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Updated: May 14, 2025
It is good to be loved, especially when you've done nothing particular to deserve it. And in their primitive way these two loved me. "Isn't she fit?" roared Jaffery. "Magnificent," said I. She was. The thick tan of exposure to wind and sun gave her a gipsy swarthiness beneath which glowed the rich colour of health.
"Thousands, my dear," said Jaffery. "They're waiting to be called for in all the shops of London." He laughed his great laugh at Barbara's momentary discomfiture. I laughed too, for he had scored a point. When a man has, say, a thousand pounds wherewith to buy that much money's worth of household clutter, he certainly is that household clutter's potential owner.
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 participate. When nurses sounded the retreat, our two Brobdingnagians appeared in the drawing-room, radiant, and dishevelled, with children sticking to them like flies.
He disappeared and presently reëntered with a battered two-handled silver quart pot bearing defaced arms and inscription, a rowing trophy of Cambridge days, which he always carried about with him on no matter what lightly equipped expedition it is always a matter of regret to me that Jaffery, as I have mentioned before, missed his seat in the Cambridge boat; but when one despoils a Proctor of his square cap and it is found the central feature of one's rooms beneath a glass shade such as used to protect wax flowers from the dust, what can one expect from the priggish judgment of university authority? he reëntered, with this vessel full of beer.
John's Wood flat, in the soft afternoon shadow, both conscious of queer isolation from the world below, and from the strange world masked behind the vast superficies of brick against which they were perched. Jaffery said something about a nest midway on a cliff side overlooking the sea. He also, in bass incoherence, formulated the opinion that in such a nest might he found true happiness.
"A year or two," he replied casually. "It must be a queer thing," said I, "to be born with no conception of time and space." "A couple of years pass pretty quick," said Jaffery. "So does a lifetime," said I. Well, this was just like Jaffery. No sooner home amid the amenities of civilisation than the wander-fever seizes him again.
After all, I fancy, it was a very simple affair. She had told me bluntly that when the two men, Jaffery and Prescott, rode into the scene of Balkan desolation in which she was the central figure, Jaffery was the one who caused her heart to throb. And in her chaste, proud way she had loved him ever since that extraordinary moment.
And, as I am a living man, I swear that if Jaffery had taken her at her word and laid on lustily 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.
By the way, can Barbara have me for the week-end?" This was like Jaffery. Most men would have asked me, taking Barbara for granted. "Barbara would have you for the rest of time," said I. "And so would Susan. I'll expect you by the 11 o'clock train." "Right," said he. "And, I say!" "Yes?" "Talking of fair ladies what about ?" "Oh, Hell!" came Jaffery's great voice. "She's here right enough."
We consulted Jaffery, who as Liosha's trustee ought to have consulted us. Jaffery pulled a long face and smiled ruefully. For the first time he realised in spite of tragic happenings the comedy aspect of his position as the legal guardian of two young, well-to-do and attractive widows. He was the last man in the world to whom one would have expected such a fate to befall.
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