Jaffery

recise. Incidentally I gathered, then and later in the smoking-room from Jaffery alone, a prodigious amount of information about Albania which, if I had imprisoned it in writing that same evening as

entry for A

Susan.

fery at

ch. Fine woman. Going to be a handful. Staying w

does one get donkeys warranted quiet and guar

o Launebeck a

igars, and only twenty-seven to the really astonishing events of the day. Of course I am angry. Of course I consult Barbara. Of course she pats the little bald patch on the top of my head and laughs in a superior way and invents, with a paralysing air of verity, an impossible amplification of the "story of meeting and Prescott marriage." And of course, the frivolo

at the end of the la

cago? No. Does any sensible man of domestic instincts and scholarly tastes like to find himself halfway up an inaccessible mountain, surrounded by a band of moustachioed desperadoes in fustanella petticoats engirdled with an armoury of pistols, daggers and yataghans, who if they are unkind make a surgical demonstration with these lethal implements, and if they are smitten with a mania of amiability, hand you over, for superintendence of your repose, to an army of satellites of whom you are only too glad to call the f

t and a parliament and picture-palaces no one yet knows. But at the time when my two friends met it was in about as chaotic a condition as a jungle. Some tribes acknowledged the rule of the Turk. Others did not. Every mountainside had a pretty little anarchical system of its own.

ld a notable position on his mountain, but he had travelled to the fabulous land of America and could read and write and could speak English and could handle a knife with peculiar dexterity. Again, Liosha was no ordinary Albanian maiden. She too had seen the world and cou

rmy of merry brigands, fell upon the sleeping homestead, murdered everybody except Liosha, who managed to escape, plundered everything plunderable, money, valuables, household goods and live stock, and then set fire to

t mad," said Liosha at

its at the sight of the annihilation of her entire kith and kin-including her bridegroom to be-and of her whole world

ny woman into a raving l

rn me," replied Lio

id you do?"

could get even with that crowd." She bit

igure in black and

e in, don't you see?" in

wiry and hawk-like, jogging up the mountain path on ragged ponies and suddenly emergin

urderers. But she laughed at them. It would take an army to dislodge her enemies from their mountain fastnesses. And who could send an army but the Sultan, a most unlikely person to trouble his head over the massacre of a few Christians? As for a local government, the mallisori, the mountain tribes

uins. "And I have no friends. And as for your escorting m

would you

ows," s

ired to adopt. Her simple idea was to go out to America, like her father, return with many bags of gold and devote her life to the linked sweetness of a gradual extermination of her enemies. When asked how she would manage to amass the gold she replied that she would work in the packing-houses like her mother. But how, they asked, would she get the money to take her to Chicago? "It must come from you!" she said. And the men looked at each other, feeling mean dogs in not having offered to settle her there themselves. Th

y?" she asked with

did

t to Chicago." And seeing them hesitate, she added: "No one's going to hurt me. A woman is safe in Albania.

hat Liosha, having left them for a few moments to take grim farewell of the charred remains of her family lying hidden beneath the smo

estioning readiness to shoulder burdens, Prescott would run to relieve her. Liosha has assured me that Jaffery did the same-and indeed I cannot conceive Jaffery allowing a female companion to stagger along under a load which he could swing onto his huge back and carry like a walnut. To go further-she maintains that the two quarrelled dreadfully over the alleviation of her labours, so much so, that often before they had ended their quarrel, she had performed the task in dispute. This of course Jaffery has blusteringly denied. She was there, paid to do certain things, and she

lled by any convention, daughter of the earth, yet chaste as her own mountain winds; and considering that both of them were hot-blooded men, the only wonder is that they did not fly at each other's throats, or dash in each other's heads with stones, after the fashion o

ling across space to my bookshelves and ruining some choice bindings-"the devil of it was," said he, after expressing

and Emperors in their dens. He would bring down awful vengeance on the heads of her enemies. How Sultans and Emperors were to do it was as obscure as at the horror-filled hour of their first meeting. But a man vehemently in love is notoriously blind to practical considerations. Prescott put his life into her hands. She accepted it calmly; and I think it was this calmness of acceptance that infuriated Jaffery. If she had been likewise caught in the whirlpool of a mad passion, Jaffery would h

d have allowed her to do so. But Jaffery sat an immovable mountain of flesh at the wheel and brought them safely to Scutari. There arrangements were made for the marriage before the British Vice-Consul. On the morning of the ceremony Prescott fell

affery beneath the wistaria arbour. Tears rolled down Barbara's and Doria's cheeks. My wife's sympathetic little hand slid into Liosha's. With her oth

had much lu

haven't," cried Barbara

y gentle wife to transcend all records of human tragedy. Very soon afterwards she made a pretext for taking Liosha away from us, and I had the extraordinary e

an Consul and his wife, and made her known as the widow of Prescott of Reuter's to the British diplomatic authorities. Then having his work to do, he started forth again, a heavy-hearted adventurer, and, when it was ov

room, and he is scared to death. Instead of sending for Barbara, for instance, when he arrived in London, or any other sensible woman, say, like Frau von Hagen of Cettinje, he drags poor Euphemia, a timid maiden lady of forty-five, from her tea-parties and Bible-classes and Dorcas-meetings at Tunbridge Wells, and plants her down as guide, philosopher and friend to this disconcerting pro

e in, the dusk before dinner-"but I have some sympathy with Liosha. Tolstoi! My dear Jaffery! And the City Te

-she still calls it Popish, poor dear-to save her s

aid Barbara. "She's even more helpless than you,

her, sweet of her, miraculous of

ut it out of your mind. And th

t hungry," he

her eyes disapprovingly. At her age, her mother would have been shocked; her grandmother would have blushed from toes to forehead; her great-grandmother might have fainted. But Doria, a Twentieth Century product, on the Committee of a Maternity Home and a Rescue Laundry, merely looked down her nose . . . I gathered that Liosha, for all her yearning to shoot, flay alive, crucify and otherwise annoy her enemies, did not greatly regret the loss of the distinguished young Albanian cutthroat w

hounds of civilisation. His daughter (woman the world over) was all for hunting. He had spent twenty years in America.

reason why a Tierra del Fuegan foundling should not run across his long-lost brother on Michigan Avenue, and still less reason why Albanian male should not meet Albanian female in Arm

us, intensely alive, desirous to get to the heart of my friend's mystery, and charmingly responsive to his frank welcome. They talked. My friend, to give the young man his story, discoursed on Chicago's amazingly solved problem of the conglomeration of

iend, "you're the

young man, "I'm

a foreign language, her parents and herself always speaking English among themselves. But the call of the blood rang strong in the veins of the elders. Robbery and assassination on the heroic scale held for the man an irresistible attraction, and he acquired great skill at the busi

est the door, opened it for them to pass out, Barbara, the last, lingered for a second or

what kind of a dinner do yo