Jaffery Part 36

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Go! You are nothing but a brute."]

The whip of her tongue lashed him to sudden fury. He picked her up bodily and held her in spite of struggles, just as you or I would hold a cat or a rabbit.

"You little fool," said he, "don't you know the difference between a man and a--"

Realisation of the tragedy struck him as a spent bullet might have struck him on the side of the head. He turned white.

"All right," said he in a changed voice. "Easy on. I'm not going to hurt you."

He deposited her gently on the sofa and strode out of the room.

CHAPTER XVII

If the old song be true which says that it is not so much the lover who woos as the lover's way of wooing, Jaffery seemed to have thrown away his chances by adopting a very unfortunate way indeed. Doria proved to Barbara, urgently summoned to a bed of prostration and nervous collapse, that she would never set eyes again upon the unqualifiable savage by whom her holiest sentiments had been outraged and her person disgracefully mishandled. She poured out a blood-curdling story into semi-sympathetic ears. Barbara made short work of her contention that Jaffery ought to have respected her as he would have respected the wife of a living friend, characterising it as morbid and indecent nonsense; and with regard to the physical violence she declared that it would have served her right had he smacked her.

"If you want to be faithful to the memory of your first husband, be faithful," she said. "No one can prevent you. And if a good man comes along with an honourable proposal of marriage, tell him in an honourable way why you can't marry him. But don't accept for months all a man has to give, and then, when he tells you what you've known perfectly well all along, treat him as if he were making shameful proposals to you--especially a man like Jaffery; I have no patience with you."

Doria wept. No one understood her. No one understood Adrian. No one understood the bond there was between them. Of that she was aware. But when it came to being brutally a.s.saulted by Jaffery Chayne, she really thought Barbara would sympathise. Wherefore Barbara, rather angry at being brought up to London on a needless errand, involving loss of dinner and upset of household arrangements, administered a sleeping-draught and bade her wake in the morning in a less idiotic frame of mind.

"Perhaps I behaved like a cat," Barbara said to me later--to "behave like a cat" is her way of signifying a display of the vilest phases of feminine nature--"but I couldn't help it. She didn't talk a great deal of sense. It isn't as if I had never warned her about the way she has been treating Jaffery. I have, heaps of times. And as for Adrian--I'm sick of his name--and if I am, what must poor old Jaff be?"

This she said during a private discussion that night on the whole situation. I say the whole situation, because, when she returned to Northlands, she found there a haggard ogre who for the first time in his life had eaten a canary's share of an excellent dinner, imploring me to tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or lie p.r.o.ne on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and trample on him. He seemed rather surprised--indeed a trifle hurt--that neither of us called him a Satyr. How could we take his part and not Doria's--especially now that Barbara had come from the bedside of the scandalously entreated lady? He boomed and bellowed about the drawing-room, recapitulating the whole story.

"But, my good friend," I remonstrated, "by the showing of both of you, she taunted you and insulted you all ends up. You--'a barren rascal'--you? Good G.o.d!"

He flung out a deprecatory hand. What did it matter? We must take this from her point of view. He oughtn't to have laid hands on her. He oughtn't to have spoken to her at all. She was right. He was a savage unfit for the society of any woman outside a wigwam.

"Oh, you make me tired," cried Barbara, at last. "I'm going to bed.

Hilary, give him a strait-waistcoat. He's a lunatic."

The household resources not including a strait-waistcoat, I could not exactly obey her, but as he had come down luggageless, and with a large disregard of the hours of homeward trains, I lent him a suit of my meagre pyjamas, which must have served the same purpose.

He left the next morning. Heedless of advice he called on Doria and was denied admittance. He wrote. His letter was returned unopened. He pa.s.sed a miserable week, unable to work, at a loose end in London during the height of the season. In despair he went to _The Daily Gazette_ office and proclaimed himself ready for a job. But for the moment the earth was fairly calm and the management could find no field for Jaffery's special activities. Arbuthnot again offered him reports of fires and fashionable weddings, but this time Jaffery did not enjoy the fine humour of the proposal. He blistered Arbuthnot with abuse, swung from the newspaper office, and barged mightily down Fleet Street, a disturber of traffic.

Then he came down to Northlands for a while, where, for want of something to do, he hired himself out to my gardener and dug up most of the kitchen garden. His usual occupation of romping with Susan was gone, for she lay abed with some childish ailment which Barbara feared might turn into German measles. So when he was not perspiring over a spade or eating or sleeping he wandered about the place in his most restless mood. At nights he ransacked my library for gazetteers and atlases wherein he searched for abominable places likely to afford the explorer the most horrible life and the bleakest possible death. He was toying with the idea of making a jaunt on his own account to Thibet, when a merciful Providence gave him something definite to think about.

It was Sat.u.r.day morning. I was shaving peacefully in my dressing-room when Jaffery, after thunderously demanding admittance, rushed in, clad in bath gown and slippers, flourishing a letter.

"Read that."

I recognised Liosha's handwriting. I read:

"Dear Jaff Chayne,

"As you are my Trustee, I guess I ought to tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to marry Ras Fendihook--"

I looked up. "But you told me the man was married already."

"He is. Read on."

"We are going to be married at once. We are going to be married at Havre in France. Ras says that because I am a widow and an Albanian it would be an awful trouble for me to get married in England, and I would have to give up half my money to Government. But in France, owing to different laws, I can get married without any fuss at all.

I don't understand it, but Ras has consulted a lawyer, so it's all right. I suppose when I am married you won't be my trustee any more. So, dear Jaff Chayne, I must say good-bye and thank you for all your great kindness to me. I am sorry you and Barbara and Hilary don't like Ras, which his real name really is Erasmus, but you will when you know him better.

"Yours affectionately,

"LIOSHA PRESCOTT."

The amazing epistle took my breath away.

"Of all the infernal scoundrels!" I cried.

"There's going to be trouble," said Jaffery, and his look signified that it was he who intended to cause it.

"But why Havre of all places in the world?" said I.

"I suppose it's the only one he knows," replied Jaffery. "He must have once gone to Paris by that route. It's the cheapest."

I glanced through the letter again, and I felt a warm gush of pity for our poor deluded Liosha.

"We must get her out of this."

"Going to," said Jaffery. "Let us have in Barbara at once."

I opened the communicating door and threw the letter into the room where she was dressing. After a moment or two she appeared in cap and peignoir, and the three of us in dressing-gowns, I with lather crinkling over one-half of my face, held first an indignation meeting, and then a council of war.

"I never dreamed the brute would do this," said Jaffery. "He couldn't offer her marriage in the ordinary way without committing bigamy, and I know she wouldn't consent to any other arrangement; so he has invented this poisonous plot to get her out of England."

"And probably go through some fool form of ceremony," said Barbara.

"But how can she be such a thundering idiot as to swallow it?" asked Jaffery.

I was going to remark that women would believe anything, but Barbara's eye was upon me. Yet Liosha's unfamiliarity with the laws and formalities of English marriage was natural, considering the fact that, not so very long before, she was placidly prepared to be sold to a young Albanian cutthroat who met his death through coming to haggle over her price. I myself had found unworthy amus.e.m.e.nt in telling her wild fables of English life. Her ignorance in many ways was abysmal. Once having seen a photograph in the papers of the King in a bowler-hat she expressed her disappointment that he wore no insignia of royalty; and when I consoled her by saying that, by Act of Parliament, the King was obliged to wear his crown so many hours a day and therefore wore it always at breakfast, lunch and dinner in Buckingham Palace, she accepted my a.s.surance with the credulity of a child of four. And when Barbara rebuked me for taking advantage of her innocence, she was very angry indeed. How was she to know when and where not to believe me?

"She is fresh and ingenuous enough," said I, "to swallow any kind of plausible story. And her ingenuousness in writing you a full account of it is a proof."

"She has given the whole show away," said Jaffery. He smiled. "If Fendihook knew, he would be as sick as a dog."

"And the poor dear is so honest and truthful," said Barbara. "She thought she was doing the honourable thing in letting you know."

"No doubt modelling herself on Mrs. Jupp, late Considine," said I.

"Who let us know at the last minute," said Barbara with a quick knitting of the brow.

"Precisely," said I.

"Good Lord!" cried Jaffery. "Do you think she's gone off with the fellow already?"