"She"ll be back in time for lunch. She had to run up to town on business. She sent you her love and Susie will do the honours."
His face brightened. "That"s all right. But you gave me a shock.
Northlands without Barbara--" He shook his head.
We drove off. The Chinese Puffhard excelled herself, and though she choked asthmatically did not really stop once until we were half way up the drive, when I abandoned her to the gardeners, who later on harnessed the donkey to her and pulled her into the motor-house. We dismounted, however, in the drive. A tiny figure in a blue smock came scuttling over the sloping lawn. The next thing I saw was the small blue patch somewhere in the upland region of Jaffery"s beard. Then boomed forth from him idiotic exclamations which are not worth chronicling, accompanied by a duet of ba.s.s and treble laughter. Then he set her astride of his bull neck and pitched his soft felt hat to Adrian to hold.
"Hang on to my hair. It won"t hurt," he commanded.
She obeyed literally, clawing two handfuls of his thick reddish shock in her tiny grasp, and Jaffery lumbered along like an elephant with a robin on his head, unconscious of her weight. We mounted to the terrace in front of the house and having established my guests in easy chairs, I went indoors to order such drink as would be refreshing on a sultry August noon. When I returned I found Jaffery, with Susan on his knee, questioning Adrian, after the manner of a primitive savage, on the subject of "The Diamond Gate," and Adrian, delighted at the opportunity, dazzling our simple-minded friend with publisher"s statistics.
"And you"re writing another? Deep down in another?" asked Jaffery. "Do you know, Susie, Uncle Adrian has just got to take a pen and jab it into a piece of paper, and--tchick!--up comes a golden sovereign every time he does it."
Susan turned her serene gaze on Adrian. "Do it now," she commanded.
"I haven"t got a pen," said he.
"I"ll fetch you one from Daddy"s study," she said, sliding from Jaffery"s knee.
Both Jaffery and Adrian looked scared. I, who was not the father of a feminine thing of seven years old for nothing, interposed, I think, rather tactfully.
"Uncle Adrian can only do it with a great gold pen, and poor old daddy hasn"t got one."
"I call that silly," replied my daughter. "Uncle Jaffery, have you got one?"
"No," said he, "You have to be born, like Uncle Adrian, with a golden pen in your mouth."
The lucky advent of the Archangel Gabriel, with a grin on his face and a doll in his mouth--the Archangel Gabriel, commonly known as Gabs, and so termed on account of his archi-angelic disposition, a hideous mongrel with a white patch over one eye and a brown patch over the other, with the nose of a collie and the legs of a Great Dane and the tail of a fox-terrier, whose mongreldom, however, Adrian repudiated by the bold a.s.sertion that he was a Zanzibar bloodhound--the lucky advent of this pampered and over-affectionate quadruped directed Susan"s mind from the somewhat difficult conversation. She ran off, forthwith, to the rescue or her doll; but later (I heard) her nurse was sore put to it to explain the mystery of the golden pen.
"So much for Adrian. I"m tired of the auriferous person," said I, waving a hand. "What about yourself? What about the dynamic widow?"
"Oh, d.a.m.n the dynamic widow," he replied, corrugating his serene and sunburnt forehead. "I"ve come down here to forget her. I"ll tell you about her later." Then he grinned, in his silly, familiar way, showing two rows of astonishingly white, strong teeth, between the hair on lip and chin.
"Well," said I, "at any rate give some account of yourself. What were you doing in Albania, for instance?"
"Prospecting," said he.
"In what--gold, coal, iron?"
"War," said he. "There"s going to be a h.e.l.l of a bust-up one of these days--and one of these days very soon--in the Balkans. From Scutari to Salonica to Rodosto, the whole blooming triangle--it"s going to be a battlefield. The war correspondent who goes out there not knowing his ground will be a silly a.s.s. The slim statesman like me won"t. See? So poor old Prescott--you must know Prescott of Reuter"s?--anyhow that was the chap--poor old Prescott and I went out exploring. When he pegged out with enteric I hadn"t finished, so I dumped his widow down at Cettinje where I have some pals, and started out again on my own. That"s all."
He filled another pint tumbler with the iced liquid (one always had to provide largely for Jaffery"s needs) and poured it down his throat.
"I don"t call that a very picturesque account of your adventures," said Adrian.
Jaffery grinned. "I"ll tell you all sorts of funny things, if you"ll give me time," said he, wiping his lips with a vast red and white handkerchief about the size of a ship"s Union Jack.
But we did not give him time; we plied him with questions and for the next hour he entertained us pleasantly with stories of his wanderings.
He had a Rabelaisian way of laughing over must of his experiences, even those which had a touch of the gruesome, and the laughter got into his speech, so that many amusing episodes were told in the roars of a hilarious lion.
Presently the familiar sound of the horn announced the return of Barbara. We sprang to our feet and descended to meet the car at the front porch. Jaffery, grinning with delight, opened the door, appeared to lift a radiant Barbara out of the car like a parcel and almost hugged her. And there they stood holding on to each other"s hands and smiling into each other"s faces and saying how well they looked, regardless of the fact that they were blocking the way for Doria, who remained in the car, I had to move them on with the reminder that they had the whole week-end for their effusions. Adrian helped Doria to alight, and to Doria then, for the first time, was presented Jaffery Chayne. Jaffery blinked at her oddly as he held her little gloved fingers in his enormous hand. And, indeed, I could excuse him; for she was a very striking object to come suddenly into the immediate range of a man"s vision, with her chiffon and her slenderness, and her black hat beneath which her great eyes shone from the startling, nervous, ivory-white face.
She smiled on him graciously. "I"m so glad to meet you." Then after a fraction of a second came the explanation. "I"ve heard so much of you."
He murmured something into his beard. Meeting his childlike gaze of admiration, she turned away and put her arm round Barbara"s waist. The ladies went indoors to take off their things, accompanied by Adrian, who wanted a lover"s word with Doria on the way. Jaffery followed her with his eyes until she had disappeared at the corner of the hall-stairs.
Then he took me by the arm and led me up towards the terrace.
"Who is that singularly beautiful girl?" he asked.
"Doria Jornicroft," said I.
"She"s the most astonishing thing I"ve ever seen in my life."
"I wouldn"t find her too astonishing, if I were you," said I with a laugh, "because there might be complications. She"s engaged to Adrian."
He dropped my arm. "Do you mean--she"s going to marry him?"
"Next month," said I.
"Well, I"m d.a.m.ned," said Jaffery. I asked him why. He did not enlighten me. "Isn"t he a lucky devil?" he asked, instead. "The most pestilentially lucky devil under the sun. But why the deuce didn"t you tell me before?"
"You expressed such a distaste for female women that we thought we would give you as long a respite as possible."
"That"s all very well," he grumbled. "But if I had known that Adrian"s fiancee was knocking around I"d have lumped her in my heart with Barbara and Susie."
"You"re not prevented from doing that now," said I.
His brow cleared. "True, sonny." He broke into a guffaw. "Fancy old Adrian getting married!"
"I see nothing funny in it," said I. "Lots of people get married. I"m married."
"Oh, you--you were born to be married," he said crushingly.
"And so are you," I retorted.
"I? I tie myself to the stay-strings of a flip of a thing in petticoats, whom I should have to swear to love, honour and obey--?"
"My good fellow," I interrupted, "it is the woman who swears obedience."
"And the man practises it. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
His laughter (at this very poor repartee) so resounded that the advent.i.tious cow, in the field some hundred yards away, lifted her tail in the air and scampered away, in terror.
"And as to the stay-strings, to continue your delicate metaphor, you can always cut them when you like."
"Yes. And then there"s the devil to pay. She shows you the ends and makes you believe they"re dripping blood and tears. Don"t I know "em?
They"re the same from Cape Horn to Alaska, from Dublin to Rio."
He bellowed forth his invective. He had no quarrel with marriage as an inst.i.tution. It was most useful and salutary--apparently because it provided him, Jaffery, with comfortable conditions wherein to exist. The mult.i.tude of harmless, necessary males (like myself) were doomed to it.