Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

It is not necessary to touch in detail the events of a saddened day; the only point that needs to be dwelt upon is the coming of the man in black, and what his coming meant to everyone concerned.

The man in black appeared first in the garden of the house, what time Mr. Baffall was pulling on stiff black gloves, and looking appropriately solemn and melancholy. The man in black had opened the gate, and had stepped quietly in; he looked all about him, almost as though he were making a valuation of the property generally. He was not a nice-looking man; he had a long thin cadaverous face, and his eyes were too near together, and his step was not a firm nor manly one. Indeed, he walked with something of a mincing gait, as though he apologised to the very ground for treading upon it.

Mr. Baffall stopped in the act of pulling on a glove, and stared out of the window at the stranger. He called in a whisper to Patience, and nodded towards the man, and looked inquiringly at the old woman. She shook her head.

"Don't know, I'm sure," she whispered. Then, in lingering tones of half remembrance, she added slowly: "And yet I seem to know the face – seem to remember – "

The man in black made no attempt to come into the house; he waited until the melancholy little procession was formed, and then fell in behind Mr. Baffall. Mrs. Baffall had gone to the churchyard, and Patience went by the way across the fields, and met her there. So that it came about that Mr. Baffall and the man in black were the only people who followed. Someone had knocked softly at the door of Anthony Ditchburn's room; but he had cried out in a frightened, whimpering voice that he was not well, and that they were to go away. Mr. Baffall did not care to say anything, or to question the man in black; he had known so little of Paul himself that he thought it possible this might be an old friend or acquaintance.

The Rev. Temple Purdue must have been thinking of something else at one part of the service, for he began a line from quite another place.

"Forasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these – "

Then he checked himself hurriedly, and went on with the proper words; but Baffall glanced at Mrs. Baffall, and thought perhaps the little slip not so wrong after all.

As Mr. Baffall, at the end of everything, was replacing his hat and turning towards his home, the man in black touched him on the elbow, and tendered a card. Baffall, in some surprise, mechanically took it, but did not look at it; instead, he looked at the man in black, and decided that he did not like him. Then his eyes travelled to the card, and he read the name upon it – "Mr. Matthew Shandler."

Baffall looked up at the man, and back again at the card. The man cleared his throat, and sighed, and ventured an explanation.

"A – a second cousin – on his father's side," he murmured. "So far as I am aware, his sole living relative; and I have made every inquiry. But perhaps he left a will."

Mr. Baffall felt his heart sink; as he expressed it afterwards to Mrs. Baffall, he "knew directly it was all up with the children." Being a man of business, however, he invited Mr. Matthew Shandler to come home with him and discuss the situation.

The shadows lengthened into evening in the little churchyard, and over the woods and fields. Honora Jackman and the two children came presently tailing homewards to that changed house; afterwards Honora took her own way back to the house of the Baffalls. In the churchyard a slim white-faced girl stole out from among the shadows of the trees, looking about her carefully in all directions, and went to the grave; and there for the first time broke down and wept as she had never wept before. For this was the parting, and only her memories were to be left to her for the future. It was, perhaps, characteristic of her that she should have watched and waited until the darkness had fallen before she went to him; characteristic of her, too, that she felt she was never again to visit the grave. This was to be final – and this was between the dead man and herself only.

"Good-bye, Old Paul – for ever and ever," she whispered, kneeling there, and touching the earth softly with her palms, as in benediction. "Sleep very quietly – rest lightly – my dear – my dear! I shall never forget; I shall think of you, dear, sleeping here, with the trees whispering above you, and the birds – and all about you that you loved. Old Paul! – oh – my Old Paul!"

By the time she got back to the house she was calm and self-contained; she offered no explanation of her absence to anyone. When, in the big room upstairs, Alice begged that she might be allowed to drag her bed across, so that she could be near Moira in the night, Moira scornfully regarded her for a moment, and then dragged the bed across herself.

"What are you afraid of?" she demanded.

"I feel as if I should die," whimpered the other girl. "It's so awful. He's dead – and I feel that perhaps in the dark he might come in – as he used to do – "

"I wish he would," broke in Moira quickly. "Go to sleep; you can hold my hand, if you feel frightened."

The younger girl presently fell asleep, with the undried tears still upon her pink cheeks; a smile grew about her mouth as she lay there. The smile was answered by one in the face of Moira, but it was a scornful one. For her part she lay wakeful, with the tears gathering in her eyes quietly now and then, as old memories came back to her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Baffall was stubbornly fighting a battle. As he went on fighting it, he discovered that he hated the man in black more and more every moment, with a growing hatred; for Matthew Shandler was not to be moved in any way. They had been together to the house, but no will had been found; they had the testimony of Mrs. Baffall that Old Paul had declared his intention of doing it that very night of his death; which looked hopeless enough, on the face of it.

Mrs. Baffall had been early turned out of the room by the shoulders, gently enough, by her husband; because she persisted in bursting into tears, and in imploring Matthew Shandler to remember the children. Which, as Baffall put it afterwards, wasn't business.

Shandler, for his part, spoke with perfect justice, as the world knows it. The children were nothing to him, and were not related in any way to the late Paul Nannock. Right was right; and although Mr. Shandler was an exceedingly well-to-do man, as he admitted with some pride, the property belonging to Old Paul was most certainly his, unless someone with a better right put in a claim to it. And he referred Mr. Baffall, with a smile, to his solicitors.

Mr. Baffall waited until such time as he discovered that the battle was a hopeless one; then he closed the door, lest Mrs. Baffall be shocked; and he remembered, with sudden vehemence, certain language long since left behind with the sordid business that had made him rich. He gave vent to some home-truths and expressions of opinion that hurt no one; for the man in black was made of stronger stuff than Baffall supposed, and merely smiled in reply. When, finally, he left, with the knowledge that he had come conveniently enough into a very snug property, he wished Mr. Baffall "Good-night!" gently, and desired that that gentleman would make Matthew Shandler's farewells to his good wife.

There was a deadly quality about Matthew Shandler that could not in any sense be opposed. He did that which he had determined upon with quiet precision, and with absolutely no display of emotion; indeed, more than once, when bitter opposition was raised against him, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders and turned away. But he went on with the work nevertheless.

Alice had her home assured; though at the last Mrs. Baffall wondered, in a timorous whisper to her husband, whether it wouldn't have been better to have taken Moira. But she had never understood Moira; and, indeed, it is doubtful if the girl would have listened to any such proposition. Alice was satisfactory, in the sense that there was nothing unexpected about her; you always knew where to find her, and you were always sure that she would never be unladylike, or in any mood difficult of analysis. As a matter of fact, Moira had been approached, dubiously enough, on the subject, and had declared that she was going to stay with Patience. Which meant, in other words, that she would stay at the old house as long as anyone would permit her to do so.

Jimmy was to go out into the world. Mr. Baffall had tugged at his beard a great deal over Jimmy, and had at last decided that the boy should go to London, and should be given a post in a business there, the strings of which were still in Mr. Baffall's hands.

Mr. Matthew Shandler had sold everything in the house, and the house itself was to let. There had been no mercy about the man, nor any suggestion of mercy; these people were nothing to him, and they must be got rid of. So that there came a day when the few possessions of Patience were packed ready to be taken away, and when an old battered tin trunk – such a small pitiful little tin trunk! – that had come with Moira years before, when Old Paul had first brought her to the house, was fished out of a garret and stuffed with what clothes the girl possessed; some parcels held the rest. Patience – brave, strong old woman – was going out into the world to-morrow, and Moira was going with her. Mr. Baffall had done pulling his beard over them; he realised that the woman and the child must be left alone. Anthony Ditchburn had sent off a box of books to some unknown destination, and then had followed too – going away as mysteriously as, years before, he had come.

On the morrow Jimmy was to start; he was going quite early in the morning, consigned to a lodging and to his new business by the Baffalls. They had been very good to the boy, and he was starting fairly well; more than that, he was filled with awe and wonder and delight at the prospect of entering that wonderful place – that London to which Old Paul had gone now and again to fetch treasure. He had said "good-bye" easily enough to Alice; Alice who, in the future, was to live comfortably, and who had not paid her calls upon the Baffalls for nothing. And now it had come to the point when he must say "good-bye" to Moira.

His small luggage had been sent on to the station, and he was to walk. He came with Moira out of the dismantled house, and through the old garden; she would walk to the top of the hill with him, she said, and see him on his way. She choked down the heart that was rising in her as she went with him; she touched his hand casually as they walked side by side; and he let it linger there, so that they went hand in hand. It was a miserable morning – fitted appropriately enough to the occasion – and a drizzle of rain was all about them as they went, and made a mist over the familiar road and the fields.

They got to the top of the hill, and Jimmy turned his bright eyes upon her. "I shall see you again – soon and often," he said. "Who knows? – you may be coming to London, too. That'll be splendid – won't it?"

"Yes," she responded soberly. "We're bound to meet again, Jimmy – because London isn't so far off, after all, and we ought to be able to find each other easily. They say it's a big place; but we can easily meet. When I come to London I'll look for you."

"Good-bye!" he said, a little huskily. "You're not crying?"

"Only a little," she whispered; and with a boyish gesture he put his arm about her neck, and kissed her.

"I'm going to do big things in London," he said. "And then I'll do big things for you. Good-bye!"

So he went over the hill, and down the long road that had always led away into the world mysteriously when they had been younger. The road that was leading him away mysteriously into the world now. So she saw him trudging on through the rain; so she remembered afterwards that she had seen him, through the rain of Heaven and the rain of her tears.

END OF BOOK I

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE CALL OF THE WORLD

The capacity of the average human being to drift apart from his fellows, whether by accident or design; to take up new interests to the neglect of old ones; to regard as mere pleasant memories vital matters which but yesterday stirred the very soul of him; all these have done much to people the great world and to spread men over its surface – but have sometimes been disastrous for the individual. Men and women have told themselves, times without number, that in this way will they live without separation; in that fashion will they order their lives; and lo! in a moment grim Fate steps in; and they are flung apart almost before there is time for remonstrance.

In such cases, happily, the new interests assert themselves, and the man or the woman – easily adaptable – begins instantly to form new ties, and to think less and less regretfully of the old ones. It is a kindly law of Nature – a merciful law.

This is true, of course, in the vast majority of cases – but not in all. It was not true in the case of the girl Moira, for instance; because she rebelled fiercely against the sudden snatching of herself away from the old life – the rude dispersal of everything and everyone that had made up that life. Hers was not a nature formed for forgetfulness; more than that, the new life (or may we not rather call it existence?) into which she had gone proved so bare as to force her back, against her will almost, to those old and pleasant recollections for almost her only mental food.

Patience, in the course of careful years, had amassed savings. She had been in the family of Paul Nannock for so long a time, and her reward as a trusted servant had been so generous, and the necessity for spending anything so meagre, that she had a considerable sum, carefully invested – considerable, that is, for a woman in her position. The interest upon those savings had gone on accumulating, until at Old Paul's death she was in a position to fold her hands, and to slumber, if she liked, during the remainder of the time left to her. She chose to do that; her real interests in life had closed with the death of the last of the family she had served; quite simply and rather beautifully, there was nothing left for her to do. Nothing, that is, save as regarded the girl Moira; for Moira had elected to stay with her.

In a sense – a selfish, elderly sense – Patience clung to the girl. Her jealously watchful eyes had shown her that the child had been first in all things with Paul; she was, in a sense, a legacy left by him, all unconsciously, to the old woman. Perhaps, too, there was a curious feeling that if Moira went elsewhere she might come to talk about that precious memory of the dead man; and with Patience only must it be shared. She stood a little in awe of the girl; was attracted to her, in a subtle sense; and so made willingly enough an arrangement to keep her with her.

Patience had never really liked the country, save for the sake of her dead master; her heart always was in the turmoil of the streets where she had been born and where she had lived so long; now, free again, she would go back to it. And in that, of course, Moira was heartily with her; for had not Jimmy set out to the Enchanted City, and was she not absolutely to meet him at the very moment of her arrival? She had walked so often through Daisley Cross, and had seen practically every living soul that filled her world. London might be bigger, but anyone could be met there easily enough. In her idea of the place Jimmy stood waiting, with hands outstretched and a smile in his eyes.

The tragedy of the thing only dawned upon her later. So eager had she been to follow where Jimmy had gloriously led, that the matter of farewells was a small one. Mr. and Mrs. Baffall said good-bye solemnly, and urged that she would write; Alice was tearful for five minutes, but called that marvellous equanimity of hers to bear upon the situation, and waved a hand smilingly at the last. And then it was hey for London, and the old life left behind! She went willingly and even eagerly with Patience; and so the world swallowed her, and she was lost.

Patience had, of course, no concern for anyone outside the man who was dead and the girl who lived; no one else mattered. She had nodded sharply with pursed lips when Mrs. Baffall pressed her to write; in her heart she determined that not a line should be sent. She was going away to live her own life; all this was done with. And in that spirit she brought Moira to London – Moira, taller by an inch or two than the bent old woman whose hand she held, and to whom she clung.

Moira was about fourteen years of age, slim, but not very well formed, with all the awkward movements of a shy girl growing up rapidly. When it is remembered that she had never seen any place very much larger than Daisley Cross, save when she had taken little excursions with Old Paul and the others to neighbouring towns, it is not to be wondered at that that first coming to London was a shock greater than can well be described. The coming to the fringe of it – that fringe which was not London at all, and yet had long since left the country behind, and was a dreary expanse of roofs and chimney-pots – cleaner roofs and newer chimney-pots than were to be found further in. After that, the roar and the rush beating up about the carriage of the train like a great angry sea; men and women crowding and hurrying everywhere in the streets down below them, and on the stations through which they flew; and then, lastly, London itself, and the demon of Noise let loose upon them! Where in all that turmoil through which they had almost to fight their way was to be found Jimmy, as she had seen him last going up the quiet hill in the rain, on a morning that seemed to be set years back in the ages?

Patience had taken some tiny furnished rooms in the top part of a house in a small street in Chelsea; one of the narrowest streets imaginable; and there, in a dull, ordinary, complete fashion, she settled down with the girl; folded her hands – and was at rest.

But Moira? This child of the woods and the fields and the birds and the flowers; this little sensitive loving soul that craved the touch of loving hands and the whisper of loving words; what of her? On how many hopeless nights was she to stare out, wet-eyed, over the hideous streets, and wonder if this was the end, and if, like Patience, she was to grow old in these top rooms, and never see the world again, and never hear of anyone. On how many nights as she sat with her knitting or her needlework (for Patience knew her duty, and knew that in these things for the young lay salvation), did she glance past the lamp on the little table, and look at the sleeping woman whose spectacles had been carefully lifted off and laid on the table before she composed herself in her arm-chair. Always the lamp burning there – and the woman sleeping – and the silence of the room – and the memories that would not die, and that the child did her best indeed to keep alive.