But there was a race of Chosen Ones, to which he belonged, whose untamable and omni-concupiscent essence kept them outside the dull conjugal pale. For such as him, nineteen hundred women at once, scattered within the regions of the seven circ.u.mferential seas. He loved them all. Woman as woman was the joy of the earth. It was only the silly spectrum of civilisation that broke Woman up into primary colours--black, yellow, brunette, blonde--he d.a.m.ned civilisation.
"To listen to you," said I, when he paused for breath, "one would think you were a devil of a fellow."
"I am," he declared. "I"m a Universalist. At any rate in theory, or rather in the conviction of what best suits myself. I"m one of those men who are born to be free, who"ve got to fill their lungs with air, who must get out into the wilds if they"re to live--G.o.d! I"d sooner be snowed up on a battlefield than smirk at a d.a.m.ned afternoon tea-party any day in the week! If I want a woman, I like to take her by her hair and swing her up behind me on the saddle and ride away with her--"
"Lord! That"s lovely," said I. "How often have you done it?"
"I"ve never done that exactly, you silly a.s.s," said he. "But that"s my att.i.tude, my philosophy. You see how impossible it would be for me to tie myself for life to the stay-strings of one flip of a thing in petticoats."
"You"re a blessed innocent," said I.
Adrian sauntering through the French window of my library joined us on the terrace. Jaffery, forgetful of his att.i.tude, his philosophy, caught him by the shoulders and shook him in pain-dealing exuberance. Old Adrian was going to be married. He wished him joy. Yet it was no use his wishing him joy because he already had it--it was a.s.sured. That exquisite wonder of a girl. Adrian was a lucky devil, a pestilentially lucky devil. He, Jaffery, had fallen in love with her on sight... .
"And if I hadn"t told him that Miss Jornicroft was engaged to you," said I, "he would have taken her by the hair of her head and swung her up behind him on the saddle and ridden away with her. It"s a little way Jaffery has."
In spite of sunburn, freckles and pervading hairiness of face, Jaffery grew red.
"Shut up, you silly fool!" said he, like the overgrown schoolboy that he was.
And I shut up--not because he commanded, but because Barbara, like spring in deep summer, and Doria, like night at noontide, appeared on the terrace.
Soon afterwards lunch was announced. By common conspiracy Jaffery and Susan upset the table arrangements, insisting that they should sit next each other. He helped the child to impossible viands, much to my wife"s dismay, and told her apocalyptic stories of Bulgaria, somewhat to her puzzledom, but wholly to her delight. But when he proposed to fill her silver mug (which he, as G.o.dfather, had given her on her baptism) with the liquefied dream of Paradise that Barbara, _sola mortalium_, can prepare, consisting of hock and champagne and fruits and cuc.u.mber and borage and a blend of liqueurs whose subtlety transcends human thought, Barbara"s Medusa glare petrified him into a living statue, the crystal jug of joy poised in his hand.
"Why mayn"t I have some, mummy?"
"Because Uncle Jaff"s your G.o.dfather," said I. "And your mother"s hock-cup is a sinful l.u.s.t of the flesh. Spare the child and fill up your own gla.s.s."
"Don"t you know," said Barbara, "that this is Berkshire, not the Balkans? We don"t intoxicate infants here to make a summer holiday!"
At this rebuke he exchanged winks with my daughter, and refusing a handed dish of cutlets asked to be allowed to help himself to some cold beef on the sideboard. The butler"s a.s.sistance he declined. No Christian butler could carve for Jaffery Chayne. After a longish absence he returned to the table with half the joint on his plate. Susan regarded it wide-eyed.
"Uncle Jaff, are you going to eat all that?" she asked in an audible whisper.
"Yes, and you too," he roared, "and mummy and daddy and Uncle Adrian, if I don"t get enough to eat!"
"And Aunt Doria?"
Again he reddened--but he turned to Doria and bowed.
"In my quality of ogre only--a _bonne bouche_," said he.
It was said very charmingly, and we laughed. Of course Susan began the inevitable question, but Barbara hurriedly notified some dereliction with regard to gravy, and my small daughter was, so to speak, hustled out of the conversation. Jaffery by way of apology for his Gargantuan appet.i.te discoursed on the privations of travel in uncivilised lands. A lump of sour b.u.t.ter for lunch and a sardine and a hazelnut for dinner.
We were to fancy the infinite acc.u.mulation of hunger-pangs. And as he devoured cold beef and talked, Doria watched him with the somewhat aloof interest of one who stands daintily outside the railed enclosure of a new kind of hippopotamus.
The meal over we sought the deep shade of the terrace which faces due east. Jaffery, in his barbaric fashion, took Doria by the elbow and swept her far away from the wistaria arbour beneath which the remaining three of us were gathered, and when he fondly thought he was out of earshot, he set her beside him on the low parapet. My wife, with the responsibilities of all the Chancelleries of Europe knitted in her brow, discussed wedding preparations with Adrian. I, to whom the quality of the bath towels wherewith Adrian and his wife were to dry themselves and that of the sheets between which their housemaid was to lie, were matters of black and awful indifference, gave my more worthily applied attention to one of a new brand of cigars, a corona corona, that had its merits but lacked an indefinable soul-satisfying aroma; and I was on the pleasurable and elusive point of critical formulation, when Jaffery"s voice, booming down the terrace, knocked the discriminating nicety out of my head. I lazily shifted my position and watched the pair.
"You"re subtle and psychological and introspective and a.n.a.lytic and all that," Jaffery was saying--his light word about an ogre at lunch was not a bad one; sitting side by side on the low parapet they looked like a vast red-bearded ogre and a feminine black-haired elf--she had taken off her hat--engaged in a conversation in which the elf looked very much on the defensive--"and you"re always tracking down motives to their roots, and you"re not contented, like me, with the jolly face of things--"
"For an accurate diagnosis," I reflected, "of an individual woman"s nature, the blatant universalist has his points."
"Whereas, I, you see," he continued, "just buzz about life like a dunderheaded old b.u.mble-bee. I"m always busting myself up against gla.s.s panes, not seeing, as you would, the open window a few inches off. Do you see what I"m driving at?"
Apparently she didn"t; for while she was speaking, he threw away his corona corona--a dream of a cigar for nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand (I glanced at Adrian who had religiously preserved two inches of ash on his)--and hauled out pipe and tobacco-pouch. I could not hear what she said. When she had finished, he edged a span nearer.
"What I want you to understand," said he, "is that I"m a simple sort of savage. I can"t follow all these intricate henry Jamesian complications of feeling. I"ve had in my life"--he stuck pouch and pipe on the stone beside him--"I"ve had in my life just a few men I"ve loved--I don"t count women--men--men I"ve cared for, G.o.d knows why. Do you know why one cares for people?"
She smiled, shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
"The latest was poor Prescott--he has just pegged out--you"ll hear soon enough about Prescott. There was Tom Castleton--has Adrian told you about Castleton--?"
Again she shook her head.
"He will--of course--a wonder of a fellow--up with us at Cambridge. He"s dead. There only remains Hilary, our host, and Adrian."
As far as I could gather--for she spoke in the ordinary tones of civilised womanhood, whereas Jaffery, under the impression that he was whispering confidentially, bellowed like an honest bull--as far as I could gather, she said:
"You must have met hundreds of men more sympathetic to you than Mr.
Freeth and Adrian."
"I haven"t," he cried. "That"s the funny devil of it. I haven"t. If I was struck a helpless paralytic with not a cent and no prospect of earning a cent, I know I could come to those two and say, "Keep me for the rest of my life"--and they would do it"
"And would you do the same for either of them?"
Jaffery rose and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and towered over her.
"I"d do it for them and their wives and their children and their children"s children."
He sat down again in confusion at having been led into hyperbole. But he took her shoulders in his huge but kindly hands, somewhat to her alarm--for, in her world, she was not accustomed to gigantic males laying unceremonious hold of her--
"All I wanted to convey to you, my dear girl, is this--that if Adrian"s wife won"t look on me as a true friend, I"m ready to go away and cut my throat"
Doria smiled at him with pretty civility and a.s.sured him of her willingness to admit him into her inner circle of friends; whereupon he caught up his pouch and pipe and lumbered down the terrace towards us, shouting out his news.
"I"ve fixed it up with Doria"--he turned his head--"I can call you Doria, can"t I?" She nodded permission--what else could she do? "We"re going to be friends. And I say, Barbara, they"ll want a wedding-present.
What shall I give "em? What would you like?"
The latter question was levelled direct at Doria, who had followed demurely in his footsteps. But it was not answered; for from the drawing-room there emerged Franklin, the butler, who marched up straight to Jaffery.
"A lady to see you, sir"
"A lady? Good G.o.d! What kind of a lady?"
He stared at Franklin, in dismay.
"She came in a taxi, sir. The driver mistook the way, and put her down at the back entrance. She would not give her name."
"Tall, rather handsome, dressed in black?"
"Yes, sir."