adrian confounded the fellow. I continued--

     "Prepare then for the Dynamic Widow. Love to Barbara, the fairy
     grasshopper--"

     "Who's that?"

     "My daughter, Susan Freeth. The last time he saw her, she was
     hopping about in a green jumper--Barbara would give you the
     elementary costume's commercial name."

     "--and yourself," I read. "By the way, do you know of a
     granite-built, iron-gated, portcullised, barbicaned, really
     comfortable home for widows?

     Yours, Jaffery."

Without waiting for comment from Adrian, I went with the letter into the
drawing room, he following. I handed it to Barbara, who ran it through.

"That's just like Jaffery. He tells us nothing."

"I think he has told us everything," said I.

"But who and what and whence is this lady?"

"Goodness knows!" said I.

"Therefore, he has told us nothing," retorted Barbara. "My own belief is
that she's a Brazilian."

"But what," asked Adrian, "would a lone Brazilian female be doing in the
Balkans?"

"Looking for a husband, of course," said Barbara.

And like all wise men when staggered by serene feminine asseveration we
bowed our heads and agreed that nothing could be more obvious.




CHAPTER II


Some weeks passed; but we heard no more of Jaffery Chayne. If he had
planted his widow there, in Cettinje, and gone off to Central Africa we
should not have been surprised. On the other hand, he might have walked
in at any minute, just as though he lived round the corner and had
dropped in casually to see us.

In the meantime events had moved rapidly for Adrian. Everybody was
talking about his book; everybody was buying it. The rare phenomenon of
the instantaneous success of a first book by an unknown author was
occurring also in America. Golden opinions were being backed by golden
cash. Adrian continued to draw on his publishers, who, fortunately for
them, had an American house. Anticipating possible alluring proposals
from other publishers, they offered what to him were dazzling and
fantastic terms for his next two novels. He accepted. He went about the
world wearing Fortune like a halo. He achieved sudden fame; fame so
widespread that Mr. Jornicroft heard of it in the city, where he
promoted (and still promotes) companies with monotonous success. The
result was an interview to which Adrian came wisely armed with a note
from his publisher as to sales up to date, and the amazing contract
which he had just signed. He left the house with a father's blessing in
his ears and an affianced bride's kisses on his lips. The wedding was
fixed for September. Adrian declared himself to be the happiest of God's
creatures and spent his days in joy-sodden idleness. His mother, with
tears in her eyes, increased his allowance.

The book that created all this commotion, I frankly admit, held me
spellbound. It deserved the highest encomiums by the most enthusiastic
reviewers. It was one of the most irresistible books I had ever read. It
was a modern high romance of love and pity, of tears iridescent with
laughter, of strong and beautiful though erring souls; it was at once
poignant and tender; it vibrated with drama; it was instinct with calm
and kindly wisdom. In my humility, I found I had not known my Adrian one
little bit. As the shepherd of old who had a sort of patronizing
affection for the irresponsible, dancing, flute-playing, goat-footed
creature of the woodland was stricken with panic when he recognised the
god, so was I convulsed when I recognised the genius of my friend
Adrian. And the fellow still went on dancing and flute-playing and I
stared at him open-mouthed.

Mr. Jornicroft, who was a widower, gave a great dinner party at his
house in Park Crescent, in honour of the engagement. My wife and I
attended, fishes somewhat out of water amid this brilliant but solid
assembly of what it pleased Barbara to call "merchantates." She
expressed a desire to shrink out of the glare of the diamonds; but she
wore her grandmother's pearls, and, being by far the youngest and
prettiest matron present, held her own with the best of them. There were
stout women, thin women, white-haired women, women who ought to have
been white-haired, but were not; sprightly and fashionable women; but
besides Barbara, the only other young woman was Doria herself.

She took us aside, as soon as we were released from the formal welcome
of Mr. Jornicroft, a thickset man with a very bald head and heavy black
moustache.

"The sight of you two is like a breath of fresh air. Did you ever meet
with anything so stuffy?"

Now, considering that all these prosperous folks had come to do her
homage I thought the remark rather ungracious.

"It's apt to be stuffy in July in London," I said.

She laid her hand on Barbara's wrist and pointed at me with her fan.

"He thinks he's rebuking me. But I don't care. I'm glad to see him all
the same. These people mean nothing but money and music-halls and bridge
and restaurants--I'm so sick of it. You two mean something else."

"Don't speak sacrilegiously of restaurants, even though you are going to
marry a genius," said I. "There is one in Paris to which Adrian will
take you straight--like a homing bird."

"Wherever Adrian takes me, it will be beautiful," she said defiantly.

My little critical humour vanished, for she looked so valiantly adorable
in her love for the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with
dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose
and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and,
for so diminutive a person, appeared vastly important.

Adrian, released from an ex-Lady Mayoress, came up all smiles, to greet
us. Doria gave him a glance which in spite of my devotion to Barbara and
my abhorrence of hair's breadth deviation from strict monogamy dealt me
a pang of unregenerate jealousy. There is only one man in the universe
worthy of being so regarded by a woman; and he is oneself. Every
true-minded man will agree with me. She was inordinately proud of him;
proud too of herself in that she had believed in him and given him her
love long before he became famous. Adrian's eyes softened as they met
the glance. He turned to Barbara.

"It's in a crowd like this that she looks so mysterious--an Elemental;
but whether of Earth, Air, Fire or Water, I shall spend my life trying
to discover."

The faintest flush possible mounted to that pure ivory-white cheek of
hers. She laughed and caught me by the arm.

"I must carry you to Lady Bagshawe--you're taking her in to dinner. Her
husband is Master of the Organ-Grinders' Company--"

"No, no, Doria," said I.

"--Well, it's some city company--I don't know--and she is a museum of
diseases and a gazetteer of cure places. Now you know where you are."

She led me to Lady Bagshawe. Soon afterwards we trooped down to dinner,
during which I learned more of my inside than I knew before, and more of
that of Lady Bagshawe than any of her most fervent adorers in their
wildest dreams could have ever hoped to ascertain; during which, also, I
endeavoured to convince an unknown, but agreeable lady on my left that I
did not play polo, whereat, it seemed, her eight brothers were experts;
and that Omar Khayyam was a contemporary not of the Prophet Isaiah, but
of William the Conqueror. As for the setting--I am not an observant
man--but I had an impression of much gold and silver and rare flora on
the table, great gold frames enclosing (I doubt not) costly pictures on
the walls, many desirable jewels on undesirable bosoms, strong though
unsympathetic masculine faces, and such food and drink as Lucullus, poor
fellow, did not live long enough to discover.

When the ladies retired, and we moved up towards our host, I found
myself between two groups; one discussing the mercantile depravity of a
gentleman called Wilmot, of whom I had never heard, the other arguing
on dark dilemmas connected with an Abyssinian loan. A vacant chair
happening to be by my side, Adrian, glass in hand, came round the table
and sat down.

"How are you getting on?"

"Well," said I. "Very well." I sipped my port. I recognised Cockburn
1870.

"You seemed rather at a loose end."

"When one has 1870 port to drink," said I, "why fritter away its flavour
in vain words?"

"It is damned good port," Adrian admitted.

"Earth holds nothing better," said I.

We lapsed into silence amid the talk on each side of us. I confess that
I rather surrendered myself to the wine. A little taper for cigarettes
happened to be in front of me; I held my glass in its light and lost
myself in the wine's pure depths of mystery and colour; and my mind
wandered to the lusty sunshine of "Lusitanian summers" that was there
imprisoned. I inhaled its fragrance, I accepted its exquisite and
spacious generosity. Wine, like bread and oil--"God's three chief
words"--is a thing of itself--a thing of earth and air and sun--one of
the great natural things, such as the stars and the flowers and the eyes
of a dog. Even the most mouth-twisting new wine of Northern Italy has
its fascination for me, in that it is essentially something apart from
the dust and empty racket of the world; how much more then this radiant
vintage suddenly awakened from its slumber in the darkness of forty
years. So I mused, as I think an honest man is justified in musing,
soberly, over a great wine, when suddenly my left eye caught Adrian's
face. He too was musing; but musing on unhappy things, for a hand seemed
to have swept his face and wiped the joy from it. He was gazing at his
half-emptied glass, with the short stem of which his fingers were
nervously toying. There was a quick snap. The stem broke and the wine
flowed over the cloth. He started, and with a flash the old Adrian came
back, manifesting itself in his smiling dismay, his boyish apology to
Mr. Jornicroft for smashing a rare glass, spoiling the tablecloth and
wasting precious wine. The incident served to disequilibrate, as one
might say, the two discussions on Wilmot and Abyssinia. Coffee came and
liqueurs. I bade farewell to Lusitanian dreams and found myself in heart
to heart conversation with my neighbour on the right, a florid,
simple-minded sugar-broker, a certain next-year's Sheriff of the City of
London, whose consuming ambition was to become a member of the Athenaeum
Club. When I informed him that I was privileged to enter that Valley of
Dry Bones--my late father, an eminent Assyriologist and a disastrous
Master of Fox hounds, had put me up for all sorts of weird institutions,
I think, before I was born--my sugar broker almost fell at my feet and
worshipped me. Although I told him that the premises were overrun with
Bishops and that we had laid down all kinds of episcopicide to no avail,
he refused to be disillusioned. I told him that on the occasion of my
last visit to the Megatherium--Thackeray, I explained--a Royal
Academician, with whom I had a slight acquaintance, reading desolate
"The Hibbert Journal" in the smoking-room, embraced me as fondly as the
austerity of the place permitted and related a non-drawing-room story
which was current at my preparatory school--and that in the library I
ran into an equally desolate, though even less familiar Archdeacon, who
seized me, like the Ancient Mariner, and never let me go until he had
impressed upon my mind the name and address of the only man in London
who could cut clerical gaiters. But the simple child of sugar would have
his way. There was but one Valhalla in London, and it was built by
Decimus Burton.

After that we joined the ladies for an unimportant half hour or so, and
then Barbara and I took our leave. As we were motoring home--we live
some thirty miles out of London--we discussed the dinner party,
according to the way of married folks, home-bound after a feast, and I
mentioned the trivial incident of Adrian and the broken glass. Why
should his face have been so haggard when he had everything to make him
happy?

"He was thinking of Mr. Jornicroft's previous insulting behaviour."

"How do you know?"

"He told me," said Barbara.

"I never knew Adrian to be seriously vindictive," said I.

"It strikes me, my dear," replied Barbara, taking my hand, "that you are
an old ignoramus."

And this from a woman who actively glories in not knowing how many "r's"
there are in "harassed."

She nestled up to me. "We're not going abroad in August, are we?"

"What?" I cried, "leave the English country during the only part of the
year that is not 'deformed with dripping rains or withered by a frost'?
Certainly not."

"But we did last year, and the year before."

"Pure accident. The year before, Susan was recovering from the measles
and you had some pretty frocks which you thought would look lovely at
Dinard. And last year you also had some frocks and insisted that
Houlgate was the only place where Susan could avoid being stricken down
by scarlet-fever."

"Anyhow," said my wife, "we're not going away this year, for I've fixed
up with Doria and Adrian to spend August at Northlands."

"Why didn't you tell me so at once? Why did you ask me whether we were
going away?"

"Because I knew we weren't," she answered.

In putting two questions at the same time, I blundered. The first was a
poser and might have elicited some interesting revelation of feminine
mental process. In forlorn hope I repeated it.

"Why, I've told you, stupid," said Barbara. "You've no objection to
their coming, have you?"

"Good Lord, no. I'm delighted."

"From the way you've argued, any one would have thought you didn't want
them."

Outraged by the illogic, I gasped; but she broke into a laugh.

"You silly old Hilary," she said. "Don't you see that Doria must get her
trousseau together and Adrian must find a house or a flat, that has to
be decorated and furnished, and the poor child hasn't a mother or any
sensible woman in the world to look after her but me?"

"I see," said I, "that you intend having the time of your life."

       *       *       *       *       *

My prevision proved correct. In August came the engaged couple and every
day Barbara took them up to town and whirled them about from house-agent
to house-agent until she found a flat to suit them, and then from
emporium to emporium until she found furniture to suit the flat, and
from raiment-vendor to raiment-vendor until she equipped Doria to suit
the furniture. She used to return almost speechless with exhaustion; but
pantingly and with the glaze of victory in her eyes, she fought all her
battles o'er again and told of bargains won. In the meantime had it not
been for Susan, I should have lived in the solitude of an anchorite. We
spent much time in the garden which we (she less conscious of irony than
I) called our desert island. I was Robinson Crusoe and she was Man
Friday, and on the whole we were quite happy; perhaps I should have been
happier in a temperature of 80 deg. in the shade if I had not been forced to
wear the Polar bear rug from the drawing-room in representation of
Crusoe's goatskins. I did suggest that I should be Robinson Crusoe's
brother, who wore ordinary flannels, and that she should be Woman
Wednesday. But Susan saw through the subterfuge and that game didn't
work. One afternoon, however, Barbara, returning earlier than usual,
caught us at it and expressing horror and indignation at the uses to
which the bearskin was put, metaphorically whipped me and sent me to bed
as being the elder of the naughty ones. After that we played at fairies
in a glade, which was much cooler.

It was in the evenings that I was loneliest; for then Barbara went early
to bed, and the lovers strolled about together in the moonlight. With
the intention, half-malicious, half-pitiful, of filling up my time,
Doria taught me a new and complicated Patience. Then finally, when
Doria, having spent a couple of polite minutes in the drawing-room, had
retired, and when I was tired out from the strain of the day and
half-asleep through weariness, Adrian would mix himself the longest
possible brandy and soda, light the longest possible cigar and try to
keep me up all night listening to his conversation.

At last, one Friday evening, while I was engaged in my forlorn and
unprofitable game, the butler entered the drawing-room with unperturbed
announcement:

"Mr. Chayne on the telephone, sir."

I sent the card table flying amid the wreckage of my lay-out and rushed
to the telephone.

"Hullo! That you, Jaff?"

"Yes, old man. Very much me. A devil of a lot of me. How are you?"

His strong bass boomed through the receiver. I have always found a
queer comfort in Jaffery's voice. It wraps you round about in thundering
waves. We exchanged the commonplaces of delighted greeting. I asked:

"When did you arrive?"

"A couple of days ago."

"Why on earth didn't you let me know at once?"

I heard him laugh. "I'll tell you when I see you. By the way, can
Barbara have me for the week-end?"

This was like Jaffery. Most men would have asked me, taking Barbara for
granted.

"Barbara would have you for the rest of time," said I. "And so would
Susan. I'll expect you by the 11 o'clock train."

"Right," said he.

"And, I say!"

"Yes?"

"Talking of fair ladies--what about--?"

"Oh, Hell!" came Jaffery's great voice. "She's here right enough."

"Where?" I asked.

"The Savoy. So is Euphemia--"

Euphemia was Jaffery's unmarried sister, as like to her brother as a
little wizened raisin is to a fat, bursting muscat grape.

"Euphemia has taken her on. Wants to convert her."

"Good Lord!" I cried. "Is she a Turk?"

"She's a problem." And his great laugh vibrated in my ears.

"Why not bring her down with Euphemia?"

"I want a couple of days off. I want a good quiet time, with no female
women about save Barbara and my fairy grasshopper whom, as you know, I
love to distraction."

"But will Euphemia be all right with her?"

I had not the faintest notion what kind of a creature the "problem" was.

"Right as rain. Euphemia has fixed up to take her to-morrow night to a
lecture on Tolstoi at the Lyceum Club, and to the City Temple on Sunday.
Ho! ho! ho!"

His Homeric laughter must have shattered the Trunk Telephone system of
Great Britain, for after that there was silence cold and merciless.
Well, perhaps it was just as well, for if we had been allowed to
converse further I might have told him that another female woman, Doria
Jornicroft, was staying at Northlands, and he might not have come.
Jaffery was always a queer fish where women were concerned. Not a
chilly, fishy fish, but a sort of Laodicean fish, now hot, now cold. I
have seen him shrink like a sensitive plant in the presence of an
ingenue of nineteen and royster in Pantagruelian fashion with a mature
member of the chorus of the Paris Opera; I ham e also known him to fly,
a scared Joseph, from the allurements of the charming wife of a Right
Honourable Sir Cornifer Potiphar, G.C.M.G., and sigh like a furnace in
front of an obdurate little milliner's place of business in Bond Street.
I do not, for the world, wish it to be supposed that I am insinuating
that my dear old Jaffery had no morals. He had--lots of them. He was
stuffed with them. But what they were, neither he nor I nor any one else
was ever able to define. As a general rule, however, he was shy of
strange women, and to that category did Doria belong.

When the lovers came in I told them my news. Adrian expressed
extravagant delight. A little tiny cloud flitted over Doria's brow.

"Shall I like him?" she asked.

"You'll adore him," cried Adrian.

"I'll try to, dear, because he seems to mean so much to you. Are you
going up to town with us to-morrow?"

"There's only a morning's fitting at a dressmaker--no place for me," he
laughed. "I'll stay and welcome old Jaffery."

Again the most transient of tiny little clouds. But I could not help
thinking that if Jaffery had been a woman instead of a mere man, there
would have been a thunderstorm.

When we were alone Adrian threw himself into a chair.

"Women are funny beings," he said. "I do believe Doria is jealous of old
Jaffery."

"You have every reason to be proud," said I, "of your psychological
acumen."




CHAPTER III


A fair-bearded, red-faced, blue-eyed, grinning giant got out of the
train and catching sight of us ran up and laid a couple of great
sun-glazed hands on my shoulders.

"Hullo! hullo! hullo!" he shouted, and gripping Adrian in his turn,
shouted it again. He made such an uproar that people stuck wondering
heads out of the carriage windows. Then he thrust himself between us,
linked our arms in his and made us charge with him down the quiet
country platform. A porter followed with his suit-case.

"Why didn't you tell me that the Man of Fame was with you?"

"I thought I'd give you a pleasant surprise," said I.

"I met Robson of the Embassy in Constantinople--you remember Robson of
Pembroke--fussy little cock-sparrow--he'd just come from England and was
full of it. You seem to have got 'em in the neck. Bully! Bully!"

Adrian took advantage of the narrow width of the exit to release himself
and I, who went on with Jaffery, looking back, saw him rub himself
ruefully, as though he had been mauled by a bear.

"And how's everybody?" Jaffery's voice reverberated through the subway.
"Barbara and the fairy grasshopper? I'm longing to see 'em. That's the
pull of being free. You can adopt other fellows' wives and families. I'm
coming home now to my adopted wife and daughter. How are they?"

I answered explicitly. He boomed on till we reached the station yard,
where his eye fell upon a familiar object.

"What?" cried he. "Have you still got the Chinese Puffhard?"

The vehicle thus disrespectfully alluded to was an ancient, ancient car,
the pride of many a year ago, which sentiment (together with the
impossibility of finding a purchaser) would not allow me to sell. It had
been a splendid thing in those far-off days. It kept me in health. It
made me walk miles and miles along unknown and unfrequented roads. In
the aggregate I must have spent months of my life doing physical culture
exercises underneath it. You got into it at the back; it was about ten
feet high, and you started it at the side by a handle in its midriff.
But I loved it. It still went, if treated kindly. Barbara loathed it and
insulted it, so that with her as passenger, it sulked and refused to go.
But Susan's adoration surpassed even mine. Its demoniac groans and
rattles and convulsive quakings appealed to her unspoiled sense of
adventure.

"Barbara has gone away with the Daimler," said I, "and as I don't keep a
fleet of cars, I had to choose between this and the donkey-cart. Get in
and don't be so fastidious--unless you're afraid--"

He took no account of my sarcasm. His face fell. He made no attempt to
enter the car.

"Barbara gone away?"

I burst out laughing. His disappointment at not being welcomed by
Barbara at Northlands was so genuine and so childishly unconcealed.

"She'll be back in time for lunch. She had to run up to town on
business. She sent you her love and Susie will do the honours."

His face brightened. "That's all right. But you gave me a shock.
Northlands without Barbara--" He shook his head.

We drove off. The Chinese Puffhard excelled herself, and though she
choked asthmatically did not really stop once until we were half way up
the drive, when I abandoned her to the gardeners, who later on harnessed
the donkey to her and pulled her into the motor-house. We dismounted,
however, in the drive. A tiny figure in a blue smock came scuttling over
the sloping lawn. The next thing I saw was the small blue patch
somewhere in the upland region of Jaffery's beard. Then boomed forth
from him idiotic exclamations which are not worth chronicling,
accompanied by a duet of bass and treble laughter. Then he set her
astride of his bull neck and pitched his soft felt hat to Adrian to
hold.

"Hang on to my hair. It won't hurt," he commanded.

She obeyed literally, clawing two handfuls of his thick reddish shock in
her tiny grasp, and Jaffery lumbered along like an elephant with a robin
on his head, unconscious of her weight. We mounted to the terrace in
front of the house and having established my guests in easy chairs, I
went indoors to order such drink as would be refreshing on a sultry
August noon. When I returned I found Jaffery, with Susan on his knee,
questioning Adrian, after the manner of a primitive savage, on the
subject of "The Diamond Gate," and Adrian, delighted at the opportunity,
dazzling our simple-minded friend with publisher's statistics.

"And you're writing another? Deep down in another?" asked Jaffery. "Do
you know, Susie, Uncle Adrian has just got to take a pen and jab it into
a piece of paper, and--tchick!--up comes a golden sovereign every time
he does it."

Susan turned her serene gaze on Adrian. "Do it now," she commanded.

"I haven't got a pen," said he.

"I'll fetch you one from Daddy's study," she said, sliding from
Jaffery's knee.

Both Jaffery and Adrian looked scared. I, who was not the father of a
feminine thing of seven years old for nothing, interposed, I think,
rather tactfully.

"Uncle Adrian can only do it with a great gold pen, and poor old daddy
hasn't got one."

"I call that silly," replied my daughter. "Uncle Jaffery, have you got
one?"

"No," said he, "You have to be born, like Uncle Adrian, with a golden
pen in your mouth."

The lucky advent of the Archangel Gabriel, with a grin on his face and a
doll in his mouth--the Archangel Gabriel, commonly known as Gabs, and so
termed on account of his archi-angelic disposition, a hideous mongrel
with a white patch over one eye and a brown patch over the other, with
the nose of a collie and the legs of a Great Dane and the tail of a
fox-terrier, whose mongreldom, however, Adrian repudiated by the bold
assertion that he was a Zanzibar bloodhound--the lucky advent of this
pampered and over-affectionate quadruped directed Susan's mind from the
somewhat difficult conversation. She ran off, forthwith, to the rescue
or her doll; but later (I heard) her nurse was sore put to it to explain
the mystery of the golden pen.

"So much for Adrian. I'm tired of the auriferous person," said I, waving
a hand. "What about yourself? What about the dynamic widow?"

"Oh, damn the dynamic widow," he replied, corrugating his serene and
sunburnt forehead. "I've come down here to forget her. I'll tell you
about her later." Then he grinned, in his silly, familiar way, showing
two rows of astonishingly white, strong teeth, between the hair on lip
and chin.

"Well," said I, "at any rate give some account of yourself. What were
you doing in Albania, for instance?"

"Prospecting," said he.

"In what--gold, coal, iron?"

"War," said he. "There's going to be a hell of a bust-up one of these
days--and one of these days very soon--in the Balkans. From Scutari to
Salonica to Rodosto, the whole blooming triangle--it's going to be a
battlefield. The war correspondent who goes out there not knowing his
ground will be a silly ass. The slim statesman like me won't. See? So
poor old Prescott--you must know Prescott of Reuter's?--anyhow that was
the chap--poor old Prescott and I went out exploring. When he pegged out
with enteric I hadn't finished, so I dumped his widow down at Cettinje
where I have some pals, and started out again on my own. That's all."

He filled another pint tumbler with the iced liquid (one always had to
provide largely for Jaffery's needs) and poured it down his throat.

"I don't call that a very picturesque account of your adventures," said
Adrian.

Jaffery grinned. "I'll tell you all sorts of funny things, if you'll
give me time," said he, wiping his lips with a vast red and white
handkerchief about the size of a ship's Union Jack.

But we did not give him time; we plied him with questions and for the
next hour he entertained us pleasantly with stories of his wanderings.
He had a Rabelaisian way of laughing over must of his experiences, even
those which had a touch of the gruesome, and the laughter got into his
speech, so that many amusing episodes were told in the roars of a
hilarious lion.

Presently the familiar sound of the horn announced the return of
Barbara. We sprang to our feet and descended to meet the car at the
front porch. Jaffery, grinning with delight, opened the door, appeared
to lift a radiant Barbara out of the car like a parcel and almost hugged
her. And there they stood holding on to each other's hands and smiling
into each other's faces and saying how well they looked, regardless of
the fact that they were blocking the way for Doria, who remained in the
car, I had to move them on with the reminder that they had the whole
week-end for their effusions. Adrian helped Doria to alight, and to
Doria then, for the first time, was presented Jaffery Chayne. Jaffery
blinked at her oddly as he held her little gloved fingers in his
enormous hand. And, indeed, I could excuse him; for she was a very
striking object to come suddenly into the immediate range of a man's
vision, with her chiffon and her slenderness, and her black hat beneath
which her great eyes shone from the startling, nervous, ivory-white
face.

She smiled on him graciously. "I'm so glad to meet you." Then after a
fraction of a second came the explanation. "I've heard so much of you."

He murmured something into his beard. Meeting his childlike gaze of
admiration, she turned away and put her arm round Barbara's waist. The
ladies went indoors to take off their things, accompanied by Adrian, who
wanted a lover's word with Doria on the way. Jaffery followed her with
his eyes until she had disappeared at the corner of the hall-stairs.
Then he took me by the arm and led me up towards the terrace.

"Who is that singularly beautiful girl?" he asked.

"Doria Jornicroft," said I.

"She's the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in my life."

"I wouldn't find her too astonishing, if I were you," said I with a
laugh, "because there might be complications. She's engaged to Adrian."

He dropped my arm. "Do you mean--she's going to marry him?"

"Next month," said I.

"Well, I'm damned," said Jaffery. I asked him why. He did not enlighten
me. "Isn't he a lucky devil?" he asked, instead. "The most
pestilentially lucky devil under the sun. But why the deuce didn't you
tell me before?"

"You expressed such a distaste for female women that we thought we would
give you as long a respite as possible."

"That's all very well," he grumbled. "But if I had known that Adrian's
fiancee was knocking around I'd have lumped her in my heart with Barbara
and Susie."

"You're not prevented from doing that now," said I.

His brow cleared. "True, sonny." He broke into a guffaw. "Fancy old
Adrian getting married!"

"I see nothing funny in it," said I. "Lots of people get married. I'm
married."

"Oh, you--you were born to be married," he said crushingly.

"And so are you," I retorted.

"I? I tie myself to the stay-strings of a flip of a thing in petticoats,
whom I should have to swear to love, honour and obey--?"

"My good fellow," I interrupted, "it is the woman who swears obedience."

"And the man practises it. Ho! Ho! Ho!"

His laughter (at this very poor repartee) so resounded that the
adventitious cow, in the field some hundred yards away, lifted her tail
in the air and scampered away, in terror.

"And as to the stay-strings, to continue your delicate metaphor, you can
always cut them when you like."

"Yes. And then there's the devil to pay. She shows you the ends and
makes you believe they're dripping blood and tears. Don't I know 'em?
They're the same from Cape Horn to Alaska, from Dublin to Rio."

He bellowed forth his invective. He had no quarrel with marriage as an
institution. It was most useful and salutary--apparently because it
provided him, Jaffery, with comfortable conditions wherein to exist. The
multitude of harmless, necessary males (like myself) were doomed to it.
But there was a race of Chosen Ones, to which he belonged, whose
untamable and omni-concupiscent essence kept them outside the dull
conjugal pale. For such as him, nineteen hundred women at once,
scattered within the regions of the seven circumferential seas. He loved
them all. Woman as woman was the joy of the earth. It was only the silly
spectrum of civilisation that broke Woman up into primary
colours--black, yellow, brunette, blonde--he damned civilisation.

"To listen to you," said I, when he paused for breath, "one would think
you were a devil of a fellow."

"I am," he declared. "I'm a Universalist. At any rate in theory, or
rather in the conviction of what best suits myself. I'm one of those men
who are born to be free, who've got to fill their lungs with air, who
must get out into the wilds if they're to live--God! I'd sooner be
snowed up on a battlefield than smirk at a damned afternoon tea-party
any day in the week! If I want a woman, I like to take her by her hair
and swing her up behind me on the saddle and ride away with her--"

"Lord! That's lovely," said I. "How often have you done it?"

"I've never done that exactly, you silly ass," said he. "But that's my
attitude, my philosophy. You see how impossible it would be for me to
tie myself for life to the stay-strings of one flip of a thing in
petticoats."

"You're a blessed innocent," said I.

Adrian sauntering through the French window of my library joined us on
the terrace. Jaffery, forgetful of his attitude, his philosophy, caught
him by the shoulders and shook him in pain-dealing exuberance. Old
Adrian was going to be married. He wished him joy. Yet it was no use his
wishing him joy because he already had it--it was assured. That
exquisite wonder of a girl. Adrian was a lucky devil, a pestilentially
lucky devil. He, Jaffery, had fallen in love with her on sight. . . .

"And if I hadn't told him that Miss Jornicroft was engaged to you," said
I, "he would have taken her by the hair of her head and swung her up
behind him on the saddle and ridden away with her. It's a little way
Jaffery has."

In spite of sunburn, freckles and pervading hairiness of face, Jaffery
grew red.

"Shut up, you silly fool!" said he, like the overgrown schoolboy that he
was.

And I shut up--not because he commanded, but because Barbara, like
spring in deep summer, and Doria, like night at noontide, appeared on
the terrace.

Soon afterwards lunch was announced. By common conspiracy Jaffery and
Susan upset the table arrangements, insisting that they should sit next
each other. He helped the child to impossible viands, much to my wife's
dismay, and told her apocalyptic stories of Bulgaria, somewhat to her
puzzledom, but wholly to her delight. But when he proposed to fill her
silver mug (which he, as godfather, had given her on her baptism) with
the liquefied dream of Paradise that Barbara, _sola mortalium_, can
prepare, consisting of hock and champagne and fruits and cucumber and
borage and a blend of liqueurs whose subtlety transcends human thought,
Barbara's Medusa glare petrified him into a living statue, the crystal
jug of joy poised in his hand.

"Why mayn't I have some, mummy?"

"Because Uncle Jaff's your godfather," said I. "And your mother's
hock-cup is a sinful lust of the flesh. Spare the child and fill up your
own glass."

"Don't you know," said Barbara, "that this is Berkshire, not the
Balkans? We don't intoxicate infants here to make a summer holiday!"

At this rebuke he exchanged winks with my daughter, and refusing a
handed dish of cutlets asked to be allowed to help himself to some cold
beef on the sideboard. The butler's assistance he declined. No Christian
butler could carve for Jaffery Chayne. After a longish absence he
returned to the table with half the joint on his plate. Susan regarded
it wide-eyed.

"Uncle Jaff, are you going to eat all that?" she asked in an audible
whisper.

"Yes, and you too," he roared, "and mummy and daddy and Uncle Adrian, if
I don't get enough to eat!"

"And Aunt Doria?"

Again he reddened--but he turned to Doria and bowed.

"In my quality of ogre only--a _bonne bouche_," said he.

It was said very charmingly, and we laughed. Of course Susan began the
inevitable question, but Barbara hurriedly notified some dereliction
with regard to gravy, and my small daughter was, so to speak, hustled
out of the conversation. Jaffery by way of apology for his Gargantuan
appetite discoursed on the privations of travel in uncivilised lands. A
lump of sour butter for lunch and a sardine and a hazelnut for dinner.
We were to fancy the infinite accumulation of hunger-pangs. And as he
devoured cold beef and talked, Doria watched him with the somewhat aloof
interest of one who stands daintily outside the railed enclosure of a
new kind of hippopotamus.

The meal over we sought the deep shade of the terrace which faces due
east. Jaffery, in his barbaric fashion, took Doria by the elbow and
swept her far away from the wistaria arbour beneath which the remaining
three of us were gathered, and when he fondly thought he was out of
earshot, he set her beside him on the low parapet. My wife, with the
responsibilities of all the Chancelleries of Europe knitted in her brow,
discussed wedding preparations with Adrian. I, to whom the quality of
the bath towels wherewith Adrian and his wife were to dry themselves and
that of the sheets between which their housemaid was to lie, were
matters of black and awful indifference, gave my more worthily applied
attention to one of a new brand of cigars, a corona corona, that had its
merits but lacked an indefinable soul-satisfying aroma; and I was on the
pleasurable and elusive point of critical formulation, when Jaffery's
voice, booming down the terrace, knocked the discriminating nicety out
of my head. I lazily shifted my position and watched the pair.

"You're subtle and psychological and introspective and analytic and all
that," Jaffery was saying--his light word about an ogre at lunch was not
a bad one; sitting side by side on the low parapet they looked like a
vast red-bearded ogre and a feminine black-haired elf--she had taken off
her hat--engaged in a conversation in which the elf looked very much on
the defensive--"and you're always tracking down motives to their roots,
and you're not contented, like me, with the jolly face of things--"

"For an accurate diagnosis," I reflected, "of an individual woman's
nature, the blatant universalist has his points."

"Whereas, I, you see," he continued, "just buzz about life like a
dunderheaded old bumble-bee. I'm always busting myself up against glass
panes, not seeing, as you would, the open window a few inches off. Do
you see what I'm driving at?"

Apparently she didn't; for while she was speaking, he threw away his
corona corona--a dream of a cigar for nine hundred and ninety-nine men
out of a thousand (I glanced at Adrian who had religiously preserved two
inches of ash on his)--and hauled out pipe and tobacco-pouch. I could
not hear what she said. When she had finished, he edged a span nearer.

"What I want you to understand," said he, "is that I'm a simple sort of
savage. I can't follow all these intricate henry Jamesian complications
of feeling. I've had in my life"--he stuck pouch and pipe on the stone
beside him--"I've had in my life just a few men I've loved--I don't
count women--men--men I've cared for, God knows why. Do you know why one
cares for people?"

She smiled, shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.

"The latest was poor Prescott--he has just pegged out--you'll hear soon
enough about Prescott. There was Tom Castleton--has Adrian told you
about Castleton--?"

Again she shook her head.

"He will--of course--a wonder of a fellow--up with us at Cambridge. He's
dead. There only remains Hilary, our host, and Adrian."

As far as I could gather--for she spoke in the ordinary tones of
civilised womanhood, whereas Jaffery, under the impression that he was
whispering confidentially, bellowed like an honest bull--as far as I
could gather, she said:

"You must have met hundreds of men more sympathetic to you than Mr.
Freeth and Adrian."

"I haven't," he cried. "That's the funny devil of it. I haven't. If I
was struck a helpless paralytic with not a cent and no prospect of
earning a cent, I know I could come to those two and say, 'Keep me for
the rest of my life'--and they would do it"

"And would you do the same for either of them?"

Jaffery rose and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and towered
over her.

"I'd do it for them and their wives and their children and their
children's children."

He sat down again in confusion at having been led into hyperbole. But he
took her shoulders in his huge but kindly hands, somewhat to her
alarm--for, in her world, she was not accustomed to gigantic males
laying unceremonious hold of her--

"All I wanted to convey to you, my dear girl, is this--that if Adrian's
wife won't look on me as a true friend, I'm ready to go away and cut my
throat"

Doria smiled at him with pretty civility and assured him of her
willingness to admit him into her inner circle of friends; whereupon he
caught up his pouch and pipe and lumbered down the terrace towards us,
shouting out his news.

"I've fixed it up with Doria"--he turned his head--"I can call you
Doria, can't I?" She nodded permission--what else could she do? "We're
going to be friends. And I say, Barbara, they'll want a wedding-present.
What shall I give 'em? What would you like?"

The latter question was levelled direct at Doria, who had followed
demurely in his footsteps. But it was not answered; for from the
drawing-room there emerged Franklin, the butler, who marched up straight
to Jaffery.

"A lady to see you, sir"

"A lady? Good God! What kind of a lady?"

He stared at Franklin, in dismay.

"She came in a taxi, sir. The driver mistook the way, and put her down
at the back entrance. She would not give her name."

"Tall, rather handsome, dressed in black?"

"Yes, sir."

"Lord Almighty!" cried Jaffery, including us all in the sweep of a
desperate gaze. "It's Liosha! I thought I had given her the slip."

Barbara rose, and confronted him. "And pray who is Liosha?"

Adrian hugged his knee and laughed:

"The dynamic widow," said he.

"I'll go and see what in thunder she wants," said Jaffery.

But Barbara's eyes twinkled. "You'll do nothing of the sort. She has no
business to come running after you like this. She must be taught
manners. Franklin, will you show the lady out here?"

She drew herself up to her full height of five feet nothing, thereby
demonstrating the obvious fact that she was mistress in her own house.

Presently Franklin reappeared.

"Mrs. Prescott," said he.




CHAPTER IV


That there should have been in the uncommon-tall young woman of buxom
stateliness and prepossessing features, attired (to the mere masculine
eye) in quite elegant black raiment--a thing called, I think, a picture
hat, broad-brimmed with a sweeping ostrich feather, tickled my especial
fancy, but was afterwards reviled by my wife as being entirely unsuited
to fresh widowhood--what there should have been in this remarkable
Junoesque young person who followed on the heels of Franklin to strike
terror into Jaffery's soul, I could not, for the life of me, imagine. In
the light of her personality I thought Barbara's _coup de theatre_
rather cruel. . . . Of course Barbara received her courteously. She,
too, was surprised at her outward aspect, having expected to behold a
fantastic personage of comic opera.

"I am very pleased to see you, Mrs. Prescott."

Liosha--I must call her that from the start, for she exists to me as
Liosha and as nothing else--shook hands with Barbara, making a queer
deep formal bow, and turned her calm, brown eyes on Jaffery. There was
just a little quarter-second of silence, during which we all wondered in
what kind of outlandish tongue she would address him. To our gasping
astonishment she said with an unmistakable American intonation: "Mr.
Chayne, will you have the kindness to introduce me to your friends?"

I broke into a nervous laugh and grasped her hand "Pray allow me. I am
Mr. Freeth, your much honoured host, and this is my wife, and . . .
Miss Jornicroft . . . and Mr. Boldero. Mr. Chayne has been deceiving us.
We thought you were an Albanian."

"I guess I am," said the lady, after having made four ceremonious bows,
"I am the daughter of Albanian patriots. They were murdered. One day I'm
going back to do a little murdering on my own account."

Barbara drew an audible short breath and Doria instinctively moved
within the protective area of Adrian's arm. Jaffery, with knitted brow,
leaned against one of the posts supporting the old wistaria arbour and
said nothing, leaving me to exploit the lady.

"But you speak perfect English," said I.

"I was raised in Chicago. My parents were employed in the stockyards of
Armour. My father was the man who slit the throats of the pigs. He was a
dandy," she said in unemotional tones--and I noticed a little shiver of
repulsion ripple through Barbara and Doria. "When I was twelve, my
father kind of inherited lands in Albania, and we went back. Is there
anything more you'd like to know?"

She looked us all up and down, rather down than up, for she towered
above us, perfectly unconcerned mistress of the situation. Naturally we
made mute appeal to Jaffery. He stirred his huge bulk from the post and
plunged his hands into his pockets.

"I should like to know, Liosha," said he, in a rumble like thunder, "why
you have left my sister Euphemia and what you are doing here?"

"Euphemia is a damn fool," she said serenely. "She's a freak. She ought
to go round in a show."

"What have you been quarrelling about?" he asked.

"I never quarrel," she replied, regarding him with her calm brown eyes.
"It is not dignified."

"Then I repeat, most politely, Liosha--what are you doing here?"

She looked at Barbara. "I guess it isn't right to talk of money before
strangers."

Barbara smiled--glanced at me rebukingly. I pulled forward a chair and
invited the lady to sit--for she had been standing and her astonishing
entrance had flabbergasted ceremonious observance out of me. Whilst she
was accepting my belated courtesy, Barbara continued to smile and said:

"You mustn't look on us as strangers, Mrs. Prescott. We are all Mr.
Chayne's oldest and most intimate friends."

"Do tell us what the row was?" said Jaffery.

Liosha took calm stock of us, and seeing that we were a pleasant-faced
and by no means an antagonistic assembly--even Doria's curiosity lent
her a semblance of a sense of humour--she relaxed her Olympian serenity
and laughed a little, shewing teeth young and strong and exquisitely
white.

"I am here, Jaff Chayne," she said, "because Euphemia is a damn fool.
She took me this morning to your big street--the one where all the shops
are--"

"My dear lady," said Adrian, "there are about a hundred miles of such
streets in London."

"There's only one--" she snapped her fingers, recalling the name--"only
one Regent Street, I ever heard of," she replied crushingly. "It was
Regent Street. Euphemia took me there to shew me the shops. She made me
mad. For when I wanted to go in and buy things she dragged me away. If
she didn't want me to buy things why did she shew me the shops?" She
bent forward and laid her hand on Barbara's knee. "She must he a damn
fool, don't you think so?"

Said Barbara, somewhat embarrassed:

"It's an amusement here to look at shops without any idea of buying."

"But if one wants to buy? If one has the money to buy?--I did not want
anything foolish. I saw jewels that would buy up the whole of Albania.
But I didn't want to buy up Albania. Not yet. But I saw a glass cage in
a shop window full of little chickens, and I said to Euphemia: 'I want
that. I must have those chickens.' I said, 'Give me money to go in and
buy them.' Do you know, Jaff Chayne, she refused. I said, 'Give me my
money, my husband's money, this minute, to buy those chickens in the
glass cage.' She said she couldn't give me my husband's money to spend
on chickens."

"That was very foolish of her," said Adrian solemnly, "for if there's
one thing the management of the Savoy Hotel love, it's chicken
incubators. They keep a specially heated suite of apartments for them."

"I was aware of it," said Liosha seriously. "Euphemia was not. She knows
less than nothing. I asked her for the money. She refused. I saw an
automobile close by. I entered. I said, 'Drive me to Mr. Jaff Chayne, he
will give me the money.' He asked where Mr. Jaff Chayne was. I said he
was staying with Mr. Freeth, at Northlands, Harston, Berkshire. I am not
a fool like Euphemia. I remember. I left Euphemia standing on the
sidewalk with her mouth open like that"--she made the funniest grimace
in the world--"and the automobile brought me here to get some money to
buy the chickens." She held out her hand to Jaffery.

"Confound the chickens," he cried. "It's the taxi I'm thinking
of--ticking out tuppences, to say nothing of the mileage. Liosha," said
he, in a milder roar, "it's no use thinking of buying chickens this
afternoon. It's Saturday and the shops are shut. You go home before that
automobile has ticked out bankruptcy and ruin. Go back to the Savoy and
make your peace with Euphemia, like a good girl, and on Monday I'll talk
to you about the chickens."

She sat up straight in her chair.

"You must take me somewhere else. I've got no use for Euphemia."

"But where else can I take you?" cried Jaffery aghast.

"I don't know. You know best where people go to in England. Doesn't he?"
She included us all in a smile.

"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.

"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?"

"More or less."

"Gosh!" said he, shutting the book, "and I suppose Doria understands it
too, or she wouldn't have recommended it. But," he rose ponderously and
looked down on me with serious eyes--"what the Hell is it all about?"

I drew out my watch. "The five seconds that you have before rushing
up-stairs to dress," said I, "don't give me adequate time to expound a
philosophic system."

Now if Adrian or I had talked t