Jaffery Part 53

We went upstairs. At the drawing-room door Barbara gave me one of her queer glances, which meant, on interpretation, that I should leave her alone with Jaffery for a few minutes so that she could pour the balm of sense over his remorseful soul, and that in the meantime it would be advisable for me to explain the situation to Liosha. Aloud, she said, before disappearing:

"Your old room, Liosha, dear--you'll find everything ready."

In order to carry out my wife's orders, I had to disentangle Susan from Liosha's embrace and pack her off rueful to the nursery. But the promise to seat her at lunch between the two seafarers brought a measure of consolation.

"Come into the library, Liosha," said I, throwing the door open. I followed her and settled her in an armchair before a big fire; and then stood on the hearthrug, looking at her and feeling rather a fool. I offered her refreshment. She declined. I commented again on her fine physical appearance and asked her how she was. I drew her attention to some beautiful narcissi and hyacinths that had come from the greenhouse.

The more I talked and the longer she regarded me in her grave, direct fas.h.i.+on, the less I knew how to tell her, or how much to tell her, of Doria's story. The drive had been a short one, giving time only for a narration of the facts of the discovery. Liosha, although accepting my apology, had sat mystified; also profoundly disturbed by Jaffery's unconcealed agitation. Her life with him during the past four months had drawn her into the meshes of the little drama. For her own sake, for everybody's sake, we could not allow her to remain in complete ignorance... . I gave her a cigarette and took one myself. After the first puff, she smiled.

"You want to tell me something."

"I do. Something that is known only to four people in the world--and they're in this house."

"If you tell me, I guess it'll be known only to five," said Liosha.

To have questioned the loyalty of her eyes would have been to insult truth itself.

"All right," said I. "You'll be the fifth and last." And then, as simply as I could, I told her all there was to know. She grasped the literary details more quickly than I had antic.i.p.ated. I found afterwards that the long months of the voyage had not been entirely taken up with the cooking of bacon and the swabbing of decks; there had been long stretches of tedium beguiled by talk on most things under heaven, and aided by her swift and jealous intelligence her mental horizon had broadened prodigiously through constant a.s.sociation with a cultivated man... . When I reached the point in my story where Jaffery gave up the Persian expedition, she gripped the arms of her chair, and her lips worked in their familiar quiver.

"He must have loved her to do that," she said in a low voice.

I went on, and the more involved I became in the disastrous affair, the more was I convinced that it would he better for her to understand clearly the imbroglio of Jaffery and Doria. You see, I knew all along, as all along I hope I have given you to understand--ever since the day when she asked him to beat her with a golf-stick--that the poor girl loved Jaffery, heart and soul. I knew also that she made for herself no illusions as to Jaffery's devotion to Doria. On that point her words to me at Havre had left me in no doubt whatever. But since Havre all sorts of extraordinary things had happened. There had been their intimate comrades.h.i.+p in the savagery (from my point of view) of the last few months. There was now Doria's awful change of soul-att.i.tude towards Adrian. It was right that Liosha should be made aware of the emotional subtleties that underlay the bare facts. It seemed cruel to tell her of the last scene, so pathetic, so tragic, so grotesque, between the man she loved and the other woman. But her unflinching bravery and her great heart demanded it. And as I told her, walking nervously about the room, she followed me with her steadfast eyes.

"So that's why Jaff Chayne came abroad with me."

"I suppose so," said I.

"If I had been a man I should have strangled her, or flung her out of the window."

"I dare say. But you wouldn't have been Jaff Chayne."

"That's true," she a.s.sented. "No man like him ever walked the earth. And how a woman could be so puppy-blind as not to see it, I can't imagine."

"Her head was full of another man, you see."

"Oh yes, I see," she said with a touch of contempt. "And such a man! You were fond of him I know. But he was a sham. He used to look on me, I remember, as an amusing sort of animal out of the Zoological Gardens. It never occurred to him that I had sense. He was a fool."

Intimately as we had known Liosha, this was the first time she had ever expressed an opinion regarding Adrian. We had a.s.sumed that, having touched her life so lightly, he had been but a shadowy figure in her mind, and that, save in so far as his death concerned us, she had viewed him with entire indifference. But her keen feminine brain had picked out the fatal flaw in poor Adrian's character, the shallow glitter that made us laugh and the want of vision from which he died.

"Go on," said Liosha.

I continued. In justice to Doria, I elaborated her reasons for setting Adrian on his towering pinnacle. Liosha nodded. She understood. False G.o.ds, whatever degree of G.o.dhead they usurped, had for a time the mystifying power of concealing their falsehood. And during that time they were G.o.ds, real live dwellers on Olympus, flaming Joves to poor mortal Semeles. Liosha quite understood.

I ended, more or less, a recapitulation of what she had heard, uncomprehending, in the car.

"And that's how it stands," said I.

I was rather shaken, I must confess, by my narrative, and I turned aside and lit another cigarette. Liosha remained silent for a while, resting her cheek on her hand. At last she said in her deep tones:

"Poor little devil! Good G.o.d! Poor little devil!"

Tears flooded her eyes.

"By heavens," I cried, "you're a good creature."

"I'm nothing of the sort," said Liosha. She rose. "I guess I must have a clean up before lunch," and she made for the door.

I looked at my watch. "You just have time," said I.

I opened the door for her to pa.s.s out, and fell a-musing in front of the fire. Here was a new Liosha, as far apart from the serene young barbarian who had come to us two and a half years before blandly characterising Euphemia as a d.a.m.n fool because she would not let her buy a stocked chicken incubator and take it to the Savoy Hotel, as a prairie wolf from the n.o.ble Great Dane. Her nature had undergone remarkable developments. As Jaffery had prophesied at Havre, she treated things in a big way, and she had learned restraint, not the restraint of convention, for not a convention would have stopped her from doing what she chose, but the restraint of self-discipline. And she had learned pity. A year ago she would not have wept over Doria, whom she had every woman's reason for hating. A new, generous tenderness had blossomed in her heart. If all the cutthroats of Albania who had murdered her family had been brought bound and set on their knees with bared necks before her and she had been presented with a sharp sword, I doubt whether she would have cut off one single head.

A tap at the window aroused me. It was Jaffery in the rain, which had just begun to fail, seeking admittance. I let him in.

"This is an awful business, old man," he said gloomily.

From which I gather that for once Barbara's soothing had been of little avail.

"Have you seen Doria yet?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Barbara is with her. She's coming in to lunch."

At the anti-climax, I smiled. "That shews she's not quite dead yet."

But to Jaffery it was no smiling matter. "Look here, Hilary," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "don't you think it would be better for me to cut the whole thing and go away right now?"

"Go away--?" I stared at him. "What for?"

"Why should I force myself on that poor, tortured child? Think of her feelings towards me. She must loathe the sound of my name."

"Jaff Chayne," said I, "I believe you're afraid of mice."

He frowned. "What the blazes do you mean?"

"You're in a blue funk at the idea of meeting Doria."

"Rot," said Jaffery.

But he was.

Franklin summoned us to luncheon. We went into the drawing-room where the rest of our little party were a.s.sembled, Susan and her governess, Liosha, Barbara and Doria. Doria stepped forward valiantly with outstretched hand, looking him squarely in the face.

"Welcome back, Jaffery. It's good to see you again."

Jaffery grew very red and bending over her hand muttered something into his beard.

"You'll have to tell me about your wonderful voyage."

"There was nothing so wonderful about it," said Jaffery.

That was all for the moment, for Barbara hustled us into the dining-room. But the terrible meeting that both had dreaded was over.