"The Greater Glory" came out in due season, puzzled the reviewers and
made a sensation; a greater sensation even than a legitimate successor
to "The Diamond Gate" dictated by the spirit of Tom Castleton. The
contrast was so extraordinary, so inexplicable. It was generally
concluded that no writer but Adrian Boldero, in the world's history, had
ever revealed two such distinct literary personalities as those that
informed the two novels. The protean nature of his genius aroused
universal wonder. His death was deplored as the greatest loss sustained
by English letters since Keats. The press could do nothing but hail the
new book as a masterpiece. Barbara and myself, who, alone of mortals,
knew the strange history of the two books, did not agree with the press.
In sober truth "The Greater Glory" was not a work of genius; for, after
all, the only hallmark of a work of genius that you can put your finger
on is its haunting quality. That quality Tom Castleton's work possessed;
Jaffery Chayne's did not. "The Greater Glory" vibrated with life, it was
wide and generous, it was a capital story; but, unlike "The Diamond
Gate," it could not rank with "The Vicar of Wakefield" and "David
Copperfield." I say this in no way to disparage my dear old friend, but
merely to present his work in true proportion. Published under his own
name it would doubtless have received recognition; probably it would
have made money; but it could not have met with the enthusiastic
reception it enjoyed when published under the tragic and romantic name
of Adrian Boldero.
Of course Jaffery beamed with delight. His forlorn hope had succeeded
beyond his dreams. He had fulfilled the immediate needs of the woman he
loved. He had also astonished himself enormously.
"It's darned good to let you and Barbara know," said he, "that I'm not a
mere six foot of beef and thirst, but that I'm a chap with brains,
and"--he turned over a bundle of press-cuttings--"and 'poetic fancy' and
'master of the human heart' and 'penetrating insight into the soul of
things' and 'uncanny knowledge of the complexities of woman's nature.'
Ho! ho! ho! That's me, Jaff Chayne, whom you've disregarded all these
years. Look at it in black and white: 'uncanny knowledge of the
complexities of a woman's nature'! Ho! ho! ho! And it's selling like
blazes."
It did not enter his honest head to envy the dead man his fresh
ill-gotten fame. He accepted the success in the large simplicity of
spirit that had enabled him to conceive and write the book. His poorer
human thoughts and emotions centred in the hope that now Adrian's
restless ghost would be laid forever and that for Doria there would open
a new life in which, with the past behind her, she could find a glory in
the sun and an influence in the stars, and a spark in her own bosom
responsive to his devotion. For the tumultuous moment, however, when
Adrian's name was on all men's tongues, and before all men's eyes, the
ghost walked in triumphant verisimilitude of life. At all the meetings
of Jaffery and Doria, he was there smiling beneath his laurels, whenever
he was evoked; and he was evoked continuously. Either by law of irony or
perhaps for intrinsic merit, the bridges to whose clumsy construction
Jaffery, like an idiot, had confessed, had been picked out by many
reviewers as typical instances of Adrian Boldero's new style. Such
blunders were flies in Doria's healing ointment. She alluded to the
reviewers in disdainful terms. How dared editors employ men to write on
Adrian's work who were unable to distinguish between it and that of
Jaffery Chayne?
One day, when she talked like this, Barbara lost her temper.
"I think you're an ungrateful little wretch. Here has Jaffery sacrificed
his work for three months and devoted himself to pulling together
Adrian's unfinished manuscript and making a great success of it, and you
treat him as if he were a dog."
Doria protested. "I don't. I _am_ grateful. I don't know what I should
do without Jaffery. But all my gratitude and fondness for Jaffery can't
alter the fact that he has spoiled Adrian's work; and when I hear those
very faults in the book praised, I am fit to be tied."
"Well, go crazy and bite the furniture when you're all by yourself,"
said Barbara; "but when you're with Jaffery try to be sane and civil."
"I think you're horrid!" Doria exclaimed, "and if you weren't the wife
of Adrian's trusted friend, I would never speak to you again."
"Rubbish!" said Barbara. "I'm talking to you for your good, and you know
it."
Meanwhile Jaffery lingered on in London, in the cheerless little eyrie
in Victoria Street, with no apparent intention of ever leaving it.
Arbuthnot of _The Daily Gazette_ satirically enquiring whether he wanted
a job or still yearned for a season in Mayfair he consigned, in his
grinning way, to perdition. Change was the essence of holiday-making,
and this was his holiday. It was many years since he had one. When he
wanted a job he would go round to the office.
"All right," said Arbuthnot, "and, in the meantime, if you want to keep
your hand in by doing a fire or a fashionable wedding, ring us up."
Whereat Jaffery roared, this being the sort of joke he liked.
The need of a holiday amid the bricks and mortar of Victoria Street may
have impressed Arbuthnot, but it did not impress me. I dismissed the
excuse as fantastic. I tackled him one day, at lunch, at the club,
assuming my most sceptical manner.
"Well," said he, "there's Doria. Somebody must look after her."
"Doria," said I, "is a young woman, now that she is in sound health,
perfectly capable of looking after herself. And if she does want a man's
advice, she can always turn to me."
"And there's Liosha."
"Liosha," I remarked judiciously, "is also a young woman capable of
looking after herself. If she isn't, she has given you very definitely
to understand that she's going to try. Have you had any more interesting
evenings out lately?"
"No," he growled. "She's offended with me because I warned her off that
low-down bounder."
"I think you did your best," said I, "to make her take up with him."
He protested. We argued the point, and I think I got the best of the
argument.
"Well, anyhow," he said with an air of infantile satisfaction, "she
can't marry him."
"Who's going to prevent her, if she wants to?"
"The law of England." He laughed, mightily pleased. "The beggar is
married already. I've found that out. He's got three or four wives in
fact--oh, a dreadful hound--but only one real one with a wedding ring,
and she lives up in the north with a pack of children."
"All the more dangerous for Liosha to associate with such a villain."
He waved the suggestion aside. No fear of that, said he. It was not
Liosha's game. Hers was an Amazonian kind of chastity. Here I agreed
with him.
"All the less reason," said I, "for you to stay in London, so as to look
after her."
"But I don't like her to be seen about in the fellow's company. She'll
get a bad name."
"Look here," said I, "the idea of a vast, hairy chap like you devoting
his life to keeping a couple of young widows out of mischief is too
preposterous. Try me with something else."
Then, being in good humour, he told me the real reason. He was writing
another book.
He was writing another novel and he did not want any one to know. He was
getting along famously. He had had the story in his head for a long
time. Glad to talk about it; sketched the outline very picturesquely.
Perhaps I was more vitally interested in the development of the man
Jaffery than in the story. A queer thing had happened. The born novelist
had just discovered himself and clamoured for artistic self-expression.
He was writing this book just because he could not help it, finding
gladness in the mere work, delighting in the mechanics of the thing, and
letting himself go in the joy of the narrative. What was going to become
of it when written, I did not enquire. It was rather too delicate a
matter. Jaffery Chayne could be nothing else than Jaffery Chayne. A new
novel published by him would resemble "The Greater Glory" as closely as
"Pendennis" resembles "Philip." And then there would be the deuce to
pay. If he published it under his own name, he would render himself
liable to the charge of having stolen a novel from the dead author of
"The Greater Glory," and so complicate this already complicated web of
literary theft; and if he threw sufficient dust into the eyes of Doria
to enable him to publish under Adrian's name, he would be performing the
task of the altruistic bees immortalised by Virgil.
Anyhow, there he was, perfectly happy, pegging away at his novel,
looking after Doria, pretending to look after Liosha, and enjoying the
society of the few cronies, chiefly adventurous birds of passage like
himself, who happened to be passing through London. Being a man of
modest needs, save need of mere bulk of simple food, he found his small
patrimony and the savings from his professional earnings quite adequate
for amenable existence. When he wanted healthy, fresh air he came down
to us to see Susan; when he wanted anything else he went to see Doria,
which was almost daily.
Doria was living now in the flat surrounded by the Lares and Penates
consecrated by Adrian. Now and then for purposes of airing and dusting,
she entered the awful room--neither servants nor friends were allowed to
cross the threshold; but otherwise it was always locked and the key lay
in her jewel case. Adrian was the focus of her being. She put heavy
tasks on Jaffery. There was to be a fitting monument on Adrian's grave,
over which she kept him busy. In her blind perversity she counted on his
coöperation. It was he who carried through negotiations with an eminent
sculptor for a bust of Adrian, which in her will, made about that time,
she bequeathed to the nation. She ordered him to see to the inclusion of
Adrian in the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography. . . .
And all the time Jaffery obeyed her sovereign behests without a murmur
and without a hint that he desired reward for his servitude. But, to
those gifted with normal vision, signs were not wanting that he chafed,
to put it mildly, under this forced worship of Adrian; and to those who
knew Jaffery it was obvious that his one-sided arrangement could not
last forever. Doria remained blind, taking it for granted that every one
should kiss the feet of her idol and in that act of adoration find
august recompense. That the man loved her she was fully aware; she was
not devoid of elementary sense; but she accepted it, as she accepted
everything else, as her due, and perhaps rather despised Jaffery for his
meekness. Why, again, she disregarded what her instinct must have
revealed to her of the primitive passions lurking beneath the exterior
of her kind and tender ogre, I cannot understand. For one thing, she
considered herself his intellectual superior; vanity perhaps blinded her
judgment. At all events she did not realise that a change was bound to
come in their relations. It came, inevitably.
One day in June they sat together on the balcony of the St. John's Wood
flat, in the soft afternoon shadow, both conscious of queer isolation
from the world below, and from the strange world masked behind the vast
superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said
something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He
also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest
might he found true happiness. The pretty languor of early summer
laughed in the air. Their situation, 'twixt earth and heaven, had a
little sensuous charm. Doria replied sentimentally:
"Yes, a little house, covered with clematis, on a ledge of cliff, with
the sea-gulls wheeling about it--bringing messages from the sunset lands
across the blue, blue sea--" Poor dear! She forgot that sea lit by a
westering sun is of no colour at all and that the blue water lies to the
east; but no matter; Jaffery, drinking in her words, forgot it likewise.
"Away from everything," she continued, "and two people who loved--with a
great, great love--"
Her eyes were fixed on the motor omnibuses passing up and down Maida
Vale at the end of her road. Her lips were parted--the ripeness of youth
and health rendered her adorable. A flush stained her ivory cheek--you
will find the exact simile in Virgil. She was too desirable for
Jaffery's self-control. He bent forward in his chair--they were sitting
face to face, so that he had his back to the motor omnibuses--and put
his great hand on her knee.
"Why not we two?"
It was silly, sentimental, schoolboyish--what you please; but every
man's first declaration of love is bathos--the zenith of his passion
connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence. Anyhow the declaration
was made, without shadow of mistake.
Doria switched her knee away sharply, as her vision of sunset and gulls
and blue sea and a clematis-covered house vanished from before her eyes,
and she found herself on her balcony with Jaff Chayne.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You know very well what I mean."
He rose like a leviathan and made a step towards her. The three-foot
balustrade of the balcony seemed to come to his ankles. She put out a
hand.
"Oh, don't do that, Jaff. You might fall over. It makes me so nervous."
He checked himself and stood up quite straight. Again he felt as if she
had dealt him a slap in the face.
"You know very well what I mean," he repeated. "I love you and I want
you and I'll never be happy till I get you."
She looked away from him and lifted her slender shoulders.
"Why spoil things by talking of the impossible?"
"The word has no meaning. Doesn't exist," said Jaffery.
"It exists very much indeed," she returned, with a quick upward glance.
"Not with an obstinate devil like me."
He leaned against the low balustrade. She rose.
"You'll drive me into hysterics," she cried and fled to the
drawing-room.
He followed, impatiently. "I'm not such an ass as to fall off a footling
balcony. What do you take me for?"
"I take you for Adrian's friend," she said, very erect, brave elf facing
horrible ogre--and, either by chance or design, her hand touched and
held the tip of a great silver-framed photograph of her late husband.
"I think I've proved it," said Jaffery.
"Are you proving it now? What value can you attach to Adrian's memory
when you say such things to me?"
"I'm saying to you what every honest man has the right to say to the
free woman he loves."
"But I'm not a free woman. I'm bound to Adrian."
"You can't be bound to him forever and ever."
"I am. That's why it's shameful and dishonourable of you,"--his blue
eyes flashed dangerously and he clenched his hands, but heedless she
went on--"yes, mean and base and despicable of you to wish to betray
him. Adrian--"
"Oh, don't talk drivel. It makes me sick. Leave Adrian alone and listen
to a living man," he shouted, all the pent-up intellectual disgusts and
sex-jealousies bursting out in a mad gush. "A real live man who would
walk through Hell for you!" He caught her frail body in his great grasp,
and she vibrated like a bit of wire caught up by a dynamo. "My love for
you has nothing whatever to do with Adrian. I've been as loyal to him as
one man can be to another, living and dead. By God, I have! Ask Hilary
and Barbara. But I want you. I've wanted you since the first moment I
set eyes on you. You've got into my blood. You're going to love me.
You're going to marry me, Adrian or no Adrian."
He bent over her and she met the passion in his eyes bravely. She did
not lack courage. And her eyes were hard and her lips were white and her
face was pinched into a marble statuette of hate. And unconscious that
his grip was giving her physical pain he continued:
"I've waited for you. I've waited for you from the moment I heard you
were engaged to the other man. And I'll go on waiting. But, by
God!"--and, not knowing what he did, he shook her backwards and
forwards--"I'll not go on waiting for ever. You--you little bit of
mystery--you little bit of eternity--you--you--ah!"
With a great gesture he released her. But the poor ogre had not counted
on his strength. His unwitting violence sent her spinning, and she fell,
knocking her head against a sofa. He uttered a gasp of horror and in an
instant lifted her and laid her on the sofa, and on his knees beside
her, with remorse oversurging his passion, behaved like a penitent fool,
accusing himself of all the unforgivable savageries ever practised by
barbaric male. Doria, who was not hurt in the least, sat up and pointed
to the door.
"Go!" she said. "Go. You're nothing but a brute."
Jaffery rose from his knees and regarded her in the hebetude of
reaction.
"I suppose I am, Doria, but it's my way of loving you."
She still pointed. "Go," she said tonelessly. "I can't turn you out, but
if Adrian was alive--Ha! ha! ha!--" she laughed with a touch of
hysteria. "How do you dare, you barren rascal--how do you dare to think
you can take the place of a man like Adrian?"
[Illustration: "Go! You are nothing but a brute."]
The whip of her tongue lashed him to sudden fury. He picked her up
bodily and held her in spite of struggles, just as you or I would hold a
cat or a rabbit.
"You little fool," said he, "don't you know the difference between a man
and a--"
Realisation of the tragedy struck him as a spent bullet might have
struck him on the side of the head. He turned white.
"All right," said he in a changed voice. "Easy on. I'm not going to hurt
you."
He deposited her gently on the sofa and strode out of the room.