Jimmy Quixote Part 13

The door opened, and a vision came in. The word is advisable, seeing that for the moment Moira did not recognise, in this radiant appearance, the short-skirted child of the tumbled curls she had known a few years before. For this was a being perfectly dressed, with hair perfectly arranged, and with a wonderfully correct smile of welcome parting her lips and brightening her blue eyes. There was no haste or impetuosity or eagerness; only one swift critical glance at the thin, somewhat shabbily dressed figure; then an embrace, with a little murmur in the girl's ear that was half pitying and half patronising; a murmur that sent the hot blood to Moira's cheeks, and chilled her at the same time.

"My sweet Moira--to meet you like this!" exclaimed the exquisite one.

"Over and over again I've urged Aunt Baffall to do something--to advertise--or inquire of somebody--and yet nothing's been done. How have you lived, my dear--and what are you doing with yourself? Do sit down and tell me all about it?"

Moira sat down, with her eyes straying in the direction of the perplexed old woman, whose motherly instincts, cheated so long, had induced her late in life to bring this awkward swan under her very ordinary goose's wing. When presently Mr. Baffall strayed in, he did but accentuate the position; for he was more awkward than ever, and seemed to have a vague and horrible feeling that Moira had come there with the object of being adopted also. He sat there, while Mrs. Baffall furtively reached for his hand, and regarded the two girls in silence.

"Now I want to have a long talk with Moira; so you'll please run away,"

said Alice at last, after a long and somewhat awkward pause. "You know what time to order the carriage, dear Uncle Baffall; and I do hope that Aunt Baffall will lie down for half an hour before we start; she _is_ so liable to fall asleep," she added to Moira, as she took an arm of each of the old people and hurried them out of the room.

"But I wanted to talk to her myself," protested Mrs. Baffall feebly. But the door was closed and she was gone.

Afterwards, in recalling the conversation that had taken place, Moira found it difficult to remember anything in particular. She had a vague notion that Alice's time was largely taken up with the fitting on of frocks and with conversations with young gentlemen upon nothing in particular; but she brought away with her a distinct notion that the blue eyes were more beautiful than ever, although somewhat colder, and that the droop of the mouth would have made almost anyone who did not understand, sorry for the girl in an indefinite way. Only one point did honest Moira think of resentfully afterwards; and that was Alice's dismissal of the Baffalls from the very scheme of things, as being necessary only for what they gave her.

"The dear old things are so stuffy," she had said. "Positively, sometimes, my dear, I find myself blus.h.i.+ng for them, and going hot and cold when I think of the mistakes they have made. But there--I think most of my real friends understand!"

Remembering that resplendent vision that drove in a carriage through this London in a corner of which Moira hid, she determined to go no more in search of Alice. Instead, she turned with an eagerly-beating heart in the direction in which Jimmy might be found--Jimmy, who had not even been mentioned by Alice or by the Baffalls. Only now, as she went in search of him, did she begin to think it strange that nothing had been said concerning Mr. Baffall's other _protege_.

The address was that of a huge general warehouse in a narrow street turning out of Cheapside. Moira found it with some difficulty; read the name over the big windows with a feeling of pride that Jimmy should belong to such an establishment. After a little hesitation she went inside, through big swing doors, into a great warehouse stacked to the very ceiling with parcels wrapped in paper, and with cardboard boxes and bales; and with innumerable young men and elderly men and boys at work among the parcels and the bales, and here and there a figure perched at a high desk, jotting down something called to him by one of the busy figures. But no sign of Jimmy.

A young gentleman without a coat lounged forward to the counter at which she stood; glanced at her quickly for a moment, and went on writing in a book. Without looking up he asked what she wanted.

"Mr. James Larrance," she said, in a low voice. "I wanted to speak to him for a moment--if he's not too busy."

The man glanced up quickly, and laughed; spread a piece of blotting-paper on the book, and rubbed it vigorously. Then he turned in the direction of another man, and jerked his head to beckon him. "Mr.

James Larrance, if you please," he said; and laughed again, and went on with his work.

The other man who had been beckoned was somewhat older than the first; moreover, he wore a coat, as showing some greater importance. He came to the counter, and lounged with one elbow upon it, and looked at the girl.

"Don't you know he's gone?" he asked.

"No--I didn't know that," she faltered.

"Well, he has," he retorted. "The work here wasn't quite good enough for him; he'd got notions above cloth and calico, I suppose--at any rate, notions that wouldn't do here. So he decided to go away, and I suppose make a fortune for himself--eh?" He glanced at the younger man and laughed unpleasantly.

"Can't I see him doing it!" replied the other, addressing the sheet of blotting-paper, and thumping it to give emphasis to his words.

"Could you tell me where I should find him?" asked Moira. "I'm an old friend; I knew him years ago."

"You might find him, miss, on the Hotel Embankment--enjoying the air--or he might have got an appointment as Inspector of Public Buildings--that is to say--the outside of 'em," said the younger clerk, with another laugh.

"In a word, my dear--he's gone from here--and I haven't yet heard that he's got another billet. That's the long and the short of it. Good morning!" Thus the elder man as he turned away.

Moira came out into the busy streets; she saw here the last chance of touching that old life gone from her. Alice unapproachable, and Jimmy wandering London friendless; the prospect was not a cheerful one.

She went home to Patience, and took up again the life she had striven to change--took it up with a new humility and a new grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER II

JIMMY--AND A MATTER OF FOOD

London, as we already know, had held out hands of welcome to the innocent Jimmy, and had promised great things to him; moreover, changing her name to Fortune, she had seemed to tell him that in a little time she would be his for the mere wooing. He soon discovered, however, what manner of jade she was, and how shamefully she had deceived him.

It must be said at once that Mr. Baffall had behaved rather well.

Remembering complacently his own first struggles in the great city--struggles intimately connected even now in his mind with a shortage of food and of clothing--he decided that the boy was starting with good prospects--far better, indeed, than those his patron had enjoyed. The boy was put into a good business, and a sufficient sum was to be paid for his lodging in a modest way; Jimmy had but to work within those carefully-arranged lines that had been drawn for him, and all would be well. He would rise step by step, and presently take his place, with his advancing years, in the great army of men in that particular line of life. Mr. Baffall shook his head at the thought of the possibilities of Jimmy rising to be a second Baffall on such beginnings; such things did not happen every day. But for the rest he was well provided for, and there was an end of the matter.

Jimmy's lodging was in a sort of rough-and-tumble haphazard boarding-house in the neighbourhood of Camden Town--a boarding-house crowded with young men and half-grown youths, and presided over by a lady of untidy appearance and rasping voice, and with an air of being always in a hurry. She was a.s.sisted in the management of the place by two haphazard, scrambling, hurrying servant-maids--never quite clean (save on special occasions, when they managed to get out for an hour or so) and always haggard and tired-looking. Everyone appeared to be in a great hurry in the morning, from the time when the first young man clattered downstairs, and plunged at his breakfast, until the time when the more aristocratic, who did not begin work until ten o'clock, hurried away from the house; and everyone appeared very tired at night, what time that strangely composite meal known as a "meat tea" was set before the returning workers. Jimmy discovered, something to his dismay, that this, outside the actual life of the warehouse in that turning off Cheapside, was to be his life.

The thing was hideous from the beginning; hideous in the sense that, in being swallowed up in such an existence, he became at once a mere unit in the scheme of things--one of a hurrying, driving crowd, with no individuality, and no time to think of anything but his work, and his journeys to and fro, and his eating and his sleeping. And even sleep was hideous; because, to his dismay, he found that, as a junior in the boarding-house he had to share a room with two other youths, given a little to sky-larking, and to the smoking of cheap cigarettes.

At the warehouse, as a beginner, he did whatever odd work was set before him; wondered a little at first, in a petulant fas.h.i.+on, why the men and the boys seemed so much happier than he was, and so generally contented with their lot. But, grimly silent regarding the past, and suspicious as to the future, he took his place in this new life like a bruised, stunned creature driven along by an unkind fate. Only afterwards was he to learn that there is another life of the senses, quite independent of the mere work of the hands, or the mere sights and sounds around about us.

His first night at the boarding-house began disastrously, and ended in a triumph. The room in which the "meat tea" had been partaken of was musty and noisy; such of the boarders as had not gone out were seated about the room; one noisy youth was pounding a broken-down piano in a corner.

Jimmy decided to go out; and after roaming about the streets for a long time, went back, and went up to his room. He found himself alone there, and was rather glad of the seclusion; he partially undressed and lay down on his bed, with his hands clasped under his head and his eyes closed--wondering a little that so great a change could have come into his life in a matter of a few hours; wondering also what the morrow was to bring him, in this great place wherein he was to make his fortune.

For he had not yet been to the warehouse.

He was disturbed by an enormous thud at the door, and by the entrance of the two youths who shared the room with him, and who had apparently been having a scuffle on the landing, the better to impress the new lodger.

Jimmy turned a little on one side to look at them; decided that they were not particularly interesting; and rolled over on his back again. A little smothered laughter followed; and presently, while he still lay with his eyes closed, something shot across the room and struck him on the arm. Jimmy was up in a moment, seated on the side of the bed, and looking gravely down at the shoe that had been thrown at him. The others were apparently very busy with their undressing.

"I beg your pardon," said Jimmy gravely--"who threw that?"

The elder of the two--a tall weedy youth with loose lips, turned to the other, and grinned and shook his head. "I dunno' what he's talking about," he murmured feebly--"or what he's doing with my shoe."

The loose lips tightened in a moment as the shoe caught them full and square; he looked round in amazement at this outrage, to discover Jimmy standing in the centre of the room, with his hands gripped tight at his sides, and a very dangerous look in his eyes. For this was what Jimmy wanted, in the sense that he could relieve an over-burdened heart only in some such fas.h.i.+on as this, and because, too, he felt that it was demanded of him that he should show London something of his quality.

It was Jimmy's second fight; he remembered the first even now, in the sweet, clean smelling woods, and decided that this was an even more important battle. The weedy youth got up from the bed on which he was seated, and with a pitying glance at Jimmy, and an amused shrug at his companion, as though suggesting that he supposed this sort of thing had to be done, the better to keep people in their places, strolled out to meet his a.s.sailant. And the next moment found his head in a most surprising fas.h.i.+on striking the floor.

For the country boy, well fed and well cared for, and used to hard exercise out of doors, was more than a match for this cigarette-smoking, narrow-chested youth, who stood half a head taller. He got up slowly, and looked with pained surprise at his friend; then tried rus.h.i.+ng tactics, and came at Jimmy like a whirlwind. But Jimmy met him coolly; and he went down again, and decided to stay there. The other youth muttered something about speaking to the landlady in the morning, and not knowing quite what things were coming to; until Jimmy happening to glance in his direction, he decided to get into bed as rapidly as possible. Jimmy, seeing that the matter was at an end, calmly undressed and went to bed himself.

He had no further trouble after that; so far as the boarding-house was concerned he was left severely alone; while at the warehouse everyone was so busy, and those in authority were so constantly hurrying backwards and forwards through the place, that there was but scant opportunity for anything but the work itself.

Yet in the time that followed he sunk more and more into himself, as it were, and became more and more dependent upon himself. It was part of Jimmy's nature that he must at all times make the most of everything, and enlarge upon any circ.u.mstance if possible; his very dreams were large ones. Therefore, when it happened that he realised, as day after day went on in its dull monotony, that there was nothing here about which he could boast, he determined to be silent about his life. There had been a sort of dim feeling in his mind that he would write to Moira; surely if he wrote to the old home any letter would be forwarded. But in a curious shame-faced fas.h.i.+on he realised that to Moira most of all he must have something to write about; must have done something in the big world to which she had so confidently consigned him before he could approach her again. And as yet he had done nothing.

In the very beginning of his career at the warehouse he trembled more than once, when the outer door opened, at the possibility of someone who had been with him in the old days coming in, and finding him there hauling parcels about, and for the most part without a coat; every time the door swung back on its hinges he felt it might be possible that Moira or Alice--or, worst thought of all, Charlie Purdue--might walk into the place: Charlie, with a grin upon his good-humoured face that would have been exasperating. But, of course, no one ever came, and after a time he ceased to watch the door.

For the most part in the evenings he wandered about the streets--staring into shop windows, and lingering about outside theatres, and generally touching the mere fringe of the great life that was pulsing all about him. But when some twelve months had gone by, the coming of younger lads than himself to the boarding-house as well as to the warehouse sent him a step up in each place; so that at the boarding-house he had a tiny room at the very top of the house to himself--a mere cupboard, but still a room in his eyes; while at the warehouse he somehow got to a desk whereat he wore his coat, and left the parcels behind. And in so doing gained a little money for himself in addition to the meagre pocket-money he had had.

That room at the top of the house became in a very big sense the boy's home. It was something to return to; something to know, in the stress and worry of the day, was waiting for him, even though he might occupy it for but a few hours at the most. And no sooner had he got that room than he set about, in quite an imitative fas.h.i.+on, to do what others had done before him. An imitative fas.h.i.+on, because he had lighted by accident upon what was to him a wonderful romance; the story of a boy as poor as he was, and working as hard as he worked, who had gathered books about him, and made of himself a great and celebrated man.

Jimmy being a mere creature of impulse, and in a desperate hurry always to do whatever his mind happened to light upon--until something else attracted his attention--began setting about the great and celebrated business without delay. He bought books--a few at a time, and quite unsuited to his purpose--and fell asleep over them with great regularity in the room upstairs for a week or two. They taught him something--stirred that brain that had not been stirred by anything beyond figures for a long time; made him think for himself. For, save that grounding in elementary things given by the Rev. Temple Purdue, and a deeper grounding in cla.s.sical matters the importance of which he had not grasped, Jimmy was profoundly ignorant. For the first time he began to remember something of the romantic side of life, as told him years before by Old Paul; for the first time began to apply that half-forgotten knowledge to his own purposes. Two years from the time Jimmy had landed in London, when he was coming near to his twentieth year, he began sheepishly and with a locked door to write. By that time the books covered two long shelves, and were in every state of binding imaginable, and in every condition of repair.

Is it necessary to state that he began with verse? Finding most unaccountably a line singing in his head for the greater part of one day, he went home, and set that line down at the top of a fair sheet of paper, and added another; afterwards erasing the second as being unworthy of the first. Stumblingly, he went at the thing again; felt that the first line was not after all what it might be, and, moreover, that it was difficult to fit with a rhyme; therefore he began again.

Poor Jimmy! His beginnings were about all there were of him for a time; and he spoilt much paper. But by that time the subtle craze of it had eaten into his very life, and the warehouse was a mere necessary thing by which he must live, but which did not really concern him in the least. After a time the verses failed to concern him also; he determined to return to them at a later period--much as Mr. Thomas Hardy had done, after making himself famous in another direction; also there was Mr.

George Meredith to be thought of, and remembered with satisfaction. In other words, Jimmy tackled prose--as being easier.