Jaffery Part 28

"Of course he hadn't," exclaimed Doria. "Of course he hadn't when Adrian was alive: now Adrian's dead, he thinks he is going to do just as he chooses. He isn't! Not while I live, he isn't!"

Jaffery looked at me from beneath bent brows and his eyes were turned to cold blue steel.

"Hilary!" said he, "will you kindly tell Doria what we found on Adrian's blotting pad--the last words he ever wrote?"

What he desired me to say was obvious.

"Written three or four times," said I, "we found the words: 'The Greater Glory: A Novel by Adrian Boldero.'"

"What has become of the blotting pad?"

"The sheet seemed to be of no value, so we destroyed it with a lot of other unimportant papers."

"And I came across further evidence," said Jaffery, "of his intention to rename the novel."

Doria's anger died away. She looked past us into the void. "I should like to have had Adrian's last words," she whispered. Then bringing herself back to earth, she begged Jaffery's pardon very touchingly.

Adrian's implied intention was a command. She too approved the change.

"But I'm so jealous," she said, with a catch in her voice, "of my dear husband's work. You must forgive me. I'm sure you've done everything that was right and good, Jaffery." She held out the great bundle and smiled. "I pa.s.s the proofs."

Jaffery took the bundle and laid it again on her lap. "It's awfully good of you to say that. I appreciate it tremendously. But you can keep this set. I've got another, with the corrections in duplicate."

She looked at the proofs wistfully, turned over the long strips in a timid, reverent way, and abruptly handed them back.

"I can't read it. I daren't read it. If Adrian had lived I shouldn't have seen it before it was published. He would have given me the finally bound book--an advance copy. These things--you know--it's the same to me as if he were living."

The tears started. She rose; and we all did the same.

"I must go indoors for a little. No, no, Barbara dear. I'd rather be alone." She put her arm round my small daughter. "Perhaps Susan will see I don't break my neck across the lawn."

Her voice ended in a queer little sob, and holding on to Susan, who was mighty proud of being selected as an escort, walked slowly towards the house. Susan afterwards reported that, dismissed at the bedroom door, she had lingered for a moment outside and had heard Auntie Doria crying like anything.

Barbara, who had said absolutely nothing since the miraculous draught of proofs, advanced, a female David, up to Goliath Jaffery.

"Look here, my friend, I'm not accustomed to sit still like a graven image and be mystified in my own house. Will you have the goodness to explain?"

Jaffery looked down on her, his head on one side.

"Explain what?"

"That!"

She pointed to the proofs of which I had possessed myself and was eagerly scanning. Unblenching he met her gaze.

"That is the posthumous novel of Adrian Boldero, which I, as his literary executor, have revised for the press. Hilary saw the rough ma.n.u.script, but he had no time to read it."

They looked at one another for quite a long time.

"Is that all you're going to tell me?"

"That's all."

"And all you're going to tell Hilary?"

"Telling Hilary is the same as telling you."

"Naturally."

"And telling you is the same as telling Hilary."

"By no manner of means," said Barbara tartly. She took him by the sleeve. "Come and explain."

"I've explained already," said Jaffery.

Barbara eyed him like a syren of the cornfields. "I'm going to dress a crab for lunch. A very big crab."

Jaffery's face was transfigured into a vast, hairy smile. Barbara could dress crab like no one else in the world. She herself disliked the taste of crab. I, a carefully trained gastronomist, adored it, but a Puckish digestion forbade my consuming one single shred of the ambrosial preparation. Doria would pa.s.s it by through sheer unhappiness. And it was not fit food for Susan's tender years. Old Jaff knew this. One gigantic crab-sh.e.l.l filled with Barbara's juicy witchery and flanked by cool pink, meaty claws would be there for his own individual delectation. Several times before had he taken the dish, with a "One man, one crab. Ho! ho! ho!" and had left nothing but clean sh.e.l.ls.

"I'm going to dress this crab," said Barbara, "for the sake of the servants. But if you find I've put poison in it, don't blame me."

She left us, her little head indignantly in the air. Jaffery laughed, sank into a chair and tugged at his pipe.

"I wish Doria could be persuaded to read the thing," said he.

"Why?" I asked looking up from the proofs.

"It's not quite up to the standard of 'The Diamond Gate.'"

"I shouldn't suppose it was," said I drily.

"Wittekind's delighted anyhow. It's a different _genre_; but he says that's all the better."

Susan emerged from my study door on to the terrace.

"My good fellow," said I, "yonder is the daughter of the house, evidently at a loose end. Go and entertain her. I'm going to read this wonderful novel and don't want to be disturbed till lunch."

The good-humoured giant lumbered away, and Susan finding herself in undisputed possession took him off to remote recesses of the kitchen garden, far from casual intruders. Meanwhile I went on reading, very much puzzled. Naturally the style was not that of "The Diamond Gate,"

which was the style of Tom Castleton and not of Adrian Boldero. But was what I read the style of Adrian Boldero? This vivid, virile opening?

This scene of the two derelicts who hated one another, fortuitously meeting on the old tramp steamer? This cunning, evocation of smells, jute, bilge water, the warm oils of the engine room? This expert knowledge so carelessly displayed of the various parts of a ship? How had Adrian, man of luxury, who had never been on a tramp steamer in his life, gained the knowledge? The people too were l.u.s.tily drawn. They had a flavour of the sea and the breeziness of wide s.p.a.ces; a deep-lunged folk. So that I should not be interrupted I wandered off to a secluded nook of the garden down the drive away from the house and gave myself up to the story. From the first it went with a rare swing, incident following incident, every trait of character presented objectively in fine scorn of a.n.a.lysis. There were little pen pictures of grim scenes faultless in their definition and restraint. There was a girl in it, a wild, clean-limbed, woodland thing who especially moved my admiration.

The more I read the more fascinated did I become, and the more did I doubt whether a single line in it had been written by Adrian Boldero.

After a long spell, I took out my watch. It was twenty past one. We lunched at half-past. I rose, went towards the house and came upon Jaffery and Susan. The latter I despatched peremptorily to her ablutions. Alone with Jaffery, I challenged him.

"You hulking baby," said I, "what's the good of pretending with me? Why didn't you tell me at once that you had written it yourself?"

He looked at me anxiously. "What makes you think so?"

"The simple intelligence possessed by the average adult. First," I continued, as he made no reply but stood staring at me in ingenuous discomfort, "you couldn't have got this out of poor Adrian's mush; secondly, Adrian hadn't the experience of life to have written it; thirdly, I have read many brilliant descriptive articles in _The Daily Gazette_ and have little difficulty in recognising the hand of Jaffery Chayne."

"Good Lord!" said he. "It isn't as obvious as all that?"