Barbara came up to me blue eyed and innocent, and with a traitorous jerk, undid my beautiful white bow.
"There, now listen."
And I, dilapidated wretch, had to listen to the tale of crime. It appeared that Reynolds, my wife"s maid, in putting Liosha into a ready-made gown--a model gown I believe is the correct term--insisted on her being properly corseted. Liosha, agonisingly constricted, rebelled.
The maid was obdurate. Liosha flew at her with a pair of scissors. I think I should have done the same. Reynolds bolted from the room. So should I have done. I sympathised with both of them. Reynolds fled to her mistress, and, declaring it to be no part of her duty to wait on tigers, gave notice.
"We can"t lose Reynolds," said I.
"Of course we can"t."
"And we can"t pack Liosha off at a moment"s notice, so as to please Reynolds."
"Oh, you"re too wise altogether," said my wife, and left me to the tranquil completion of my dressing.
Liosha came down to dinner very subdued, after a short, sharp interview with Barbara, who, for so small a person, can put on a prodigious air of authority. As a punishment for bloodthirsty behaviour she had made her wear the gown in the manner prescribed by Reynolds; and she had apologised to Reynolds, who thereupon withdrew her notice. So serenity again prevailed.
In some respects Liosha was very childish. The receipt of letters, no matter from whom--even bills, receipts and circulars--gave her overwhelming joy and sense of importance. This harmless craze, however, led to another outburst of ferocity. Meeting the postman outside the gate she demanded a letter. The man looked through his bundle.
"Nothing for you this morning, ma"am."
"I wrote to the dressmaker yesterday," said Liosha, "and you"ve got the reply right there."
"I a.s.sure you I haven"t," said the postman.
"You"re a liar," cried Liosha, "and I guess I"m going to see."
Whereupon Liosha, who was as strong as a young horse, sprang to death-grapple with the postman, a puny little man, pitched him onto the side of the road and calmly entered into felonious possession of His Majesty"s mails. Then finding no letter she cast the whole delivery over the supine and gasping postman and marched contemptuously into the house.
The most astonishing part of the business was that in these outbreaks of barbarity she did not seem to be impelled by blind rage. Most people who heave a postman about a peaceful county would do so in a fit of pa.s.sion, through loss of nerve-control. Not so Liosha. She did these things with the bland and deadly air of an inexorable Fate.
The perspiration still beads on my brow when I think of the cajoling and bribing and bl.u.s.tering and lying I had to practise in order to hush up the matter. As for Liosha, both Jaffery and I rated her soundly. I explained loftily that not so many years ago, transportation, lifelong imprisonment, death were the penalties for the felony which she had committed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, handled the cleek.]
"You ought to have a jolly good thrashing," roared Jaffery.
At this Liosha, who had endured our abuse with the downcast eyes of angelic meekness, took a golfclub from a bag lying on the hall table and handed it to the red-bearded giant.
"I guess I do," she said. "Beat me."
And, as I am a living man, I swear that if Jaffery had taken her at her word and laid on l.u.s.tily she would have taken her thrashing without a murmur. What was one to do with such a woman?
Jaffery, considerably disconcerted, fingered the cleek. Gradually she raised her glorious eyes to him, and in them I was startled to see the most extraordinary doglike submission. He frowned portentously and shook his head. Her lips worked, and after a convulsive sob or two, she threw herself on the ground, clasped his knees, and to our dismay burst into a pa.s.sion of weeping. Barbara, rushing into the hall at this juncture, like a fairy tornado, released us from our embarra.s.sing position. She annihilated us with a sweeping glance of scorn.
"Oh, go away, both of you, go away!"
So we went away and left her to deal with Liosha.
Save for such little excursions and alarms the days pa.s.sed very pleasantly. Jaffery spent most of the sweltering hours of daylight (it was a blazing summer) in playing golf on the local course. Adrian and Doria trod the path of the perfect lovers, while I, to justify my position as President of the Hafiz Society, worked hard at a Persian Grammar. Barbara, the never idle, was in the meantime arranging for Liosha"s future. Her organising genius had brought Doria"s suggestion as to the First Cla.s.s London Boarding House into the sphere of practical things. The Boarding House idea alone would not work; but, combine it with Mrs. Considine, and the scheme ran on wheels.
"Even you," said Barbara, as though I were a sort of Schopenhauer, a professional disparager of her s.e.x--"even you have a high opinion of Mrs. Considine."
I had. Every one had a high opinion of Mrs. Considine. She was not very beautiful or very clever or very fascinating or very angelic or very anything--but she was one of those women of whom everybody has a high opinion. The impoverished widow of an Indian soldierman, with a son soldiering somewhere in India, she managed to do a great deal on very small means. She was a woman of the world, a woman of character. She knew how to deal with people of queer races. Heaven indicated her for appointment by Barbara as Liosha"s duenna in the Boarding House. Mrs.
Considine, herself compelled to live in these homes for the homeless, gladly accepted the proposal, came down, interviewed her charge, who happened then to be in a mood of meekness indescribable, and went away, so to speak, with her contract in her pocket. It was part of the programme that Mrs. Considine should tactfully carry on Liosha"s education, which had been arrested at the age of twelve, instil into her a sense of Western decorum, extend her acquaintance, and gradually root out of her heart the yearning to do her enemies to death. It was a capital programme; and I gave it the benediction of a smile, in which, seeing Barbara"s shrewd blue eyes fixed on me, I suppressed the irony.
When this was all settled Jaffery proclaimed himself the most care-free fellow alive. His. .h.i.therto grumpy and resentful att.i.tude towards Liosha changed. He established himself as fellow slave with her under the whip of Susan"s tyranny. It did one good to see these two magnificent creatures sporting together for the child"s, and incidentally their own, amus.e.m.e.nt. For the first time during their intercourse they met on the same plane.
"She"s really quite a good sort," said Jaffery.
But if it was pleasant to see him with Liosha, it was still more touching to watch his protective att.i.tude towards Doria. He seemed so anxious to do her service, so deferential to her views, so puzzle-headedly eager to reconcile them with his own. She took upon herself to read him little lectures.
"Don"t you think you"re rather wasting your life?" she asked him one day.
"Do you think I am?"
"Yes."
"Oh! But I work hard at my job, you know," he said apologetically--"when there"s one for me to do. And when there isn"t I kind of prepare myself for the next. For instance I"ve got to keep myself always fit."
"But that"s all physical and outside." She smiled, in her little superior way. "It"s the inside, the personal, the essential self that matters. Life, properly understood, is a process of self-development. If a human being is the same at the end of a year as he was at the beginning he has made no spiritual progress."
Jaffery pulled his red beard. "In other words, he hasn"t lived," said he.
"Precisely."
"And you think that I"m just the same sort of old animal from one year"s end to another and that I don"t progress worth a cent, and so, that I don"t live."
"I don"t want to say quite that," she replied graciously. "Every one must advance a little bit unless they deteriorate. But the conscious striving after spiritual progress is so necessary--and you seem to put it aside. It is such waste of life."
"I suppose it is, in a way," Jaffery admitted.
She pursued the theme, a flattered Egeria. "You see--well, what do you do? You travel about in out-of-the-way places and make notes about them in case the knowledge may be useful to you in the future. When you come across anything to kill, you kill it. It also pleases you to come across anything that calls for an exercise of strength. When there is a war or a revolution or anything that takes you to your real work, as you call it, you"ve only got to go through it and report what you see."
"But that"s just the difficulty," cried Jaffery. "It isn"t every chap that"s tough enough to come out rosy at the end of a campaign. And it isn"t every chap that can _see_ the things he ought to write about.
That"s when the training comes in."
Again she smiled. "I"ve no idea of belittling your profession, my dear Jaffery. I think it"s a n.o.ble one. But should it be the Alpha and Omega of things? Don"t you see? The real life is intellectual, spiritual, emotional. What are your ideals?"
Jaffery looked at her ruefully. Beneath those dark pools of eyes lay the spirituality that made her a mystery so sacred. He, great hulking fellow, was a gross lump of clay. Ideals?
"I don"t suppose I have any," said he.
"But you must. Everybody has, to a certain extent."
"Well, to ride straight and tell the truth--like the ancient Persians, I suppose it was the Persians--anyway it"s a sort of rough code I"ve got."
"Have you read Nietzsche?" she asked suddenly.