Jaffery

“ There are disgusting little details that only a man that had been there could have mentioned. Oh! do you suppose I don't know the difference between Adrian's work and that of a penny-a-liner like Jaffery?"
The door opened and Jaffery appeared. Doria went up to him and took him by the lapels of his dress coat.
"I've read it. It's a work of genius. But, oh! Jaffery, I do want it to be without a flaw. Don't hate me, dear—I know you've done all that mortal man could do for Adrian and for me. But it isn't your fault if you're not a professional novelist or an imaginative writer. ”

“ We were all impressed by his lordly command of the railway systems of Europe. It was a question of credit, of course, but neither Mr. Jornicroft, solid man that he was, nor myself could have undertaken that journey with a few loose shillings in his possession. For the first time since Adrian's death I saw Jaffery really enjoying himself.
And that is how Jaffery without money or luggage or even an overcoat travelled from London to Nice, for no other purpose than to save Doria's sacred little body from being profaned by the touch of ruder hands. ”

“ She had said: "There never was an Adrian." From her point of view, she was mercilessly right.
"It's horrible to think," she went on after a pause, "that all this time I've been living, first on stolen property and now on charity—Jaffery's charity—and he hasn't even had a word of thanks. Quite the contrary." Again she laughed the shrill, dead laugh. "You see, I must go home—to my father's—I'm strong enough now—and start my life, such as it is, all over again. I can't touch another penny of the Wittekind money. Castleton's people and Jaffery must be paid." ”

“ I can imagine nothing more like it than that of a conscience smitten lion. Doria ran her arm through mine and kept me near the doorway.
"I've asked Jaffery to marry me," she said, in a steady voice, "and he doesn't want to. It's because he loves a much better woman and wants to marry her."
Then while Jaffery and Liosha gasped in blank astonishment, she swung me abruptly out of the room and slammed the door behind her. ”

“ Full of the thought, I deposited the letters in the drawer with the rest of the correspondence, and, leaving the flat, summoned the lift, and in Jaffery's name presented a delighted porter with the contents of a nine-gallon cask. I went away in the rich glow that mantles from man's heart to check when he knows that he has made a friend for life. It was only afterwards, when I got home, and hung the labelled key on my library wall, that I realised that old Jaffery and myself had, at least, one thing in common—videlicet, the keyless habit. ”

“ He turned to Barbara.
"I too. Hilary has told you the truth."
"But Doria! Good God! Doria! It will kill her!"
Barbara put her little gloved fingers on Jaffery's great raw hand. Only at weddings or at the North Pole would Jaffery wear gloves.
"We know nothing about it as yet. The more we tear ourselves to pieces now, the less able we'll be to deal with things." ”

“ But don't accept for months all a man has to give, and then, when he tells you what you've known perfectly well all along, treat him as if he were making shameful proposals to you—especially a man like Jaffery; I have no patience with you."
Doria wept. No one understood her. No one understood Adrian. No one understood the bond there was between them. Of that she was aware. But when it came to being brutally assaulted by Jaffery Chayne, she really thought Barbara would sympathise. ”

“ A little tiny cloud flitted over Doria's brow.
"Shall I like him?" she asked.
"You'll adore him," cried Adrian.
"I'll try to, dear, because he seems to mean so much to you. Are you going up to town with us to-morrow?"
"There's only a morning's fitting at a dressmaker—no place for me," he laughed. "I'll stay and welcome old Jaffery."
Again the most transient of tiny little clouds. But I could not help thinking that if Jaffery had been a woman instead of a mere man, there would have been a thunderstorm.
When we were alone Adrian threw himself into a chair.
"Women are funny beings," he said. ”

“ For her soothing he would give all that life held for him, save one thing—which was no longer his to give. Another man glib of tongue and crafty of brain might have lied his way out of an abominable situation. But Jaffery's craft was of the simplest. He could not trick the dead love into smiling semblance of life. His nature was too primitive. He could only stare in spellbound affright at the icy barrier that separated him from Doria. ”

“ I replied, "I think she is."
"Oh, rubbish, Hilary!" she smiled, and swung her little foot. "You, a man of the world, how can you talk so? First she runs off with that dreadful fellow and a few hours afterwards runs off with Jaffery. What respectable woman—well, what honest woman, according to the term of the lower classes—would run away with two men within twenty-five hours?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?"
"Go! You are nothing but a brute." ”

“ But Liosha stood firm. The spurning of Jaffery by Doria struck a chord of the heroic that ran through her strange, wild nature. If this man she loved was not for her, at least no other woman should scorn him. She drew herself up in her full-bosomed magnificence.
"Instead of telling him not to touch you, you little fool, you ought to fall at his feet. For what he has done for you, you ought to steal the wide world and give it to him. And you refuse your footling little insignificant self. If you had a thousand selves, they wouldn't be enough for him." ”

“ We drifted mechanically, still talking, into the interior of the Café-Restaurant, where we sat down to a dinner which I ordered to please myself, for not one of the others took the slightest interest in it. Jaffery, like a schoolboy son of Gargamelle, shovelled food into his mouth—it might have been tripe, or bullock's heart or chitterlings for all he knew or cared. His jolly laugh served as a bass for the more treble buzz and clatter of the pleasant place. I have never seen a man exude such plentiful happiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It was Jaffery Chayne, who, on the pavement before the house in Park Crescent, threw the satin slipper at the departing carriage. He had been very hearty and booming all the time, the human presentment of a devil-may-care lion out for a jaunt, and his great laugh thundering cheerily above the clatter of talk had infected the heterogeneous gathering. Unconsciously dull eyes sparkled and pursy lips vibrated into smiles. So gay a wedding reception I have never attended, and I am sure it was nothing but Jaffery's pervasive influence that infused vitality into the deadly and decorous mob. ”

“ We alighted at the hotel and ordered our three rooms; coffee and roll to be taken up to madame; we men would eat our petit déjeuner downstairs. Liosha left us without saying a word.
Bathed, shaved, changed, refreshed by the good café au lait, gladdened by the sunshine and smugly satisfied with our morning's work, quite a different Hilary Freeth sat with Jaffery on the terrace from the sleepless wreck he had awakened two hours before. My urbane dismissal of Ras Fendihook lingered suave in my memory. ”

“ After despatching, by the chasseur, a long telegram to Barbara, and sending up to Liosha's room a bunch of red roses we bought at a florist's hard by, I surrendered myself idly to the contemplation of the matutinal Sunday life of provincial France, while Jaffery smoked his pipe and uttered staccato maledictions on Mr. Ras Fendihook.
I love provincial France. It is narrow, it is bourgeois, it is regarding of its sous, it is what you will. But it lives a spacious, out-of-door, corporate life. On Sundays, it does not bury itself, like provincial England, in a cellular house. It walks abroad. ”

“ Presently Jaffery again seized my arm.
"There's the brute waiting for her."
And there on the quay, with a flower in his buttonhole and a smile on his fat face, stood Mr. Ras Fendihook. He met her at the foot of the gangway, and obviously told at once of our presence, sought us anxiously with his gaze; then with an air of bravado waved his hat—a hard white felt—and cried out: "Cheer O!" We did not respond. He grinned at us and linking his arm through Liosha's joined the stream of passengers hurrying across the stones to the custom-sheds.
"Stop," Jaffery roared. ”

“ The meal over we sought the deep shade of the terrace which faces due east. Jaffery, in his barbaric fashion, took Doria by the elbow and swept her far away from the wistaria arbour beneath which the remaining three of us were gathered, and when he fondly thought he was out of earshot, he set her beside him on the low parapet. My wife, with the responsibilities of all the Chancelleries of Europe knitted in her brow, discussed wedding preparations with Adrian. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, all else having been done for the dead and for the living, the time now came for us to take the manuscript from the safe and hand it over to the publisher.
So, one dark morning, Jaffery and I unlocked the study-door and entered the gloom-filled, barren room. The curtains were drawn apart, and the blinds drawn up, and the windows framed squares of unilluminating yellow. It was bitterly cold. The fire had not been laid since the morning of the tragedy and the grate was littered with dim grey ash. The stale smell of the week's fog hung about the place. I turned on the electric light. ”

“ You see how impossible it would be for me to tie myself for life to the stay-strings of one flip of a thing in petticoats."
"You're a blessed innocent," said I.
Adrian sauntering through the French window of my library joined us on the terrace. Jaffery, forgetful of his attitude, his philosophy, caught him by the shoulders and shook him in pain-dealing exuberance. Old Adrian was going to be married. He wished him joy. Yet it was no use his wishing him joy because he already had it—it was assured. That exquisite wonder of a girl. Adrian was a lucky devil, a pestilentially lucky devil. ”