About this time a bolt came from the blue or a bomb fell at our
feet--the metaphor doesn't matter so long as it conveys a sense of an
unlooked-for phenomenon. True, in relation to cosmic forces, it was but
a trumpery bolt or a squib-like bomb; but it startled us all the same.
The admirable Mrs. Considine got married. A retired warrior, a recent
widower, but a celibate of twenty years standing owing to the fact that
his late wife and himself had occupied separate continents (_on avait
fait continent à part_, as the French might say) during that period, a
Major-General fresh from India, an old flame and constant correspondent,
had suddenly swooped down upon the boarding-house in Queen's Gate and,
in swashbuckling fashion, had abducted the admirable and unresisting
lady. It was a matter of special license, and off went the tardily happy
pair to Margate, before we had finished rubbing our eyes.
It was grossly selfish on the part of Mrs. Considine, said Barbara. She
thought her--no; perhaps she didn't think her--God alone knows the
convolutions of feminine mental processes--but she proclaimed her
anyhow--an unscrupulous woman.
"There's Liosha," she said, "left alone in that boarding-house."
"My dear," said I, "Mrs. Jupp--I admit it's deplorable taste to change a
name of such gentility as Considine for that of Jupp, but it isn't
unscrupulous--Mrs. Jupp did not happen to be charged with a mission
from on High to dry nurse Liosha for the rest of her life."
"That's where you're wrong," Barbara retorted. "She was. She was the one
person in the world who could look after Liosha. See what she's done for
her. It was her duty to stick to Liosha. As for those two old faggots
marrying, they ought to be ashamed of themselves."
Whether they were ashamed of themselves or not didn't matter. Liosha
remained alone in the boarding-house. Not all Barbara's indignation
could turn Mrs. Jupp into the admirable Mrs. Considine and bring her
back to Queen's Gate. What was to be done? We consulted Jaffery, who as
Liosha's trustee ought to have consulted us. Jaffery pulled a long face
and smiled ruefully. For the first time he realised--in spite of tragic
happenings--the comedy aspect of his position as the legal guardian of
two young, well-to-do and attractive widows. He was the last man in the
world to whom one would have expected such a fate to befall. He too
swore lustily at the defaulting duenna.
"I thought it was all fixed up nicely forever," he growled.
"Everything is transitory in this life, my dear fellow," said I.
"Everything except a trusteeship. That goes on forever."
"That's the devil of it," he growled.
"You must get used to it," said I. "You'll have lots more to look after
before you've done with this existence!"
His look hardened and seemed to say: "If you go and die and saddle me
with Barbara, I'll punch your head."
He turned his back on me and, jerking a thumb, addressed Barbara.
"Why do you take him out without a muzzle? Now you've got sense. What
shall I do?"
Then Liosha superb and smiling sailed into the room.
I ought to have mentioned that Barbara had convened this meeting at the
boarding-house. The room into which Liosha sailed was the elegant
"_bonbonnière_" of a chamber known as the "boudoir." There was a great
deal of ribbon and frill and photograph frame and artful feminine touch
about it, which Liosha and, doubtless, many other inmates thought
mightily refined.
Liosha kissed Barbara and shook hands with Jaffery and me, bade us be
seated and put us at our ease with a social grace which could not have
been excelled by the admirable Mrs. Considine (now Jupp) herself. That
maligned lady had performed her duties during the past two years with
characteristic ability. Parenthetically I may remark that Liosha's
table-manners and formal demeanour were now irreproachable. Mrs.
Considine had also taken up the Western education of the child of twelve
at the point at which it had been arrested, and had brought Liosha's
information as to history, geography, politics and the world in general
to the standard of that of the average schoolgirl of fifteen. Again, she
had developed in our fair barbarian a natural taste in dress, curbing,
on her emergence from mourning, a fierce desire for apparel in primary
colours, and leading her onwards to an appreciation of suaver harmonies.
Again she had run her tactful hand over Liosha's stockyard vocabulary,
erasing words and expressions that might offend Queen's Gate and
substituting others that might charm; and she had done it with a touch
of humour not lost on Liosha, who had retained the sense of values in
which no child born and bred in Chicago can be deficient.
"I suppose you're all fussed to death about this marriage," she said
pleasantly. "Well, I couldn't help it."
"Of course not, dear," said Barbara.
"You might have given us a hint as to what was going on," said Jaffery.
"What good could you have done? In Albania if the General had interfered
with your plans, you might have shot him from behind a stone and
everyone except Mrs. Considine would have been happy; but I've been
taught you don't do things like that in South Kensington."
"Whoever wanted to shoot the chap?"
"I, for one," said Barbara. "What are we to do now?"
"Find another dragon," said Jaffery.
"But supposing I don't want another dragon?"
"That doesn't matter in the least. You've got to have one."
"Say, Jaff Chayne," cried Liosha, "do you think I can't look after
myself by this time? What do you take me for?"
I interposed. "Rather a lonely young woman, that's all. Jaffery, in his
tactless way, by using the absurd term 'dragon,' has missed the point
altogether. You want a companion, if only to go about with, say to
restaurants and theatres."
"I guess I can get heaps of those," said Liosha, a smile in her eyes.
"Don't you worry!"
"All the more reason for a dragon."
"If you mean somebody who's going to sit on my back every time I talk to
a man, I decidedly object. Mrs. Considine was different and you're not
going to find another like her in a hurry. Besides--I had sense enough
to see that she was going to teach me things. But I don't want to be
taught any more. I've learned enough."
"But it's just a woman companion that we want to give you, dear," said
Barbara. "Her mere presence about you is a protection against--well, any
pretty young woman living alone is liable to chance impertinence and
annoyance."
Liosha's dark eyes flashed. "I'd like to see any man try to annoy me. He
wouldn't try twice. You ask Mrs. Jardine"--Mrs. Jardine was the keeper
of the boarding-house--"she'll tell you a thing or two about my being
able to keep men from annoying me."
Barbara did, afterwards, ask Mrs. Jardine, and obtained a few sidelights
on Liosha's defensive methods. What they lacked in subtlety they made up
in physical effectiveness. There were not many spruce young gentlemen
who, after a week's residence in that establishment, did not adopt a
peculiarly deferential attitude towards Liosha.
"Still," said Jaffery, "I think you ought to have somebody, you know."
"If you're so keen on a dragon," replied Liosha defiantly, "why not take
on the job yourself?"
"I? Good Lord! Ho! ho! ho!"
Jaffery rose to his feet and roared with laughter. It was a fine joke.
"There's a lot in Liosha's suggestion," said Barbara, with an air of
seriousness.
"You don't expect me to come and live here?" he cried, waving a hand to
the frills and ribbons.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," said I. "You would get all the advantages
and refining influences of a first-class English home."
He pivoted round. "Oh, you be--"
"Hush," said Barbara. "Either you ought to stay here and look after
Liosha more than you do--"
He protested. Wasn't he always looking after her? Didn't he write?
Didn't he drop in now and then to see how she was getting on?
"Have you ever taken the poor child out to dinner?" Barbara asked
sternly.
He stood before her in the confusion of a schoolboy detected in a lapse
from grace, stammering explanations. Then Liosha rose, and I noticed
just the faintest little twitching of her lip.
"I don't want Jaff Chayne to be made to take me out to dinner against
his will."
"But--God bless my soul! I should love to take you out. I never thought
of it because I never take anybody out. I'm a barbarian, my dear girl,
just like yourself. If you wanted to be taken out, why on earth didn't
you say so?"
Liosha regarded him steadily. "I would rather cut my tongue out."
Jaffery returned her gaze for a few seconds, then turned away puzzled.
There seemed to be an unnecessary vehemence in Liosha's tone. He turned
again and approached her with a smiling face.
"I only meant that I didn't know you cared for that sort of thing,
Liosha. You must forgive me. Come and dine with me at the Carlton this
evening and do a theatre afterwards."
"No, I wont!" cried Liosha. "You insult me."
Her cheeks paled and she shook in sudden wrath. She looked magnificent.
Jaffery frowned.
"I think I'll have to be a bit of a dragon after all."
I recalled a scene of nearly two years before when he had frowned and
spoken thus roughly and she had invited him to chastise her with a
cleek. She did not repeat the invitation, but a sob rose in her throat
and she marched to the door, and at the door, turned splendidly,
quivering.
"I'm not going to have you or any one else for a dragon. And"--alas for
the superficiality of Mrs. Considine's training--"I'm going to do as I
damn well like."
Her voice broke on the last word, as she dashed from the room. I
exchanged a glance with Barbara, who followed her. Barbara could convey
a complicated set of instructions by her glance. Jaffery pulled out
pouch and pipe and shook his head.
"Woman is a remarkable phenomenon," said he.
"A more remarkable phenomenon still," said I, "is the dunderheaded
male."
"I did nothing to cause these heroics."
"You asked her to ask you to ask her out to dinner."
"I didn't," he protested.
I proved to him by all the rules of feminine logic that he had done so.
Holding the match over the bowl of his pipe, he puffed savagely.
"I wish I were a cannibal in Central Africa, where women are in proper
subjection. There's no worry about 'em there."
"Isn't there?" said I. "You just ask the next cannibal you meet. He is
confronted with the Great Conundrum, even as we are."
"He can solve it by clubbing his wife on the head."
"Quite so," said I. "But do you think the poor fellow does it for
pleasure? No. It worries him dreadfully to have to do it."
"That's specious rot, and platitudinous rubbish such as any soft idiot
who's been glued all his life to an armchair can reel off by the mile. I
know better. A couple of years ago Liosha would have eaten out of my
hand, to say nothing of dining with me at the Canton. It's all this
infernal civilisation. It has spoiled her."
"You began this argument," said I, "with the proposition that woman was
a remarkable phenomenon--a generalisation which includes woman in
fig-leaves and woman in diamonds."
"Oh, dry up," said Jaffery, "and tell me what I ought to do. I didn't
want to hurt the girl's feelings. Why should I? In fact I'm rather fond
of her. She appeals to me as something big and primitive. Long ago, if
it hadn't been that poor old Prescott--you know what I mean--I gave up
thinking of her in that way at once--and now I just want to be
friends--we have been friends. She's a jolly good sort, and, if I had
thought of it, I would have taken her about a bit. . . . But what I
can't stand is these modern neurotics--"
"You called them heroics--"
"All the same thing. It's purely artificial. It's cultivated by every
modern woman. Instead of thinking in a straight line they're taught it's
correct to think in a corkscrew. You never know where to have 'em."
"That's their artfulness," said I. "Who can blame them?"
Meanwhile Liosha, pursued by Barbara, had rushed to her bedroom, where
she burst into a passion of tears. Jaff Chayne, she wailed, had always
treated her like dirt. It was true that her father had stuck pigs in the
stockyards; but he was of an old Albanian family, quite as good a family
as Jaff Chayne's. It had numbered princes and great chieftains, the
majority of whom had been most gloriously slain in warfare. She would
like to know which of Jaff Chayne's ancestors had died out of their
feather beds.
"His grandfather," said Barbara, "was killed in the Indian Mutiny, and
his father in the Zulu War."
Liosha didn't care. That only proved an equality. Jaff Chayne had no
right to treat her like dirt. He had no right to put a female policeman
over her. She was a free woman--she wouldn't go out to dinner with Jaff
Chayne for a thousand pounds. Oh, she hated him; at which renewed
declaration she burst into fresh weeping and wished she were dead. As a
guardian of young and beautiful widows Jaffery did not seem to be a
success.
Barbara, in her wise way, said very little, and searched the
paraphernalia on the dressing table for eau-de-cologne and such other
lotions as would remove the stain of tears. Holding these in front of
Liosha, like a stern nurse administering medicine, she waited till the
fit had subsided. Then she spoke.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Liosha, going on like a silly
schoolgirl instead of a grown-up woman of the world. I wonder you didn't
announce your intention of assassinating Jaffery."
"I've a good mind to," replied Liosha, nursing her grievance.
"Well, why don't you do it?" Barbara whipped up a murderous-looking
knife that lay on a little table--it was the same weapon that she had
lent the Swiss waiter. "Here's a dagger." She threw it on the girl's
lap. "I'll ring the bell and send a message for Mr. Chayne to come up.
As soon as he enters you can stick it into him. Then you can stick it
into me. Then if you like you can go downstairs and stick it into
Hilary. And having destroyed everybody who cares for you and is good to
you, you'll feel a silly ass--such a silly ass that you'll forget to
stick it into yourself."
Liosha threw the knife into a corner. On its way it snicked a neat
little chip out of a chair-back.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Clean your face," said Barbara, and presented the materials.
Sitting on the bed and regarding herself in a hand-mirror Liosha obeyed
meekly. Barbara brought the powder puff.
"Now your nose. There!" For the first time Barbara smiled. "Now you look
better. Oh, my dear girl!" she cried, seating herself beside Liosha and
putting an arm round her waist. "That's not the way to deal with men.
You must learn. They're only overgrown babies. Listen."
And she poured into unsophisticated but sympathetic ears all the
duplicity, all the treachery, all the insidious cunning and all the
serpent-like wisdom of her unscrupulous sex. What she said neither I nor
any of the sons of men are ever likely to know! but so proud of
belonging to that nefarious sisterhood, so overweening in her
sex-conceit did she render Liosha, that when they entered the little
private sitting-room next door whither, according to the instructions
conveyed by Barbara's parting glance downstairs, I had dragged a softly
swearing Jaffery, she marched up to him and said serenely:
"If you really do want me to dine with you, I'll come with pleasure. But
the next time you ask me, please do it in a decent way."
I saw mischief lurking in my wife's eye and shook my head at her
rebukingly. But Jaffery stared at Liosha and gasped. It was all very
well for Doria and Barbara to be ever putting him in the wrong: they
were daughters of a subtle civilisation; but here was Liosha, who had
once asked him to beat her, doing the same--woman was a more curious
phenomenon than ever.
"I'm sorry if my manners are not as they should be," said he with a
touch of irony. "I'll try to mend 'em. Anyhow, it's awfully good of you
to come."
She smiled and bowed; not the deep bow of Albania, but the delicate
little inclination of South Kensington. The quarrel was healed, the
incident closed. He arranged to call for her in a taxi at a quarter to
seven. Barbara looked at the clock and said that we must be going. We
rose to take our leave. Maliciously I said:
"But we've settled nothing about a remplaçante for Mrs. Considine."
"I guess we've settled everything," Liosha replied sweetly. "No one can
replace Mrs. Considine."
I quite enjoyed our little silent walk downstairs. Evidently Jaffery's
theory of primitive woman had been knocked endways; and, to judge by the
faint knitting of her brow, Barbara was uneasily conscious of a mission
unfulfilled. Liosha had gained her independence.
* * * * *
Our friends carried out the evening's programme. Liosha behaved with
extreme propriety, modelling her outward demeanour upon that of Mrs.
Considine, and her attitude towards Jaffery on a literal interpretation
of Barbara's reprehensible precepts. She was so dignified that Jaffery,
lest he should offend, was afraid to open his mouth except for the
purpose of shovelling in food, which he did, in astounding quantity.
From what both of us gathered afterwards--and gleefully we compared
notes--they were vastly polite to each other. He might have been
entertaining the decorous wife of a Dutch Colonial Governor from whom he
desired facilities of travel. The simple Eve travestied in guile took
him in completely. Aware that it was her duty to treat him like an
overgrown baby and mould him to her fancy and twist him round her finger
and lead him whithersoever she willed, making him feel all the time that
he was pointing out the road, she did not know how to begin. She sat
tongue-tied, racking her brains to loss of appetite; which was a pity,
for the maître d'hôtel, given a free hand by her barbarously ignorant
host, had composed a royal menu. As dinner proceeded she grew shyer than
a chit of sixteen. Over the quails a great silence reigned. Hers she
could not touch, but she watched him fork, as it seemed to her, one
after the other, whole, down his throat: and she adored him for it. It
was her ideal of manly gusto. She nearly wept into her _Fraises
Diane_--vast craggy strawberries (in March) rising from a drift of snow
impregnated by all the distillations of all the flowers of all the
summers of all the hills--because she would have given her soul to sit
beside him on the table with the bowl on her lap and feed him with a
tablespoon and, for her share of it, lick the spoon after his every
mouthful. But it had been drummed into her that she was a woman of the
world, the fashionable and all but incomprehensible world, the English
world. She looked around and saw a hundred of her sex practising the
well-bred deportment that Mrs. Considine had preached. She reflected
that to all of those women gently nurtured in this queer English
civilisation, equally remote from Armour's stockyards and from her
Albanian fastness, the wisdom that Barbara had imparted to her a few
hours before was but their A.B.C. of life in their dealings with their
male companions. She also reflected--and for the reflection not Mrs.
Considine or Barbara, only her woman's heart was responsible--that to
the man whom she yearned to feed with great tablespoonfuls of delight,
she counted no more than a pig or a cow--her instinctive similes, you
must remember, were pastoral--or that peculiar damfool of a sister of
his, Euphemia.
When I think of these two children of nature, sitting opposite to one
another in the fashionable restaurant trying to behave like
super-civilised dolls, I cannot help smiling. They were both so
thoroughly in earnest; and they bored themselves and each other so
dreadfully. Conversation patched sporadically great expanses of silence
and then they talked of the things that did not interest them in the
least. Of course they smiled at each other, the smirk being essential to
the polite atmosphere; and of course Jaffery played host in the orthodox
manner, and Liosha acknowledged attentions with a courtesy equally
orthodox. But how much happier they both would have been on a bleak
mountain-side eating stew out of a pot! Even champagne and old brandy
failed to exercise mellowing influences. The twain were petrified in
their own awful correctitude. Perhaps if they had proceeded to a musical
comedy or a farce or a variety entertainment where Jaffery could have
expanded his lungs in laughter, their evening as a whole might have been
less dismal. But a misapprehension as to the nature of the play had
caused Jaffery to book seats for a gloomy drama with an ironical title,
which stupefied them with depression.
When they waited for the front door of the house in Queen's Gate to open
to their ring, Liosha in her best manner thanked him for a most
enjoyable evening.
"Most enjoyable indeed," said Jaffery. "We must have another, if you
will do me the honour. What do you say to this day week?"
"I shall be delighted," said Liosha.
So that day week they repeated this extraordinary performance, and the
week after that, and so on until it became a grim and terrifying
fixture. And while Jaffery, in a fog of theory as to the Eternal
Feminine, was trying to do his duty, Liosha struggled hard to smother
her own tumultuous feelings and to carry out Barbara's prescription for
the treatment of overgrown babies; but the deuce of it was that though
in her eyes Jaffery was pleasantly overgrown, she could not for the life
of her regard him as a baby. So it came to pass that an unnatural pair
continued to meet and mystify and misunderstand each other to the great
content of the high gods and of one unimportant human philosopher who
looked on.
"I told you all this artificiality was spoiling her," Jaffery growled,
one day. "She's as prim as an old maid. I can't get anything out of
her."
"That's a pity," said I.
"It is." He reflected for a moment. "And the more so because she looks
so stunning in her evening gowns. She wipes the floor with all the other
women."
I smiled. You can get a lot of quiet amusement out of your friends if
you know how to set to work.