"My dear fellow, call it what you please," said I, anxious to avoid a duel of plates and gla.s.ses, for we were lunching on opposite sides of a table at his club.
"I please to call it," said he, "by the only conceivable t.i.tle that is adequate to such a work." Then he laughed, with a gleam of his old charm, and filled up my wine gla.s.s. "Anyhow, Wittekind, who has the commercial end of things in view, thinks it"s ripping." He lifted his gla.s.s. "Here"s to "G.o.d.""
"Here"s to the new book under a different name," said I.
When I told Barbara about this, she rather agreed with Wittekind. It all depended on the matter and quality of the book itself.
"Well, anyhow," said I, abhorrent of dissension, "thank Heaven the wretched composition"s nearly finished."
On the morning of the twenty-third came my cousin Eileen and her offspring, and in the afternoon came Liosha and Mrs. Considine. Jaffery met his dynamic widow with frank heartiness, and for the hour before bedtime, there were wild doings in the nursery, in which neither my wife, nor my cousin, nor Mrs. Considine, nor myself were allowed to partic.i.p.ate. When nurses sounded the retreat, our two Brobdingnagians appeared in the drawing-room, radiant, and dishevelled, with children sticking to them like flies. It was only when I saw Liosha, by the side of Jaffery, unconsciously challenging him, as it were, physical woman against physical man, with three children--two in her generous arms and one on her back--to his mere pair--that I realised, with the shock that always attends one"s discovery of the obvious, the superb Olympian greatness of the creature. She stood nearly six feet to his six feet two. He stooped ever so little, as is the way of burly men. She held herself as erect as a redwood pine. The depth of her bosom, in its calm munificence, defied the vast, thick heave of his shoulders. Her lips were parted in laughter shewing magnificent teeth. In her brown eyes one could read all the mysteries and tenderness of infinite motherhood. Her hair was anyhow: a debauched wreckage of combs and wisps and hairpins.
Her barbaric beauty seemed to hold sleekness in contempt. I wanted, just for the picture, half her bodice torn away. For there they stood, male and female of an heroic age, in a travesty of modern garb. Clap a pepperpot helmet on Jaffery, give him a skin-tight suit of chain mail, moulding all his swelling muscles, consider his red sweeping moustache, his red beard, his intense blue eyes staring out of a red face; dress Liosha in flaming maize and purple, leaving a breast free, and twist a gold torque through her hair, dark like the bronze-black shadows under autumn bracken; strip naked-fair the five nesting bits of humanity--it was an unpresented scene from Lohengrin or the Gotterdammerung.
I can only speak according to the impression produced by their entrance on an idle, dilettante mind. My cousin Eileen, a smiling lady of plump unimportance, to whom I afterwards told my fancy, could not understand it. Speaking entirely of physical attributes, she saw nothing more in Jaffery than an uncouth red bear, and considered Liosha far too big for a drawing-room.
When the children departed after an orgy of osculation, Jaffery surveyed with a twinkling eye the decorous quartette sitting by the fire. Then in his familiar fashion, he took his companion by the arm.
"They"re too grown up for us, Liosha. Let"s leave "em. Come and I"ll teach you how to play billiards."
So off they went, to the satisfaction of Barbara and myself. Nothing could be better for our Christmas merriment than such relations of comradeship. We had the cheeriest of dinners that evening. If only, said Jaffery, old Adrian and Doria were with us. Well, they were coming the next day, together with Euphemia and the four unattached men. As I said before, I had given up enquiring into the lodging of this host, but Barbara, doubtless, as is her magic way, had caused bedrooms and beds to smile where all had been blank before. She herself was free from any care, being in her brightest mood; and when Barbara gave herself up to gaiety she was the most delicious thing in the wide world.
In the morning the shadow fell. About eleven o"clock Franklin brought me a telegram into the library where Jaffery and I were sitting. I opened it.
"_Terrible calamity. Come at once. Boldero_."
I pa.s.sed it to Jaffery. "My G.o.d!" said he, and we stared at each other.
Franklin said:
"Any answer, sir?"
"Yes. "Boldero. Coming at once." And order the car round immediately--for London. Also ask Mrs. Freeth kindly to come here. Say the matter"s important." Franklin withdrew. "It"s Adrian," said I, my mind rushing back to my horrible apprehensions of the summer.
"Or Doria. I understood--" He waved a hand.
"Then Barbara must come."
"She would in any case. It may be Adrian, so I"ll come too, if you"ll let me."
Let the great, capable fellow come? I should think I would. "For Heaven"s sake, do," said I.
Barbara entered swinging housewifely keys.
"I"m dreadfully busy, dear. What is it?"
Then she saw our two set faces and stopped short. Her quick eyes fell on the telegram which Jaffery had put down in the arm of a couch, and before we could do or say anything, she had s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and read it.
She turned pale and held her little body very erect.
"Have you ordered the car?"
"Yes. Jaffery"s coming with us."
"Good, I"ll get on my coat. Send Eileen to me. I must tell her about house things."
She went out. Jaffery laid his heavy hand on my shoulder.
"What a wonder of a wife you"ve got!"
"I don"t need you to tell me that," said I.
We went downstairs to put on our coats and then round to the garage to hurry up the car.
"There"s some dreadful trouble at Mr. Boldero"s," I said to the chauffeur. "You must drive like the devil."
Barbara, veiled and coated, met us at the front door. She has a trick of doing things by lightning. We started; Barbara and Jaffery at the back, I sideways to them on one of the little chair seats. We had the car open, as it was a muggy day... . It is astonishing how such trivial matters stick in one"s mind... . We went, as I had ordained, like the devil.
"Who sent that telegram?" asked Barbara.
"Doria," said I.
"I think it"s Adrian," said Jaffery.
"I think," said Barbara, "it"s that silly old woman, Adrian"s mother.
Either of the others would have said something definite. Ah!" she smote her knee with her small hand, "I hate people with spinal marrow and no backbone to hold it!"
We tore through Maidenhead at a terrific pace, the Christmas traffic in the town clearing magically before us. Sometimes a car on an errand of life or death is recognised, given way to, like a fire engine.
"What makes you so dead sure something"s happened to Adrian?" Jaffery asked me as we thundered through the railway arch.
Then I remembered. I had told him little or nothing of my fears. Ever since I learned that Adrian was putting the finishing touches to his novel, I had dismissed them from my mind. Such accounts as I had given of Adrian had been in a jocularly satirical vein. I had mentioned his pontifical att.i.tude, the magnification of his office, his bombastic rhetoric over the Higher Life and the Inspiration of the Snows, and, all that being part and parcel of our old Adrian, we had laughed. Six months before I would have told Jaffery quite a different story. But now that Adrian had practically won through, what was the good of reviving the memory of ghastly apprehensions?
"Tell me," said Jaffery. "There"s something behind all this."
I told him. It took some time. We sped through Slough and Hounslow, and past the desolate winter fields. The grey air was as heavy as our hearts.
"In plain words," said Jaffery, "it"s G.P.--General Paralysis of the Insane."
"That"s what I fear," said I.
"And you?" He turned to Barbara.
"I too. Hilary has told you the truth."
"But Doria! Good G.o.d! Doria! It will kill her!"
Barbara put her little gloved fingers on Jaffery"s great raw hand. Only at weddings or at the North Pole would Jaffery wear gloves.
"We know nothing about it as yet. The more we tear ourselves to pieces now, the less able we"ll be to deal with things."
Through the bottle-neck of Brentford, the most disgraceful main entrance in the world into any great city, with bare room for a criminal double line of tramways blocked by heavy, horse-drawn traffic, an officially organised murder-trap for all save the shrinking pedestrian on the mean, narrow, greasy side-walk, we crawled as fast as we were able. Then through Chiswick, over Hammersmith Bridge, into the heart of London.
All London to cross. Never had it seemed longer. And the great city was smitten by a blight. It was not a fog, for one could see clearly a hundred yards ahead. But there was no sky and the air was a queer yellow, almost olive green, in which the main buildings stood out in startling meanness, and the distant ones were providentially obscured.