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 théâtre_
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.