Barbara having freed Jaffery from immediate anxieties with regard to
Liosha, easily persuaded him to pay a longer visit than he had proposed.
A telephonic conversation with a first distracted, then
conscience-smitten and then much relieved Euphemia had for effect the
payment of bills at the Savoy and the retreat of the gentle lady to
Tunbridge Wells. Liosha remained with us, pending certain negotiations
darkly carried on by my wife and Doria in concert. During this time I
had some opportunity of observing her from a more philosophic standpoint
and my judgment was--I will not say formed--but aided by Barbara's
confidential revelations. When not directly thwarted, she seemed to be
good-natured. She took to Susan--a good sign; and Susan took to her--a
better. Finding that her idea of happiness was to sprawl about the
garden and let the child run over her and inveigle her into childish
games and call her "Loshie" (a disrespectful mode of address which I had
all the pains in the world in persuading Barbara to permit) and
generally treat her as an animate instrument of entertainment, we
smoothed down every obstacle that might lie in this particular path to
beatitude. So many difficulties were solved. Not only were we spared the
problem of what the deuce to do with Liosha during the daytime, but also
Barbara was able to send the nurse away for a short and much needed
holiday. Of course Barbara herself undertook all practical duties; but
when she discovered that Liosha experienced primitive delight in
bathing Susan--Susan's bath being a heathen rite in which ducks and fish
and swimming women and horrible spiders played orgiac parts, and in
getting up at seven in the morning--("Good God! Is there such an hour?"
asked Adrian, when he heard about it)--in order to breakfast with Susan,
and in dressing and undressing her and brushing her hair, and in
tramping for miles by her side while with Basset, her vassal, in
attendance, Susan rode out on her pony; when Barbara, in short, became
aware of this useful infatuation, she pandered to it, somewhat
shamelessly, all the time, however, keeping an acute eye on the zealous
amateur. If, for instance, Liosha had picked a bushel of nectarines and
had established herself with Susan, in the corner of the fruit garden,
for a debauch, which would have had, for consequence, a child's funeral,
Barbara, by some magic of motherhood, sprang from the earth in front of
them with her funny little smile and her "Only one--and a very ripe
one--for Susan, dear Liosha." And in these matters Liosha was as much
overawed by Barbara as was Susan.
This, I repeat, was a good sign in Liosha. I don't say that she would
have fallen captive to any ordinary child, but Susan being my child was
naturally different from the vulgar run of children. She was _rarissinia
avis_ in the lands of small girls--one of the few points on which
Barbara and I are in unclouded agreement. No one could have helped
falling captive to Susan. But, I admit, in the case of Liosha, who was
an out-of-the-way, incalculable sort of creature--it was a good sign.
Perhaps, considering the short period during which I had her under close
observation, it was the best sign. She had grievous faults.
One evening, while I was dressing for dinner, Barbara burst into my
dressing-room.
"Reynolds has given me notice."
"Oh," said I, not desisting (as is the callous way of husbands the world
over) from the absorbing and delicate manipulation of my tie. "What
for?"
"Liosha has just gone for her with a pair of scissors."
"Horrible!" said I, getting the ends even. "I can imagine nothing more
finnikin in ghastliness than to cut anybody's throat with nail scissors,
especially when the subject is unwilling."
Barbara pished and pshawed. It was no occasion for levity.
"I agree," said I. The dressing hour is the calmest and most philosophic
period of the day.
Barbara came up to me blue eyed and innocent, and with a traitorous
jerk, undid my beautiful white bow.
"There, now listen."
And I, dilapidated wretch, had to listen to the tale of crime. It
appeared that Reynolds, my wife's maid, in putting Liosha into a
ready-made gown--a model gown I believe is the correct term--insisted on
her being properly corseted. Liosha, agonisingly constricted, rebelled.
The maid was obdurate. Liosha flew at her with a pair of scissors. I
think I should have done the same. Reynolds bolted from the room. So
should I have done. I sympathised with both of them. Reynolds fled to
her mistress, and, declaring it to be no part of her duty to wait on
tigers, gave notice.
"We can't lose Reynolds," said I.
"Of course we can't."
"And we can't pack Liosha off at a moment's notice, so as to please
Reynolds."
"Oh, you're too wise altogether," said my wife, and left me to the
tranquil completion of my dressing.
Liosha came down to dinner very subdued, after a short, sharp interview
with Barbara, who, for so small a person, can put on a prodigious air of
authority. As a punishment for bloodthirsty behaviour she had made her
wear the gown in the manner prescribed by Reynolds; and she had
apologised to Reynolds, who thereupon withdrew her notice. So serenity
again prevailed.
In some respects Liosha was very childish. The receipt of letters, no
matter from whom--even bills, receipts and circulars--gave her
overwhelming joy and sense of importance. This harmless craze, however,
led to another outburst of ferocity. Meeting the postman outside the
gate she demanded a letter. The man looked through his bundle.
"Nothing for you this morning, ma'am."
"I wrote to the dressmaker yesterday," said Liosha, "and you've got the
reply right there."
"I assure you I haven't," said the postman.
"You're a liar," cried Liosha, "and I guess I'm going to see."
Whereupon Liosha, who was as strong as a young horse, sprang to
death-grapple with the postman, a puny little man, pitched him onto the
side of the road and calmly entered into felonious possession of His
Majesty's mails. Then finding no letter she cast the whole delivery over
the supine and gasping postman and marched contemptuously into the
house.
The most astonishing part of the business was that in these outbreaks of
barbarity she did not seem to be impelled by blind rage. Most people who
heave a postman about a peaceful county would do so in a fit of passion,
through loss of nerve-control. Not so Liosha. She did these things with
the bland and deadly air of an inexorable Fate.
The perspiration still beads on my brow when I think of the cajoling and
bribing and blustering and lying I had to practise in order to hush up
the matter. As for Liosha, both Jaffery and I rated her soundly. I
explained loftily that not so many years ago, transportation, lifelong
imprisonment, death were the penalties for the felony which she had
committed.
[Illustration: Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek.]
"You ought to have a jolly good thrashing," roared Jaffery.
At this Liosha, who had endured our abuse with the downcast eyes of
angelic meekness, took a golfclub from a bag lying on the hall table and
handed it to the red-bearded giant.
"I guess I do," she said. "Beat me."
And, as I am a living man, I swear that if Jaffery had taken her at her
word and laid on lustily she would have taken her thrashing without a
murmur. What was one to do with such a woman?
Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, fingered the cleek. Gradually she
raised her glorious eyes to him, and in them I was startled to see the
most extraordinary doglike submission. He frowned portentously and shook
his head. Her lips worked, and after a convulsive sob or two, she threw
herself on the ground, clasped his knees, and to our dismay burst into a
passion of weeping. Barbara, rushing into the hall at this juncture,
like a fairy tornado, released us from our embarrassing position. She
annihilated us with a sweeping glance of scorn.
"Oh, go away, both of you, go away!"
So we went away and left her to deal with Liosha.
Save for such little excursions and alarms the days passed very
pleasantly. Jaffery spent most of the sweltering hours of daylight (it
was a blazing summer) in playing golf on the local course. Adrian and
Doria trod the path of the perfect lovers, while I, to justify my
position as President of the Hafiz Society, worked hard at a Persian
Grammar. Barbara, the never idle, was in the meantime arranging for
Liosha's future. Her organising genius had brought Doria's suggestion as
to the First Class London Boarding House into the sphere of practical
things. The Boarding House idea alone would not work; but, combine it
with Mrs. Considine, and the scheme ran on wheels.
"Even you," said Barbara, as though I were a sort of Schopenhauer, a
professional disparager of her sex--"even you have a high opinion of
Mrs. Considine."
I had. Every one had a high opinion of Mrs. Considine. She was not very
beautiful or very clever or very fascinating or very angelic or very
anything--but she was one of those women of whom everybody has a high
opinion. The impoverished widow of an Indian soldierman, with a son
soldiering somewhere in India, she managed to do a great deal on very
small means. She was a woman of the world, a woman of character. She
knew how to deal with people of queer races. Heaven indicated her for
appointment by Barbara as Liosha's duenna in the Boarding House. Mrs.
Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless,
gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who
happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away,
so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the
programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha's
education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her
a sense of Western decorum, extend her acquaintance, and gradually root
out of her heart the yearning to do her enemies to death. It was a
capital programme; and I gave it the benediction of a smile, in which,
seeing Barbara's shrewd blue eyes fixed on me, I suppressed the irony.
When this was all settled Jaffery proclaimed himself the most care-free
fellow alive. His hitherto grumpy and resentful attitude towards Liosha
changed. He established himself as fellow slave with her under the whip
of Susan's tyranny. It did one good to see these two magnificent
creatures sporting together for the child's, and incidentally their own,
amusement. For the first time during their intercourse they met on the
same plane.
"She's really quite a good sort," said Jaffery.
But if it was pleasant to see him with Liosha, it was still more
touching to watch his protective attitude towards Doria. He seemed so
anxious to do her service, so deferential to her views, so
puzzle-headedly eager to reconcile them with his own. She took upon
herself to read him little lectures.
"Don't you think you're rather wasting your life?" she asked him one
day.
"Do you think I am?"
"Yes."
"Oh! But I work hard at my job, you know," he said apologetically--"when
there's one for me to do. And when there isn't I kind of prepare myself
for the next. For instance I've got to keep myself always fit."
"But that's all physical and outside." She smiled, in her little
superior way. "It's the inside, the personal, the essential self that
matters. Life, properly understood, is a process of self-development. If
a human being is the same at the end of a year as he was at the
beginning he has made no spiritual progress."
Jaffery pulled his red beard. "In other words, he hasn't lived," said
he.
"Precisely."
"And you think that I'm just the same sort of old animal from one year's
end to another and that I don't progress worth a cent, and so, that I
don't live."
"I don't want to say quite that," she replied graciously. "Every one
must advance a little bit unless they deteriorate. But the conscious
striving after spiritual progress is so necessary--and you seem to put
it aside. It is such waste of life."
"I suppose it is, in a way," Jaffery admitted.
She pursued the theme, a flattered Egeria. "You see--well, what do you
do? You travel about in out-of-the-way places and make notes about them
in case the knowledge may be useful to you in the future. When you come
across anything to kill, you kill it. It also pleases you to come across
anything that calls for an exercise of strength. When there is a war or
a revolution or anything that takes you to your real work, as you call
it, you've only got to go through it and report what you see."
"But that's just the difficulty," cried Jaffery. "It isn't every chap
that's tough enough to come out rosy at the end of a campaign. And it
isn't every chap that can _see_ the things he ought to write about.
That's when the training comes in."
Again she smiled. "I've no idea of belittling your profession, my dear
Jaffery. I think it's a noble one. But should it be the Alpha and Omega
of things? Don't you see? The real life is intellectual, spiritual,
emotional. What are your ideals?"
Jaffery looked at her ruefully. Beneath those dark pools of eyes lay the
spirituality that made her a mystery so sacred. He, great hulking
fellow, was a gross lump of clay. Ideals?
"I don't suppose I have any," said he.
"But you must. Everybody has, to a certain extent."
"Well, to ride straight and tell the truth--like the ancient Persians, I
suppose it was the Persians--anyway it's a sort of rough code I've got."
"Have you read Nietzsche?" she asked suddenly.
He frowned perplexedly. "Nietzsche--that's the mad superman chap, isn't
it? No. I've not read a word."
"I do wish you would. You'll find him so exhilarating. You might
possibly agree with a lot of what he says. I don't. But he sets you
thinking."
She sketched her somewhat prim conception of the Nietzschean philosophy,
and after listening to it in dumb wonder, he promised to carry out her
wishes. So, when I came down to my library that evening dressed for
dinner, I found him, still in morning clothes, with "Thus Spake
Zarathustra" on his knees, and a bewildered expression on his face.
"Have you read this, Hilary?" he asked.
"Yes," said I.
"Understand it?"
"More or less."
"Gosh!" said he, shutting the book, "and I suppose Doria understands it
too, or she wouldn't have recommended it. But," he rose ponderously and
looked down on me with serious eyes--"what the Hell is it all about?"
I drew out my watch. "The five seconds that you have before rushing
up-stairs to dress," said I, "don't give me adequate time to expound a
philosophic system."
Now if Adrian or I had talked to Jaffery about soul-progression and the
Will to Power and suggested that he was missing the essentials of life,
we should have been met with bellows of rude and profane derision. I
don't believe he had even roughly considered what kind of an
individuality he had, still less enquired into the state of his
spiritual being. But the flip of a girl he professed so much to despise
came along and reduced him to a condition of helpless introspection. I
cannot say that it lasted very long. Psychology and metaphysics and
æsthetics lay outside Jaffery's sphere. But while seeing no harm in his
own simple creed of straight-riding and truth-speaking, he added to it
an unshakable faith in Doria's intellectual and spiritual superiority.
On his first meeting with her he had disclaimed the subtler mental
qualities, videlicet his similitude of the bumble-bee; now, however, he
went further, declaring himself, to a subrident host, to be a
chuckle-headed ass, only fit to herd with savages. He would listen, with
childlike envy, to Adrian, glib of tongue, exchanging with Doria the
shibboleths of the Higher Life. He had been considerably impressed by
Adrian as the author of a successful novel; but Adrian as a co-treader
of the stars with Doria, appeared to him in the light of an immortal.
Adrian and I, when alone, laughed over old Jaff, as we had laughed over
him for goodness knows how many years. I, who had guessed (with
Barbara's aid) the incidence of the thunderbolt, found in his humility
something pathetic which was lost to Adrian. The latter only saw the
blustering, woman-scorning hulk of thews and sinews, at the mercy of
anything in petticoats, from Susan upward. I disagreed. He was not at
the mercy of Liosha.
"You burrowing mole," cried Adrian one morning in the library, Jaffery
having gone off to golf, "can't you see that he goes about in mortal
terror of her?"
"No such thing!" I retorted hotly. "He has regarded her as an abominable
nuisance--a millstone round his neck--a responsibility--"
"A huntress of men," he interrupted. "Especially an all too probable
huntress of Jaffery Chayne. With Susan and Barbara and Doria he knows
he's safe--spared the worst--so he yields and they pick him up--look at
him and stand him on his head and do whatever they darn well like to
him; but with Liosha he knows he isn't safe. You see," Adrian continued,
after having lit a cigarette, "Jaffery's an honourable old chap, in his
way. With Liosha, his friend Prescott's widow, it would be a question of
marriage or nothing."
"You're talking rubbish," said I. "Jaffery would just as soon think of
marrying the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour."
"That's what I'm telling you," said Adrian. "He's in a mortal funk lest
his animated Statue of Liberty should descend from her pedestal and with
resistless hands take him away and marry him."
"For one who has been hailed as the acutest psychologist of the day,"
said I, "you seem to have very limited powers of observation."
For some unaccountable reason Adrian's pale face flushed scarlet. He
broke out vexedly:
"I don't see what my imaginative work has got to do with the
trivialities of ordinary life. As a matter of fact," he added, after a
pause, "the psychology in a novel is all imagination, and it's the same
imaginative faculty that has been amusing itself with Jaffery and this
unqualifiable lady."
"All right, my dear man," said I, pacifically. "Probably you're right
and I'm wrong. I was only talking lightly. And speaking of
imagination--what about your next book?"
"Oh, damn the next book," said he, flicking the ash off his cigarette.
"I've got an idea, of course. A jolly good idea. But I'm not worrying
about it yet."
"Why?" I asked.
He threw his cigarette into the grate. How, in the name of common sense,
could he settle down to work? Wasn't his head full of his approaching
marriage? Could he see at present anything beyond the thing of dream and
wonder that was to be his wife? I was a cold-blooded fish to talk of
novel-writing.
"But you'll have to get into it sometime or other," said I.
"Of course. As soon as we come back from Venice, and settle down to a
normal life in the flat."
"What does Doria think of the new idea?"
Thousands who knew him not were looking forward to Adrian Boldero's new
book. We, who loved him, were peculiarly interested. Somehow or other we
had not touched before so intimately on the subject. To my surprise he
frowned and snapped impatient fingers.
"I haven't told Doria anything about it. It isn't my way. My work's too
personal a thing, even for Doria. She understands. I know some fellows
tell their plots to any and everybody--and others, if they don't do
that, lay bare their artistic souls to those near and dear to them.
Well, I can't. A word, no matter how loving, of adverse criticism, a
glance even that was not sympathetic would paralyse me, it would shatter
my faith in the whole structure I had built up. I can't help it. It's my
nature. As I told you two or three months ago, it has always been my
instinct to work in the dark. I instanced my First at Cambridge. How
much more powerful is the instinct when it's a question of a vital
created thing like a novel? My dear Hilary, you're the man I'm fondest
of in the world. You know that. But don't worry me about my work. I
can't stand it. It upsets me. Doria, heart of my heart and soul of my
soul, has promised not to worry me. She sees I must be free from outside
influences--no matter how closely near--but still outside. And you must
promise too."
"My dear old boy," said I, somewhat confused by this impassioned
exposition of the artistic temperament, "you've only got to express the
wish--"
"I know," said he. "Forgive me." He laughed and lit another cigarette.
"But Wittekind and the editor of _Fowler's_ in America--I've sold him
the serial rights--are shrieking out for a synopsis. I'm damned if I'm
going to give 'em a synopsis. They get on my nerves. And--we're intimate
enough friends, you and I, for me to confess it--so do our dearest
Barbara and old Jaff, and you yourself, when you want to know how I'm
getting on. Look, dear old Hilary"--he laughed again and threw himself
into an armchair--"giving birth to a book isn't very much unlike giving
birth to a baby. It's analogical in all sorts of ways. Well, some women,
as soon as the thing is started, can talk quite freely--sweetly and
delicately--I haven't a word to say against them--to all their women
friends about it. Others shrink. There's something about it too near
their innermost souls for them to give their confidence to anyone. Well,
dear old Hilary--that's how I feel about the novel."
He spoke from his heart. I understood--like Doria.
"Elizabeth Barrett Browning calls it 'the sorrowful, great gift,'" said
I. "We who haven't got it can only bow to those who have."
Adrian rose and took a few strides about the library.
"I'm afraid I've been talking a lot of inflated nonsense. It must sound
awfully like swelled head. But you know it isn't, don't you?"
"Don't he an idiot," said I. "Let us talk of something else."
We did not return to the subject.
In the course of time came Mrs. Considine to carry off Liosha to the
First Class Boarding House which she had found in Queen's Gate. Liosha
left us full of love for Barbara and Susan and I think of kindly feeling
for myself. A few days afterwards Jaffery went off to sail a small boat
with another lunatic in the Hebrides. A little later Doria and Adrian
went to pay a round of short family visits beginning with Mrs. Boldero.
So before August was out, Barbara and Susan and I found ourselves alone.
"Now," said I, "I can get through some work."
"Now," said Barbara, "we can run over to Dinard."
"What?" I shouted.
"Dinard," she said, softly. "We always go. We only put it off this year
on account of visitors."
"We definitely made up our minds," I retorted, "that we weren't going to
leave this beautiful garden. You know I never change my mind. I'm not
going away."
Barbara left the room, whistling a musical comedy air.
We went to Dinard.