ctively put out the forces that had carried him
unscathed through the wildest and fiercest of the congregations of men.
He could subdue and he could create. In the most pithless he had started
the working of the sap of life.

As for his own definite part of best man, he played it with an
Elizabethan spaciousness. . . . There was no hugger-mugger escape of
travel-clad bride and bridegroom. He contrived a triumphal progress
through lines of guests led by a ruddy giant, Master of the Ceremonies,
exuding Pantagruelian life. Joyously he conducted them to their
glittering carriage and pair--and, unconscious of anthropological truth,
threw the slipper of woman's humiliation. The carriage drove off amid
the cheers of the multitude. Jaffery stood and watched it until it
disappeared round the curve. In my eagerness to throw the unnecessarily
symbolic rice I had followed and stayed a foot or two away from him; and
then I saw his face change--just for a few seconds. All the joyousness
was stricken from it; his features puckered up into the familiar twists
of a child about to cry. His huge glazed hands clenched and unclenched
themselves. It was astonishing and very pitiful. Quickly he gulped
something down and turned on me with a grin and shook me by the
shoulders.

"Now I'm the only free man of the bunch. The only one. Don't you wish
you were a bachelor and could go to Hell or Honolulu--wherever you chose
without a care? Ho! ho! ho!" He linked his arm in mine, and said in what
he thought was a whisper: "For Heaven's sake let us go in and try to
find a real drink."

We went into a deserted smoking-room where decanters and siphons were
set out. Jaffery helped himself to a mighty whisky and soda and poured
it down his throat.

"You seemed to want that," said I, drily.

"It's this infernal kit," said he, with a gesture including his frock
coat and patent leather boots. "For gossamer comfort give me a suit of
armour. At any rate that's a man's kit."

I made some jesting answer; but it had been given to me to see that
transient shadow of pain and despair, and I knew that the discomfort of
the garments of civilisation had nothing to do with the swallowing of
the huge jorum of alcohol.

Of course I told Barbara all about it--it is best to establish your wife
in the habit of thinking you tell her everything--and she was more than
usually gentle to Jaffery. We carried him down with us to Northlands
that afternoon, calling at his clu