Jaffery Part 22

"And she at the point of death--to complete the tragedy," he said below his breath.

Then suddenly he shook himself like a great dog.

"I would give the soul out of my body to save her," he cried with a startling quaver in his deep voice.

"I know you love her dearly, old man," said I, "but is life the best thing you can wish for her?"

"Why not?"

"Isn't it obvious? She recovers--she will, most probably, recover; Jephson said so this morning--she comes back to life to find what? The shattering of her idol. That will kill her. My dear old Jaff, it's better that she should die now."

Rugged lines that I had never seen before came into his brow, and his eyes blazed.

"What do you mean--shattering of idols?"

"She is bound to learn the truth."

He darted forward in his chair and gripped my knee in his mighty grasp, so that I winced with pain.

"She's not going to learn the truth. She's not going to have any dim suspicion of the truth. By G.o.d! I'd kill anybody, even you, who told her. She's not to know. She must never know." In his sudden fit of pa.s.sion he sprang to his feet and towered over me with clenched fists,--the sputtering flames casting a weird Brocken shadow on wall and ceiling of the fog-darkened room--I shrank into my chair, for he seemed not a man but one of the primal forces of nature. He shouted in the same deep, shaken voice.

"Adrian is dead. The child is dead. But the book lives. You understand."

His great fist touched my face. "The book lives. You have seen it."

"Very well," said I, "I've seen it."

"You swear you've seen it?"

"Yes," said I, in some bewilderment.

He turned away, pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead and through his hair, and walked for a little about the room.

"I'm sorry, Hilary, old chap, to have lost control of myself. It's a matter of life and death. I'm all right now. But you understand clearly what I mean?"

"Certainly. I'm to swear that I saw the ma.n.u.script. I'm to lend myself to a pious fraud. That's all right for the present. But it can't last forever."

Jaffery thrust both hands in his pockets and bent and fixed the steel of his eyes on me. I should not like to be Jaffery's enemy.

"It can. And it's going to. I'll see to that."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "There's no book. We can't conjure something out of nothing."

"There is a book, d.a.m.n you," he roared fiercely, "and you've seen it, and I've got it. And I'm responsible for it. And what the h.e.l.l does it matter to you what becomes of it?"

"Very well," said I. "If you insist, I can wash my hands of the whole matter. I saw a completed ma.n.u.script. You are my co-executor and trustee. You took it away. That's all I know. Will that do for you?"

"Yes. And I'll give you a receipt. Whatever happens, you're not responsible. I can burn the d.a.m.ned thing if I like. Do anything I choose. But you've seen the outside of it."

He went to the writing table by the gloomy window and scribbled a memorandum and duplicate, which we both signed. Each pocketed a copy.

Then he turned on me.

"I needn't mention that you're not going to give a hint to a human soul of what you have seen this day?"

I faced him and looked into his eyes. "What do you take me for? But you're forgetting... . There is one human soul who must know."

He was silent for a minute or two. Then, with his great-hearted smile:

"You and Barbara are one," said he.

Presently, after a little desultory talk, he took a folded paper from his pocket and shook it out before me. I recognized the top sheet of the blotting-pad on which Adrian had written thrice: "G.o.d: A Novel: By Adrian Boldero."

"We had better burn this," said he; and he threw it into the fire.

CHAPTER XII

The slow weeks pa.s.sed. Fog gave way to long rain and rain to a touch of frost and timid spring sunshine; and it was only then that Doria emerged from the Valley of the Shadow. The first time they allowed me to visit her, I stood for a fraction of a second, almost in search of a human occupant of the room. Lying in the bed she looked such a pitiful sc.r.a.p, all hair and eyes. She smiled and held droopingly out to me the most fragile thing in hands I have ever seen.

"I'm going to live, after all, they tell me."

"Of course you are," I answered cheerily. "It's the season for things to find they're going to live. The crocuses and aconite have already made the discovery."

She sighed. "The garden at Northlands will soon be beautiful. I love it in the spring. The dancing daffodils--"

"We'll have you down to dance with them," said I.

"It's strange that I want to live," she remarked after a pause. "At first I longed to die--that was why my recovery was so slow. But now--odd, isn't it?"

"Life means infinitely more than one's own sorrow, no matter how great it is," I replied gently.

"Yes," she a.s.sented. "I can live now for Adrian's memory."

I suppose most women in Doria's position would have said much the same.

In ordinary circ.u.mstances one approves the pious aspiration. If it gives them temporary comfort, why, in Heaven's name, shouldn't they have it?

But in Doria's case, its utterance gave me a kind of stab in the heart.

By way of reply I patted her poor little wrist sympathetically.

"When will the book be out?" she asked.

"I'm afraid I don't quite know," said I.

"I suppose they're busy printing it."

"Jaffery's in charge," I replied, according to instructions.

"He must get it out at once. The early spring's the best time. It won't do to wait too long. Will you tell him?"