Jimmy Quixote Part 30

Jimmy said nothing; he could only hold the hand, and stare into the face of this man who had been his friend as a boy--this man who had made such a poor business, as it seemed, of the life that had been given him.

"Only--for G.o.d's sake--listen to me." Charlie's eyes closed for a moment, and he seemed to set his teeth to keep back a groan. "It isn't me--it's someone--someone else. It's a woman."

Jimmy nodded. It seemed, as he bent over the other man, that he must remember all his life this quiet ward, with the high windows, and the fading light outside, and the man in the bed whispering. It was as though he had entered upon another life--something stronger and more forceful than anything he had yet understood. He was miles away from the petty smallnesses and jealousies that had been his for some time past.

"You know her--Moira. One of the best, Jimmy--d.a.m.n sight too good for me. We were going--going to be married. I--you needn't look at me for a minute--I wronged her."

Jimmy was looking at him intently; the words seemed to sing through his ears like some tune he had remembered. "I wronged her!--I wronged her!"

"I was a beast--but I've promised--promised faithfully it would be all right. She'll die--kill herself, I think--shame, you know. There's going to be--a child. Jimmy--what shall we do?"

In that last hour, as it seemed, the two were drawn together; the great city that had sucked their lives into itself, and made of them what it would, was a thing forgotten; almost they were boys again in the woods and the fields; almost it seemed that the one stretched out hands to the other, and craved for help.

"It won't be long--before I'm gone, Jimmy"--the other hand was feebly groping for the stronger hand of the man beside the bed--"Jimmy--she'll be all alone--and--and the child. You loved her--I think you did--and she was fond of you----"

This was what he had meant to say; even if it was unfinished in words, his eyes said the rest. Jimmy, looking at him, seemed to have a vision of something else beyond him; seemed to see this woman bowed in shame, and left lonely and helpless. And in a curious, ironical, half-whimsical way, quite apart from the tragedy of it, this fitted in with Jimmy's mood of the day--was but the legitimate complement of the bitterness of the morning. Alice was not for him; Alice turned to another man; and here was something that Jimmy might do that must for ever place him on a lonely and wonderful pedestal, far above Alice, and far above the petty things of the world in which he lived. He saw it all; saw that, wonderfully, he must step forward to rescue this girl, and must perforce occupy that lonely position, because of her and of the sacrifice he made for her--that position he had long ago seemed to map out for himself in his mind.

So swift was his thought that even before he answered he seemed to see a radiant figure standing before him--and he obdurate; he, with some sadness, declaring that it could never be--that he had sacrificed himself for someone else. And so rising to a point in her view, and in the view of others, to which he could never under more commonplace circ.u.mstances have reached. He voiced that thought, in a measure, when he answered the dying man.

"I think I understand," he whispered. "You would have done the right thing for her?"

"Yes--yes--I would!"

"But there is no time? I understand; she shall not be left alone. I did love her--I'll marry her."

"Oh--may G.o.d bless you!" The feeble spluttering lips were pressed against his hands; Charlie was laughing and crying hysterically. "Swear it--swear you'll make her marry you!"

"I swear it; she shall not suffer," said Jimmy; and there was in him a great and sudden uplifting of his heart at the thought of this thing he was to do.

Charlie had but little else to say; the few mutterings he made, in the few minutes that remained, could scarcely be distinguished even by the man who bent above him. But at the last, with some faint suspicion of the old cheery smile that had been his always, he drew Jimmy's head down to him, and whispered a message:

"Tell her--tell her from me--I said it'd be--be all right!"

Then someone drew a screen about the bed, and Jimmy went out into the late winter afternoon, with some of his elation gone; and thinking deeply of the man who lay so quiet in the big ward with the high windows.

At first he was all for going straight to Moira, and telling her; he saw himself breaking the news of this sudden death; and then soothing her by telling her what he had done, and what he had promised; perhaps he began to wonder a little how she would receive him under those circ.u.mstances.

But when he had walked a little way towards Chelsea, he suddenly decided that he must not see her yet; when he went to her she must be prepared, and must know beforehand all that had happened. Therefore he hurried home, and wrote a letter to Patience--telling her what had happened, and begging her to break the news to the girl as gently as possible. He added in the letter that he would come the next day, and see Moira; he wanted to talk to her. He made it clear that he had seen Charlie at the last, and had been with him when he died; he made it clear also that he had a message from the dead man to Moira.

That despatched, he sat down to think over the situation--to consider fairly and clearly the position in which he found himself. He discovered that he rather liked it; he felt that this was in a sense altogether appropriate. He was to do a great and n.o.ble thing--and in the doing of it was to have two women at his feet in one moment. The first, because he gave up everything for her and to preserve her good name; the second, in wonder and awe that any man could do such a thing. He quite saw Alice blaming herself that she had trifled, even for a moment, with such a man as this.

Being, as it were, the executor of Charlie Purdue's poor affairs, he wrote also to the Rev. Temple Purdue, telling him of what had happened; he did not know, of course, that Charlie had been returning from a visit to his father at the time of the accident.

He went on the following morning to Locker Street, Chelsea. If the truth be told he rather dreaded the coming interview--rather wondered, in fact, how Moira--this new Moira of whom he knew nothing--would take the suggestion he had to offer. He had always thought of her in a curious, indefinite, detached fas.h.i.+on--as of someone he did not really understand; he wondered now how he was to be met--whether by tears and self-reproaches--or in what other fas.h.i.+on.

But he was destined not to meet her then. He found his way upstairs, and was met at the door of the room by Patience--Patience with an inscrutable face, save that the eyes were tragic. They shook hands in silence, and he followed her into the room.

"Where's Moira?" he asked; and it was curious that he spoke in the subdued tones of one speaking of someone ill or dead. "I want to see her."

"She's not here," replied Patience. "I--I don't know where she is."

"Not know where she is?" he demanded. "But you had my note; you know what has happened?"

"Yes--I know," replied the old woman in a dull, level voice. "And she knows, too; I told her last night."

"Well--what did she say?"

"She didn't say anything; she seemed stunned," said Patience. "I broke it to her gently; I said there had been an accident, and that someone she loved--just like that I put it--someone she loved was dead. And the funny thing was that she looked at me wildly--and said another name--not his at all."

"Another name?" Jimmy looked at her in perplexity. "Whose?"

"Yours. She must have been thinking of something else," said the old woman. "Then, when I told her who it was, she sat for a long time brooding; but she didn't say anything. And this morning she went out quite early, without a word to me."

"I'll come again," said Jimmy, moving towards the door. And at the door she called him softly.

"Mr. Jimmy--did he tell you anything?" It was a mere whisper, and she looked at him intently while she spoke.

"Everything. That's what I'm to see her about," he said. "I'll come again."

He went back to his own rooms, and tried to work; but he could only think of the man who lay dead, and of the girl who was in a sense his pitiful legacy. He felt he could do nothing until he had seen her; until he had completed the work left for him. After that he would settle down again to the life he knew--the life of which this had been so strange an interruption.

There came a note from Alice--a little hurried scrawled thing--demanding petulantly to know what had become of him, and whether he would not go and see her that evening; she would be all alone, she said, and promised to be very good. He was tearing it up slowly when there came a hesitating knock at the door; he went to open it, and found waiting there, outside on the landing, old Mr. Purdue. He took his hand, and drew him into the room, and shut the door.

Jimmy's head was in a whirl; there seemed at that time so many vital things to be thought about and arranged--things more vital than he had ever touched before. On the one hand, the desperate woman whose lover was gone; on the other, the woman who wrote from the security of her a.s.sured position, and asked him to go and see her. And, lastly, this broken old man whose only son was dead--the only hope he had in life gone. Jimmy dropped the pieces of paper in the fire, and faced Mr.

Purdue.

"I came at once," said the old man. "It was kind of you to do what you have done--you have been most thoughtful. I would have liked--liked to have seen him again--alive, I mean. Because, you know"--he spread out his hands with a feeble gesture that was pitiful to see--"because, you know--this was my fault."

"Your fault?" Jimmy looked at him in astonishment.

"Yes. He came down to see me--he wanted to tell me something--wanted me to help him. And I drove him away; I wouldn't listen to him. I wish I'd listened now."

Jimmy stood waiting; he knew there must be something else to be said; he wondered, in view of what was in his own mind, what he might have to say himself. Mr. Purdue stood nervously rubbing one hand over the back of the other, and blinking his eyes at the fire; it almost seemed as if he tried to weep, but had forgotten the trick of it.

"When Charlie came to me--he spoke of a woman--some woman he must marry," went on the old man. "I would not listen to that--and I should have listened, I suppose. I suppose you know nothing--nothing about her?"

"Yes--I know everything," replied Jimmy, steadily. "I know the woman well; she will be provided for."

He did not mean it quite in that way--did not intend, perhaps, to put the statement so crudely; but in face of this new and strange situation he seemed to be acting in a new and strange fas.h.i.+on. Proud, in a curious sense, of what he was to do, he yet had in him that chivalry which would make him keep secret Moira's name, even while he boasted of what he was to do for her. While the old man stared at him, he repeated that phrase he had used.

"She will be provided for," he said again; and he said it sternly.

"I'm glad," replied the other, with something of a sigh of relief. "I'm glad he thought of that--at the last."

Mr. Purdue asked but a few questions after that; and then set out to do all that was to be done for the dead man. There was to be an inquest; and after that the father had decided to take the son back to the place where he had lived as a boy. Jimmy was not, of course, concerned in that, and the two men parted presently; the one to go back to the solitary life he had lived so long--the other to step forward into the new life that was so strangely opening for him.

Always with that feeling in his mind of the great thing he was doing, Jimmy decided to do it very completely; he would not go near Alice again, nor would he reply to her note. The time was coming when he could stand before her, as he had already suggested, and would let her know of this thing he had done; the time when he would very beautifully, as he felt, go out of her presence for ever, leaving an ineffaceable memory behind him, to be treasured by her while she lived.

He was hugging that thought to himself, and was deciding that he would go and see Moira, and tell her what her fate was to be; and he had lingered over it a little until the day had grown dark; when he was thrown a little off his balance by Moira coming to him. He was sitting at his desk--not working, but with the circle of light from his lamp falling upon his brooding face, when she came softly in, and stood within the door, looking at him. Just so once before she had seen him, on a night when he was to have spoken a word to her that should have changed the current of their lives; just so she saw him now, for a moment, before he moved, and rose, and came towards her.