Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

"Why did you bring them to me?" asked Jimmy. "They are nothing to me."

Anthony Ditchburn cleared his throat for an oration "I bring them," he said, "in the faint hope that it may be my privilege to bring together two young people who are most unhappily estranged. I am an old man, and the world has not used me well; but I would like to think" – Anthony got out a doubtful handkerchief, and dabbed at his eyes – "I would really like to think, as I go down the desolate hill of life, that I have done such a thing as this. You live apart – why? You refuse to see her – again, why?"

"Give me the letters." Jimmy held out his hand for them; snatched them from the hand of the old man, and flung them into a corner. "Sit down," he said roughly, "and listen to what I have to say."

Again it seemed as though he must talk to someone; again it seemed that this old man, derelict though he was, would serve as well as any other. Ditchburn was not particularly interested, because he saw, in the attitude of the younger man, his own chances slipping away; this was not the man who would be likely to reward the ambassador in such a business as this. But he sat down, and listened with something of an air of attention; also, he seized the opportunity to replenish his glass.

"I was a happy man before I married – before I was tricked into marriage," he said. "I might have married in such a fashion as would have gained for me a real helpmate; someone who understood me – someone who would have lifted me up – inspired me. But circumstances I can't explain prevented that; she went (I mean the woman I really loved) into the arms of another man. They were married last week, and that finished me – did for me completely."

"There seems to have been a blunder somewhere certainly," broke in Anthony, a little helplessly.

"Blunder? I should think there has been a blunder," cried Jimmy, with a laugh. "I set out so well; I meant to do such big things; and here, for ever hung round my neck like a millstone, are a wife and child who are nothing to me, and can be nothing. She drags me down, and keeps me down; my work is not what it was; it will never be anything again. I can't write; I can't think; I fly to that" – he flung out a hand towards the bottle on the table – "and so get some relief. That's poor Jimmy Larrance – who married a woman out of pity!"

Anthony Ditchburn coughed again, and shook his head; it seemed the only thing he could do. "Sad – inexpressibly sad," he murmured.

"Sad, indeed," said Jimmy. "But what does it matter? Already people are beginning to say that the work I've done lately – such as it is – isn't what it was; the grip has gone out of it. They begin to hint at failure; and you know how I started a year or two ago – eh?"

"I know – I remember well," murmured Anthony, with another melancholy shake of the head.

"Exactly; even you can be sorry for me. Take another drink; it's the best stuff in the world for a heartache – the best medicine for a failure. You're a failure – aren't you, old Ditchburn; and I'm another; we can shake hands on that!"

Anthony Ditchburn went away that evening – a little unsteadily as to the stairs – but the richer by five pounds. Here was a gold mine indeed; here was a man who, kept in a proper condition of insobriety, might spell luxury for Anthony Ditchburn for some time to come. Only one regret the old man had; that he had given up the letters; he might have done something better with those in the future.

Let it not be supposed for a moment that this attitude on the part of Jimmy had been a mere thing of a moment; it had been steadily growing. He was of that temperament that must brood, and he had had loneliness enough wherein to brood. It had begun on a particular day when Alice had come to him, to demand weakly and tearfully the meaning of a certain letter he had sent her.

He had had to tell her something; he had told her but half. To his credit let it be put that he breathed no word against Moira; it had merely been a mistaken marriage, and they had separated immediately. To his credit, also, be it written that on reflection he decided not to pose in any heroic attitude before Alice; simply as the pathetic victim of a blunder. He had not loved Moira, he had said; he had felt pity for her loneliness, and had married her; that was all. And he remembered now the tears in the blue eyes, and the pathetic quiver in the voice, what time Alice had told him that her heart was breaking.

Nevertheless, she had seen Ashby Feak for a few moments that night, and Ashby Feak had had the good sense not to press his claims at that time. A day or two later he had met her, apparently by chance, and from that time all was smooth sailing. She had written a letter to Jimmy – the letter of an old friend, who dwelt upon the past, but must make the best of the present; and she had spoken with tenderness of the great kindness of Mr. Ashby Feak. And after that – with a decent interval – the wedding.

Once or twice, in that time of his great loneliness, Jimmy had tried to work; had set himself resolutely to it, determining that he would show everyone the stuff that was in him. But always before him rose two pictures – the one of the woman he believed he loved, and whom he had last seen with tears in her blue eyes; the other of the woman to whom he was tied, living her life quietly and happily, as he believed, in the country. And at the thought of those two pictures the pen fell from his hand, and he sought the old consolation.

There cannot be set down here all the incidents of that time – all the slow processes of neglect and carelessness – all the constant telling himself, day after day, that there was nothing for which he need strive. Only in the course of many months certain pictures stand out, and may be recorded.

A day that arrived when, out of some curious hazy dream, he woke to find that he had no money – or, at best, not sufficient for the demands upon him. Which, in process of time, led to his abandonment of those comfortable rooms of his, and a return to something like those he had once occupied in a small court in the neighbourhood of Holborn. That was necessary, for economic reasons; but it did but add to his bitterness against what he regarded as the cause of it all.

Another day – set much further on in the record – when a play that had been commissioned, and of which he had had great hopes, was curtly returned to him, with the intimation that he had failed to work out his own idea at all adequately; in a savage temper he ripped the pages across and across, and flung them on the fire.

A day when he woke out of black night, as it were, and saw in his own diseased and tortured mind a swift and sudden ending to his troubles. Somewhere down in the quiet and peaceful country there was a smiling, happy, contented woman, with a child that was not his, and that woman was the very root of all his troubles; but for her he would have been a great man. There might be an end; some dream that had belonged to the black night suggested what that end should be. He would go down and see her.

In some blind, stumbling, halting fashion he got to the place; was turned back, again and again, on his way by one circumstance and another; finally, only reaching her late at night. And then a savage Jimmy – hungry and forlorn – but with a purpose staring out of his bloodshot eyes. That picture had been a horrible one, but he remembered it often and often.

After endless journeyings, he seemed to have found himself alone in a room with her. It seemed a pretty room, with dainty things about it such as might properly indicate the presence of a dainty woman. He remembered that she had come down from some upper room, singing; remembered that she had stopped at sight of him as she came in; and yet had spoken calmly and gently to him, while her dark eyes were fixed on his.

There had been no word of reproach from her, in spite of all he had said. His words had stung and lashed her; he had not spared her; he had set the thing fully and brutally before her. She was dragging him down; she and the child were a burden upon him. He had stretched out passionate hands to call attention to himself; had begged bitterly that she would note the change in him; and then had cursed her for the cause of it all. And she had looked at him, white faced but dry eyed, and had told him that he did not mean what he said.

"I mean to find some way of escape – or you shall find one," he had said, speaking as it seemed words that he remembered had come out of the black night through which he had passed to this hour. "There must be a way; there shall be a way. What are you to me? In all your life has there been no man you have loved?"

Her unfaltering gaze did not change even at that; only her face flushed a little. "Yes, Jimmy," she had said in a whisper; and still he had not understood.

The end of that picture seemed to be, so far as he could remember, that she stood straight and firm and fine before him, and that he had her horribly by the throat. And still her eyes burnt into his; and still, while he muttered that there was a way, and that this might be the way, and that he could kill her, she looked steadily at him, and smiled.

"Yes – kill me," she had breathed; "I shall not flinch from you. That might be the best thing, after all – at your hands."

And he had got away, and had gone out into the darkness; with a notion in his head that she was calling after him as he ran and stumbled to get away from the house.

Then black darkness again – a darkness through which figures flitted here and there; and men came, and talked to him, and left him; men who laughed, or men who drank, or men who clapped him on the shoulder, and strove to advise him. And then all the figures merging impossibly, as it seemed, into the one figure of Moira. Moira flitting about his rooms, softly putting things straight; Moira, with grave eyes, looking into his, and with lips that smiled. And for a time that dream did not fade.

Curiously, too, it seemed good and restful to have her there; broken thing though he was, he yet was able to realise that. Not that he could tell exactly from whence she came, or where she went when each day was ended; sufficient for him then that she was there; that he heard her voice speaking to him; that he could watch her moving about the room. And gradually, as he came to realise what he was, and what he had been, and how low he had fallen, a great shame came upon him that she should see him like this. And it was part of the dream – almost the waking part of it – that he should strive to tell her so; and that she, with a cry, should take him for the first time in her arms, and hide his face upon her breast and soothe him as she might have soothed a child. And from that dream he woke to find her gone.

But she came again – and it was to find a Jimmy changed, by some curious process, in her absence. Some of the bitterness remained; but here was a man who looked out with eyes that had some eagerness in them in search for the better things he had left behind so long. Presently, on an impulse, he began to talk to her about that long neglected work; began to discuss, half to himself and half to her, some point in it that had baffled him. Found himself presently, indeed, talking eagerly about it, while she sat on the opposite side of the fireplace with her chin propped in her hands, and with her eyes upon his, listening – suggesting!

From that it was but a step to his desk – with a flying pen for music to her ears. She had sent him there; she saw the old eager light in the tired eyes and in the worn face; she answered quickly when he spoke, or when he read a phrase to her. She sat there – eager, alert, and ready – while the night wore itself away, and while he wrote. And in her heart a song to match the flying pen.

The long night was ended, and the blessed dawn had come. When presently the pen ceased, while his lamp died out beside him, and his head lay upon his work where he slept, she stole softly from the room, and went away. For she knew that she had won.

CHAPTER V

"IF I MIGHT DIE!"

She was gone, but the spirit of her remained. Never again could he shame himself as he had done before; always it seemed that her presence was in the room; if his pen dropped from his hand, it was only that it might be caught up again at the remembrance of her eager face when she had urged him to work.

Not that the victory was gained in a moment. There were times when he went back; times when, had he but recognised it, he needed her. He was still resentful, in a sense; still felt, in fact, that what she had done had been but something of a repayment for what he had done for her; more than that, despite himself, he resented the fact that she had seen him in such a condition, and had been able to help him. Yet, on the other hand, that, in a zig-zag fashion, brought about in him a determination to work – if only to show her that he could work without her direct aid.

She came again; and then a more generous mood was on him that urged him half-shamefacedly to thank her. She came in brightly and yet hesitatingly, as though not certain what she would find; relief was in her face in an instant when she saw the difference in him. So for a moment they looked at each other, with the gulf that had narrowed for a time between them widening again.

"It's all right, you see," said Jimmy after a moment or two, and without turning his head to look at her. "I've pulled straight; I'm working hard once more."

"Of course – I knew you would, Jimmy," she replied.

"I'm not going to apologise – or make excuses – "

"Oh – please!" She held out hands of entreaty towards him.

"Things went all wrong with me; they'd have been worse but for you. I don't know what you found me like" – the words were hard to say, but he spoke them doggedly – "I only know how you left me. And I've done lots of work – good work, too – since then, Moira."

"Oh, I'm glad," she said shyly. "And I didn't do anything – not any more than another might have done."

He paced up and down the room for a moment or two, with bent head; then began to talk as though he had some difficulty in saying what he had determined to say – as though it were forced from him in a measure. She stood straight and slim and tall, looking at him; for a time, after he had finished speaking, she did not reply.

"The new play's all right, I believe; at any rate my man says so, and backs his opinion with money. Things seem to be going better with me – since – since you came to me. It's been a bit of a muddle, I know, old lady; but I like to treat people as people treat me; and you've been the one that has behaved well to me – the only one that hasn't deserted me. The pity and the tragedy of it is that you and I are just two lonely people – not loving anyone very much – and yet forced to remain lonely. I've been thinking about it rather carefully, Moira, from a practical common-sense point of view, and I don't see why we shouldn't cheat Fate, in a manner of speaking, and come together. I'm not speaking on the impulse of the moment. I'm simply saying what I've thought about very carefully. We're married; you're Mrs. James Larrance; and I've no doubt the child is a sweet little thing; we'll bring her up nicely. There'll be plenty of money, and we shall live where you like. What do you think of it?"

"No, Jimmy," she said at last; and he thought he had never heard her speak in so quietly determined a voice before. "When you kept faith with Charlie, and saved me and the child from shame, I asked nothing of you – not even money – nothing but just the name the world demands. You gave me that; I have blessed you on my knees many and many a time; but I want nothing more. I helped you a little, perhaps, as I might have helped any other dear friend; but I will not go even to your arms, Jimmy, for pity. You do not love me; the thing would be a mockery. We can at least keep our self-respect, each of us; in the years that are coming we can look at each other with friendly eyes, and live our own lives – apart. I speak with no bitterness, Jimmy dear! in my heart I am very, very grateful. But I will live with my child alone."

"Of course I understand that anyone of so strong a nature as you must find it hard to forget the – the other man – the man who should have been your husband," he said. He waited for a moment, as though expecting her to reply; but she said nothing. "At the same time," he went on, "I am bound to say that I think you are wrong. For your own sake, and for the sake of the child, you ought to establish yourself properly. If I'm ready to give up all sorts of dreams and things, surely you should be willing to meet me half way."

She shook her head, although she smiled at him. "We will not discuss it, Jimmy; my mind is firmly made up," she replied.

He let her go, with something more of tenderness in his farewell than he had ever shown before. He was disappointed, chiefly, perhaps, because he felt that she had not shown a proper gratitude; he felt that in all probability she would presently find that, for her own sake as well as that of the child, it might be expedient for her to adopt his very sensible suggestion.