"Perhaps I behaved like a cat," Barbara said to me later—to "behave like a cat" is her way of signifying a display of the vilest phases of feminine nature—"but I couldn't help it. She didn't talk a great deal of sense. It isn't as if I had never warned her about the way she has been treating Jaffery. I have, heaps of times. And as for Adrian—I'm sick of his name—and if I am, what must poor old Jaff be?"
This she said during a private discussion that night on the whole situation. I say the whole situation, because, when she returned to Northlands, she found there a haggard ogre who for the first time in his life had eaten a canary's share of an excellent dinner, imploring me to tell him whether he should enlist for a soldier, or commit suicide, or lie prone on Doria's doormat until it should please her to come out and trample on him. He seemed rather surprised—indeed a trifle hurt—that neither of us called him a Satyr. How could we take his part and not Doria's—especially now that Barbara had come from the bedside of the scandalously entreated lady? He boomed and bellowed about the drawing-room, recapitulating the whole story.
"But, my good friend," I remonstrated, "by the showing of both of you, she taunted you and insulted you all ends up. You—'a barren rascal'—you? Good God!"
He flung out a deprecatory hand. What did it matter? We must take this from her point of view. He oughtn't to have laid hands on her. He oughtn't to have spoken to her at all. She was right. He was a savage unfit for the society of any woman outside a wigwam.
"Oh, you make me tired," cried Barbara, at last. "I'm going to bed. Hilary, give him a strait-waistcoat. He's a lunatic."
The household resources not including a strait-waistcoat, I could not exactly obey her, but as he had come down luggageless, and with a large disregard of the hours of homeward trains, I lent him a suit of my meagre pyjamas, which must have served the same purpose.
He left the next morning. Heedless of advice he called on Doria and was denied admittance. He wrote. His letter was returned unopened. He passed a miserable week, unable to work, at a loose end in London during the height of the season. In despair he went to The Daily Gazette office and proclaimed himself ready for a job. But for the moment the earth was fairly calm and the management could find no field for Jaffery's special activities. Arbuthnot again offered him reports of fires and fashionable weddings, but this time Jaffery did not enjoy the fine humour of the proposal. He blistered Arbuthnot with abuse, swung from the newspaper office, and barged mightily down Fleet Street, a disturber of traffic. Then he came down to Northlands for a while, where, for want of something to do, he hired himself out to my gardener and dug up most of the kitchen garden. His usual occupation of romping with Susan was gone, for she lay abed with some childish ailment which Barbara feared might turn into German measles. So when he was not perspiring over a spade or eating or sleeping he wandered about the place in his most restless mood. At nights he ransacked my library for gazetteers and atlases wherein he searched for abominable places likely to afford the explorer the most horrible life and the bleakest possible death. He was toying with the idea of making a jaunt on his own account to Thibet, when a merciful Providence gave him something definite to think about.
It was Saturday morning. I was shaving peacefully in my dressing-room when Jaffery, after thunderously demanding admittance, rushed in, clad in bath gown and slippers, flourishing a letter.
"Read that."
I recognised Liosha's handwriting. I read: