 Chapter 19 of Jaffrey, by William John Locke—this LibriVox recording is in the public domain—recording by Simon Evers. Chapter 19 Areté! Areté! wrought Jaffrey all of a sudden. We had just passed the Avla Casino on our way back from Ephrata. The chauffeur pulled up. Jaffrey flung open the door, leaped out, and disappeared. In a few seconds we heard his voice reverberating from side to side of the Boulevard-Marie team. Hello! Hello! Hello! I raised myself, and, looking over the back of the car, saw Jaffrey in characteristic attitude shaking a strange man by the shoulders and laughing in delighted welcome. He was a squat, broad, powerful-looking fellow with a heavy black beard trimmed to a point and wearing a curiously ill-fitting suit of tweeds and a burler hat. I noticed that he carried neither stick nor gloves. The exorcises of encounter having subsided Jaffrey dragged him to the car. "'This is my good old friend, Captain Maturin,' he shouted, opening the door. "'Mrs. Prescott, Mr. Freeth, get in. We'll have a drink at Tortoni's.'" Captain Maturin, unconfused by Jaffrey's unceremonious whirling, took off his hat very politely and entered the car in a grave self-possessed manner. He had clear, unblinking grey-green eyes, the colour of a stormy sea before the dawn. I was for surrendering in my seat next to Yosha, but with a courteous, but I don't. He quickly established himself on the small seat facing us, here the two occupied by Jaffrey. Jaffrey jumped up in front next to the chauffeur and leaned over the partition. The car started. "'Captain and I are old shipmates.'" All half must have heard him. From Christiania to Odessa, with all the Baltic and Mediterranean ports thrown in, and the depths of winter, remember? "'It was five years ago,' said Captain Maturin, twisting his head round. "'Were you sailed from the port of Leith on the 27th of December?' "'My gosh, didn't it blow? Gales the whole time there and back.' "'It was as dirty a voyage as ever I made,' said Captain Maturin. "'A ripping time anyhow,' said Jaffrey.' "'Weren't you very seasick?' I asked. "'Hahaha!' Jaffrey roared derisively. "'Mr. James, pretty tough, sir,' said the captain with a grave smile. "'He's missed his vacation. He's a good sailor lost.' "'Remember that night of Figo?' "'I don't ever want to see such another, Mr. Jane, as touch and go.' Captain Maturin's smile faded. No commander likes to think of a time when a freakish providence and not his helpless self was responsible for the saving of his ship.' "'He was on the bridge, sixty hours at a stretch,' said Jaffrey. "'Sixty hours?' I exclaimed. "'Thousands have done it before and thousands have done it since, myself included. On this a character Mr. Jane saw it through with me.' "'Two days and nights and a day without sleep, standing on a few planks, holding on to a rail, while you were tossed up and down and from side to side, and drenched with dashing tons of ice-cold water, and fronting a hurricane that blows ice-tipped arrows, and all the time not knowing, from one minute to the next, whether you're going to Kingdom come?' "'No. It is my idea of duty, but not my idea of fun. And even as duty, I thanked merciful heaven that never since the age of nine, when I was violently sick crossing to the Isle of Wight, have I had the remotest desire to be a mariner, either professional or amateur. I looked at the two adventurers wonderingly, and so did Lyosha. "'I love the seat,' he said. "'Don't you?' "'I can't say I do, ma'am. I've got a wife and child at Pinner, and I grow sweet peas of exhibition, all of which I can't attend to on board ship.' He said it very seriously. He was not the man to talk flippantly for the entertainment of a pretty woman. "'But if he's a month's of shore, he fumes to get back,' boomed Jeffrey. "'It's the work I was bred to,' replied the captain soberly. If a man doesn't have his work, he's not worth his sort. But that's not saying that I love the sea.' "'With such discourse you'll be beguile the shortest journey to the hotel, restaurant, and café Tortoni in the place Gombatta.' The terrace was thronged with the good avid of folks, husbands, and wives, and families enjoying the Sunday afternoon aperitif. "'Now, let us have a drink,' cried Jeffrey, huge pioneer through the crowd. Lyosha would have left us three men to our masculine devices. But Jeffrey swept her along. "'Why shouldn't we have a pretty woman at our table, as well as other people?' She flushed with the compliment. The first, I think, he had ever paid her. A waiter conjured a vacant table and chairs from nowhere in the midst of the sedentary throng. For Lyosha was bought grenadine syrup and soda. For me, absent, at which kept him maturing with the steady English sailor's suspicion of any other drink than scotch whiskey, glanced disapprovingly. Jeffrey, to give himself an appetite for dinner, ordered half a litre of Munich beer. "'And now, Captain,' said he, genuinely, "'what have you been doing with yourself? Still on the Baltic Mediterranean?' "'Now, Mr. Chain, I left that some time ago. I'm on the blue cross-line, Edda Shore and Co., training Buenaavra and Mozambique.' "'Where's Mozambique?' Lyosha asked me. I looked wise, but Captain Maturing supplied the information. Portuguese East Africa, ma'am. We also ran every other trip to Madagascar.' "'That's the place I've never been to,' said Jeffrey.' "'Interesting,' said the Captain.' He poured the little bottle of soda into his whiskey, held up his glass, bowed to the lady and to me, exchanged a solemnly confidential wink with Jeffrey, and sipped his drink. Under Jeffrey's questioning he informed us. For he was not a spontaneously communicative man, that he now had a very good command. Steamship Vesta, one thousand five hundred tons, somewhat old but sea-worthy, warranted to take more cargo than any vessel of her size he had ever set eyes on.' "'And when do you sail?' asked Jeffrey. "'Tomorrow at daybreak. They're finishing later up now.' Jeffrey drained his tall glass mug of beer and ordered another. "'Are you going to Madagascar this trip?' "'Yes, worst luck.' "'Why worst luck?' I asked. "'It cut short my time at Pinner,' replied Captain Maturin. "'Here is a man I reflected with the mystery and romance of Madagascar before him, who sighed for his little suburban villa and plot of garden at Pinner. Some people are never satisfied.' "'I've not been to Madagascar,' said Jeffrey again. Captain Maturin smiled gravely. "'Why not come along with me, Mr. Jane?' Jeffrey's eyes danced and his smile broadened so that his white teeth showed beneath his moustache. "'Why not?' he cried. I'm bringing down his hand with a clamp on Lyosha's shoulder. "'Why not? You and I, out of this rotten civilisation.'" Lyosha drew a deep breath and looked at him in awed amazement. So did I. I thought he was going mad. "'Would you like it?' he asked. "'Like it?' she had no words to express the glory that sprang into her face. Captain Maturin leaned forward. "'I'm sorry, Mr. Jane, we have no licence for passengers, and certainly there's no accommodation for ladies.'" Jeffrey threw up a hand. "'But she's not a lady in your silly old sailor's sense of the term. She's a hefty savage like me. When you have me aboard, did you think of having accommodation for a gentleman? Ha! Ha! Ha! But at any rate,' said he, at the end of the peel. "'You've a sort of spare cabin. There's always one.'" "'Oh, kind of dog-hole for you, Mr. Jane.'" Jeffrey's keen eye caught the captain's and read things. He jumped to his feet, upsetting his chair, and causing disaster at two adjoining and crowded tables, for which, dismayed and bareheaded, Jeffrey could be a very courtly gentleman when he chose. He apologised in fluent French. And, turning, caught Captain Maturin beneath the arm. "'Let us have a private palaver about this.'" They furthered their way through the tables to the spaciousness of the plus cumbetta. Lyosha followed them with her glance till they disappeared. Then she looked at me and asked breathlessly, "'Hillary, do you think he means it?' "'He's demented enough to mean anything,' said I. "'But seriously,' she caught my wrist, and in the end did I notice that her hands were bare, her gloves reposing where she had cast them on the hillside, "'Did he mean it? I'd give my immortal soul to go,' I looked into her eyes. And if I did not see stick-stark-staring crazeness in them, I don't know what stick-stark-staring crazeness is. "'Do you know what you're letting yourself in for?' said I, pretending to believe in her sanity. Here's a rotten old tub of a tramp, without another woman on board, with all the inherited smells of all the animals in Noah's Ark, including the descendants of all the cockroaches that Noah forgot to land, with a crew of dagos and Dutchmen, with awful food, without a bath, with a beast of an unventilated rabbit-hutch to sleep in, a wallowing, rolling, tossing, pitching, antiquated parody of a steamer, a little crumpering cockle-shell, always wet, always shipping seas, always slivery, never a dry place to sit down upon, the people always standing, sixty hours at a time, without sleep, on the bridge to see that she doesn't burst a sunder and go down a floating, a winter she does float, a floating inferno of misery. Here it is, I can tell you all about it, any child in a board school can tell you an inferno of misery in which you would be always hungry, always sleepless, always suffering from indigestion, always wet through, always violently ill and always dirty, with your hair in ropes and your face bloused by the wind, to say nothing of icebergs and fogs and the cargo of cotton goods catching fire and the wheezing medieval boilers bursting and setting you all to glory, I paused for lack of breath. Leosha, who elbows on table and chin on hands and listened to me, first with amusement, then with absorbed interest, and lastly with glowing rapture, cried in a shaky voice, I should love it, I should love it. But it's lunatic, said I, so much the better, but the proprieties. She shifted her position, threw herself back in her chair, and flung out her hands towards me. You ought to be giving Mrs. Jardine's boarding-house, what have Jeff Shane and I to do with proprieties? Didn't he and I travel from Skewtari to London? Yes, said I, but aren't things just a little bit different now? It was a searching question. Her swift change of expression from glow to defensive somberness omitted its significance. Nothing is different, she said curtly, things are exactly the same. She bent forward and looked at me straight from beneath lowering brows. If you think just because he and I are good friends now there's any difference, he may be a great mistake. And just you tell Barbara that. I will do so, said I. And he can also tell her, she continued, that Leosha Prescott is not going to let herself be made a fool of by a man who's crazy mad over another woman. No, sir, not this child, not me. And as for the proprieties, she snapped her fingers. They be—they be anythinged. To this frank exposition of her feelings I could say nothing. I drank the remainder of my absent and lit a cigarette. I fell back on the manifest lunacy of the Madagascar voyage. Urged, somewhat edgy climatically after my impassioned harangue, it's discomfort. You'll be the fifth wheel to a coach. Your petting-oats, my dear, will always be in the way. I didn't wear a petticoat, said Leosha. We argued until a red grinning jaffrey, beaming like the farest sun now about to set, appeared winding his way through the tables, followed by the black-bearded grey-eyed sea-captain. It all fixed up, said he, taking his seat. The captain understands the whole position. If you want to come to Jerusalem and Madagascar and North and South America, come. But this is Midsomer madness, said I. Suppose it is, what matter? He waved a great hand, and fortuously caught a waiter by the arm. Mimsha was put to Le Monde. He picked him away. Now, this business. Would you come and rough it? The Vesta isn't a Q-naught liner, not even a passenger boat. No luxuries. Hope you understand. Henry has been telling me just what I am to expect, said Leosha. I will do our best for you, ma'am, said Captain Matrin. But you mustn't expect too much. I suppose you know you'll have to sign on as one of the crew. And if you disobey orders, said I, the captain can tie you up to the binnacle and give you 40 lashes and put you in arms. I guess I'll be obedient, Captain, said Leosha, proud of her incredulity. I don't allow my ship's company to bring many trunks and portmanteau aboard. Smile, Captain Matrin. I'll see to the dunnage, said Jeffery. The what, I ask? It's only passengers that have luggage. Sailor-folk like Leosha and me have dunnage. I see, said I, and you bring it on board in a bundle, together with a parrot in a cage. An instant persuasion, being of no avail, I must have recourse to light mockery. But it meant with little response. And what, I ask, is to become of the 40-odd collie that we pass through the customs this morning. Ah, you can take him home with you, said Jeffery. He grinned over his third, foaming beaker of dark beer. Is it a blessing I brought them along? I told him he'd come in useful. But—but, good Lord! I protested aghast. What an excuse can I, a lone man, give to the Southampton customs for the possession of all this baggage. They'll think I've murdered my wife on the voyage, and I shall be arrested. No. There's the parcel-posts. There are agencies of expedition. We can forward the luggage by Grand Vitesse or Petit Vitesse. How long likely to be away on this theophile, gortier voyage? Ah, four months, said Captain Matrin. Then I must send them by the great swiftness that arrived just in time. I love my friends, and perform altruistic feats of astonishing difficulty. But I draw the line of being personally involved in a nightmare of curved top trunks and green canvas hat containing crates belonging to a woman who is not my wife. They followed a conversation on what seemed to me fantastic, but to the others practical details, in which I had no share. A suit of oil-skins and sea-boots, Filiasha, formed the subject of much complicated argument, and the end of which Captain Matrin undertook to procure them from marine stores this peaceful Sunday night. The Osha, aglow with excitement and looking exceedingly beautiful, also mentioned her need of thick jersey and woollen cap and stout boots, not quite so tempest-defying as the others. And these two, the foolish and apparently infatuated mariner, promised to provide. 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. Geoffrey, like a schoolboy son of Gargamel, shoveled food into his mouth. He might have been tripled, booked just hard, or chitterlings for all he knew or cared. His jolly laugh served as a base for the more troubled buzz and clatter of the pleasant place. I've never seen a man exude such plentiful happiness. The Osha, et unthinkingly, are always on the table, after the manner of Albania. I had not strayed. I whispered the information as, through force of training, I should have whispered it to Barbara, with no other result than an impatient shove, which rendered it more picotly crooked than ever. Captain Maturin went through the performance with the grave-face of another classical devotee to duty. But his heart, poor fellow, was not in his food. It was partly in Pinner, partly in his anti-Diluvian tramp, and partly in the prospect of having his cook's mate join his voyage, the superbly vital young woman of the Stone Age, now accidentally tricked out in twentieth-century finery, who was sitting next to him. Captain Maturin took an early leave. He had various things to do before turning in, including, I suppose, the purchase of his cook's mate's outfit, and he was to sail at five-thirty in the morning. If his new deck-hand and cook's mate would come alongside and fireful thereabouts, he would see to their adequate reception. "'You would like to ship along with me, too, Mr. Threath?' said he, with a grip like any horrible thing that is hard and arn and clamping an esteemous machinery, and a thwart his green-gray eyes, filled with wind and sea, past a gleam of humour. There's still time.' "'I would come with pleasure,' said I, worried not for the fact that all my spare moments are devoted to the translation of a Persian poet.' "'If I'm not a bane, I am nothing.' He went. "'Leosha bane me good-bye. She must retire early. The re-arrangement of her luggage, a dunnage,' I corrected, would be a lengthy process. She thanked me in her best Constantine manner for all the trouble I'd taken on her account, sent her love to Barbara and to Susan, whose sickness she trusted would be transitory, expressed the hope that the care of her belongings would not be too great a strain upon my household, and then, like a flash of lightning, in the very middle of the humming-restaurant filled with all the notabilities and respectabilities of father, she flung her generous arms around my neck in a great hug and kissed me and said, "'Dear old Hillary, I do love you.' I marched away magnificently through the staring-tables to the inner recesses of the hotel, puzzled and reigned in half of that night. English people accredited in France with any form of eccentricity, so long as it conformed to the traditions of le flegme burikhanique. But there was not much flegme about Leosha's embrace, and so the good Avray were mystified.' There was no following Leosha. She had made her exit. To have run after her were an artistic crime, and in real life we are more instinctively artistic and dramatic than the unthinking might suppose. Besides, there was the bill to pay. We sat down again. "'That little chap never seems to have any luck,' said Jeffrey. He's one of the finest seamen of float, with a nerve of steel and a damnable way of getting himself obeyed. He ought to be in command of a great liner, instead of a rotten old tramp of fifteen hundred tonnes.' I beamed. I'm glad you call it a rotten old tramp. I described it in those terms to Leosha.' "'Haha!' said Jeffrey. There's just a lot you know about it.' He yawned, cavernously. "'I'll be telling you soon, myself.' It was not yet ten o'clock. "'And what shall I do?' I asked. "'Better turn in, too, if you want to see us off.' "'My dear Jeff,' said I, "'you've always bewildered me, and when I contemplate this new caprice, I'm beyond the phenomenon of bewilderment, but in one respect my mind retains its serene equipoise, nothing short of an act of God to drag me from my bed at half-past four in the morning. "'I wanted to give you a few last instructions.' "'Give them to me now,' said I.' He handed me the key of his chambers. If you wouldn't mind tidying up some day, I left a paper and a dew of so amassed. "'All right,' said I. "'And I better give you a power of attorney in case anything shall crop up.' He called for writing materials and scribbled and signed the document, which I put into my lettercase. "'And what about letters?' "'I don't want any.' "'Unless,' said he, after a little pause, frowning in the plenitude of his content, if you and Barbara can make things right again with Doria, then one of you might drop me a line. I'll send you a schedule of dates.' "'Still harping on my daughter,' said I. "'You may think it devilish-funny,' he replied, but for me there's only one woman in the world.' "'Let us have a final drink,' said I. We drank, chatted a while, and went to bed. When I woke the next morning the Vesta was already four hours on her way to Madagascar.' End of CHAPTER XIX I have one failing. Even I, Hillary Freeth of Northlands in the county of Berkshire, Esquire, Gent, have one failing, and I freely confess it. I cannot keep a key. Where I as other men are, which think heaven I am not, I might wear a pound or so of hideous arm-mongery chained to my person. This I declined to do with the result that, as I say, I cannot keep a key. Of all the household stairway places under my control, and Barbara limits their number, only one is locked, and that drawer containing I know not what treasures or rubbish is likely to continue so for ever and for ever, for the key is lost. Such important documents as I desire to place in security I send to bankers or solicitors, who are trained from childhood in the expert use of safes and strongboxes. May other papers of the world can read if it chooses to waste its time? At any rate, I am not going to lock them up and have the worry of a key preying on my mind. I should only lose it as I lost the other one. And now, by a freak of fortune, the key of Jaffery's flat remained in the suitcase, wherein I had flung it at Avra, until it was fished out by Franklin, on my arrival at Northland's. For goodness' sake, my dear, said I to Barbara, take care of this thing. But she refused. She has too many already to look after. I must accept the responsibility as a model discipline. So I tied a luggage-label to the elusive object, inscribed there on the legend, Key of Jaffery's Flat, and hung it on a nail which I drove into the wall of my library. Besides, said Barbara, satirically watching the operation, I am not going to have anything to do with this crack-brained adventure. To hear you speak, said I, for she had already spoken a considerable length on the subject, I'm going to think that I could have prevented it. If Jaffery chooses to go berserk and Lyosha to throw her cap over the top mass, why in the world shouldn't they? I suppose I am conventional, said Barbara, and from the description you have given me of the boat, I am sure the poor child will be utterly miserable, and she will ruin her hands, and her figure, and her skin. I wished I had drawn a little less lurid picture of the steamship of Vesta. As soon as business or idleness took me to town, I visited St Quentin's Mansions, and, after consultation with the porter, who knowing me to be a friend of Mr. Chains, assured me that I need not have burdened myself with the horrible key, I entered Jaffery's chambers. I found the small sitting-room in very much the same state of litter as when Jaffery left it. He enjoyed litter and hated the devastating tidiness of house-maids. Give a young horse with a long swishy tail, a quarter of an hour's run in an ordinary bachelor's-rooms, and you will have the normal appearance of Jaffery's home. As I knew he did not want me to dust his books and pictures, such as they were, or to make order out of a chaos of old newspapers, or to put his pipes in the rack, or to remove spurs and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannonball, an antiquated 18 or 20 pounder which reposed most useful piece of furniture in the middle of a hearth-rug, or to see the comfortless electric radiator that took the place of a grate, I let these things be, and concentrated my attention on his papers, which would lay loose on desk and table. This was obviously the tidying up to which he had referred. I swept his correspondence into one drawer. I gathered together a manuscript of his new novel and swept it into another. On the top of a Petlstil bookcase, I discovered the original manuscript of The Greater Glory, neatly bound in brown paper and threaded through with red tape. This I dropped into the third drawer of the desk, which already contained a mass of papers. I went into his bedroom, where I found more letters lying about. I collected them and looked around. There seemed to be little left for me to do. I noticed two photographs on his dressing-table, one of his mother, whom I remembered, and one of Doria. These I laid face downwards so that the light should not fade them. I noticed also a battered portmanteau from beneath the lid of which protruded three or four corners of scribbling paper. And lastly my eyes fell upon the offending beer-barrel in a dark alcove. The basin set below the tap in order to catch the drip was nearly full. In four months' time the room would be flooded with sour and horrible beer. 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 Geoffrey's name presented a delighted porter with the contents of a nine-gallon casque. 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 realized that old Geoffrey and myself had at least one thing in common—vitelliquette, the keyless habit. I had often suspected that deep in our souls lurk some hidden trade union. Now I had found it. And, looking back on that wreck of a room, I reflected how congenial Geoffrey must have found his surroundings on board the Vesta. The weather had changed from summer calm to storm. The gentleman from the meteorological office who writes for the newspapers talked about cyclonic disturbances, and reported gales in the channel and on the west coasts of France. The same was likely to continue. The wind blew hard enough in Berkshire. What must it have done in the Bay of Biscay? As a matter of fact, as we learned from a picture postcard from Geoffrey, and a short letter from Lyosha posted at Bordeaux, and from their lips considerably later, for impossible as it may seem they did not go to the bottom or dive scurvy or the cannibals polax, they had made their way from Avla in an ever-increasing tempest, during which they apparently had not slept or put on a dry rag. Heavy seas washed the deck and kept out the gallifers, so that warm food had not been procurable. It seemed that every horror I had prophesied had come to pass. I should have pitted them, but for the blatant joyousness of their communications. I was not seasick a minute, and I have never been so happy in my life, wrote Lyosha. Hillary should have been with us, wrote Geoffrey. It would have made a man of him. Lyosha in splendid fetal. She goes about in men's clothes and oil-skins, and could turn her hand to anything when she is lashed to a stanchion. You can just imagine them having cast off all semblance of Christians and wallowing in wet and dirt. About this time, according to the sequence of events recorded in my all-too-scraggy diary, Doria came to us for a weekend, her first visit since Geoffrey's outrageous conduct. She was glad to make friends with us once more, and to prove it showed the pleasant aside of her character. She professed not to have forgiven Geoffrey, but she referred to the terrible episode in less vehement terms. It was obvious to us both that she missed him more than she would confess, even to herself. In her reconstituted existence he had stood for an essential element. Unconsciously she had counted on his devotion, his companionship, his constant service, his bulky protection from the winds of heaven. Now that she had driven him away, she found a girder wanting in her life's neat structure, which accordingly had begun to wobble uncomfortably. After all, she had provoked the man. This, with some reluctance, she admitted to Barbara, and he'd only picked her up and shaken her. He'd had no intention of dashing out her brains or even of giving her a beating. In her heart she repented. Otherwise why should he take so ill Geoffrey's flight with Lyosha, which she characterised as a vulnerable, and Lyosha's flight with Geoffrey, which she characterised as monstrous? I can't talk to Barbara about it, she said to me on the Sunday morning, perching herself on the corner of my library table, a disrespectful trick which she had caught from my wife, when I sat back in my writing-chair. Barbara seemed to be amused about the woman. One would think she was a kind of saint, incapable of staying. In one specific way I replied, I think she is. Oh rubbish, Hillary! 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 Geoffrey. What respectable woman—well, what honest woman, according to the terms of the lower classes, would run away with two men within twenty-four hours? She went off with Fenyhook, honourably, thinking he was going to marry her. She has joined Geoffrey honourably too, because there was no quest of marriage or anything else between them. Sangtas implicitas. She shook her head from side to side, and looked at me pittingly. Unallowed Geoffrey is just a fool, but she isn't. The best one could say for her is that she has no moral sense. I know the type. Where have you studied it, my dear? I asked. She cuddled, taken her back, but after half a second she replied with her ready sureness. In my father's drawing-room among city people, and in my own among literary people. Ah! said I. Leoshers, don't grow on every occasional sure. You're as bemused as Barbara. I haven't studied what you call the type, I replied, but I've studied an individual which you haven't. She swung off the table. Oh, well, have it your own way. Paul and Virginia, if you like. What does it matter to me? Yes, my dear, said I. That's just it. What the Dickens does it matter to you. Nothing at all. She snapped a dainty finger and thumb. You've turned Geoffrey out of your house, I continued with malicious intent. You've sworn never to set eyes on him again. You've banished him beyond your horizon. His doings now can be no concern of yours. If he chose to elope with the fat woman in a freak museum, why shouldn't he? What would it have to do with you? Only this, said Doria, coming back to the table-corner but not sitting on it, it would make Geoffrey's declaration to me all the more insulting. Having no meter to climb, I quoted, precisely. She tossed her head in her wounded pride, but unknowingly she had swallowed my bait. I had hooked my little fish. I smiled to myself. She was eaten up with jealousy. Well, said I, you remember the French proverb about the absent being always in the wrong? Let us wait until they come back and hear what they've got to say for themselves. She put her hands behind her back. As she stood her little black and ivory head was not much above the level of mine. What they may say is a matter of perfect indifference to me. I bent forward. I think I ought to tell you what Geoffrey's practically last words to me were. There's any one woman in the world for me. Meaning you. She broke away with a laugh. And to prove it he eloped with the fat woman. Oh, Hilary! With the tips of her fingers she brushed my hair. You really are a simple old dear! All the same, I began. All the same, she interrupted. This is a very untidy conversation. I didn't come in here to talk, but to borrow a copy of Baudelaire, if you have one. She turned to scam my shelves. I joined her and she took down Le Fleur du Mile. She thanked me, tucked the book under her arm, and went out. Rather uncharitably I rejoiced in her soreness. It was good discipline. It would give her a sense of values. Should she ever get Geoffrey back again, with no Lyosha hanging round his neck, I was certain that not only would she forgive pass mishandling, but for the sake of keeping him would put up with a little more. Whether she would marry him was another story. I had every reason to believe that she would not. Adrien reigned her bosom's lord. In her worshipping fidelity she never wavered. She regarded a second marriage with horror. That was comprehensible enough, with her husband not seven months dead. No, should she ever get Geoffrey back, I didn't think she would marry him. But beyond doubt she would treat him with more consideration and respect. These, of course, were my conjectures and deductions, confirmed by Barbara, from the patent fact that she found herself lost without Geoffrey, and that she was furiously jealous of Lyosha. It was several weeks before we saw her again. August arrived. Barbara and I played the ever-fresh summer comedy. I swore by all the gods I would not leave Northlands. I went on vying until I arrived with a mountain of luggage, a wife and a child and a maid, at a great hotel on the Lido. Our days were unimportant. We bathed in the Adriatic. We revisited familiar churches and picture galleries in Venice. We mingled with a cosmopolitan crowd, and developed the complexions, not only in our faces, of an Othello family. Doria, too, made holiday abroad. Every August Mr. Jornicroft repaired the ravages of eleven months' civic and other feasting at Marienbad, and Doria, as she had done before her marriage, accompanied him. She and Barbara exchanged letters about nothing in particular. The time passed smoothly. Once or twice we had word from our runnigates. The fury of the sea having subsided after they had left Bordeaux, they had settled down to the normal life of shipboard, and Jaferi took his term with the hands, coiled ropes, sweated over cargo, and kept his watch. The osher, we were given to understand, besides helping in the galley and the cabin and the swabbing decks, found much delight in painting the ship's boats with paint, which Jaferi had bought for the purpose at Bordeaux. She had struck up a friendship with the first mate, who, possessing a camera, had taken their photographs. They sent us one of the two standing side by side, and a more venerous-looking yet widely-smiling pair you could not wish to see. Both wore sailor's caps and jerseys and sea-boots, and Barbara's keen eye detected the fact that Laotia, for freedom's sake, had cut a foot or so off the bottom of her skirt, without taking the trouble to hem up the edge, which, now afraid, hung about her calves in disgraceful fringes. "'I think you were wrong, my dear,' said I. The poor thing looks anything but utterly miserable.' "'I'm sure I was right about her hands and skin,' she maintained. "'Well, it's her own skin.' "'What's the pity?' Barbara retorted. What on earth she meant, I do not know. But as usual she had the last word. The middle of September found us back in England, and shortly afterwards Doria returned also, and resumed her lonely life in the Aegean-haunted flat. But by and by she grew restless, complaining that no one but her father, of whose society she had wearied, was in town, and went off on a series of country-house visits. The flat, I suspected for all its sacred memories, was dull without Jaffery. She still maintained her unrelenting attitude, and spoke scornfully of him. But once or twice she asked when this mad voyage would be over, thereby betraying curiosity rather than indifference. Meanwhile the autumn publishing season was in full swing. Wittekind's list of new novels in its deeper black framing border stared at you from the advertisement pages of every periodical you picked up, and so did the list of every other publisher. Day after day Doria's eyes fell on this announcement of Wittekind, and day after day her indignation swelled at the continued admission of the great Hadlory. All these nobodies, these ephemeral scribblers, were being thrust flamboyantly on public notice, and her Aegean, the great son of the firm, was allowed to remain in atlipse. For what purpose had he lived and died if his memory was treated with this dark ingratitude? I strove to reason with her. Aegean's book had been prodically advertised in the spring. It had sold enormously. It was still selling. There was no need to advertise it any longer. Besides, advertisement cost money, and poor Wittekind had to do his duty by his other authors. He had to push his new wares. Tradesmen? cried Doria. If he wasn't, I remonstrated. If he wasn't a tradesman in a certain sense, an expert in the art of selling books, how could Aegean's novels have attained their wide circulation? It was to his interest to increase that circulation as much as possible. Why not let him run his very successful business his own way? Doria loftily assured me that she had no interest in his business in the mayor vulgar number of copies sold. Aegean's Doria was above such sordid things. Of far higher importance was it that his name should be kept like a beacon before the public. Not to do so was callous ingratitude and tradesman's niggleness on the part of Wittekind. Something ought to be done. I confess my inability to do anything. I know you have nothing to do with the literary side of the Exarcheryship. Geoffrey undertook it. And now, instead of looking after his duties, he has gone on this impossible voyage. Here was another grievance against the unfortunate Geoffrey. I might have asked her who drove him to Madagascar. For had she been kind, he would have made short work of Lyosha after having rescued her from Fendi Hook and would have returned meekly to Doria's feet. But what would have been the use? I was tired of these windy arguments with Doria and worn out with the awful irony of upholding our poor Aegean's genius. I'm sorry he's not here, said I, somewhat tartly, because he might have prevailed upon you to listen to common sense. A little while after this, another firm of publishers announced an aditio deluxe of the works of a brilliant novelist cut off like Aegean and the flower of his age. He was printed on special paper and illustrated by a famous artist and limited to a certain number of copies. This set Doria aflare. From Scotland, where she was paying one of her restless visits, she sent me the newspaper-cutting. If the commercial organism, she said, that password with a kind for a soul, would not permit him to advertise Aegean's spring book in his autumn list, why couldn't he do like Mackenzie and Co and advertise an aditio deluxe of Aegean's two novels? And if Mackenzie and Co thought it worthwhile to bring out such an addition of an entirely second-rate author, surely it would be to Wittekind's advantage to treat Aegean equally sumptuously. I advice her to write to Wittekind. She did. Accompanied by a fury of ink, she sent me his most courteous and sensible answer. Both books were doing splendidly. There was every prospect of a golden aftermath of cheap editions. The time was not ripe for an aditio deluxe. It would come, a pleasurable thing to look forward to, when other sales showed signs of exhaustion. He talks about exhaustion, she wrote. I suppose he means when he sends the volumes to be pelt, remainder or waste. There's a foolish woman here who evidently has written a foolish book and has shown me her silly contract with a publisher, remainder or waste. That's what he's thinking of. It's intolerable. I've no idea, Henry, to turn to, but you do advise me. I sent her a telegram. Well, for one thing it saved the trouble of concocting a letter, and for another it was more likely to impress the recipient. It ran. I advise you strongly to go to Wittekind yourself and bite him. I was rather pleased at the humour. May I venture to qualify it as Mordent, of the suggestion. Even Barbara smiled. Of course I was right. Let her fight it out herself with Wittekind. But I have regretted that telegram ever since. End of CHAPTER XXI Luckily I have kept most of Geoffrey's letters written to me from all quarters of the globe. Accepting those concerned with the voyage of the SS Vesta, they were rare phenomena. Ordinarily, if I heard from him thrice a year, I had to consider that he was indulging in an orgy of correspondence. But what with Doria and Adrian and Leosha, and what with Barbara and myself being so intimately mixed up in the matters which preoccupied his mind, the voyage of the Vesta covered a period of abnormal epistolary activity. Instead of a wife, our amateur sailor found a post-office at every port. He wrote reams. He had the journalist's trick of instantaneous composition. Like the Uda-esque hero who could ride a Derby-winner with one hand and stroke a university crew to victory with the other, Geoffrey could with one hand hang on to a rope over a yawning abyss, while with the other he could scribble a graphic account of the situation on a knee-supported writing-pad. In ordinary circumstances—that is to say, in what to Geoffrey were ordinary circumstances—he performed these literary gymnastics for the sake of his newspaper. But the voyage of the Vesta was an exceptional affair. Save incidentally, for he did send descriptive articles to the Daily Gazette. He was not out on professional business. The gymnastics were performed for my benefit, yet with an ulterior motive. He had sailed away, not on a job, but to satisfy a certain nostalgia—to escape from civilisation, to escape from Doria, to escape from desire and from heartache. And the deeper he plunged into the fatness of primitive life, the closer did the poor ogre come to heartache and to desire. He wrote spaciously in the foolish hope that I would reply narrowly, following a Doria scent laid down with a naivety of childhood. I received constant telegrams inform me of dates and addresses. I, who Geoffrey out of England never knew for certain whether he was doing the giants stride around the North Pole or horizontal bar exercise on the Equator. It was rather pathetic, for I could give him but little comfort. Besides the letters, he and Leosha deluged us with photographs taken chiefly by the absurd Second Mate, from which it was possible to reconstruct the SS Vesta in all her dismaleness. You have seen scores of how rusty grimy congeners in any port in the world, if only to picture an old two-masted, well-decked tramp with smokestack and foul clutter of bridge house amidships, and fore and after a miserable bit of a deck, broken by hatches and capstones and donkey engines and stanchions and chains, and other unholy stumbling blocks and offences to the casual promenada. From the photographs and letters I learned that the dog-hole, entated by the captain for Geoffrey, but given over to Leosha, was a way off beneath a kind of poop and immediately above the scrunch of the propeller, and that Geoffrey, with singular lack of privacy, bunked in the stuffy low cabin where the officers took their meals and relaxations. The more vividly did they present the details of their life, the more heartfelt were my thanksgivings to a merciful providence for having been spared so dreadful and experienced. Our two friends, however, found indiscriminate joy in everything. I have their letters to prove it. And Geoffrey especially found perpetual enjoyment in the vagaries of Leosha. For instance, here is an extract from one of the letters. It's a grand life, my boy. You're up against realities all the time, not a sham within the horizon. You eat till you burst, work till you sleep, and sleep till you're kicked awake. You should just see, Leosha. Maturin says he's only met one other woman sailor like her, and that was the daughter of a traitor sailing among the islands, who lived all her life since birth on his ship and had scarcely slept ashore. She's as much born to it as any shell back on board. She has the amazing gift of looking part of the tub, like the stokers and the man of the wheel. Unlike another woman, she's never in the way, and the more work you can give her to do, the happier she is. She's in magnificent health and as strong as a horse. At first the house didn't know what to make of her. Now she's friends with the whole bunch. The difficulty is to keep her from over-familiar intercourse with them. For though she's signed on as Cook's mate, she eats in the cabin with the officers, and between the cabin and the focus all lies a great gulf. They come and tell her about their wives and their girls and what rotten food they've got. Everybody has got rotten food on board the ship, you silly ass, quote Leosha. What do you expect, sweetbreads and ices? And what soul-shattering blighters they've shipped with, and what deeds of heroism, mostly imaginary, they have performed in pursuit of their perilous calling. They're all children, you know, when you come to the bottom of them, these hell-taring fellows. Children afflicted with a perpetual thirst and a craving to punch heads. But Leosha's a child, too, so there's a kind of freemasonry between them. There was a devil's own row in the focus all the other evening. The first mate went to look into it and found Leosha standing in rapture to the hatch, looking down upon a free fight. There were knives about. The mate, being a blasphemous and putilistic dog, soon restored order. Then he came up to Leosha. You and Barbra should have seen her. It was sultry, not a breath of air. And she just had on the thin bodice open at her throat, and the sleeves rolled up on a short ragged skirt and was bare-headed. Why, the haters, didn't you stop her, Mrs? For some reason or the other the whole ship's company, except the skipper and myself, called her Mrs. She gazed on him like an Oxide Juno, you know her way. Why should I interfere with their enjoyment? Enjouement, he gasped. Oh, my God! He flung out his arms and came over to me. My, it was smoky against the taff rail. There there was trying to cut one another's throat, and she caused it enjoyment. He went off spluttering. I watched, Leosha. A Dutchman, what you would call a swede, a hulking beggar, came up from the focus all very much the worse for wear. Leosha says, Mr. Andrews was very angry, Peterson. He grinned. He was, Mrs. What was it all about? He explained it in his C-English, which is not the English of that mildewed boarding-house in South Kensington. Bill Fingens had called him up. He had retaliated, and the others had taken a hand, too. It is I who suppressed the actual word reported by Geoffrey, but believe me, they were enough to annoy anybody. She shouted down the stairway, Here you, Bill Fingens, come up on deck a minute. A lean, wiry, black-looking man spawn of the pool of London emerged. What's the matter? Why did you call Peterson up? She asked pleasantly, and word perfect. Cos he is one. He isn't, certainly, Leosha. He's a very nice man, and so are you, and you both fought fine. I was looking on, and I was mad not to see the end of it. But Mr. Andrews doesn't like fighting. So see here, if you two don't shake hands right now and make friends, I promise not to fight again, I'll not speak a word to either of you for the rest of the voyage. If I had tackled them like this, hefty chap that I am, they would have consigned me to a shambles of perdition. And if any other woman had attempted it, even our valiant Barbara, they would have told her in perhaps polite, but anyhow forcible terms, to mind her own business. In either case they would have resented to the depths of their simple souls the alien interference. But with Leosha it was different. Of course sex told, naturally. But she was a child like themselves. She had looked on pleasantly, and had caught the flash of knives without turning her hair. They felt that if she were drawn into a menace she would use a knife with the best of them. I'm panning out about this, because it seems so juiced interesting. I shall like to know what you and Barbara think. Do you remember Gulliver? For all the world it was like glum-doll clitch, making the peace between the two little nine-year-old brobly Gnaggians. The two men looked at each other sheepishly. Half a dozen grinning heads appeared at the focus of the hatch. You never saw anything so funny in your life. At last the lean Bill Figgins stuck out his hand sideways to the Dutchman without looking at him. All right, mate. And the Swede shook it heartily, and the grimy hands cried, Bravo, Mrs., and Leosha, turning and catching sight of me just a bit above the funnel beneath the bridge for the first time, swung up the depth towards me, as pleased as punch. Here is another extract. Well, wait a minute. Geoffrey's letters are an embarrassment of riches. If I printed them in full, they would form a picturesque handbook to the coast of the African continent, from Casablanca, Morocco, all the way round by the Cape of Good Hope to Port Sade. But Geoffrey, in his lavish way, duplicated these travel pictures in articles to the Daily Gazette, which, supplemented by memory, he has already published in book form for all the world to read. Therefore, if I recorded his impressions of Grand Bassum, Cape Lopez, Boma, Matadi, Delagoe Bay, Monte Rana, Mombasa, and other apocalyptic places, I should be merely plagiarising or infringing copyright or what not. And in any case, I should be introducing matter entirely irrelevant to this chronicle. You must just imagine the rusty Vesta wallowing along about nine knots an hour around Africa, disgorging cotton goods and cheap jewellery at each godforsaken port, and making up cargo with whatever raw material could find a European market. If I had gone this voyage, I would tell you all about it. But you see, I remained in England. And if I subjected Geoffrey's correspondence to microscopic examination and read up blue books on the exports and imports of all the places on the South African coastline, and told you exactly what was taken out of the SS Vesta and what was put into her, I cannot conceive your being in the slightest degree interested. To do so would bore me to death. To me, cargo is just cargo. The transference of it from ship to shore and from shore to ship is a matter of awful noise and perspiring confusion. I have travelled, in so-called comfort, as a first-class passenger to Africa. I know all about it. Generally, the ship cannot get within a quarter of a mile of the shore. On one side of it lies a fleet of flat-bottomed lighters manned by listening and excited negroes. On board is a donkey-engine working a derrick with a tophetical clatter. Vast bales and packing-cases are lifted from the holds. A dingily white-suited officer stands by with greasy invoice-sheets, while another of the yawning abyss whence the cargo emerges makes the tropical day hideous with horrible implications. And the merchant-eye swings over the side and is received in the lighter, by black, uplifted arms, in the midst of a blood-curdling babel of unmeaning ferocity. That is all that unloading cargo means to me, and I cannot imagine that it means any more to any of the sons or daughters of men who are not intimately concerned in a particular trade. You must imagine, I say, the SS Vesta repeating this monotonous performance. Jeffrey and Leosha and the little black-bearded skipper all clad in decent raiment, going ashore and being entertained scraggly or copiously by German, French, Portuguese, English, fever-eyed commissioners who took them on the Tour du Propertère, among the white wooden government buildings, the palm-covered huts of the natives, and showed them the missing chapels on the new custom-houses and the pigeon-like fowls on the little dirty naked nigger-children, and the insecurity of their stock of glass and china, and the yearning of their souls for the flesh-pots of the respective Egypts to which they belonged. You must imagine this. If anything relevant to the story of Jeffrey, which, as you remember, is all that I have to relate, happened at any of these ports, I should tell you. I should have chapter and verse for it in Jeffrey's letters. But as far as I can make out, the moment they put foot on shore, they behaved like the best-conducted globetrotters who dwell habitually in a semi-detached residence in Peckham Rye. I know Jeffrey will be furious when he reads this. But great is the truth, and it shall prevail. It was on the sea, away from ports and mission stations and exiles hungering for the last word of civilisation and sure-going clothes, that life as depicted by Jeffrey swelled with juiciness, and to my taste, the juiciest parts of his letters are those humoristically concerned with the doings of Leosha. As to his hopeless passion for Doria, he says very little. When Jeffrey put pen to paper, it was objective, loving to describe what he saw and letting what he felt go hang. In consequence, the shy references to Doria were all the more poignant by reason of their rarity. But Leosha was a central figure in many a picture. Here, I say, is another extract. Leosha continues to thrive exceedingly. But there's one thing that worries me about her. What the blazes are we going to do with her after this voyage? No doubt she would like to keep on going round and round Africa for the rest of her life. But I can't go with her. I must get back and begin to earn my living. And I don't see her settling down to afternoon tea and respectability again. I think I'll have to set her up as a gypsy with a caravan and a snarling tyke for company. How a creature with her physical energy has managed to lie listless for all these months, I can't imagine. It shows strength of character, anyway. But I don't see her putting in another long stretch. She has taken her position as Cook's mate, seriously, and shares the galley with the Cook, the sorrow-stricken little Portuguese whose wife ran away with another man during the last trip. He pours out his words to her while she wipes away the tears from the lobscows. I don't know how she stands it, for even I, who've got a pretty strong stomach, draw the line at the galley. But she loves it. Now in a game, when it's my watch, I'm on the starboard, watch, you know, I see her turn out of the morning at two bells. She stands for a few moments right after her cabin door and fills her lungs, and the wind tugs at her hair beneath her cap and at her skirts, and the spin drift from the pale grey sea of dawn stings at her face. And then she lurches like a sailor down the wet, slanting deck. And I can tell you, she looks a devilish, fine figure of a woman. And soon afterwards there come from the galley the smell of bacon and eggs. My sign, if you don't know the conglomerate smell of fried bacon and eggs, bilge water, and the salt of the pure early morning ocean, your ideas of perfume are rudimentary. She and the Portuguese between them, he contributing the sands and she the good will, give us excellent grub. Of course you would turn your nose up at it, but you've never been hungry in your life, and there hasn't been a grumble in the cabin. Maturin has offered her the permanent job. Certainly she looks after us and attends to our comforts in a way sailor men on tramps aren't accustomed to. She's a great pal of the second mates, and at night they play spoiled five at a corner of the table, with the greasiest pack of cards you ever saw, and she's perfectly happy. None again we discuss the future without arriving at any result. A day or two ago I chafed her about marriage. She considered the matter gravely. I guess I'll have to, I'm twenty-four, but I haven't had much luck so far, have I? I replied, you won't always strike wrong hands. I don't know what kind of a man I'm going to strike, she said. Not only those little billy-goats in dinner-jackets I used to meet at Mrs Jardine's, no sir Rhee, and no more wrass-fendi-hooks. She rose. We'd been sitting on the cabin skylight, and leaned over the taff rail and looked wistfully out to see. I joined her. She was silent for a bit. Then she said, I guess I'm not going to marry at all, for I'm not going to marry a man I don't love, and I couldn't love a man who couldn't beat me, and there ain't many. That's the kind of fool way I'm built. She turned and left me. I suppose she meant it. Lyosha doesn't talk through her hat. But if she ever does fall in love with a man who can beat her, there'll be the devil to pay. Lyosha in love would be a tornado of a spectacle. But I shouldn't like it. Honest, I shouldn't like it. I've got so used to this clean, great Amazon of Lyosha, that I should loathe the fellow where he is decent as ought as you please. It is curious to observe how, as the voyage proceeded, Geoffrey's horizon gradually narrowed to the small ship-board-circle, just as an invalid's interests become circumscribed by the walls of his sacrum. He tells us of charge-ish things. I catch a fish, a quarrel between the first and second mate over Lyosha, second having accused first of a disrespectful attitude toward the lady. The sail-cloth-screen rigged up aft, behind which Lyosha had her morning tarp of seawater, the stubbing of Lyosha's toe and her temporary lameness, the illness of the Portuguese cook, and Lyosha's supremacy in the galley. And he rated all with the air of the impresario, venting the qualities of his prima donna. Nay, more, with a fatuous air of proprietorship, as though he himself had created Lyosha. Here is the beginning of another letter addressed to us both. A thousand thanks, dearest people, for what you tell me of Doria. If she just misses me a little bit, all may be well. I've bought some jolly, gold barbaric ornaments that she may accept when I reach home, and do try to persuade her that the poor old bear is rough only on the outside. Things going on just as usual. Lyosha has got a monkey given her by the donkey-man. He follows a description of the monkey and its antings, and a long account of a chase all over the ship, in which all the ship's company, including the captain, took part, to the subversion of discipline and navigation. But you see, he switches off at once to Lyosha and the trivial records of the humdrum day. At last he had something less trivial to write about. They were in the Mozambique Channel making for Madagascar. Now that this darned cabin-table is comparatively straight, I can scribble a few lines to you. We've had a beast of a time. The dirtiest weather ever since we left Myra, and the cranky old tub rolling and pitching and standing on her head as I've never known ship do before. Consequence was the cargo got shifted, and there was a list to port, so that every time she ducked that side she shipped half the channel. The skies black as thunder and the sea the colour of inky water. We had the devil's own job getting the cargo straight. Just imagine a black rolling dungeon full of great packing-cases, weighing about half a tonne, each all gone murderous mad. Just imagine getting down among them, as practically all hands had to do, save the engine room, and sweating and fighting and straining and lashing for hour after hour. And half the time the port side of their lame old duck underwater. Ouchie didn't turn to turtle, is known only to Anna and Maturin. And one is great, and the others a damn fine sailor. Of course I had to go down into the inferno of the hold like the others. Part of the day's work, but I didn't like it. No one liked it. When the order was given all hands tumbled up to the hatchway, I began swarming down the arne ladder. It was a swaying, staggering crowd. When you stand on a wet deck at an angle of 45 degrees one way and 30 degrees another, and constantly shifting both angles, with nothing but a rope lashed at the fault of the ship to catch hold of, your mind is pretty well concentrated on yourself. I know mine was. I slipped and wallowed on my belly, hanging onto the rope like grim death till my turn came for the ladder. I got my feet on the rungs. I was all right. When looking up at the livid daylight, whom do you think I saw calmly preparing to follow me? Leosha. I hadn't noticed her. She had sea boots and a jersey and looked just like a man. I roared, clear out, this is no place for you. I'm coming. Go along down. She put her foot on the rung just below my face. I gripped as much of her ankle as the stiff leather allowed. Clear out, don't be a damn fool. Andrews the first mate poured out a flood of blasphemy. What for this, what for the other, and what were we waiting for? Mr. Andrews, I shouted, sent this woman to her cabin. Oh, go to hell, tumble down every one of you, or I'll damn soon make you! cried Andrews. He was in a vile temper, being responsible for the snugness of the cargo. And the cargo lay about as snug as a dormitory of devils. He was sorry afterwards, poor chap, for his lack of courtesy. But at the moment he didn't care who went down into the hold, or who was killed, so long as this infernal cargo was righted, and the crazy old tub didn't go down. So I descended. It was ordained. Leosha followed. A month's down we were carried away out of ourselves by a nightmare of toil and peril. Andrews and second were there, yelling orders. We obeyed in some subconscious way. How we heard, I don't know. For peace and quiet give me a battlefield. Twenty men in semi-darkness gas able to stand, fighting blind, mad forces of half a tonne each. The huge crates of deal seemed so innocent and harmless on the key side, but charging about that swaying, rocking, lower deck, they looked malignant, like grimy blocks of hell's anger. I didn't know what I did. All I can say is I never before felt my own muscles about to snap. Queer feeling that. And I think I'm about as tough as they make them. Leosha worked as well as any man in the bunch. Only caught sight of her now and then. You see what we had to do, don't you? We had to secure all these infernal things that were running amok and ease up the rest of the cargo that had got jammed on the port side. There were accidents. Three or four were knocked out. Peterson, the Swede, had his leg crushed. I don't know what was wrong at the time. He was working next to me and a roll of the ship brought an ugly crate over him. He couldn't get up. He looked ghastly. So I took him on my back and clawed my way up the arn ladder and reached the deck somehow and staggered along, barging into everything. It was blowing half a gale. And once I fell and he screamed like a pig, poor devil. But I picked him up and got him into the focus all and stuck him in a bunker. The Portuguese cook, sick of fever. I think he's a blighted malingerer. He was the only creature there. I routed him out in the dim, mephitic place, reeking of sour bedding, and put Peterson in charge. Then I went back through the drenching seas to the hatch. There was just enough room for a man's body to squeeze through down the ladder. I went down into the same hell-broth of sweat and confusion. The ground he stood upon might have been the back of a super-titanic butterfly. Stability was a non-existent term. It was a helpless, scuttering surge of men and vast wooden cubes. Most of the men had torn off their upper garments and fought half-naked, the sweat listing on their skins in the feeble light. Soon the heat became unbearable, and I too tore off my jersey and shirt. Leosha joined me, and we worked together without speaking. A long, thick hair had come down, and she'd hastily tied it in a knot, just as you might tie a knot in a towel. And she'd thrown off things like everybody else, and only a flimsy, cotton, sleeveless body, or whatever it's called, drenched through and sticking to her, made a pretense of covering her from her waist. You had to get like flies round these infernal things and wait your time, if you could, for the roll, and push, and then scramble with ropes and make fast, and at the same time dance out of way of the slithering hulks that bore down on you with fantastic murderousness. And through it all thundered the roaring of the storm, the grind of the engines, the shattering of the propeller lifted above the waves, and the shrieks and creakings of every plank and plate of this steam-driven, old Noah's Ark. We had just, with exhausted muscles, made a whole stack fast. I'm astounding by panting, haggard-eyed, the sweat running down anyhow. Twenty of us, daggers, Dutchmen, Englishmen, in the dim twilight, just a shaft of pale illumination coming slick down the ladder where the hatch was open, hanging on to edges and corners of cargo. When suddenly the ship, caught on top of a wave, vibrated in a sickening shudder, plunged, and then with an impetus of cataclysm wallowed to starboard. Andrews shrieked, stand clear. Most of the men leaped and flung themselves away, but I stumbled and fell. Before I realised the dangers of a vast sliding crate, two strong arms was curled round my waist, and I was flung aside to slither and roll down the swaying deck until I was stopped by the bulkhead. When I picked myself up, I saw half the men securing the crate and the other half groveling around something on the deck. It was Lyosha, Chile White, and senseless with blood streaming from her head. In a mortal funk I took her up the ladder with the help of another fellow, and carried her to her cabin. I never before realised the pawling length of this vessel. We got her into our bunk aft. I sent the other chap for Brandy and first-aid appliances from the ship's stalls, and did what I could to discover how far she was injured. Thank God! Nothing worse had happened than a nasty scalp wound. But her escape had been miraculous. She had saved my life. For as I lay on the deck, the crate charging direct would have squashed my skull into jelly, and crushed my body against the side of the hold. A fraction of a second later, it would have been her skull and her body instead of mine, but she had just managed to roll practically clear until she got caught by the swerving side of the crate. I hope you'll understand what a heroic thing she did. She faced what seemed to be certain death for me, and it is thanks to Lyosha that I am able to tell you that I am alive. And she, God bless her, walks about with her head bandaged among an adoring ship's company, and refuses to admit having done anything wonderful. And indeed, to confirm Jeffrey's last statement, here is a bit of a scrawl from Lyosha, her complete account of the incident. We just had the most awful storm I ever did see. The cargo go loose in the hold, and we had to fix it up. I got a cut on the head and had to stay in bed till the storm finished. I'll say it gave me an awful headache, but there I guess I'm better now. Well, that seems to be the most exciting thing that happened to them. Afterwards, in the mind of each, it loomed as the great event in the amazing voyage. A man does not forget having his life saved by a woman at the risk of her own, and a woman, no matter how heroic in action and how magnanimous in after modesty, does not forget it either. Although he had been credited, to his ingenuous delight, by reviewers of The Great Adlauri, with uncanny knowledge of the complexities of a woman's nature, I have never met a more done-deheaded blunderer in his dealings with women. He perceived the symptoms of this unforgetfulness on Lyosha's part, but seems to have been absolutely fogged in diagnosis. Lyosha flourishes, he writes in one of his last fester letters, like a virgin forest of green bay-trees. Gosh, she's splendid! I take back and swallow every presumptuous word I've said about her. And I suppose, owing to a knock-about sort of intimacy, she has adopted a protective motherly attitude towards me. In her great spacious kind way, she gives you the impression that she owned Jeffrey Shane, and knows exactly what is for his good. Women's ways are wonderful, but weird. He must have sought himself vast at level with his illiterative epigram, but he hasn't the faintest idea of the fount of Lyosha's motherliness. Owing to our knock-about sort of intimacy. Ha! the silly ass! End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Jaffrey by William John Locke This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Simon Evers. Chapter 22 It was not until the end of October that Doria completed her round of country-house visits and returned to the flat in St. John's Wood. The morning after her arrival in town she took my satirical council and called at Wittekine's office, and, I am afraid, tried to bite that very pleasant well-intentioned gentleman. She went out to do battle, arraying herself in subtle panoply of war. This I gather from Barbara's account of the matter. She informs me that when a woman goes to see her solicitor, her banker, her husband's uncle, a woman she hates, or a man who really understands her, she wears in each case an entirely different kind of hat. Judging from a warehouse of tissue paper-covered millinery at the top of my residence, which I once accidentally discovered when trekking down a smell of fire, I know that this must be true. Costumes also, Barbara implies, must correspond emotionally with the hats. I recognise this, too, as a philosophic truth, for it explained many puzzling and apparently unnecessary transformations in my wee wife's personal appearance. And yet, the other morning, when I was going up to town to see her after some investments, and I asked her which was the more psychological tie, a green or a violet, in which to visit my stockbroker, she lost as much of her temper as she allows herself to lose, and made me not be silly. But this has nothing to do with Doria. Doria, I say, with beaver, cocked, and plumes ruffled, intent on striking terror into the heart of Wittekind, presented herself in the outer office and sent in her card. At the name of Mrs. Adrienne Baldero, doors flew open, and Doria marched straight away into Wittekind's comfortably furnished private room. Wittekind himself, tall, loose-limbed, courteous, the least tradesman-like person you can imagine, rose to receive her. For some reason or the other, or more likely against reason, she had pictured a rather soapy, smug little man hiding crafty eyes behind spectacles. But here he was, obviously a man of good breeding, who smiled at her most charmingly, and gave her to understand that she was the one person in the world whom he had been longing to meet. And the office was not a sort of human charcuterie hung round with brains of authors for sale, but a quiet, restful place to which valuable prints on the walls and a few bits of real Chippendale gave an air of distinction. Doria admits to being disconcerted. She had come to bite, and she remained to smile. He seated her in a nice old armchair with a beautiful back. She was sensitive to such things, and spoke of Adrienne as of his own blood-brother. She had not anticipated such warmth of genuine feeling, or so fine an appreciation of our Adrienne's work. Believe me, my dear Mrs. Baldero, said he, I am second only to you in my admiration and grief, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep your husband's memory green. But it is green, thank goodness. How do I know? By two signs. One, that people wherever the English language is spoken are eagerly reading his books. I say reading, because you deprecate the purely commercial side of things. But you must forgive me if I say that the only proof of all their reading is the record of all their buying. And when people buy and read an author to this prodigious extent, they also discuss him. Adrienne Baldero's name is a household word. You want advertisement and an addition of deluxe. But it is only the little man that needs the big rum. But still, Mr. Whitaker and Doria urged, an addition of deluxe would be such a beautiful monument to him. I don't care a bit about the money. She went on with a splendid disregard of her rights that would have sent a shiver down the incorporated back of the incorporated society of authors. I am only too willing to contribute towards the expense. Please understand me. It's a tribute and a monument. You only put up monuments to those who are dead, so bit of kind. But my husband isn't dead, said he. Oh, said Doria, then the time for your addition of deluxe is not yet. Yes, but you don't think Adrienne's work is going to die? She looked at him tragically. He reassured her. Certainly not. Our future sumptuous addition will be a sign that he is among the immortals. But an addition to deluxe just now would be a wanton ick-yacket. All of this may have been a bit sophistical, but it was sound business from the publisher's point of view, and conveyed through the media of Whitaker's unaffected urbanity, it convinced Doria. I listened to her account of it with a new moon of a smile across my face, or across whatever part of oneself one smiles with when one's face is constrained to immobility. I'm so glad I plucked up courage to come and see you, Mr. Wittekind. She said, I feel much happier. I'm quite content to leave Adrienne's reputation in your hands. I wish indeed I had come to see you before. I wish you had, said he. Mr. Chain has been most kind, but— And Jafferit Chain isn't you, he laughed. But all the same he's a splendid fellow and an admirable man of business. In what way? she asked rather coldly. Well, so prompt. That's the very last word I should apply to him. He took an unconscionable time, said Doria. He had a very difficult and delicate work of revision to do. Your husband's work was a first draft. The novel had to be pulled together. He did it admirably. That sort of thing takes time, although it was a labour of love. It merely meant writing him bits of scenes. Oh, Mr. Wittekind, she cried, reverting to an old grievance. I do wish I could see exactly what he wrote and what Adrienne wrote. I've been so worried. Why do your printers destroy all those manuscripts? They don't, said Wittekind. They don't get them nowadays. They print from a typed copy. The great Doria was printed from my husband's original manuscript. Wittekind smiled and shook his head. No, my dear Mrs. Baldero, from two typed copies, one in England and one in America. Mr. Chay told me that in order to save time he sent you Adrienne's original manuscript with his revisions. I'm sure you must have misunderstood him, said Wittekind. I've read the typed script myself. I've never seen a line of your husband's manuscript. But the Darmond Gate was printed from Adrienne's manuscript. No, no, no. That too I read in type. Doria rose, and the colour fled from her cheeks, and her great dark eyes grew bigger, and she brought down her little gloved hand on the writing desk by which the publisher Cross Need was sitting. He rose too. Mr. Jane has definitely told me that both Adrienne's original manuscripts went to the printers and were destroyed by the printers. It's impossible, said Wittekind, in much perplexity. You're making some extraordinary mistake. I'm not. Mr. Chay would not tell me a lie. Wittekind drew himself up. And neither would I, Mrs. Baldero. Allow me. He took up his house and telephone. Asked Mr. Forrest to come to me at once. He turned to Doria. Let us get to the bottom of this. Mr. Forrest is my literary adviser. Everything goes through his hands. They waited in silence until Mr. Forrest appeared. You remember the Baldero manuscripts? Of course. What were they, manuscript or type script? Type script? Have you ever seen any of Mr. Baldero's original manuscript? No. Do you think that any of it has ever come into the office? I'm sure it hasn't. Thank you, Mr. Forrest. The reader retired. You see, said Wittekind, then where are the original manuscripts of The Diamond Gate and The Grated Lawry? I'm very sorry, dear Mrs. Baldero, but I have no means of knowing. Mr. Chains said they were sent here and used by the printers and destroyed by the printers. I'm sure, so Wittekind, there's some muddled misunderstanding. Jeffrey Chains in his own line is a distinguished man and a man of unblemished honour. A word or two will tear up everything. He's in Madagascar. Then wait till he comes back. Doria insisted. And who in the world can blame her for insisting? You may think me a silly woman, Mr. Wittekind, but I'm not. Not to the extent of an hysterical invention. Mr. Chains has told me definitely that those two manuscripts came to your office, that the books were printed from them, and that they were destroyed by the printers. And I, said Wittekind, give you my word of honour, and I have also given you independent testimony that no manuscript of your husband has ever entered this office. I suppose they'd come in his handwriting. Would they have been destroyed? Certainly not. Every sheet would have been returned with the proofs. Type, copy, mail may not be returned. But to autograph copy is valuable. Naturally. The manuscripts of agents' novels might be worth a lot of money. Quite a lot of money. So you don't think Mr. Chains destroyed them? It's an act of folly of which a literary man like Mr. Chains would be, like Mr. Chains would be incapable. And you've never seen any of it? I've given you my word of honour. Then it's very extraordinary, said Doria. It is, said Wittekind, stiffly. She thrust out her hand and flashed a generous glance. Forgive me for being bewildered, but it's so upsetting. You have nothing whatever to do with it. It's all Jeffrey Chains. She looked up at the loosely built, kindly man. It's for him to give explanations. In the meanwhile I leave my dear, dear husband's memory in your hand, to keep green, as you say. Tears came into her eyes. And you will, won't you? The pathos of her attitude dissolved all resentment. He bent over her, still holding her hand. You may be quite sure of that, said he. Even we publishers have our ideals. And our purist is to distribute through the world the works of a man of genius. So, Doria, having telephoned for permission to come and see us on urgent business, arrived at Northland late in the afternoon, full of the virtue of Wittekind and the vices of Jeffrey. She gave us a full account of her interview, and appealed to me for explanations of Jeffrey's extraordinary conduct. I upgraded myself bitterly for having counseled her to bite Wittekind. I ought instead to have thrown every possible obstacle in the way of her meeting him. I ought to have foreseen this question of the manuscripts, the one weak spot in our whip of deception. Now, I may be a liar when driven by necessity from the paths of truth, but I am not an accomplished liar. It's not my fault. Mere providence has guided my life through such gentle pastures that I have had no practice worth speaking of. Barbara, too, is an amateur in mendacity. Both of us were sorely put to it under Doria's indignant and suspicious cross-examination. You saw the original manuscript of the Great Adlauri? Yes, I lied. Did you see the original manuscript of the Diamond Gate? No, I lied again. Was it among Adrian's papers? Not to my knowledge. Probably if Adrian didn't send it to the printers, he destroyed it. I don't believe he destroyed it. Jeffrey has got it, and he's also got the manuscript of the Great Adlauri. What does he want them for? That's a leading question, my dear, which I can't answer because I don't know whether he has them or not. In fact, I know nothing whatever about them. It sounds horrid and ungracious, Hillary, after all you've done for me, said Doria, but I really think you ought to know something. From her point of view, and from any outside person's point of view, she was perfectly right. My bland ignorance was disgraceful. If she had brought an action against us for recovery of these wretched manuscripts, and we managed to keep the essential secret, both Council and Jant would have flayed me alive. Put yourself in her place for a minute. God knows I tried to do so hard enough, and you'll see the logic of her position all through. She was not a woman of broad human sympathies and generous outlook. She was intense and narrow. Her whole being had been concentrated on Adrian during their brief married life. It was concentrated now on his memory. To her, as to all the world, he flamed a dazzling meteor. Her thoughts, which were many and hard to bear with, all sprang from the bigotry of love. Nothing had happened to clout her faith. She'd come up against many incomprehensible things, the delay in publication of Adrian's book, the change of title, the burning of Adrian's last written words on the blotting-pad, the vivid pictures that were obviously not Adrian's, the consignment to a printer's limbo of the original manuscripts, my own placid disassociation from the literary side of the executorship. She had accepted them, not without protest, but she had, in fact, accepted them. Now she struck a wreath of things more incomprehensible still. Jeffrey had lied to her outrightously. I, for one, hold her justified in her indignation. But what on earth could I do? What on earth could my poor barber do? We sat, both of us, racking our brains for some fantastic invention, while Doria, like a diminutive tragedy queen, walked about my library, invading against Jeffrey and crying for her manuscripts. And I did not know anything at all about them. She had every reason to reproach me. Barbara, feeling very uncomfortable, said, You mustn't blame me, Hillary. When Adrian died, each of the executors took charge of a special department. Jeffrey Chang did not interfere with Hillary's management of financial affairs, and Hillary let Jeffrey free with the literary side of things. It has worked very well. This silly muddle about the manuscripts doesn't matter a little bit. But it does matter, cried Doria. And it did. Now that she knew that those sacred manuscripts written by the dear, dead hand had not been destroyed by printers, every fibre of her passionate self craved their possession. We argued futilely, as people must, who haven't the ghost of a case. But why has Jeffrey lied? The manuscript of the diamond gate, I declared, again perjury myself, has nothing whatever to do with Jeffrey and me. As I've told you, it was not among Adrian's papers which we went through together. We are narrowed down to the greater glory. Possibly, said I, with a despairing flash, Jeffrey had to put it about so much and deface it with his own great scroll that he thought it might pain you to see it, and say he told you that it had disappeared at the printers. Now that I remember, he did say something of the kind. Yes, he did, said Barbara. Doria brushed away the hypothesis. You poor things, you're merely saying that to shield him. A blind imbecile could see through you. I've already apologised to you for our being the unconvincing liars that we were. You know nothing more about it than I do. You ought to, as I've already said, but you don't. In fact, you know considerably less. Shall I tell you where the manuscripts are of the present moment? No, my dear, said Barbara, in the plaintive voice of one who has come to the end of a profitless talk. For you cannot imagine how utterly weary to be were with the whole of the miserable business. Let us wait till Jaffer comes home. It won't be so very long. Yes, Doria, said I soothingly. Barbara's right. You can't condemn a man without a hearing. Doria laughed scornfully. Oh, can't I? I'm a woman, my dear friend. And when a woman condemns a man unheard, she's much more merciful than when she condemns him after listening to his pleadings. Then she gets really angry, and perhaps does the man injustice. I gasped at the monstrous proposition. But Barbara did not seem to detect anything particularly wrong about it. At any rate, said I, whether you condemn him or not, we can't do anything until he comes home. So you'd better leave it at that. Very well, said Doria, let us leave it for the present. I don't want to be more of a worry to you, dear people, than I can help. But that's where Adrian's manuscripts are, both of them. And she pointed to the key of Jaffrey's flat, hanging with its staring label against my library wall. Of course, it was rather mean to throw the entire eros onto Jaffrey. But again, what could we do? Doria put her pistol at our heads, and demanded Adrian's original manuscripts. She had every reason to believe in their existence. Vittagai had never seen them, Vandal and Goth, and every kind of barbarian that she considered Jaffrey to be, it was inconceivable that he had deliberately destroyed them. It was equally inconceivable that he had sold the precious things for vulgar money. They remained, therefore, in his possession. Why did he lie? We could supply no satisfactory answer. And the more solutions we offered, the more did we confirm in her mind the suspicion of dark and nefarious dealings. If it were only to gain time in order to think and consult, we had to refer her to the absent Jaffrey. My dear, said I to Barbara when we were alone. We're an adhesive of a mess. I'm afraid we are. Henceforward, said I, we're going to live like selfish pigs, with no thought about any of what about ourselves, and our own little pig, and about anything outside our nice comfortable style. We'll do nothing of the kind, said Barbara. You'll see, said I, I'm a larn of egotism when I'm roused. We dined, and had a pleasant evening. Doria did not raise the disastrous topic, but talked of Marion Bad and her visits, and discussed the modern tendencies of the drama. She prided herself on being in the forefront of progress, and found no dramatic salvation outside the most advanced productions of the Incorporated Stage Society. I pleaded for beauty, which she called wedding-cake. She pleaded for courage and truth in the presentation of actual life. Which I called a dull and stupid photography, which any dismal fool could do. We had quite an exacting, and entirely profitless, argument. I'm not going to listen any longer, she cried at last, to your silly old early Victorian platitudes. And I, I retorted, I'm not going to be brow-beaten in my own home by one foot nothing of crankiness and shiffle. So, laughingly, we parted for the night, the best of friends. If only I thought she could sweep her head clear of Adrian, what a fascinating little person she might be. And I understood how it had come to pass that our hulking old ogre had fallen in love with her so desperately. The next morning I was in the garden, superintending the planting of some roses in her new bed. Wendoria, in hat and furs, came through my library of window, and sang out a good-bye. I hurried to her. Surely not going already, I thought you were at least staying to lunch. No, she had to get back to town. The car, ordered by Barbara, was waiting to take her to the station. But I'll see you into the train, said I. Oh, please don't trouble. I will trouble, I laughed, and I accompanied her down the slope to the front door, worse to Barbara by the car, and frankling with the luggage. Doria and I drove to the station. For the few minutes before the train came in, we walked up and down the platform. She was in high spirits, full of jest and laughter, and unwanted flush in her cheeks and her brightness and her deep eyes rendered her perfectly captivating. I haven't seen you looking so well and so pretty for ever such a long time, I said. The flush deepened. You and Barbara have done me all the good in the world. You always do. Northland is a sort of fontaine de juvance for weary people. This was as graceful as could be. And when she took hands with me a short while afterwards, through the carriage window, she thanked me for our long sufferance, with more spontaneous cordiality than she'd ever before exhibited. I returned to my roses, feeling that, after all, we had done something to help the poor little lady on her way. If I'd been a cat, I should have purred. After an hour or so, Barbara summoned me from my contemplative occupation. Yes, dear," said I, the library window. Have you written to Rodgers?" Rodgers was a plumber. He's a degraded wretch, said I, and unworthy of receiving a letter from a clean-minded man. Meanwhile, said Barbara, the servant's bathroom continues to be unusable. Good God! said I! Does Rodgers hold the cleanliness of this household in his awful hands? He does. Then I will sink my pride and write to him. Right now, said Barbara, leading to me to my chair, you ought to have done it three days ago. So with three days of bathruses of my domestic staff upon my conscience, and with Barbara at my elbow, I wrote to my summons. I turned in my chair, holding it up in my hand. Is this sufficiently dignified and imperious? I began to reclaim it. Sir, it has been brought to my notice at the pipes. I broke off short. Hello, said I, my eyes on the wall. What has become of the key of Geoffrey's flat? There was the brass-headed nail on which I'd hung it impertinently and nakedly bright. The label key had vanished. You've got it in your pockets, as usual, sir Barbara. I may say that I have a habit of losing things and setting the household from the butler to the lower meritums of the kitchen in frantic search, and calling in gardeners and chauvers and nurses and wives and children to help. Only to discover that I have had the Richard object in my pocket all the time. Sir accustomed his Barbara to this wolf-cry, and that if I came up to her without my head and informed her that I had lost it, she would be profoundly skeptical. But this time I was blameless. I haven't touched it, I declared, and I saw it this morning. I don't know about this morning, sir Barbara, but I grant you it was there yesterday evening because Doria drew our attention to it. Doria! I cried, and I rose with mouth agape and our eyes met in a sudden stare. Good heavens! Do you think she's taken it? Who else? said I. She came out from here to say good-bye to me in the garden. She had the opportunity. She was preternaturally animated and demonstrative at the station. Your sexist little guileful way ever since the world began. She had the stolen key about her. She's going straight to Geoffrey's flat to hunt for those manuscripts. Well, let her, said Barbara. We know she can't find them because they don't exist. But my darling Barbara, I cried. Everything else does, and everything else is there, and there's not a blessed thing locked up in the place. Do you mean? she cried agast. Yes, I do. I must get up to town at once and stop her. I'll come with you, said Barbara. So once more on altruistic errand I motored post-haste to London. We alighted at St. Quentin's mansion. My friend to the porter came out to receive us. Has a lady been here with a key of Mr. Chains' flat? No, sir, not to my knowledge. We drew breaths of relief. Our journey had been something of a strain. Thank goodness, said Barbara. Should a lady come? Don't allow her to enter the flat, said I. I shouldn't give a strange lady entrance in any case, said the porter. Good, said I, and I was about to go. But Barbara, with her ready common sense, took me aside and whispered, Why not take all these compromising manuscripts home with us? In my lettercase, I had the half-forgotten power of attorney that Jaffer had given me at Avra. I showed it to the porter. I wanted to get some things out of Mr. Chains' flat. Certainly, sir, said the porter, I'll take you up. We ascended in the lift. The porter opened Jaffer's door. We entered the sitting-room. And there, in a wilderness of ransacked drawers and strewn papers, with a head against the cannonball on the half-rug, lay a tiny, black, moaning heap of a woman. Chapter 23 If a ministering angel walks abroad through this world of many sorrows, it is my wife Barbara. To her and to her alone did the soul-stricken little creature owe her life and her reason. For a fortnight she scarcely left Doria's room, sleeping for odd hours anywhere, and snatching meals with the casual swiftness of a swallow. For a whole fortnight she wrestled with the powers of darkness, which, like a Pollyon, straggled quite over all the breadth of the way, and by sheer valiancy and beauty of heart, she made them spread forth their dragon's wings and speed them away, so that Doria for a season saw them no more. How she fought them with what weapons? Who am I to tell you? These things are written down, but in a book which no human eye can see. We carried her, moaning and distraught from that room of awful revelation. Put her in the car, and brought her back to Northlands. It was the only thing to be done. Barbara's instinct foresaw madness if we took her to the flat in St. John's Wood. Her father's house, her natural refuge, was equally impossible. For what explanation could we have given to the worthy but uncomprehending man? He would have called in doctors to minister to a mind afflicted with the disease beyond their power of diagnosis. Unless, of course, we made public the facts of the tragedy, which was unthinkable. Barbara's instinct pierced surely through the gloom. The first coherent words that Doria said were, Let me stay with you for a little. I've nowhere in the world to go. I can't ask father, and I can't go back home. It would drive me mad. Of course it would have driven her mad to return to the haunted flat. Haunted now by no gracious ghost, but by an unutterable presence, the thought of which, even in her quiet, lavender-scented country-bedroom, made her scream of nights. For she knew all. To save her reason, Barbara, with her wonderful tenderness, had bridged over the chasms between her stark peaks of discovery. She knew all that we knew. Further attempts at deception would have been vain cruelty. Barbara could palliate the offence. She could show how irresistible had been the temptation. She could prove how our love for ageing had been unshaken by disastrous knowledge, and urge that Doria's love should be unshaken likewise. She could apply all the healing remedies of which she only has the secret. But she could not leave the poor soul to stumble blindly in uncertainty. Doria could never enter her disallowed paradise again. Even I, when I went through the place in order to make arrangements for closing it all together, felt a teeth-chattering shiver in the condemned cell where Adrian had worked out his doom. It had been sacrosanct. Not a thing had been disturbed. There was the iron safe empty, but he had a grim receptacle of abominable secrets. The quill-pen, its point stained with idle ink, lay on the office-writing table, and the blotting pad was still there under a clump of dusty, unused scribbling paper. On a little stool in the corner stood the half-empty decanter of brandy, and a glass and a siphon of soda-water. Gnus knows I'm not a superstitious or even an imaginative man. I have been in that room before, and had hated it, on account of its poignant associations. Nothing transcendental had affected me. But now I shuddered, physically shuddered, as though the cubic space were informed with a spirit in the torture of an everlasting despair. Doria not knowing. He could have borne his punishment. But now Doria knew. He had lost her love, the rock on which he had built his hope of salvation. He was damned to eternity. It is the supreme and unspeakable horror of eternal life that you cannot dash your head against a wall unplunge into nothingness. Yet he tried. The awful presence of Adrian was dashing his head against those bare and ghastly walls. I never was so glad to breathe God's honest November fog again. Of course my fright was a silly matter of nerves, but I would not have stepped in that flat for anything in the world. I had to make, of course, another expedition to Jaffrey's chambers in order to restore to order the chaos that Doria had made. She had ransacked every drawer in the place and strewn the contents of the Old Portmanteau, Adrian's mass of incoherent manuscript about the floor. I did what I ought to have done in my first visit. I brought the tragic lumber to Northlands, and, having made a bonfire in a corner of the kitchen garden, burned the whole lot. Why Jaffrey had not got rid of the evidence of Adrian's guilt, I could not at the time imagine. It was only later that I heard the trivial and mechanical reason. He could not burn the papers in his flat because he had no fire, only the electric radiator. You try in these circumstances to destroy five or six thousand sheets of thick paper and see how you get on. Jaffrey had his idea when he transferred the manuscript from Adrian's study. On his next voyage he would take the Portmanteau with him, weighted with the cannonball which he used after his bath for physical exercise, and throw it overboard. By singular ill luck he had started on his two voyages that year, if a channel crossing could be termed a voyage, at a moment's notice. In each case he had not had occasion to call at his chambers, and a destroying journey had yet to be made. As for discovery of the secrets lying in unlocked receptacles, who was there to discover them? Such friends as he had would never pry into his private concerns, and as for housemaids and waiters and porters, the whole matter to them was unintelligible. While he was leaving in St. Quentin's mansions he considered himself secure. When he realised at Avre that he would be absent for some months he put things into my charge. That I bitterly regretted not having put tinder lock and key or taken steps to destroy papers and manuscripts, I need not say. For a long time I felt the guiltiest wretch outside prison in the three kingdoms. If I had been a wild man of the jungle, like Jaffrey, it would not have mattered. But I have always prided myself on being—not the last word, for that would not be consonant with my natural modesty, but, say, the penultimate word of our modern civilisation. And the memory of having acted like an ingenuous child of nature still burns whenever it floats across my brain. Metaphorically Jaffrey and I sobbed with remorse on each other's bosoms, and called ourselves all the picturesque synonyms for careless fools we could think of. But that, naturally, did not a bit of good to anybody. The fact was accomplished. Our dear Humpty Dumpty had had his great fall, and not all the king's horses and all the king's men could ever set Humpty Dumpty up again. Greek tragedies are all very well in their way. They are vastly interesting in the inevitableness of their prearranged doom. M'akivou pal, I have read all of them, and I like them. I've even seen some of them acted. I have seen, for instance, the Agamemnon, given by the boys of Bradfield College, in their model open-air Greek theatre, built out of a chalk bit. And I have sat gripped from beginning to end by the tremendous drama. I'm not talking foolishly. I know as much as the old man need to know about Greek tragedy. But in spite of Aristotle, water had been strangled to birth like all other bland doctrinaires, and of all the doctrinaires on art there has been none so blandly egregious since the early morning long ago, when the prehistoric artist who drew an elk on the omoplate of a bison was clubbed by the superior person of his day who could not draw for nuts. In spite of Aristotle and the rest of the theorists, I assert that, as far as my experience goes, in the ordinary weary modern life to which we are accustomed, doom and inevitableness do not matter a hang. If we have any common sense, we can dodge them. Most of us do. Of course, if a woman marries a congenital idiot, there are bound to be ructions. Here we are entering the domain of pathology, which is as doomful as you please. But in our ordinary modern life 90% of the tragedies are determined by sheer million-to-one fortuities. The history of our great Cromerall trials, for instance, is a romance of coincidence. It is your melodramatist and not your Aristotelian purist that knows what he's talking about when he writes a play. He only has to look about him and draw what happens in real life. That there may be any eternal, puckish, malice arranging and deranging human destinies is another question. I am neither a theologian nor a metaphysician, and I do not desire to discuss the subject. I only maintain that, had it not been for sheer chance, Agent Secret would never have been discovered a second time. I cannot see any doom about it. A series of sheer silly accidents on the part of Geoffrey and myself have brought Doria face to face with these incriminating papers. As for her having gained access to the flat without the porter's knowledge, that had been calculation on her part. She had watched at the street entrance until he had taken someone up in the lift, and then she had mounted the interminable stairs. I could have caught Geoffrey by letter at Genoa or Marseille, but in view of his imminent return I did not write to him. What useful purpose would have been served? He would have left the steamship Vesta and travelled post-hace overland, dragging with him a resentful Lyosha, and rushed like a mad bull into an upheaval in which he could have no place. We had arranged by correspondence that, after he had parted from the good Captain Maturin at Havela, he would come straight to us, in order to leave Lyosha temporarily in our care. For what else could be done with her? It didn't bring her then, according to programme. It would be far better, we agreed, Barbara and I, to let them fulfill their lunatic adventure undisturbed, and on Jaffrey's arrival at Northland's to break the disastrous tidings. He would give us time to watch Doria and see what direction the resultant of the forces now tearing her soul would take. Let Jaffrey stay away as long as possible, said Barbara. I can't be bothered with him, and with his old voyage could be extended for a year. The first time I met Doria, when she crawled out of her room, a great pity smote my heart. The ivory of her face had turned to wax, and she had dwindled into a fragile reed, and in her eyes quivered the apprehension of an ill-treated dog. I put my arm round her and hugged her reassuringly, not knowing what else to do. I mumbled a few silly words. Then I settled her down before the drawing-room far, and rushed out into the garden and cut the last poor, lingering autumn roses, and, returning, cast them into her lap. And we talked hard about the roses, and I told her which were Madame Abil Chatinay, which Machies de Salisbury, and which Frau Karl Droska, which Lady Ursula, and which Lady Hillingdon. We did not refer at all to unhappy things. It was any some days afterwards that she ventured to raise the veil of her awful desolation. But she had no need to tell me. Any fool could have divined it. Together with far less shattering of idols has many a woman's reason been brought down. And in our poor Doria's case it was not only the shattering of idols. Henry dear, she said, with a mournful attempt at a smile, I can't go on living here forever. Why not? I asked. This is a vast barrack of a place, and even just a bit of a wee white mouse. And we love our pets. Why do you want to go? We were walking up and down the drive. It was a warm, damp morning, and the trees shaken by the mild southwestern shed their leaves around us in a golden shower. And the leaves that had fallen lay sodden on the grass-borders. Here and there a surviving blossom of antirhinums swaggered among its withered brethren, as if to maintain the illusion of summer. A partridge or two whirred across the path from cops to meadow. The gentle sadness of the autumn day had moved her to discourse on the mutability of mundane things. Hence, by chain of association, I suppose, her sudden remark, I don't want to go," she replied. I should like to stay in the dreamy piece of Northland's forever. But I have been a pet for such a long time, for years, and I have assured myself to be such a bad pet, biting the hand that fed me. I better not talk foolishly. She moved her small shoulder. It's true. While the three of you, you, and Barbara, and Geoffrey, who were doing for me what had never been done for another human being, I was all the time snarling and snapping. I can't make out how you can bear the sight of me," she clenched her hand, and straightened her arms down tense. The thought of it scorches me. She cried suddenly. What have you did, dear, that I was so natural, and we understood it all. How could we blame you? We had, in fact, blamed her on many occasions, not being as gods to whom human hearts are open books. But this was not the occasion on which to tell her so. I don't like the devil being called the father of lives. I am convinced that the discoverer of mendacity was a warm-hearted philanthropist, who has never received due credit, and that the devil, having seized hold of his discovery, perverted it to his own diabolical uses. It is the sort of plagiaristic thing that devils, whether they promote ancient Gehenna's or modern companies, have been doing since the world began. That doesn't make it any the easier to me, said Doria, for horrible things I said and did the ghastliness of it. My dear girl, I interrupt it as kindly as I could. Don't let this mere fringe of tragedy worry you." She laughed shrilly, with a set white face, which is the most unmerthal kind of laugh you can imagine. Don't you know that it is the fringe that is the maddening irritation? The big central thing numbs and stupefies when it doesn't kill. And for some reason—she threw out her little gloved hands—the big thing hasn't killed me. It has paralysed me. The springs of feeling—she clutched her bosom—are dried up. My heart is withered and dead. I can't explain. For all the dead things I am not responsible. I have gone through hell the last two or three weeks, and they have been burned up altogether. But what hasn't been burned up is the fringe. As you call it, that's only red-hot. It scorches me, and I can't sleep for the torture of it. She stopped, unfronting me, laid an appealing touch on my arm. Oh, Hilary, forgive me. I didn't mean to go on in this wild way. I thought I had a better hold on myself. I don't see, said I, why you shouldn't unburden your heart to one who has proved himself to be a friend, not only of yours, but of Adrian. She released me, and with a wide gesture swayed across the gravel path. I stepped to her side, and mechanically we walked on, a few paces before either of us spoke. I have told you, she said at last, I have no heart to unburden. There never was an Adrian. There was indeed, said I, warmly. Yours, not mine. Have you never given us for him, then? I asked, earnestly. She halted again, and looked at me, and at the back of her great eyes gleamed black ice. No, she said. I went straight to bedrock. He was the father of your dead child, said I. Her small frame heaved, and she looked away from me down the drive. I can only thank God that the child didn't live. Barbara had told me something of the fear in which she seemed to hold Adrian's memory, but I had not in the least realized it till now, when I heard the profession from my own lips. In fact, I know that she had never yet spoken to Barbara with such passionate directness. He oughtn't to say such a thing, Doria, I said sternly. I am as God made me. Adrian loved you. He sinned for your sake, in order to get you. She dismissed the argument with a gesture. You must have pity on him, I insisted, for the unspeakable torment of those months of baroness of aborted of attempts at creation—she was silent for a moment—having reached the front gates, we turned, and began to walk up the drive. Then she said, Yes, I do pity him. It's enough to tear one's brains out—his, when he was alive, and mine now. The thought of it will freeze myself for all eternity. I can't tell you what I feel. She cast out her hands imploringly to the autumn fields. I pity him as I would pity someone remote from me—a criminal whom I might have seen done to death by awful tortures. It's a matter of the brain, not of the heart. No, I don't. Not of the heart. No, I have all the understanding, but I can't find the pardon. That will come, said I. In the next while, perhaps, not in this—her tone of finality forbade argument, besides what was there to argue about—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'd been living, first on stone and property, now on charity—Jaffrey'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 Wittigind money. Castleton's people and Geoffrey must be paid. Tom Caston, I said, was alone in the world, and Geoffrey's not the man to take back a free gift, beautifully given. If you don't like to keep the money, I appreciate your feelings. You can devote it to philanthropic purposes. Yes, I might do that, she agreed. But is this fraud, this false reputation, to go on forever? I'm afraid it must, said I. Nobody would be benefited by throwing such a bombshell of scandal into society. If anybody living was suffering from wrong, it might be different, but there's no reason to blacken unnecessarily the name you bear. Then you really think I should be justified in keeping the secret? She asked anxiously. I think it would be outrageous of you to do anything else, said I. That eases my mind. If it were essential for me to make things public, I would do it. I'm not a coward. But I should die of the disgrace. To poor Adrien, said I. She flashed a quick, defiant glance. To me. To Adrien, I insisted, smitten with a queer inspiration. He sinned. The unpardonable sin, if you like. But he expiated it. He's expiating it now. And you love him. And it's for his sake not yours that you shrink from public disgrace. You were so irrevocably wrapped up in him. I pursued my advantage, that you feel yourself a partner in his guilt. Which means that you love him still. She raised a stark, terror-stricken face. I touched her shoulder. Then all of a sudden she collapsed and broke into an agony of sobs and tears. I drew her to a desolate, rustic bench, and put my arm round her, and let her sob herself out. After that, we did not speak of Adrien. End of Chapter 23