When, by way of comforting Jaffery, I criticised Doria's outburst, he
fell upon me as though about to devour me alive. After what he had done
for her, said I, given up one of the great chances of his career,
carried her bodily from London to Nice, and made her a present of a
brilliant novel so as to save Adrian's memory from shame, she ought to
go on her knees and pray God to shower blessings on his head. As it was,
she deserved whipping.
Jaffery called me, among other things, an amazing ass--he has an Eastern
habit of, facile vituperation--and roared about the drawing-room. The
ladies, be it understood, had retired.
"You don't seem to grip the elements of the situation. You haven't the
intelligence of a rabbit. How in Hades could she know I've written the
rotten book? She thinks it's Adrian's. And she thinks I've spoiled it.
She's perfectly justified. For the little footling services I rendered
her on the journey, she's idiotically grateful--out of all proportion.
As for Persia, she knows nothing about it--"
"She ought to," said I.
"If you tell her, I'll break your neck," roared Jaffery.
"All right," said I, desiring to remain whole. "So long as you're
satisfied, it doesn't much matter to me."
It didn't. After all, one has one's own life to live, and however
understanding of one's friends and sympathetically inclined towards
them one may be, one cannot follow them emotionally through all their
bleak despairs and furious passions. A man doing so would be dead in a
week.
"It doesn't seem to strike you," he went on, "that the poor girl's
mental and moral balance depends on the successful carrying out of this
ghastly farce."
"I do, my dear chap."
"You don't. I wrote the thing as best I could--a labour of love. But
it's nothing like Tom Castleton's work--which she thinks is Adrian's. To
keep up the deception I had to crab it and say that the faults were
mine. Naturally she believes me."
"All right," said I, again. "And when the book is published and Adrian's
memory flattered and Doria is assured of her mental and moral
balance--what then?"
"I hope she'll be happy," he answered. "Why the blazes do you suppose
I've worried if it wasn't to give her happiness?"
I could not press my point. I could not commit the gross indelicacy of
saying: "My poor friend, where do you come in?" or words to that effect.
Nor could I possibly lay down the proposition that a living second
husband--stretching the imagination to the hypothesis of her taking
one--is but an indifferent hero to the widow who spends her life in
burning incense before the shrine of the demigod husband who is dead. We
can't say these things to our friends. We expect them to have common
sense as we have ourselves. But we don't, and--for the curious reason,
based on the intense individualism of sexual attraction, that no man can
appreciate, save intellectually, another man's desire for a particular
woman--we can't realize the poor, fool hunger of his heart. The man who
pours into our ears a torrential tale of passion moves us not to
sympathy, but rather to psychological speculation, if we are kindly
disposed, or to murderous inclinations if we are not. On the other
hand, he who is silent moves us not at all. In any and every case,
however, we entirely fail to comprehend why, if Neæra is obdurate, our
swain does not go afield and find, as assuredly he can, some complaisant
Amaryllis.
I confess, honestly, that during this conversation I felt somewhat
impatient with my dear, infatuated friend. There he was, casting the
largesse of his soul at the feet of a blind woman, a woman blinded by
the bedazzlement of a false fire, whose flare it was his religion to
intensify. There he was doing this, and he did not see the imbecility of
it! In after time we can correlate incidents and circumstances, viewing
them in a perspective more or less correct. We see that we might have
said and done a hundred helpful things. Well, we know that we did not,
and there's an end on't. I felt, as I say, impatient with Jaffery,
although--or was it because?--I recognised the bald fact that he was in
love with Doria to the maximum degree of besottedness.
You see, when you say to a man: "Why do you let the woman kick you?" and
he replies, with a glare of indignation: "She has deigned to touch my
unworthy carcass with her sacred boot!" what in the world are you to do,
save resume the interrupted enjoyment of your cigar? This I did. I also
found amusement in comparing his meek wooing, like that of an early
Italian amorist, with his rumbustious theories as to marriage by capture
and other primitive methods of bringing woman to heel.
Doria, seeing him unresentful of kicking, continued to kick (when
Barbara wasn't looking--for Barbara had read her a lecture on the polite
treatment of trustees and executors) and made him more her slave than
ever. He fetched and carried. He read poetry. He was Custodian of the
Sacred Rubbers, when the grass was damp. He shielded her from over-rough
incursions on the part of Susan. He chanted the responses in her Litany
of Saint Adrian. He sacrificed his golf so that he could sit near her
and hold figurative wool for her to unwind. It was very pretty to watch
them. The contrast between them made its unceasing appeal. Besides,
Doria did not kick all the time; there were long spells during which,
touched by the giant's devotion, she repaid it in tokens of tender
regard. At such times she was as fascinating an elf as one could wish to
meet on a spring morning. He could bring, like no one else, the smile
into her dark, mournful eyes. There is no doubt that, in her way and as
far as her Adrian-bound emotional temperament permitted, she felt
grateful to Jaffery. She also felt safe in his company. He was like a
great St. Bernard dog, she declared to Barbara.
These idyllic relations continued unruffled for some days, until a
letter arrived from the eminent novelist to whom, with Doria's approval,
Jaffery had sent the proofs.
"A marvellous story," was the great man's verdict; "singularly different
from 'The Diamond Gate,' only resembling it in its largeness of
conception and the perfection of its kind. The alteration of a single
word would spoil it. If an alien hand is there, it is imperceptible."
At this splendid tribute Jaffery beamed with happiness. He tossed the
letter to Barbara across the breakfast table.
"No alien hand perceptible. Ho! ho! ho! But it's stunning, isn't it? I
do believe the old fraud of a book is going to win through. This ought
to satisfy Doria, don't you think so?"
"It ought to," said Barbara. "I'll send it up to her room."
But Doria with Adrian's impeccability on the brain--and how could a work
of Adrian's be impeccable when an alien hand, however imperceptible,
had touched it?--was not satisfied. Towards noon, when she came
downstairs, she met Jaffery on the terrace, with a familiar little
knitting of the brow before which his welcoming smile faded.
"It's all right up to a point," she said, handing him back the letter.
"Nobody with the rudiments of a brain could fail to recognise the merits
of Adrian's work. But no novelist is possessed of the critical faculty."
"Then why," asked Jaffery, after the way of men, "did you ask me to send
him the novel?"
"I took it for granted he had common sense," replied Doria, after the
way of women.
"And he hasn't any?"
"Read the thing again."
Jaffery scanned the page mechanically and looked up: "Well, what's to be
done now?"
"I should like to compare the proofs with Adrian's original manuscript.
Where is it?"
Here was the question we had all dreaded. Jaffery lied convincingly.
"It went to the printers, my dear, and of course they've destroyed it."
"I thought everything was typed nowadays."
"Typing takes time," replied Jaffery serenely. "And I'm not an advocate
of feather-beds and rose-water baths for printers. As I wanted to rush
the book out as quickly as possible, I didn't see why I should pamper
them with type. Have you the original manuscript of 'The Diamond Gate'?"
"No," said Doria.
"Well--don't you see?" said Jaffery, with a smile.
For the first time I praised Old Man Jornicroft. He had brought up his
daughter far from the madding mechanics of the literary life. To my
great relief, Doria swallowed the incredible story.
"It was careless of you not to have given special instructions for the
manuscript to be saved, I must say. But if it's gone, it's gone. I'm not
unreasonable."
"I think you are," said Barbara, who had been arranging flowers in the
drawing-room, and had emerged onto the terrace. "You made Jaffery submit
his careful editing to an expert, and you're honourably bound to accept
the expert's verdict."
"I do accept it," she retorted with a toss of her head and a flash of
her eyes. "Have I ever said I didn't? But I'm at liberty to keep to my
own opinion."
Jaffery scratched his whiskers and beard and screwed up his face as he
did in moments of perplexity.
"What exactly do you want changed?" he asked.
"Just those few coarse touches you admit are yours."
"Adrian wanted to get an atmosphere of rye-whisky and bad tobacco--not
tea and strawberries." The eminent novelist's encomium had aroused the
artist's pride in his first-born. An altered word would spoil the book.
"My dear girl," said he, stretching out his great hand, from beneath
which she wriggled an impatient shoulder, "my dear Doria," said he, very
gently, "the possessor of the Order of Merit is both a critic and a man
of common sense. Anyway, he knows more about novels than either of us
do. If it weren't for him I would give you the proofs to blue pencil as
much as you liked. But I'm sure you would make a thundering mess of it."
Doria made a little gesture--a bit of a shrug--a bit of a resigned
flicker of her hands.
"Of course, do as you please, dear Jaffery. I'm quite alone, a woman
with nobody to turn to"--she smiled with her lips, but there was no
coordination of her eyes--"as I said before, I pass the proofs."
She went quickly through the drawing-room door into the house, leaving
Jaffery still scratching a red whisker.
"Oh, Lord!" said he, ruefully, "I've gone and done it now!"
He turned to follow her, but Barbara interposed her small body on the
threshold.
"Don't be a silly fool, Jaff. You've pandered quite enough to her morbid
vanity. It's your book, isn't it? You have given it birth. You know
better than anybody what is vital to it. Just you send those proofs
straight back to the publisher. If you let her persuade you to change
one word, as true as I'm standing here, I'll tell her the whole thing,
and damn the consequences!"
My exquisite Barbara's rare "damns" were oaths in the strictest sense.
They connoted the most irrefragable of obligations. She would no more
think of breaking a "damn" than her marriage vows or a baby's neck.
"Of course, I'm not going to let her touch the thing," said Jaffery.
"But I don't want her to look on me as a bullying brute."
"It would be better, both for you and her, if she did," snapped Barbara.
"The ordinary woman's like the dog and the walnut tree. It's only the
exceptional woman that can take command."
I, who had been sitting calm, on the low parapet beneath the tenderly
sprouting wistaria arbour, broke my philosophic silence.
"Observe the exceptional woman," said I.
* * * * *
For a day or so Doria stood upon her dignity, treating Jaffery with cold
politeness. In the mornings she allowed him to wrap her up in her garden
chair and attend to her comforts, and then, settled down, she would open
a volume of Tolstoi and courteously signify his dismissal. Jaffery with
a hang-dog expression went with me to the golf-course, where he drove
with prodigious muscular skill, and putted execrably. Had it not been a
question of good taste, to say nothing of human sentiment, I would have
reminded him that the thing he was hitting so violently was only a
little white ball and not poor Adrian's skull. If ever a man was loyal
to a dead friend Jaffery Chayne was loyal to Adrian Boldero. But poor
old Jaffery was being checked in every vital avenue, not by the memory
of the man whom he had known and loved, but by his cynical and
masquerading ghost. It is not given to me, thank God! to know from
direct speech what Jaffery thought of Adrian--for Jaffery is too
splendid a fellow to have ever said a word in depreciation of his once
living friend and afterward dead rival; but both I, who do not aspire to
these Quixotic heights and only, with masculine power of generalisation,
deduce results from a quiet eye's harvest of mundane phenomena, and
Barbara, whose rapier intuition penetrates the core of spiritual things,
could, with little difficulty, divine the passionate struggle between
love and hatred, between loyalty and tenderness, between desire and duty
that took place in the soul of this chivalrous yet primitive and vastly
appetited gentleman.
You may think I am trying to present Jaffery as a hero of romance. I am
not. I am merely trying to put before you, in my imperfect way, a
barbarian at war with civilised instincts; a lusty son of Pantagruel
forced into the incongruous rôle of Sir Galahad. . . . During the term
of his punishment he behaved in a bearish and most unheroic manner. At
last, however, Doria forgave him, and, smiling on him once more,
permitted him to read Tolstoi aloud to her. Whereupon he mended his
manners.
The day following this reconciliation was a Sunday. We had invited
Liosha (as we constantly did) to lunch and dine. She usually arrived by
an early train in the forenoon and returned by the late train at night.
But on Saturday evening, she asked Barbara, over the telephone, for
permission to bring a friend, a gentleman staying in the boarding house,
the happy possessor of a car, who would motor her down. His name was
Fendihook. Barbara replied that she would be delighted to see Liosha's
friend, and of course came back to us and speculated as to who and what
this Mr. Fendihook might be.
"Why didn't you ask her?" said I.
"It would scarcely have been polite."
We consulted Jaffery. "Never heard of him," he growled. "And I don't
like to hear of him now. That young woman's running loose a vast deal
too much."
"What an old dog in the manger you are!" cried Barbara; and thus started
an old argument.
On Sunday morning we saw Mr. Fendihook for ourselves. I met the car, a
two-seater, which he drove himself, at the front door, and perceived
between a motoring cap worn peak behind and a tightly buttoned Burberry
coat a pink, fleshy, clean shaven face, from the middle of which
projected an enormous cigar. I helped Liosha out.
"This is Mr. Fendihook."
"Commonly called Ras Fendihook, at your service," said he.
I smiled and shook hands and gave the car into the charge of my
chauffeur, who appeared from the stable-yard. In the hall, aided by
Franklin, Mr. Ras Fendihook divested himself of his outer wrappings and
revealed a thickset man of medium height, rather flashily attired. I
know it is narrow-minded, but I have a prejudice against a black and
white check suit, and a red necktie threaded through a gold ring.
"Against the rules?" he asked, holding up his cigar, a very good one, on
which he had retained the band.
"By no means," said I, "we smoke all over the house."
"Tiptop!" He looked around the hall. "You seem to have a bit of all
right here."
"I told you you would like it. Everybody does," said Liosha. "Ah,
Barbara, dear!" She ran up the stairs to meet her. We followed. Mr.
Fendihook was presented. I noticed, with a little shock, that he had
kept on his gloves.
"Very kind of you to let me come down, madam. I thought a bit of a blow
would do our fair friend good."
Barbara took off Liosha, looking very handsome and fresh beneath the
motor-veil, to her room, leaving me with Mr. Fendihook. As he preceded
me into the drawing-room I saw a bald patch like a tonsure in the middle
of a crop of coarse brown hair. Again he looked round appreciatively and
again he said "Tiptop!" He advanced to the open French window.
"Garden's all right. Must take a lot of doing. Who are our friends? The
long and the short of it, aren't they?"
He alluded to Jaffery and Doria, who were strolling on the lawn. I told
him their names.
"Jaffery Chayne. Why, that's the chap Mrs. Prescott's always talking
about, her guardian or something."
"Her trustee," said I, "and an intimate friend of her late husband."
"Ah!" said he, with a twinkle in his eyes which, I will swear, signified
"Then there was a Prescott after all!" He waved his cigar. "Introduce
me." And as I accompanied him across the lawn--"There's nothing like
knowing everybody--getting it over at once. Then one feels at home."
"I hope you felt at home as soon as you entered the house," said I.
"Of course I did, old pal," he replied heartily. "Of course I did." And
the amazing creature patted me on the back.
I performed the introductions. Mr. Fendihook declared himself delighted
to make the acquaintance of my friends. Then as conversation did not
start spontaneously, he once more looked around, nodded at the landscape
approvingly, and once more said "Tiptop!"
"That's what I want to have," he continued, "when I can afford to retire
and settle down. None of your gimcrack modern villas in a desirable
residential neighbourhood, but an English gentleman's country house."
"It's your ambition to be an English gentleman, Mr. Fendihook?" queried
Doria.
He laughed good-humouredly. "Now you're pulling my leg."
I saw that he was not lacking in shrewdness.
Susan, never far from Jaffery during her off-time, came running up.
"Hallo, is that your young 'un?" Mr. Fendihook asked. "Come and say how
d'ye do, Gwendoline."
Susan advanced shyly. He shook hands with her, chucked her under the
chin and paid her the ill compliment of saying that she was the image of
her father. Jaffery stood with folded arms holding the bowl of his pipe
in one hand and looked down on Mr. Fendihook as on some puzzling insect.
"Do you mind if I take off my gloves?" our strange visitor asked.
"Pray do," said I. The sight of the fellow wandering about a garden
bareheaded and gloved in yellow chamois leather had begun to affect my
nerves. He peeled them off.
"Look here, Gwendoline Arabella, my dear," he cried. "Catch!"
He made a feint of throwing them.
"Haven't you caught 'em?"
"No."
She stared at the man open-mouthed, for behold, his hands were empty.
"Tut, tut!" said he. "Perhaps you can catch a handkerchief." He flicked
a red silk handkerchief from his pocket, crumpled it into a ball and
threw; but like the gloves it vanished. "Now where has it gone to?"
Susan, who had shrunk beneath Jaffery's protecting shadow, crept forward
fascinated. Mr. Fendihook took a sudden step or two towards a flower
bed.
"Why, there it is!"
He stretched out a hand and there before our eyes the handkerchief hung
limp over the pruned top of a standard rose.
"Jolly good!" exclaimed Jaffery.
"I hope you don't mind. I like amusing kiddies. Have you ever talked to
angels, Araminta? No? Well, I have. Look."
He threw half-crowns up into the air until they disappeared into the
central blue, and then held a ventriloquial conversation, not in the
best of taste, with the celestial spirits, who having caught the coins
announced their intention of sticking to them. But threats of reporting
to headquarters prevailed, and one by one the coins dropped and jingled
in his hand. We applauded. Susan regarded him as she would a god.
"Can you do it again?" she asked breathlessly.
"Lord bless you, Eustacia, I can keep on doing it all day long."
He balanced his cigar on the tip of his nose and with a snap caught it
in his mouth. He turned to me with a grin, which showed white strong
teeth. "More than you could do, old pal!"
"You must have practised that a great deal," said Doria.
"Two hours a day solid year in and year out--not that trick alone, of
course. Here!" he burst into a laugh. "I'm blowed if you know who I
am--I'm the One and Only Ras Fendihook--Illusionist, Ventriloquist, and
General Variety Artist. Haven't you ever seen my turn?"
We confessed, with regret, that we had missed the privilege.
"Well, well, it's a queer world," he said philosophically. "You've never
heard of me--and perhaps you two gentlemen are big bugs in your own
line--and I've never heard of you. But anyhow, I never asked you, Mr.
Chayne, to catch my gloves."
"I haven't your gloves," said Jaffery, with his eye on Susan.
"You have. You've got 'em in your pocket."
And diving into Jaffery's jacket pocket, he produced the wash-leather
gloves.
"There, Petronella," said he, "that's the end of the matinée
performance."
Susan looked at him wide-eyed. "I'm not at all tired."
"Aren't you? Then don't let that big black dog there chase the little
one."
He pointed with his finger and from behind the old yew arbour came the
shrill clamour of a little dog in agony. It brought Barbara flying out
of the house. Liosha followed leisurely. The yelping ceased. Mr. Ras
Fendihook went to meet his hostess. Doria, Jaffery and I looked at one
another in mutual and dismayed comprehension.
"Old pal," quoted Doria.
I glanced apprehensively across the strip of lawn. "I hope, for his
sake, he's not calling Barbara 'old girl.'"
"He calls everybody funny names," Susan chimed in. "See what a lot he
called me."
"Does your Royal Fairy Highness approve of him?" asked Jaffery.
"I should think so, Uncle Jaff," she replied fervently. "He's--he's
_marvelious_!"
"He is," said Jaffery, "and even that jewel of language doesn't express
him."
"My dear," said I, "you stick close to him all day, as long as mummy
will let you."
I have never got the credit I deserved for the serene wisdom of that
suggestion. All through lunch, all through the long afternoon until it
was Susan's bedtime, her obedience to my command saved over and over
again a tense situation. To the guest in her house Barbara was the
perfection of courtesy. But beneath the mask of convention raged fury
with Liosha. A woman can seldom take a queer social animal for what he
is and suck the honey from his flowers of unconventionality. She had
never heard a man say "Right oh!" to a butler when offered a second
helping of pudding. She had never dreamed of the possibility of a
strange table-neighbour laying his hand on hers and requesting her to
"take it from me, my dear." It sent awful shivers down her spine to hear
my august self alluded to as her "old man." She looked down her nose
when, to the apoplectic joy of Susan (supposed to be on her primmest
behaviour at meals), he, with a significant wink, threw a new potato
into the air, caught it on his fork and conveyed it to his mouth. Her
smile was that of the polite hostess and not of the enthusiastic
listener when he told her of triumphs in Manchester and Cincinnati. To
her confusion, he presupposed her intimate acquaintance with the
personalities of the World of Variety.
"That's where I came across little Evie Bostock," he said
confidentially. "A clipper, wasn't she? Just before she ran off with
that contortionist--you know who I mean--handsome chap--what's his
name?--oh, of course you know him."
My poor Barbara! Daughter of a distinguished Civil servant, a K.C.B.,
assumed to be on friendly terms with a Boneless Wonder!
"But indeed I don't, Mr. Fendihook," she replied pathetically.
"Yes, yes, you must." He snapped his fingers. "Got it. Romeo! You must
have heard of Romeo."
I sniggered--I couldn't help it--at Barbara's face. He went on with his
reminiscences. Barbara nearly wept, whilst I, though displeased with
Liosha for introducing such an incongruous element into my family
circle, took the rational course of deriving from the fellow
considerable entertainment. Jaffery would have done the same as myself,
had not his responsibility as Liosha's guardian weighed heavily upon
him. He frowned, and ate in silence, vastly. Doria, like my wife, I
could see was shocked. The only two who, beside myself, enjoyed our
guest were Susan and Liosha. Well, Susan was nine years old and a meal
at which a guest broke her whole decalogue of table manners at once--to
say nothing of the performance of such miracles as squeezing an orange
into nothingness, without the juice running out, and subsequently
extracting it from the neck of an agonised mother--was a feast of
memorable gaudiness. Susan could be excused. But Liosha? Liosha, pupil
of the admirable Mrs. Considine? Liosha, descendant of proud Albanian
chieftains who had lain in gory beds for centuries? How could she admire
this peculiarly vulgar, although, in his own line, peculiarly
accomplished person? Yet her admiration was obvious. She sat by my side,
grand and radiant, proud of the wondrous gift she had bestowed on us.
She acclaimed his tricks, she laughed at his anecdotes, she urged him on
to further exhibition of prowess, and in a magnificent way appeared
unconscious of the presence at the table of her trustee and would-be
dragon, Jaffery Chayne.
After lunch Susan obeyed my instructions and stuck very close to Mr.
Fendihook. Doria retired for her afternoon rest. Jaffery, having invited
Liosha to go for a long walk with him and she having declined, with a
polite smile, on the ground that her best Sunday-go-to-meeting long gown
was not suitable for country roads, went off by himself in dudgeon.
Barbara took Liosha aside and cross-examined her on the subject of Mr.
Fendihook and as far as hospitality allowed signified her
non-appreciation of the guest. After a time I took him into the billiard
room, Susan following. As he was a brilliant player, giving me one
hundred and fifty in two hundred and running out easily before I had
made thirty, he found less excitement in the game than in narrating his
exploits and performing tricks for the child. He did astonishing things
with the billiard balls, making them run all over his body like mice and
balancing them on cues and juggling with them five at a time. I think
that day he must have gone through his whole répertoire.
The party assembled for tea in the drawing-room. Fendihook's first words
to Liosha were:
"Hallo, my Balkan Queen, how have you been getting on?"
"Very well, thank you," smiled Liosha.
He turned to Jaffery. "She's not up to her usual form to-day. But
sometimes she's a fair treat! I give you my word."
He laughed loudly and winked. Jaffery, whose agility in repartee was
rather physical than mental, glowered at him, rumbled something
unintelligible beneath his breath, and took tea out to Doria, who was
established on the terrace.
"Seems to have got the pip," Mr. Fendihook remarked cheerfully.
Barbara, with icy politeness, offered him tea. He refused, explaining
that unless he sat down to a square meal, which, in view of the
excellence of his lunch, he was unable to do, he never drank tea in the
afternoon.
"Could I have a whisky and soda, old pal?"
The drink was brought. He pledged Barbara--"And may I drink to the
success of that promising little affair"--he jerked a backward
thumb--"between our pippy friend and the charming widow?"
Barbara had passed the gasping stage.
"Mr. Chayne," she said in the metallic voice that, before now, had made
strong men grow pale, "Mr. Chayne stands in the same relation of trustee
to Mrs. Boldero as he does to Mrs. Prescott."
But Fendihook was undismayed. "Some fellows have all the luck! Here's to
him, and here's to you, Sheba's Queen."
He nodded to Liosha and pulled at his drink. But Liosha did not respond.
A hard look appeared in her eyes and the knuckles of her hand showed
white. Presently she rose and went onto the terrace, where she found
Jaffery fixing a rebellious rug round Doria's feet. And this is what
happened.
"Jaff Chayne," she said, "I want to have a word with you. You'll excuse
me, Doria, but Jaff Chayne's as much my trustee as he is yours. I have
business to talk."
Doria eyed her coldly. "Talk as much business as you like, my dear girl.
I'm not preventing you." Jaffery strode off with Liosha. As soon as they
were out of earshot, she said:
"Are you going to marry her?"
"Who?"
"Doria."
Jaffery bent his brows on her. He was not in his most angelic mood.
"What the blazes has that got to do with you? Just you mind your own
business."
"All right," she retorted, "I will."
"Glad to hear it," said he. "And now I want a word with you. What do you
mean by bringing that howling cad down here?"
"It's you who howl, not he. He's a very kind gentleman and very clever
and he makes me laugh. He's not like you."
"He's a performing gorilla," cried Jaffery.
They were both exceedingly angry, and having walked very fast, they
found themselves in front of the gate of the walled garden.
Instinctively they entered and had the place to themselves.
"And a confounded bounder of a gorilla at that!" Jaffery continued.
"How dare you speak so of my friend?"
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself for having such a friend. And
you're just going to drop him. Do you understand?"
"Shan't!" said Liosha.
"You shall. You're not going to be seen outside the house with him."
There was battle clamorous and a trifle undignified. They said the same
things over and over again. Both had worked themselves into a fury.
"I forbid you to have anything to do with the fellow."
"You, Jaff Chayne, told me to mind my own business. Just you mind
yours."
"It is my business," he shouted, "to see that you don't disgrace
yourself with a beast of a fellow like that."
"What did you say? Disgrace myself?" She drew herself up magnificently.
"Do you think I would disgrace myself with any man living? You insult
me."
"Rot!" cried Jaffery. "Every woman's liable to make a blessed fool of
herself--and you more than most."
"I know one that's not going to make a fool of herself," she taunted,
and flung an arm in the direction of the house.
Jaffery blazed. "You leave me alone."
"And you leave me alone."
They glared inimically into each other's eyes. Liosha turned, marched
superbly away, opened the garden door and, passing through, slammed it
in his face. It had been a very pretty, primitive quarrel, free from all
subtlety. Elemental instinct flamed in Jaffery's veins. If he could have
given her a good sound thrashing he would have been a happy man. This
accursed civilisation paralysed him. He stood for a few moments tearing
at whiskers and beard. Then he started in pursuit, and overtook her in
the middle of the lawn.
"Anyhow, you'll take the infernal fellow away now and never bring him
here again."
"It's Hilary's house, not yours," she remarked, looking straight before
her.
"Well, ask him."
"I will. Hilary!"
At her hail and beckon I left the terrace where Mr. Fendihook had been
discoursing irrepressibly on the Bohemian advantages of widowhood to a
quivering Doria, and advanced to meet her, a flushed and bright-eyed
Juno.
"Would you like me to bring Ras Fendihook here again?"
"Tell her straight," said Jaffery.
Even Susan, looking from one to the other, would have been conscious of
storms. I took her hand.
"My dear Liosha," said I, "our social system is so complicated that it
is no wonder you don't appreciate the more delicate ramifications--"
"Oh! Talk sense to her," growled Jaffery.
"Mr. Fendihook is not quite"--I hesitated--"not quite the kind of
person, my dear, that we're accustomed to meet."
"I know," said Liosha, "you want them all stamped out in a pattern, like
little tin soldiers."
"I see the point of your criticism, and it's true, as far as it goes."
"Oh, go on--" Jaffery interrupted.
"But--" I continued.
"You'd rather not see him again?"
"No," roared Jaffery.
"I'm talking to Hilary, not you," said Liosha. She turned to me. "You
and Barbara would like me to take him away right now?"
I still held her hand, which was growing moist--and I suppose mine was
too--and I didn't like to drop it, for fear of hurting her feelings. I
gave it a great squeeze. It was very difficult for me. Personally, I
enjoyed the frank, untrammelled and prodigiously accomplished scion of a
vulgar race. As a mere bachelor, isolated human, meeting him, I should
have taken him joyously, if not to my heart, at any rate to my
microscope and studied him and savoured him and got out of him all that
there was of grotesqueness. But to every one of my household, save Susan
who did not count, he was--I admit, deservedly--an object of loathing.
So I squeezed Liosha's hand.
"The beginning and end of the matter, my dear," said I, "is that he's
not quite a gentleman."
"All right," said Liosha, liberating herself. "Now I know."
She left me and sailed to the terrace. I use the metaphor advisedly. She
had a way of walking like a full-rigged ship before a breeze.
"Ras Fendihook, it's time we were going."
Mr. Fendihook looked at his watch and jumped up.
"We must hook it!"
Barbara asked conventionally: "Won't you stay to supper?"
"Great Scott, no!" he exclaimed. "No offence meant. You're very kind.
But it's Ladies' Night at the Rabbits and I'm Buck Rabbit for the
evening and the Queen of Sheba's coming as my guest."
"Who are the Rabbits?" asked Doria.
Even I had heard of this Bohemian confraternity; and I explained with a
learned inaccuracy that evoked a semi-circular grin on the pink, fleshy
face of Mr. Ras Fendihook.
* * * * *
"Ouf! Thank goodness!" said Barbara as the two-seater scuttered away
down the drive.
"Yes, indeed," said Doria.
Jaffery shook his fist at the disappearing car.
"One of these days, I'll break his infernal neck!"
"Why?" asked Doria, on a sharp note of enquiry.
"I don't like him," said Jaffery. "And he's taking her out to dine among
all that circus crowd. It's damnable!"
"For the lady whose father stuck pigs in Chicago," said Doria. "I should
think it was rather a rise in the social scale."
And she went indoors with her nose in the air. To every one save the
puzzled Jaffery it was obvious that she disapproved of his interest in
Liosha.