Jaffery Part 47

"I replied: 'You won't always strike wrong 'uns.'

"'I don't know what kind of a man I'm going to strike,' she said.

'Not any of those little billy-goats in dinner jackets I used to meet at Mrs. Jardine's. No, sirree. And no more Ras Fendihooks!'

"She rose--we had been sitting on the cabin sky-light--and leaned over the taffrail and looked wistfully out to sea. I joined her.

She was silent for a bit. Then she said:

"'I guess I'm not going to marry at all; for I'm not going to marry a man I don't love, and I couldn't love a man who couldn't beat me--and there ain't many. That's the kind of fool way I'm built.'

"She turned and left me. I suppose she meant it. Liosha doesn't talk through her hat. But if she ever does fall in love with a man who can beat her, there'll be the devil to pay. Liosha in love would be a tornado of a spectacle. But I shouldn't like it.

Honest--I shouldn't like it. I've got so used to this clean great Amazon of a Liosha, that I should loathe the fellow were he as decent a sort as you please."

It is curious to observe how, as the voyage proceeded, Jaffery's horizon gradually narrowed to the small shipboard circle, just as an invalid's interests become circ.u.mscribed by the walls of his sick-room. He tells us of childish things, a catch of fish, a quarrel between the first and second mate over Liosha, second having accused first of a disrespectful att.i.tude towards the lady, the sail-cloth screen rigged up aft behind which Liosha had her morning tub of sea-water, the stubbing of Liosha's toe and her temporary lameness, the illness of the Portugee cook and Liosha's supremacy in the galley. And he wrote it all with the air of the impresario vaunting the qualities of his prima donna, nay more--with a fatuous air of proprietorship, as though he himself had created Liosha.

Here is the beginning of another letter, addressed to us both:

"A thousand thanks, dearest people, for what you tell me of Doria.

If she just misses me a little bit, all may be well. I've bought some jolly gold barbaric ornaments that she may accept when I reach home; and do try to persuade her that the poor old bear is rough only on the outside.

"Things going on just as usual. Liosha has got a monkey given her by the donkey-man... ."

There follows a description of the monkey and its antics, and a long account of a chase all over the ship, in which all the ship's company including the captain took part, to the subversion of discipline and navigation. But you see--he switches off at once to Liosha and the trivial records of the humdrum day.

At last he had something less trivial to write about. They were in the Mozambique Channel, making for Madagascar:

"Now that this darned cabin table is comparatively straight, I can scribble a few lines to you. We've had a beast of a time. The dirtiest weather ever since we left Beira and the cranky old tub rolling and pitching and standing on her head as I've never known ship do before. Consequence was the cargo got shifted and there was a list to port, so that every time she ducked that side, she shipped half the channel. Skies black as thunder and the sea the colour of inky water. We had the devil's own job getting the cargo straight. Just imagine a black rolling dungeon full of great packing cases weighing about half a ton each all gone murderous mad. Just imagine getting down among them, as practically all hands had to do, save the engine-room, and sweating and fighting and straining and lashing for hour after hour. And half the time the port side of the lame old duck under water. How she didn't turn turtle is known only to Allah and Maturin; and One is great and the other's a d.a.m.ned fine sailor. Of course, I had to go down into the inferno of the hold like the others. Part of the day's work; but I didn't like it; no one liked it.

"When the order was given all hands tumbled up to the hatchway and began swarming down the iron ladder. It was a swaying, staggering crowd. When you stand on a wet deck at an angle of forty-five degrees one way and thirty degrees another and constantly shifting both angles, with nothing but a rope lashed athwart the ship to catch hold of, your mind is pretty well concentrated on yourself. I know mine was. I slipped and wallowed on my belly hanging on to the rope like grim death till my turn came for the ladder. I got my feet on the rungs. I was all right, when looking up into the livid daylight whom do you think I saw calmly preparing to follow me?

Liosha. I hadn't noticed her. She had sea-boots and a jersey and looked just like a man. I roared:

"'Clear out. This is no place for you.'

"'I'm coming. Go along down.'

"She put her foot on the rung just below my face. I gripped as much of her ankle as the stiff leather allowed.

"'Clear out. Don't be a fool.'

"Andrews, the first mate, poured out a flood of blasphemy. What the this, that and the other were we waiting for?

"'Mr. Andrews,' I shouted, 'send this woman to her cabin.'

"'Oh, go to h.e.l.l! Tumble down every one of you, or I'll d.a.m.n soon make you,' cried Andrews.

"He was in a vile temper, being responsible for the snugness of the cargo, and the cargo lay about as snug as a dormitory of devils. He was sorry afterwards, poor chap, for his lack of courtesy, but at the moment he didn't care who went down into the hold, or who was killed, so long as this infernal cargo was righted and the crazy old tub didn't go down.

"So I descended. It was ordained. Liosha followed. And once down we were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and peril. Andrews and second were there yelling orders. We obeyed in some subconscious way. How we heard I don't know. For peace and quiet give me a battlefield. Twenty men in semi-darkness, scarce able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a ton each. The huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the quay-side, but charging about that swaying, rocking lower deck, they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of h.e.l.l's anger. I don't know what I did. All I can say is that I never before felt my muscles about to snap--queer feeling that--and I think I'm about as tough as they make 'em.

"Liosha worked as well as any man in the bunch. I only caught sight of her now and then ... you see what we had to do, don't you? ... We had to secure all these infernal things that were running amuck and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got jammed on the port side. There were accidents. Three or four were knocked out. Petersen, the Swede, had his leg crushed. I don't know what was wrong at the time. He was working next me, and a roll of the ship brought an ugly crate over him. He couldn't get up. He looked ghastly. So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the iron ladder and reached the deck somehow, and staggered along, barging into everything--it was blowing half a gale--and once I fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil. But I picked him up and got him into the fo'c'sle and stuck him in a bunk. The Portugee cook, sick of fever--I think he's a blighted malingerer--was the only creature there. I routed him out, in the dim mephitic place reeking of sour bedding, and put Petersen in his charge. Then I went back through the drenching seas to the hatch. There was just enough room for a man's body to squeeze through down the ladder. I went down into the same h.e.l.l-broth of sweat and confusion. The ground you stood upon might have been the back of a super-t.i.tanic b.u.t.terfly. Stability was a nonexistent term. It was a helpless scuttering surge of men and vast wooden cubes. Most of the men had torn off their upper garments and fought half naked, the sweat glistening on their skins in the feeble light. Soon the heat became unbearable and I too tore off jersey and shirt. Liosha joined me and we worked together without speaking. Her long thick hair had come down and she had hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel, and she had thrown off things like everybody else and only a flimsy cotton, sleeveless bodice, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretence of covering her from her waist.

"You had to get like flies round these infernal things and wait your time--if you could--for the roll, and push and then scramble with ropes and make fast; awl at the same time dance out of the way of the slithering hulks that bore down on you with fantastic murderousness. And through it all thundered the roaring of the storm, the grind of the engines, the shattering of the propeller lifted above the waves, and the shrieks and creakings of every plank and plate of this steam-driven old Noah's Ark.

"We had just, with exhausted muscles, made a whole stack fast, and were standing by, panting, haggard eyed, the sweat running down anyhow, twenty of us, Dagoes, Dutchmen, Englishmen, in the dim twilight--just a shaft of pale illumination coming slick down the ladder where the hatch was open,--hanging on to edges and corners of cargo, when suddenly the ship, caught on top of a wave, vibrated in a sickening shudder, plunged, and then with an impetus of cataclysm wallowed to starboard. Andrews shrieked, 'Stand clear!'

Most of the men leaped and flung themselves away. But I stumbled and fell. Before I realized the danger of a vast sliding crate, two strong arms were curled round my waist and I was flung aside, to slither and roll down the swaying deck until I was stopped by the bulkhead. When I picked myself up, I saw half the men securing the crate and the other half grovelling around something on the deck. It was Liosha. She lay white and senseless with blood streaming from her head.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Before I realized the danger ... I was flung aside.]

"In a mortal funk I took her up the ladder with the help of another fellow, and carried her to her cabin. I never before realised the appalling length of this vessel. We got her into her bunk aft; I sent the other chap for brandy and first-aid appliances from the ship's stores, and did what I could to discover how far she was injured... .

"Thank G.o.d, nothing worse had happened than a nasty scalp wound.

But her escape had been miraculous. She had saved my life; for as I lay on the deck, the crate charging direct would have squashed my skull into jelly, and crushed my body against the side of the hold.

A fraction of a second later and it would have been her skull and her body instead of mine; but she just managed to roll practically clear until she got caught by the swerving side of the crate. I hope you'll understand what a heroic thing she did. She faced what seemed to be certain death for me; and it is thanks to Liosha that I'm able to tell you that I'm alive. And she, G.o.d bless her, walks about with her head bandaged, among an adoring ship's company, and refuses to admit having done anything wonderful."

And, indeed, to confirm Jaffery's last statement, here is a bit of a scrawl from Liosha--her complete account of the incident:

"We've just had the most awful storm I ever did see. The cargo go loose in the hold and we had to fix it up. I got a cut on the head and had to stay in bed till the storm finished. I must say it gave me an awful headache, but there I guess I'm better now."

Well, that seems to be the most exciting thing that happened to them.

Afterwards, in the mind of each, it loomed as the great event in the amazing voyage. A man does not forget having his life saved by a woman at the risk of her own; and a woman, no matter how heroic in action and how magnanimous in after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he had been credited (to his ingenuous delight) by reviewers of "The Greater Glory" with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's nature, I have never met a more dunder-headed blunderer in his dealings with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on Liosha's part, but seems to have been absolutely fogged in diagnosis.

"Liosha flourishes," he writes in one of his last _Vesta_ letters, "like a virgin forest of green bay trees. Gosh! She's splendid. I take back and swallow every presumptuous word I've said about her.

And, I suppose, owing to our knockabout sort of intimacy, she has adopted a protective, motherly att.i.tude towards me. In her great, s.p.a.cious, kind way, she gives you the impression that she owns Jaffery Chayne, and knows exactly what is for his good. Women's ways are wonderful but weird."

He must have thought himself vastly clever with his alliterative epigram. But he hadn't the faintest idea of the fount of Liosha's motherliness.

"Owing to our knockabout sort of intimacy"! Oh, the silly a.s.s!

CHAPTER XXII

It was not until the end of October that Doria completed her round of country-house visits and returned to the flat in St. John's Wood. The morning after her arrival in town she took my satirical counsel and called at Wittekind's office, and, I am afraid, tried to bite that very pleasant, well-intentioned gentleman. She went out to do battle, arraying herself in subtle panoply of war. This I gather from Barbara's account of the matter. She informs me that when a woman goes to see her solicitor, her banker, her husband's uncle, a woman she hates, or a man who really understands her, she wears in each case an entirely different kind of hat. Judging from a warehouse of tissue-paper-covered millinery at the top of my residence, which I once accidentally discovered when tracking down a smell of fire, I know that this must be true. Costumes also, Barbara implies, must correspond emotionally with the hats. I recognised this, too, as philosophic truth; for it explained many puzzling and apparently unnecessary transformations in my wee wife's personal appearance. And yet, the other morning when I was going up to town to see after some investments, and I asked her which was the more psychological tie, a green or a violet, in which to visit my stockbroker, she lost as much of her temper as she allows herself to lose and bade me not he silly... . But this has nothing to do with Doria.

Doria, I say, with beaver c.o.c.ked and plumes ruffled, intent on striking terror into the heart of Wittekind, presented herself in the outer office and sent in her card. At the name of Mrs. Adrian Boldero, doors flew open, and Doria marched straight away into Wittekind's comfortably furnished private room. Wittekind himself, tall, loose-limbed, courteous, the least tradesman-like person you can imagine, rose to receive her. For some reason or the other, or more likely against reason, she had pictured a rather soapy, smug little man hiding crafty eyes behind spectacles; but here he was, obviously a man of good breeding, who smiled at her most charmingly and gave her to understand that she was the one person in the world whom he had been longing to meet. And the office was not a sort of human _charcuterie_ hung round with brains of authors for sale, but a quiet, restful place to which valuable prints on the walls and a few bits of real Chippendale gave an air of distinction. Doria admits to being disconcerted. She had come to bite and she remained to smile. He seated her in a nice old armchair with a beautiful back--she was sensitive to such things--and spoke of Adrian as of his own blood brother. She had not antic.i.p.ated such warmth of genuine feeling, or so fine an appreciation of her Adrian's work.

"Believe me, my dear Mrs. Boldero," said he, "I am second only to you in my admiration and grief, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep your husband's memory green. But it is green, thank goodness. How do I know?

By two signs. One that people wherever the English language is spoken are eagerly reading his books--I say reading, because you deprecate the purely commercial side of things; but you must forgive me if I say that the only proof of all their reading is the record of all their buying.

And when people buy and read an author to this prodigious extent, they also discuss him. Adrian Boldero's name is a household word. You want advertis.e.m.e.nt and an _edition de luxe_. But it is only the little man that needs the big drum."

"But still, Mr. Wittekind," Doria urged, "an _edition de luxe_ would be such a beautiful monument to him. I don't care a bit about the money,"

she went on with a splendid disregard of her rights that would have sent a shiver down the incorporated back of the Incorporated Society of Authors, "I'm only too willing to contribute towards the expense. Please understand me. It's a tribute and a monument."

"You only put up monuments to those who are dead," said Wittekind.

"But my husband--"

"--isn't dead," said he.