Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

For Jimmy had not yet learnt his lesson; still felt, in fact, even without confessing it in so many words, that he had conferred a great and singular favour upon the woman to whom he had given his name; he was pained somewhat that she should not recognise how great that favour had been; should not be more at his feet.

The coming of Anthony Ditchburn to him again (for although Jimmy, in this better time, had moved again into fresh quarters, Anthony had contrived to trace him) brought about a reminder of that stolen packet of letters that had been flung so contemptuously into a corner. Mr. Ditchburn could not understand yet why nothing substantial had come of that carefully planned piece of business; the money he had had was gone; and he went again with large hopes. But Jimmy was curt with him, and dismissed him somewhat summarily. True, he gave him some money; and Anthony, before leaving, jogged his memory as to the letters.

"She meant them for you, my dear young friend; they may contain something of the utmost importance. It seems such a pity that two young and loving hearts – beating naturally towards each other – ."

Alone in his rooms again, Jimmy began a search for the things. In the confusion attendant upon moving they had been lost sight of; he found himself hunting somewhat anxiously for these curious epistles, written by his wife, and yet never sent. It was possible that they might contain some allusion to the business – might suggest some way out of the tangle in which they both were placed.

He found the packet at last, and opened it, and began to read. And, once beginning, seemed unable to leave off. There were many of the letters, and the first of them dated back nearly two years. It was the time of Charlie Purdue's death.

He read on and on steadily – stopping for nothing, save, when the light failed, to get a lamp; carrying one letter in his hands even while he did that. And while he read a curious feeling of solemnity came on him; it seemed as though from some spirit-world the very soul of this woman he had not understood cried to him – craved him – longed for him and loved him. Just as he had learnt so much from her unconsciously before, so he learnt from her again; saw the little things that might, but for his blindness; have pointed him clearly to her, and shown him what was in her mind.

Long afterwards little phrases and scraps from them lingered in his mind, not to be lightly forgotten; little scraps and phrases, spoken as it seemed by the dream-woman who had been so near him in all things, and yet so far away. Imaginative always, he had yet not imagined this; had seen, from the very circumstances under which she had come to him in her sorrow, only a woman seeking for an escape from the consequences of her sin; only a woman desiring to hide what she had shamefully done. Now he read the truth.

"I write here, my love, what you may not ever read; unless it should happen that at some time when I am dead, and the world goes on without me, you may find this paper, and think that I am speaking to you – when it is too late. I want to set down solemnly here what I dare not ever tell you. I write it carefully, because the words are more precious than anything I have ever written. And yet I turn away my face for a moment before I write; because my face is hot with what I am going to say. See – here it is! I LOVE YOU. There are no words like these anywhere in any language; and they mean so much that I want to write them again and again.

"You are going to marry me. Out of that great heart of yours that is sorry for me, and for the wreck I have made of my life, you take pity on me, and shelter me. Yet you do something greater than that, although you don't know it; you make me the happiest woman in all the world – "

He read no more then; he got up and paced about the room, holding the letter in his hands. For he seemed to see her as she had once stood before him, with the tears swimming in her eyes; he seemed to see himself as a lower, meaner thing, because he had told her callously of the arrangement he had made to save her honour. This woman – who could write this and mean it all!

Another letter, further on, was written with beautiful tenderness, as she might have written to him had she stood in the nearest and dearest relation to him. It is scarcely too much to say that he read it with awe and wonder.

" – For they tell me that women sometimes die at such a time as that; and I was never strong. But I am not afraid; that might be best for everyone. Only I want to tell you now – with all the earnestness that is in me, and with all the strength that this change in me has given – that I never loved him. On the night he asked me to marry him I came to you. (Oh, do you remember the old shabby, shadowy room, and you in the light of the lamp, my dear; and all the cold world outside?) I prayed then that you might say something to me; that you might, out of some love for me, snatch me from him. But you did not speak. Then I was sorry for him – and I promised. But so surely as I believe in God, so surely do I write here that I did not love him."

"The child is yours! Don't look away from this when you read it, Jimmy dear, – because it's true. The child that is to be mine – born of my body, and part of my very soul – is the spirit-child that might in some better, happier time have been yours. So much is that so, that I have felt, through all the doubts and fears of these months, that the child is yours; the other man has never for a moment entered into my thoughts. He never did, and the sin was never mine. In the long, long dreams of my girlhood, when thoughts and desires were mine that I did not understand, it was always you – never anyone else. The only sorrow I have had – the bitterest thought of all – was that I had been spoiled in your sight; I never thought of anything else. So that if I die, I shall die with that happiness; that I was your wife, not alone in name, but in thought. I never have belonged to anyone else."

He laid it aside reverently with the others, and went on reading. All the dear intimate thoughts of her – so innocent and so kindly – so sweet and whimsical – were spread here for him; he wondered that he could ever have thought of any other woman. His heart leaped at the thought that she belonged to him; that he might claim her, and tell her that he loved her. He went on reading.

"I scrawl this in pencil; because I want to write to you first of all, my dear – I want to speak to you before I speak to anyone. It is all right; the child lies warm within my arms, just as I used to hold that poor, shabby old doll of mine you laughed at when I was a child. Do you remember? Why do we grow up, I wonder; and yet it's beautiful to grow up – wonderful to suffer, and to know for what we suffer. You won't read this; I shall only dream that you read it, and that something impossible keeps you away from me, and that you are a little sorry and yet a little glad. For your baby – yours and mine, dear – is the prettiest baby in all the world; quite what she ought to be. Aren't you proud of her?"

Proud of her? He longed then to go at once and find the child; wanted, almost savagely, to take the mite in his arms, and hide his shamed face upon her, and whisper his love for the woman who had waited so long for it. For here was the record of all her patience – all the dear wonder of her. He whispered her name brokenly while he read. "Moira! – Moira!"

"You were not kind to me to-day, Jimmy, dear," she wrote again. "I wanted so much for you to be kind to me to-day; I came to tell you about the baby. You were very patient; and once your eyes smiled at me. But you were only sorry for me, as you always are; and I would have been so glad for just a word of tenderness. You asked if you should get a cab for me; you would have said that to any other woman – wouldn't you? And I had dreamt the night before that your arms were about me, and that you whispered to me something I have longed so often to hear you say."

"And the someone else? I am mad at the thought of it; wild at the thought that I could have been so blind as not to understand. I have thought sometimes that only your pride kept you from me – or perhaps a little the thought of what I had done; and all the time you have thought of her. What shall I do; how can I find a way? And yet in my selfish heart I am glad to think that I hold you; that she can never come into your life. Can you forget her? Can you presently come to love me a little, and to think that after all I belong to you?"

A little further on she wrote in a more despondent tone; he remembered by the date that this was the time when she had come to him in the hour of his degradation, and had set him to his work again.

"I am no nearer to you; I have but done what any poor friend of yours might have done. I wish that that first thought had been true; I wish that you had killed me in your madness. It would have been the end – and I so glad to die! For the thought of me has driven you down and held you down, as you said; and I that love you so can do nothing. If I might die, Jimmy dear – "

He read no more. Now, for the first time, he seemed to set these women, who had been with him as it were through all his life, side by side; to see the one, so strong, so fine, and so patient; the other – the gay butterfly that had been good to look at. He had thought that Alice had helped him; now, through his shamed memory, came the remembrance of the monosyllables – the light laughter – the ready acquiescence in all he had said or suggested. And set against that the woman who had come to him in his rooms, and had not been ashamed to speak of the child and of her love for it – to speak of the little hands that held her own and wound themselves about her heart.

He thought savagely of all he had lost; triumphantly of all he would regain.

But he was a little late. Mr. Anthony Ditchburn – that poor, wavering, drifting wreck of humanity – had got the start of him; and Anthony Ditchburn wanted money and craved shelter. He had gone down to that quiet country place where Moira lived with Patience and the child; and there had blurted out the truth.

He had been quite proud, in a sense, of what he had done; he seemed to see a grateful Moira, blessing him for having brought those hidden letters to the notice of her obdurate husband. Ashamed and afraid to send the letters herself, she yet would welcome this messenger; would understand the motive in the mind of the man who had done so daring a thing. Therefore when, in due course, Anthony Ditchburn presented himself again at the cottage, and presently (the better to establish a temporary residence there) blurted out what he had done, he was a little astonished at the result.

She stood for a moment as if stunned; opened her lips to speak once or twice, but could get out no words. Then she sprang for the door, and he and the wondering Patience heard her flying up the stairs; then the sound of swift feet overhead. A few moments later she was down again; and there was a look in her eyes before which Anthony Ditchburn trembled.

"Why did you do it?" she demanded. "Is nothing sacred to you; am I to be shamed and degraded by such a creature as you? You have sheltered here – you have eaten our bread, and slept secure under our roof; yet you rob me of what was mine – steal the very soul of me!"

"But you addressed them to him," pleaded Ditchburn.

"Yes – for my own comfort – to cheat myself," she cried passionately. "And now – now he has read them" – she beat her hands together, and suddenly and surprisingly burst into tears. "I cannot see him again – cannot meet him; and I that hoped some day to climb as high as his heart!"

Anthony Ditchburn had begun again a halting explanation; but she checked him fiercely. She flung open the door, and pointed outside imperiously.

"Go!" she cried, "for I am in that mood when I might do you harm. Go – and never let me see you again!"

"I'm a poor old man – and it's raining," he whimpered; but she thrust him out of the house and shut the door upon him.

The money he had carried him, half crazily, back to London and to Jimmy. To Jimmy he told his woes; told of this strange madness that had come upon the woman he desired to help. And to his surprise and disgust Jimmy seemed to have caught this new fever too; for he also turned him roughly from the place, cursing him for a fool.

And here we may take our leave of Anthony Ditchburn; may see him, in imagination, going on for years yet, borrowing innumerable coins, and prating of his woes and of the treatment he had received from the world. And dying at last obscurely, and still railing, to any who may hear him, of the ingratitude of friends.

Meanwhile Jimmy made all speed to find Moira. All speed for him, that is; for, hesitating as ever, he must needs sit down to think about her, and to dream of how beautifully he was to bring her back into his life. So that when, in sudden and desperate haste, he started from London for the cottage where he had seen her under such different circumstances not so long before, a fear began to creep into his heart that Anthony Ditchburn might have spoiled the business after all. Which proved to be true.

He found Patience at the cottage; she shook her head even as he hurried through the garden towards her. Moira was gone, the old woman said; had left within an hour of Ditchburn's visit. She had implored Patience to look after the child; when the old woman had clung to her, and begged to know when she would return, she had said with tears: "Never!" But the old woman was wiser than Jimmy; she smiled and shook her head, and whispered what only a woman could whisper with perfect understanding of another:

"She will come back to the child," she said.

Jimmy looked at her sharply; seemed to understand a little what she meant. He caught the hand of Patience and wrung it; laughed like a boy at what he read in her eyes.

"Then – if I took the child – "

"Oh – Mr. Jimmy," said Patience with a sob, "she'll come back to the child!"

CHAPTER VI

THE SPIRIT OF OLD PAUL

THE thought that was growing in Jimmy's mind, and which had started from what Patience had said, bore fruit upon the morrow. Jimmy slept that night at the cottage – having in his mind perhaps the hope that Moira might come back. Yet morning dawned and she had not been seen.

With the dawn he roused himself from his uneasy slumbers on a couch, and went to find Patience, to seek the news of the night. He found her with the baby; the baby a dark-eyed mite, scarcely dressed, and giving the old woman a bad time in matters of hair pulling and general infantile wickedness; yet Patience seemed to like it. Jimmy stood just within the door, looking at the child shyly and awkwardly; Patience whispered what she had to say over the child's head, much as though that small mortal might have understood.

"No news, Mr. Jimmy; no word of her."

"You seemed so sure that she would come back," said Jimmy.

"Dear man – shouldn't I know her by this time!" exclaimed Patience very impatiently. "What has she to live for but this baby? If only you would understand – if only you would see that she has left the way clear for you! Come in; the child won't eat you."

Jimmy came in, and introduced himself to the baby; she seemed to approve of him; in the lonely heart of the man there was a curious stirring as the soft fingers of the child closed on his. "She's a pretty baby," he said with a smile.

"Not another like her in the world – and lots that'll tell her so as she grows up. Girl babies growing up every day – and boy babies to match 'em, and none of 'em knowing what's in store for 'em. It's just a big puzzle they'll have to unravel for themselves in the years to come." Thus Patience, wagging the head of experience over the baby.

"I've made up my mind what to do; I've been thinking about it all night," said Jimmy presently. "She'll come back to the child, you said; and I believe you're right. I want her, Patience; I seem to have grown up years and years in the last day or two. I dare not lose her now; I need her, as I never needed anyone in all my life."

"I wonder if that's true," said the old woman, bending over the child. "Men are so sure of things one minute – and not at all sure the next. For the love of God, Mr. Jimmy, be very sure before you meet her; she deserves something better than any man has given her yet."