"My dear young friend," began Anthony, in that querulous, whining tone he had learned to adopt, "I am indeed glad to look upon your face again. The world has gone hardly with me; it may astonish you to know that I have not at times had sufficient to eat. I wrote to your dear father, and he was so good as to send me a little temporary assistance—merely as a loan, of course."
"Look here," broke in Charlie, hurriedly, "if you're thinking of that sort of thing, I may tell you at once that it's no good. I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world—but I have a devil of a fight to get along on my small allowance; because, you see, a man of my age wants enjoyment—must have it, in fact."
Mr. Ditchburn drew himself up somewhat haughtily; strength was his, because he had not yet exhausted the sum sent him by the Rev. Temple Purdue. "I do not come here to beg," he said; "this is merely a friendly visit."
"That's all right," said Charlie, with an abashed laugh. "But it's just as well to have a clear understanding at the beginning—isn't it? Will you have a drink?"
"I will swallow my pride, young sir—and I will take refreshment with you," said Mr. Ditchburn solemnly.
"You needn't—if it hurts you at all," retorted Charlie, as he opened a cupboard and took out bottles and glasses. "Help yourself."
Mr. Ditchburn helped himself liberally, and sat down; Charlie, philosophically understanding that he was in for an hour or two of the man's company, mixed for himself, and sat down also. When he produced a tobacco jar and a pipe Anthony's lean fingers twitched; he found from somewhere about his soiled dress a blackened old briar pipe, and ostentatiously blew through it to show that it was empty. Charlie pushed the tobacco across the table.
"I doubt if I shall like your mixture," said Anthony, fingering it, "but tobacco in any form appeals to me." He filled the pipe, and lighted it, and sucked at it meditatively.
During the next hour or so he mumbled over the pipe—removing it occasionally from between his teeth to utter some scathing criticism of the world and the world's methods—methods by which he had suffered. Charlie nodded fast to slumber, but woke himself now and then with a jerk, to answer vaguely some question that had been put to him fiercely by the old man. At last, as it grew on to one o'clock in the morning, and Anthony Ditchburn, having mixed himself many doses, and having also dug deep into the tobacco jar, was stretching out more comfortably in his chair, Charlie rose to his feet, and yawned, and looked despairingly at the clock.
"I'm very sorry," he said, "but I've got a lecture in the morning, and I've got to turn out early. I'm dead tired; I shall go to bed."
"Don't let me detain you," said Mr. Ditchburn, a little thickly.
Charlie stared at him in perplexity. "Yes, but—I can't very well leave you here; it isn't—isn't exactly polite," he said.
"Do not waste politeness on me," retorted Anthony, wagging his head at the fire, which had died down almost to nothing. "I am not used to it. If you insist upon my leaving you, I shall in all probability be discovered in a comatose state in the streets by some benevolent policeman; it is too far for me to walk to my humble lodging to-night—and cabs I cannot afford. Surely I am doing no harm in remaining here?" he added, stretching out his hand, and looking round at the young man. "Let me at least remain where I am warm; I can sleep anywhere. This chair is very comfortable—and I can reach the coal to replenish the fire without moving. Good-night!"
Charlie would have removed the decanter with the remaining whisky in it before going, but at the very moment that he stretched out a hand for it Anthony Ditchburn also reached out towards it to replenish his glass. Charlie good-humouredly shrugged his shoulders, and went to bed.
In the morning, when he came out to his breakfast, he discovered the decanter empty, and the room thick with the fumes of stale tobacco; Anthony had apparently been smoking and drinking all night. He blinked red eyes at Charlie, and smacked his dry lips, and watched the preparations for breakfast; he looked more shabby and unkempt than ever in the morning light. He sat down unbidden with his unwilling host; ate substantially, and had almost to be turned out of the place by force at last. But he went finally, and Charlie congratulated himself on the fact that he had got rid of him.
He had yet to learn that Anthony Ditchburn could stick like the proverbial leech, and could bleed his victim as voraciously. He came again and again; was to be found, miserably cold, upon the stairs at unseasonable hours; even when sent away he left behind him the whining threat that he would be found dead in the street, and that his blood would be upon the head of Charlie Purdue. The persecution became so great at last that it roused Charlie to do that which he had been half-shamefacedly contemplating for some time. So that in the end it may be said that this miserable whining creature, with his tales of wrongs done him, and benefits withheld, became in a sense the pivot round which the tragedy was to revolve.
Charlie came up one evening to the lamp-lit room where Moira and Patience were seated; he was bubbling over with excitement and suppressed laughter. As he came in Moira noted something about him, and spoke of it at once.
"Why, Charlie—where's your hat?" she asked.
Charlie chuckled. "It's downstairs," he said.
The two women, young and old, turned to look at him; Moira breathlessly repeated the word. "Downstairs?"
"Yes; I thought I should surprise you," exclaimed Charlie. "I've taken the two empty rooms below; father's been hammering it into me ever so long—thought the other place wasn't respectable. I did it quietly, so as to surprise you; I moved in my books and things this afternoon. Now you'll have to look after me, Moira, and see that I work."
They were silent; Moira had stolen a glance at Patience, and was striving perhaps to hide the feeling of exultation that made her heart beat faster, and brought a flush to her pale face. There had swept over her the thought that Charlie would be in this very house—cheerful, light-hearted, happy-go-lucky Charlie; that he could run upstairs at any moment—that she could go down to him! No longer would she be tied to these rooms, with Patience for company; half the house would be practically hers, because Charlie lived below.
"I don't know as you'll find it comfortable," said Patience, after a somewhat awkward pause. "We're very quiet people here."
"That'll just suit me," said Charlie, with a grin. "You don't know how quiet I can be when I try. Well, Moira"—he turned towards the girl a little anxiously—"aren't you glad?"
"Yes—I'm very glad," she replied, afraid almost to think how glad she was.
For the first few evenings, at least, Charlie brought his books upstairs; and that was delightful. Simply to have him there at the end of the table, and to hear him muttering weird words to himself when he couldn't quite understand anything; to see him puffing at his pipe (for Patience, after a feeble protest, had given in, and now merely sniffed ominously from time to time), all this was as it should be. Once or twice, too, Moira went down to his rooms, saw the wonderful array of books and pipes, and wondered and admired. The house was completely changed with his coming, and could never be the same again.
He was sitting one evening yawning over his books, and now and then glancing up at the pleasant figure of Moira at the other side of the table, when he raised his head, and sat still, listening; someone was coming up the stairs. That was strange at that hour of the evening; it must be a visitor who had been directed to come up by the landlady. Patience was nodding in her chair as usual; the two young people whispered eagerly, as they listened to the somewhat stumbling steps upon the stairs.
"I wonder who it can be?" whispered Charlie. "I expect it's someone for me—and they've come up——"
The words died on his lips as the door opened behind him and a head was thrust in. Charlie had turned, and Moira had risen to her feet; the head at which they both looked was the ragged and unkempt one of Anthony Ditchburn. Charlie uttered a groan, and sank back in his chair.
"Ah!—glad to find you at last," said Mr. Ditchburn, cheerfully. "I went to your old lodgings, and they gave me your new address; you forgot to send it to me—or to write to me." By this time he was actually in the room, and was looking round benevolently on the others without in the least recognising them.
"Now, look here, Ditchburn," exclaimed Charlie, rising to his feet, "this is getting really a little too thick. I've got work to do—and I've really moved——"
Moira put him aside quickly, and advanced to the old man. "Mr. Ditchburn!" she exclaimed, in a surprised voice. "Why, of course—I knew you at once."
Anthony looked somewhat astonished, but, scenting here a new ally, took her hand, and smiled in triumph at Charlie. "Another friend!" he said, "although I do not at the moment recall the lady's name. My eyes are not what they were; privation and sorrow, and much poring over books——"
"You remember me?—Moira?" she said quickly.
He had to search his mind for a moment or two before he remembered; in his old selfish days he had not troubled much about the children or their names. But perhaps the presence of Charlie jogged his memory; he seized the girl's hands, and beamed upon her. "Little Moira!" he exclaimed. "This is delightful!"
Patience had by this time got to her feet; he recognised her more promptly, probably from the fact that in the old days she had been the one to feed him and look to his comforts.
"What a reunion!" he exclaimed, sitting unbidden in the sacred seat of Patience, and stretching out his hands to the fire. "After all these years—to come again into the midst of a circle of which I was once a welcome and a happy member! Dear!—Dear!—how wonderful!"
"He's an old humbug!" whispered Charlie to Moira.
"Hush!—he's poor—and he's old; the world hasn't treated him well perhaps," she whispered gently.
"And that reminds me," exclaimed Ditchburn, looking round at them with a smile, and beginning to fumble in his pockets. "I met a man to-day—another friend—now, where did I put that paper?—one who was with us in the old days. Is there anyone here who remembers Jimmy—Jimmy Larrance?"
Moira and Charlie cried out at once; looked at each other quickly. "You've found Jimmy?" they exclaimed in a breath.
"Yes. I was in a place of which I don't suppose you know anything—the reading-room of the British Museum; only persons of some culture can gain admittance there, I am given to understand; and a man came up to me, and spoke my name. I imagined at first it must be someone who had heard of me, or of my work; fame travels, you know. Then I looked at him more closely, and there was something familiar—strangely familiar, I may say——"
"Yes—yes—it was Jimmy!" exclaimed Moira.
"It was Jimmy!" exclaimed Anthony, letting them into the secret with a burst. "I don't know how he's living exactly, but he's got a sort of idea that he can write. He gave me this—I presume as a specimen; it contains a rather foolish piece of fiction from his pen. Curious how one with no particular learning or experience will attempt these things," he added, spreading out the paper on his knee, and searching among its pages. "I never heard that Jimmy had been to a university, or was even moderately acquainted with the classics. I haven't attempted to read it myself, except for the opening sentences."
Moira had eagerly snatched the paper from him; with a glowing face she held it out, so that Charlie might look over her shoulder. For there was the thing in print; there were the wonderful words—"By James Larrance," underneath the title. And then a name caught the eyes of the girl, and she gasped, and looked quickly at Charlie.
"He's called one of his girls 'Moira,'" said Charlie, with a laugh. "So he hasn't forgotten you."
"Of course not," said Moira, scanning the paper eagerly. She turned to Ditchburn, quickly. "Do you know where he is?—where he lives?"
"I can find him easily enough," said the old man. "I will certainly bring him to see you," he added.
"And then"—Moira was looking at the paper she held, but was not reading the lines—"then we shall all be together again—just as in the old days!"
Anthony Ditchburn looked into the fire, and smiled. Perhaps he understood the difference; perhaps he knew that never could they be together again as in the old days—never any more.
CHAPTER V
ANOTHER TASTE OF BOHEMIA
When it came to an actual matter of finding Jimmy, that young man proved difficult. Anthony Ditchburn went out full of confidence, but returned dejected—returned, let it be said, at a time when a meal might be expected to be spread in that top floor in Locker Street, Chelsea; he required some pressing to stay, but asked a blessing in somewhat choice Latin. Patience felt, in regard to this latter, that it might be pagan, but sounded genteel.
"I have hunted high and low," said Mr. Ditchburn, sinking into a chair wearily and combing his ragged beard with his fingers. "First to the museum, where I had a good look round in all directions, but failed to find him; next, a weary tramp to Fleet Street, where I am told these struggling ones are sometimes to be discovered. But though I went to the very office of the paper, they declined to give me any information; I might even say that they looked upon me with suspicion."
This was not altogether to be wondered at perhaps, seeing that Anthony Ditchburn, with tears in his eyes, had endeavoured to borrow half-a-crown at that office, on the strength of a supposed friendship with Mr. James Larrance, which had lasted for many years; and had been repulsed coldly.
"They live in holes and corners, these writing people, I've heard," murmured Patience, with a shake of the head. "No getting up at regular hours; no going to bed at regular ones either. And as to meals——" Patience raised her hands and closed her eyes at the mere horror of it.
"The ease of the thing surprises me," said Mr. Ditchburn presently, as he sat at the table eating ravenously. "A mere boy like this gets his name into print (I actually saw his name on a placard outside a paper shop this very afternoon) with no more qualifications than"—he looked round in search of a simile—"than you have. No grounding in the classics—nothing!"
"Jimmy was always clever—and—and poetical," said Moira.
"There are others who are clever—also poetical," snapped Anthony; "yet they fail to obtain a hearing. Bah! it's the spread of cheap and popular education; every young jackanapes who can spell c-a-t—cat, d-o-g—dog, thinks he has a right to give his views to the public. It's a horrible state of things—and won't be mended in my time, I fear."
"But I've heard that it's difficult—very difficult indeed—to get a hearing—to persuade editors that you can write," urged Moira.
"Stuff and fiddlesticks!" exclaimed the old man. "You've only got to knuckle down to 'em—to pander to a public that doesn't know what it wants. I've always refused to do that—and you see the result. I would rather starve."
Still on that mission to find Jimmy, Anthony Ditchburn haunted likely spots for a day or two, but with no success. He came in to report his want of progress each day, and each day came at the same time; moreover, he stayed, and smoked as late or later than they would have him. When he had gone on the last occasion, Moira hit upon a simpler plan to find her old friend, and adopted it. She wrote to him at the office of that paper Anthony Ditchburn had brought—wrote a little tender, girlish, friendly note, that should strike at once at Jimmy's heart. For the wonder of it was that Jimmy was not like an ordinary person at all; he could be found in this great world of London through the actual medium of the printed press.
There came a letter back to her in a surprisingly short space of time. It was headed with the address of the house in that little court off Holborn; was written in a scrawl that was almost boyish, and seemed to speak as Jimmy might have spoken.
"My dear, dear Moira,
"Yes, of course I am 'your own special Jimmy' as you delightfully phrase it; and of course I am delighted to hear about you. We mustn't lose sight of each other again—and you must come soon and see me. What a lot we shall have to talk about! Your note doesn't say very much about you, or what you are doing; it seems strange to think you must be grown a woman. I shall have a lot to tell you when we meet; thanks for all the nice things you say about my work.
"Ever yours,
"Jimmy."
That was sufficiently wonderful; in that at least she had triumphed over them all; she had found Jimmy. Had she looked a little deeper into the letter she might have read that note of hesitation in it; that half suggestion that they were to meet at some future time, and not now, in the first flush of their finding each other. But she did not think of that; she saw only that Jimmy—Jimmy who was already in her eyes great and famous—was near at hand, and wanted to see her. She would go to him without delay.
In that, as may be guessed, was something of the old passionate, jealous Moira, eager to be the first with all with whom she came in contact—eager to stand first in their hearts. She had found Jimmy; she would be the first to drag him out into the light of day, and to show her friends how she had triumphed. She would take Jimmy by the hand and draw him again amongst them all. She set off on the very morning of the day that had brought her the letter.
There was a curious feeling of hesitation about her; she was half afraid of this man who had grown into something so different from what might have been anticipated. Jimmy poor and unknown; Jimmy in a warehouse, labouring among ordinary men and boys; that was a Jimmy to be taken frankly by the hand as a comrade in the struggle in this great world of London. But Jimmy famous; Jimmy in print, to be read and admired by the million; that was a Jimmy to be approached with care and hesitation. True, genius appeared to be but indifferently housed, she thought, as she climbed the dark stairs to his room; but then genius was proverbially careless in such matters.
We may leap ahead of Moira's hesitating steps, and open the door for ourselves, and discover Jimmy. Jimmy in a somewhat despondent mood, having a dull aching wonder in his heart as to whether after all this game of writing was worth the candle; a little momentary feeling of envy for those who plodded the ways to offices that held certain salaries for them at the end of each carefully mapped-out week. For Jimmy had had two rebuffs that week; there was the evidence of them in packets at his elbow at that very moment. And beside the packets a certain red-covered book, that had haunted him long, and over which there had been a storm that very morning. For the wheezy dame who looked after him had delivered an ultimatum, and had snapped her fingers at Jimmy's suggestion that there was certainly money coming to him in the near future. Jimmy had pulled out periodicals, and had held before her undazzled eyes stories by himself, with his very name attached to them, but unpaid for; the good woman had merely retorted that she "couldn't abide readin' of any sort, an' didn't mean to begin at her time of life."
Therefore, Jimmy had no prospect of lunch; which might not have been a serious matter had there been any prospect of dinner, or, after that, any prospect of a bed. As the wheezy dame before mentioned had taken it into her head, the better to revive his drooping spirits, to come back into the room at intervals, and to launch at him further suggestions regarding the impropriety of his conduct in general, and the advisability of his earning an honest living at the earliest possible moment in particular, Jimmy had had a stormy morning, and was not in the best mood for visitors. Therefore, when, after a preliminary tap at the door, urgently repeated, the door was opened, and he heard the swish of skirts, Jimmy, without looking round, saluted his visitor.
"Now, my good lady—I can't do impossibilities—but I should like to do my work. You shall be paid in time; there's three guineas due to me this morning, and you shall be settled with to the uttermost farthing. If you'd read more yourself, and encourage your friends to do so, it might push up the circulation of some of the papers a bit, and I should get the money sooner. Please don't leave the door open; there's a frightful draught."
Finding that the door was not closed, and finding, also, something to his astonishment, that no fresh outburst came from the direction of the doorway, Jimmy turned round. Turned round, to find this tall, white-faced, wistful-looking girl, with hands strangely outstretched to him, and a smile parting and fluttering her lips. He fell back in amazement.
"Jimmy! You know me, Jimmy—you haven't forgotten?"
He went towards her blindly, with his eyes fixed upon hers; he seemed to grope for her hands. Perhaps, of all times in his life, he wanted her most then; perhaps, above all things, he was glad, in an indefinite unconscious way, to find that she seemed to be poor and shabby, and perhaps a little thin and hungry too. That was as it should be; he could not quite have borne anything else then.
He took her hands and held them; the two of them laughed shyly at each other, swaying towards each other for a moment, and swaying away again. And then the eager words found vent.
"Moira—dear old Moira!"
"Jimmy—oh, Jimmy!"
He shut the door, and drew her across to a chair by the fire, and looked long at her. He stirred the fire, simply to have some occupation for his hands; looked up at her with a half smile. She, for her part, found that a new hesitation had come upon her—a new reluctance into her speech. For though this was no genius of a Jimmy, to be held in reverence and awe and worship, still, this was a Jimmy grown up, with a deeper voice, and with the responsibilities of life upon him. The only blessed thought in her mind, as it had been a blessed thought in his, was that he, too, was poor and shabby—perhaps even a little in trouble.
They laughed at each other softly—a little sentimentally and foolishly, if the truth be told, because there was so much to be said that each was looking for a beginning. The years had gone by for each of them, and had given each of them, in a sense, a new experience of the world, and yet a small experience at the best. So that, although it was the old Jimmy and the old Moira who looked into each other's eyes in this poor room, it was yet a new Jimmy and a new Moira, with much to be learned and much to be forgotten. The child who had romped and wandered with him through sunny days was left far behind; this woman who smiled with the eyes of the old Moira was a something different, with which he had to get acquainted.
"Everyone's been trying to find you," she said at last, laughing nervously. "Now that you're such an important person, we've all been anxious to hear about you—to know what you were doing. Jimmy"—she leaned down towards him where he knelt before the refractory fire—"why didn't you try to find us?"
He got up from his knees, and stood a little shamefacedly beside his desk, turning over papers on it. "Well, you see," he began at last, "I had a notion I wanted to do something in the world—to be great—and all that sort of thing; then I think I meant to spring in upon you all—and surprise you."
He finished rather lamely, but the eyes into which he looked were tender, and he laughed more easily. "You see, I've had a bit of a struggle," he said. "Before a man does anything in this sort of profession, he's got to be prepared to live on dry bread almost——"
"But not now, Jimmy," she broke in hurriedly. "All that is done with."
"Practically," said Jimmy, jingling some coppers in his pockets, and swallowing with some difficulty. "Still, it's a good thing to look back upon; to remember the days when you didn't have all you wanted—and—and so forth."
"You must have been very brave, Jimmy," she said in wonderment.
"I had to be," he retorted.
At that moment a curious bumping sound was audible from the landing; then the door was thrust open without ceremony. In the doorway was framed, as a picture of Bohemia for the eyes of Moira, the figure of the landlady—a supercilious landlady, and no respecter of persons. She struck an attitude as she came into the room, and looked about her contemptuously; had a particular eye for Moira.
"Ho!" she exclaimed, with a sniff. "So we entertains, do we? Not content with robbin' honest people of what's their doo, an' snatchin' the very bread from the mouths of the widow an' such like, we brings our young ladies, if you please, an' sits 'em down by our fires, an' what not. An' it's cheques we're goin' to 'ave the very next time the postman walks in; an' I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we don't 'ave champagne wine for our lunches. Oh, it's a nice world for them as is brazen enough to 'old their 'eads 'igh, an' mock the pore an' the 'elpless!"
Jimmy, with a burning face, crossed the room to her, and endeavoured to control her. "My good woman—I've already told you that you shall have your money to-day; I'm a little pressed, but it isn't my fault. Don't make a scene, I implore you, before this lady." All this earnestly, and with backward glances towards the girl.
"Ho, yes—I dare say!" exclaimed the woman. "Nobody mustn't be put out a bit while this 'ere robbery goes on—nor must we breathe a word that might be over'eard by anyone as doubtless calls theirselves most superior. 'Owever, young man"—she raised her voice for the benefit of Moira—"it's come to this 'ere with me; that money I will 'ave—an' this very day. I might've known, by the very look of yer, w'en you first come 'ere, that I was doin' a silly thing to let you 'ave the place at all—much less feed yer!"
She went out, slamming the door; Jimmy turned towards Moira. Something to his surprise, he saw that though the ready tears were in her eyes, she was smiling at him—smiling in something of the fashion of the old Moira, who had been sorry for him when he had got into a scrape. He went across to her, and stood looking down at her.
"She's a beast!" he said boyishly.
"And so you're really poor, Jimmy?" she whispered eagerly. "Really—really hard up! That's splendid!"
"Splendid?" He looked down at her in perplexity.
"Yes. Because now that we've met again I shall be able to see all you do—and how you fight. It would have been awful to come back to you, and find that all the work had been done, and that I had not seen how it was done. It's beautiful to think that now, when your name is in print, and people are beginning to talk about you, all this goes on—this fight for money. I could not have liked you, Jimmy, unless you had been poor—that is, poor to begin with, of course. I shall be able to watch it all grow up; see you making money; I shall have been in the secret of it all."
"It's a poor sort of secret," he said ruefully.
"No, it isn't," she retorted. "Don't you understand, Jimmy dear, that being poor you're my friend in a special sense, because I'm poor too. It seems to me that the nicest people are poor, and I shan't feel so lonely in London now, as I should have done if I'd had to look up to you, as to someone richer than myself. But what are you going to do about—about her?" She jerked her head towards the door.
"Clear out, I suppose, if I can't pay up," he said. "Everything's gone wrong lately, Moira, and everything seemed to go so right at first. I was to have had a cheque this morning—and it hasn't come."
"Had any breakfast, Jimmy?" She spoke eagerly—wistfully—with a little catch in her voice.
"Not—not exactly," he replied. "Not that I was hungry, you'll understand; I never eat much before lunch——"
"Jimmy!" He looked round at her sharply, and read the reproach in her eyes. "You're not treating me fairly," she said.
"Well—what would you have me say? That I was beastly hungry—not having had a very liberal dinner last night—and that I dared not ask her for any breakfast, because I owed her too much already? Would you like me to say that?"
"To me—yes," she whispered. "Would you be hurt with me if I offered—offered to get you some breakfast?"
"Moira!" He drew back, and looked at her with a sudden frown of resentment.
"Oh, it's only a little matter," she pleaded, "and you shall pay me back some day—when you're rich. It's only a few coppers, Jimmy—and I should love to do it—please!"
She saw that he was relenting; she laughed gaily, and ran out of the room. Almost before he had done smiling foolishly at the door through which she had vanished, she came back again, bringing parcels with her. And then, all aglow with excitement, was down on her knees before the fire, stirring it to activity, and laughing delightedly like a child.
"What am I to cook it in," she asked, suddenly. "I suppose you haven't a frying-pan?"
"Oh, yes—I have," he whispered, entering suddenly and completely into the spirit of the thing. "I keep a frying-pan and a kettle—because sometimes at night, after she's gone to bed, and one is hungry—well, even sausages are very comforting for supper."
"Poor Jimmy!" She whispered it to herself, with a softened look, as she saw him go to a cupboard and open it, and with many glances towards the door bring out a battered frying-pan, and a kettle that had also seen better days. Also, he found a cup and saucer, and a plate or two.
Then, of course, the obvious miracle, while Jimmy stood watching wonderingly and admiringly. In no time at all a rasher and eggs were spluttering merrily over the fire, and the kettle was boiling, just to add another pleasant sound to the business. She made the tea in the kettle itself, gipsy fashion (the teapot was downstairs in charge of the dragon, it was explained), and in a trice had it poured out, and the eggs and bacon done to a turn, set before him. Her reward was in the hungry fashion in which he set to work upon it.
But he paused between bites to look up at her anxiously. "You'll never tell anyone?" he demanded.
She shook her head, and looked at him with perfect understanding. "Of course not, Jimmy; this is something quite between ourselves. You were hungry, you know," she added, looking at the empty plates. "Feel better?"
"Rather!" he replied gratefully. "I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come here this morning, and done—done this!" He indicated the hastily-arranged breakfast table as he spoke. "Now I want you to tell me all about yourself—and what you've been doing all these years. Do you know, Moira"—he went towards her, looking at her critically—"do you know that you've grown a woman?"
"I'm afraid so," she said shyly. She turned her head quickly towards the door, listening. "Hush! she's coming back again," she whispered, with a mischievous laugh that was half a frightened one. "We'd better clear these things away."
It was a hurried scrambling business; to tell the truth, they got somewhat in each other's way over the work; it was a mere frantic scurry, with whispers and soft laughter as they passed each other. But it was done before the door was opened, and Moira was back again in her place by the fire, and Jimmy standing looking down at her. As the door opened, he turned somewhat coldly towards it, feeling that now he could receive the landlady with some greater firmness for the food that was in him; moreover, he must show Moira that he was not to be set at nought lightly by a mere landlady.
But his eyes opened to their roundest as he saw the two men who stood in the doorway—an old man and a young one. The old one he knew—had seen him more than once lately; it was Anthony Ditchburn. The face of the younger seemed familiar, but he did not at first recognise it. The slight exclamation to which he gave vent brought Moira's head round at once; she started to her feet.
"Charlie!" she exclaimed in surprise; and then Jimmy knew in a moment who the second visitor was.
"Forestalled!" exclaimed Ditchburn, spreading out his hands, and looking round upon them. "She's stolen a march upon us, after all, Charlie; and I made so sure of being first—didn't I, Purdue?"
"How are you, Jimmy?" Charlie had come forward, and was holding out his hand somewhat awkwardly. "Ditchburn told me he met you yesterday, and that you told him where you lived——"
"I'd forgotten," said Jimmy. "But I'm very glad to see you. It seems such ages since we met. Moira and I have had quite a long talk."
"There is a distinct smell of cooking," said Ditchburn, sniffing and looking about him. "If I put a name to it, I might almost say that it was bacon—and——"
"Quite impossible," broke in Jimmy, with a glance at the girl.
"It comes up from below," exclaimed Moira, with her eyes dancing. "I was really the first to find him," she went on, turning to Charlie. "You never saw anyone so surprised as he was when I came in."
"Is this where you do it all?" asked Charlie, coming across to the desk. (Jimmy hurriedly hid the packages that had come in on that and the previous day.) "And I suppose you grind away like one o'clock—eh?"
"Yes—the work's pretty hard at times," said Jimmy with another glance at the girl.
"He calls it hard work!" exclaimed Anthony Ditchburn, raising his hands and his eyes at the same moment. "This business of writing for the popular tastes; this stringing together of words that shall catch the vulgar ear, and bring a smile to vulgar lips; this writing of things that can have no possible connection with the classics—or with——"
"Never mind about that," broke in Charlie, "so long as you make money by it. That's the great thing—the making of the money. That's where independence comes in; no having to go to fathers to beg for shillings here or sovereigns there; there's the glorious feeling that you coin money by your pen. Jimmy—we must see more of you. It seems funny," he added, appealing to the others with a whimsical smile, "awfully funny to think that Jimmy—sober quiet old Jimmy—should have blossomed out like this."
Anthony Ditchburn had worked his way over to where Jimmy was standing, a little confused, against his desk; he bent his head to whisper, even while he kept his eyes fixed on the others. "I am in the deepest distress, old friend," he murmured, "but the loan of five shillings would immediately relieve that distress, and would make a new man of me. Brethren in the paths of literature—treading its hard and thorny ways—and the one with a success which may not be perhaps unmerited—while the other——"
"I can't manage it—just now," whispered Jimmy, with a burning face.
Mr. Ditchburn moved away, muttering something to himself not wholly complimentary. Perhaps he felt a little relieved when Charlie burst in with a most inopportune suggestion.
"The best thing old Jimmy can do, now that we've routed him out, is to make a glorious occasion of it, and take us all to lunch. If I had my watch with me," he went on ruefully, diving into his waistcoat pocket and bringing up empty fingers, "I could tell you the time to a minute, but I know it's near lunch time. There's a beautiful little restaurant not a stone's throw from here, and we can celebrate the occasion with proper joyfulness. What do you say, Jimmy?"
Jimmy might have said a great deal; instead, he glanced at Moira. The girl, having already penetrated to the true inwardness of the situation, endeavoured to carry the thing off with a laugh.
"I'm afraid you don't understand, Charlie," she said, "that these celebrated writing people breakfast late. I actually caught Jimmy at his breakfast when I came in—didn't I, Jimmy?"
"I only finished five minutes ago," said Jimmy. "I lunch—much later."
"The true meaning of hospitality, my young friend, is to see others enjoy themselves," said Anthony Ditchburn, a little spitefully. "The suggestion is an admirable one; we are but ordinary mortals, and you can at all events have the satisfaction of looking on while we eat. Come, Purdue—lead the way!"
Moira would have stepped forward, in the endeavour to save a catastrophe—would have flung herself into the breach somehow, but it was not necessary. Even then Providence was knocking at the door, though in a strange shape; Jimmy had heard the knocking before the others, and had heard it with dread. He crossed the room swiftly, and opened to the landlady; took from her hand a letter, and, checking what she was about to say, closed the door upon her. He came back to his desk, with a murmured apology as he opened the letter; glanced at Moira with a meaning look.
Inside the envelope, accompanying a brief note, was a slip of pink paper—rather larger than the ordinary cheque, in that it had printed at the top of it the names of many papers unknown in the larger world of literature; it bore two signatures at the foot, and it was for the sum of five guineas. Jimmy thrust it into his pocket, and turned with a bright face to the others.
"It is a great occasion," he said, "and we must celebrate it; we'll certainly go to lunch. But we'll go to my own restaurant; they know me there, and it is more comfortable. Lead the way, Charlie!"
Anthony Ditchburn and Charlie went out of the place hilariously, arm in arm; Jimmy followed with Moira. At the door, as he paused for a moment, she whispered to him, with a look of awe on her face:
"Does it always come in like that, Jimmy?"
He heaved a sigh—laughed a little as he looked into her eyes. "Mostly like that," he replied; and they went down the stairs together.
CHAPTER VI
CHARLIE PLUNGES
Of the qualities that distinguished Charlie Purdue, and that made somewhat for his undoing, it may be safely said that he had got but few of them from his father. Rumour had it that Mrs. Purdue had been a flighty, pretty girl, who had in her time driven the good man almost to distraction, both before and after his successful wooing of her. Daisley Cross had seen but little of her; she had died within a few months of her first coming to the place, leaving a very small boy and a heart-broken husband behind her. So that, in a sense, Charlie Purdue had grown up, as has been shown, in his own fashion—ruled sternly at rare intervals by his father, and for the most part left to his own devices.
If he inherited anything from his mother, it was perhaps that light-hearted gaiety which refused to take the world seriously; that eager restlessness which taught him from the beginning that he had a big inheritance in the world itself, and that he must make the most of it. He was of the kind that could spring from his bed each morning, with the keen anticipation that the new day was to bring him new delights; of the sort, too, that must ever go to bed reluctantly, because the day has closed. To suggest for a moment that Charlie Purdue, launched suddenly into London at the beginnings of a new profession that included men as wild and reckless as himself, should settle down to sober work and to nothing else, was to expect the impossible.
Charlie had told himself (and had told others) that there was time enough for sober work later on; he wasn't going to forget his duties or his responsibilities; but a man could only be young once, and could only face London once in the best of health and spirits, and with the best of friends about him. That old Sobersides, his father, did not know what life meant; besides that, Mr. Purdue's profession debarred him from those delights which were open to his son. Which, perhaps, accounted for the Rev. Temple Purdue's letters to his boy in London.
Those letters were for the most part in response to hurriedly-affectionate letters begging for money. Charlie had begun honestly enough, by pointing out how much money was required in this big world in which he lived, and how quickly the money he had went; there had come mild remonstrances from the father to the son, begging that he would be careful, and would remember that his father, though possessing some private means and a living, was not a wealthy man. Charlie, seeing only the money, had scanned the letters hurriedly, on the chance of news, and had allowed the advice to remain practically unread. Then, when the necessity arose again for money, he had carefully tapped the same source, and with the same result.
But the time came when the father grew suspicious; came to London on the impulse, and sought out his son. He failed to find him at his lodgings, and was, somewhat to his surprise, presented by the landlady with a bill for a sum long due; the good woman thought that such an opportunity should not be lost. The Rev. Temple Purdue, after questioning her carefully, and looking at her with pained eyes of surprise through his glasses, came to the conclusion that it would be well for him to seek his son without delay; he went off at once to the hospital where the boy was supposed to be at work.
Referred from one to the other, and working his way up, as it were, from the students to those in authority, he learned that Charlie Purdue was somewhat irregular in his attendance; they doubted much if he would be there that day. The father took his pained face back to the boy's rooms, and sat down there, with what patience he possessed, to wait for him.
He waited long—waited, with a growing anger in his heart which he strove to control, far into the small hours. Then Charlie came home hilariously with three or four boon companions; saw with dismay the black-coated visitor waiting for him; and understood that unless he exercised great care the game was up. He got rid of the boon companions with some difficulty (one of them persisted in sitting on the stairs for a long time, crooning a love song in a falsetto voice), and faced his father.
Of course, it was the old story; he had really been working very hard—and this was a night of nights, when an old friend had secured an appointment, and the occasion must be celebrated. It had never happened before, and it would never happen again. He was not drunk; the suggestion was absurd, and he was amazed and pained that his father should make it. He was a little excited; the night air had brought a flush to his cheek and an additional light to his eyes. That was all. He trusted he was a gentleman (it was a pity the mantelpiece refused to catch his elbow at the proper moment when he would have leant upon it with dignity), and his father did not understand these things.
His father understood them so well, that that night, before composing himself to sleep upon the sofa in his son's sitting-room, he delivered an ultimatum; and it is probable that Charlie had never seen the kindly old mouth take on so firm a line. Charlie would attend strictly to his studies; instead of having money on every occasion on which he cared to demand it, he would be strictly limited to a definite allowance, and that allowance would not be exceeded.
That had been, of course, practically at the very beginning of things; much had happened since then. For Charlie contrived to keep within the bounds of his allowance for but a week or two; then gaily went back to the old order of things. While his father, watching the post anxiously, was gratified to think that his words had sunk deep into a ready soil, and that the boy was reforming, Charlie was gaily borrowing here, there and everywhere—beginning by little, and making the amounts larger as time went on; giving promissory notes, and playing all the old mad business as thoroughly as it could be played. As for work—well—there were examinations that should some day be scrambled through—at the eleventh hour; for the present they could be set aside, and happily forgotten.
He was pretty deeply involved at the time he came to the house in Locker Street and took the rooms there; it was Charlie's fashion to cast old responsibilities behind him (a sort of wiping of the slate), and to take on new ones cheerfully. Here, for the first time, in the quiet room with the two women wherein he sat at night, he determined that he would work; books were fetched out, and Charlie plunged into this matter of medicine again as heartily as he had once begun it. The mere fact that Moira sat near him, and was proud of him, was a stimulus; she should see that he was no mere idler.
But after a time the old life called to him again, and with no uncertain voice. He was not interested in the least in the profession he had adopted; only the irresponsibility of it—the jolly companionship of other students—appealed to him. It was the life he liked and wanted; never the work.
He began in a foolish fashion to cheat his father a little. Pressed for money, he wrote that new books must be bought, and fresh fees paid for lectures; he was careful to specify the books and the lectures. The Rev. Temple Purdue, pleased to think that he had won so easy a victory, sent the money at once; Charlie, a little ashamed, was yet pleased to think that he had tapped that source of wealth again. He did not buy the books nor pay the fees; the money went elsewhere. A little later on, when necessary, he would be able to borrow the books or to buy them secondhand; and his father could be put off with another excuse.
But that father remembered always that he had this one son; he kept a more watchful eye upon that son's future than the boy imagined. Examination lists came out, and failed to tell the tale the father expected; inquiries were set on foot, and the miserable story leaked out bit by bit. Charlie was summoned by a telegram to Daisley Cross; and went down there, inventing stories on the way—stories that grew more desperate with each mile that the train covered.
The old place seemed to have dwindled a little in the years; Charlie, reaching it in the evening, felt that he understood, resentfully and yet pityingly enough, that a man who had lived so many years in its narrowness, and in the midst of its petty happenings, must necessarily fail to understand that broader life and that bigger world in which he himself had flung away his substance. Above all things, his father was not a man in whom there was any real live blood; he was a creature (or so Charlie felt) in whom passions and hopes and ambitions had died long since, giving place to the mere desire to live comfortably and at peace with his neighbours. How could he understand the game of life as Charlie had played it?
The rectory looked grim and forbidding when he got to it; some memory of days when, as a boy, he had crept back half exultantly and half in fear from some escapade came full upon him; this seemed to be just such another home-coming. He would not go in yet; he would wait, and rehearse again what he meant to say, and rehearse it better. He went on past the rectory—past the old house where Paul Nannock had lived so long ago, as it seemed—and so to the little churchyard adjoining the church. There were lights in the windows of the church, and the sound of the wheezy old organ, and of voices accompanying it, floated out into the darkness. Charlie leaned against the wall of the churchyard and waited; now making up his mind to go and face his father boldly; now determining to remain where he was, until he had his lesson more complete in his mind.
While he debated, the organ gasped and wheezed and was still; a door at the side of the church was opened, and some dim figures came out, snuggling their necks into the collars of overcoats and jackets. Almost the last of them was a bent figure that exchanged salutations with them, and then, turning, came on towards where Charlie was waiting. He knew the figure before it reached him for that of his father.
The Rev. Temple Purdue stopped within a yard or so of him, and scanned him closely for a moment; then held out his hand. In that first gesture there was a natural warmth, as from the father to the son; a moment later he had checked it, and it was the grave salutation of the man with a painful duty to perform. Charlie stiffened at the altered touch, and hardened himself to meet what was to come.
"I thought I'd better come up and see you," said Charlie, standing stiff and aggressive, and towering by many inches above the little rector. "I suppose I'm in for a wigging—eh?"
"Charlie!—Charlie!—have you nothing else to say to me than that?"
"What am I to say?" retorted the other. "I suppose you'd call me a lost sheep, and goodness knows what else; and I suppose it'd be all true. We look at things from opposite points of view—you and I."
"You've had chances enough," said his father, moving on towards the gate of the churchyard, and glancing round at the tall fellow who lounged beside him. "It's been a series of failures from beginning to end——"
"I never liked the work," said Charlie, slashing at the grass with his stick as he walked. "All very interesting to begin with—but a year or so of it would sicken anyone. Besides, there are easier ways of getting through the world and making a living. Look at our old friend Jimmy—Jimmy Larrance."
"What of him?" The rector spoke sharply, for, according to his information, this was but another erring young man, who had refused to take advantage of the benefits that had been showered upon him. "What has he done?"
"Why, without any training, or anything of that sort, he's taken to writing for the papers—and makes rather a good thing of it. That's what I ought to have done," added Charlie seriously; "I wanted something that I could sit down to when I felt in the mood, or—or not sit down to when I didn't feel in the mood. That's the sort of thing I was cut out for; it's the sticking to it, whether I like it or not, that upsets me."
In that walk back to the house, where the old man lived practically alone, the rector endeavoured to impress upon Charlie, with the use of many platitudes, the necessity for that sticking to it; but without much effect. For Charlie knew the real state of the case, and his father did not; Charlie understood only too well the huge pile of debts that hung like a cloud over certain parts, at least, of that gay London the boy loved. Only a very small fraction of these had been confessed to; and even that fraction had been sufficient to disconcert Mr. Purdue. Charlie had, in a sense, burnt his boats; he could not make that fair and fresh beginning his father suggested, and he knew that there was no one to whom he could appeal to help him out of the tangle into which he had got. The most he could hope for was some temporary assistance, to be given him until such time as, by some extraordinary freak of Fortune, a few of his creditors should die or disappear, or some benevolent, but hitherto unsuspected, relative should leave him a large sum of money.
The talk lasted well into the night; Charlie, lounging in a chair, seeing the end of his hopes looming nearer with every moment, and his father pacing up and down his study with short, nervous steps, and explaining his view of the situation. Gradually, in the sheer hopelessness of the business, Charlie blurted out some further confession of the position in which he found himself; was forced in cross-examination to disclose yet a little more; and so stood, with nearly everything laid bare before the old man, and himself grinning—half recklessly, half with relief—at the thought that the worst was told.
That was, of course, the end of all things. Mr. Purdue had a duty to perform, and he had already been sorely tried. Charlie refused to go on with his profession; refused, for the time at least, to entertain the thought of any other. His father left him at last to his own reflections, telling him that he would try and sleep, and try better alone to understand the situation, and how best to grapple with it.
The dawn was coming in through the cracks in the shutters, and the lamp was burning low, when the father came downstairs—hollow-eyed and unkempt—to confront his son. In his own simple fashion the good man had spent the night in some sort of halting prayer to the God who had given the boy to him; he felt he had arrived, with that help, at a solution. Charlie, watching him furtively, wondered what was coming.
"Since you will do nothing I suggest—and since you have wasted every opportunity that has ever been given to you—I have determined to leave you to your own devices. I am going to give you a draft for fifty pounds; that is the last you will ever have from me. If you are sincere in meaning to make a start in some new mode of life—that will give you the start; but I can do nothing more. Your life is in your own hands, and you must make what you will of it. Good-bye!"
Charlie suppressed his feelings; there was a sort of wonder in his mind that he should have come out of the thing so well. Fifty pounds meant everything just then; it would keep him for—well, never mind exactly how long; that was not a time to juggle with dates. The proper thing to do, of course, was to show penitence and a chastened spirit; and Charlie contrived to convey both pretty admirably. He took the draft; listened to a few last words from the father who was breaking his poor old heart in the dawn of that morning for him; and went back to London.
Went back—to begin his new life in a special and an easy sense. He sold his medical books at once, and said good-bye to all the work of the years he had spent in London; then looked about him (with the feeling that there was no special need for haste in the matter), to decide what he should do in the future. His experience seemed to have taught him that there were one or two remarkably easy professions—such as painting and literature, and slight matters of that kind—where no preparation was specially necessary, and where the life and the surroundings were attractive. Almost his mind leaned towards painting; he had heard that your art student was a happy-go-lucky bohemian, in a picturesque costume, who smoked innumerable pipes, and sang while he worked. Charlie felt he could manage that role pretty well.
Having ample time upon his hands, he even invested in an easel and a paint-box and a few canvases; was a little astonished, when he came to the actual work, to discover that lines would not go quite where they were intended, and that some small knowledge was necessary even for the mixing of colours. However, that difficulty could surely be got over; Charlie joined an art school, where, in less than a week, he was the most popular student, and had already given two delightful dinners at a restaurant in Soho. He felt that here, at last, was the very profession for which he had been looking.
But he tired of that, as he tired of everything else; and a chance visit to Jimmy, and the sight of Jimmy driving a pen furiously, while a printer's boy dangled his legs and strove not to whistle between his teeth, spurred Charlie to the knowledge that perhaps after all he had made another mistake, and that there was no reason why printers' boys should not wait on him. He went home, to fling easel and canvas and brushes aside, and to look for a pen that absolutely suited his hand.
He wrote something, and took it down to practical Jimmy; and practical Jimmy scanned it thoughtfully, and made suggestions—something on the lines of those given to himself some years back, by the young man in a certain office of a certain paper—the first for which Jimmy had worked. Charlie was deeply grateful, and took the thing away; looked at it on reaching home, and decided that Jimmy was altogether wrong about it; and pitched it into a corner after the easel and the canvases.
Yet he tried again—and yet again; flinging into each effort a fierce energy that carried him on feverishly for an hour or so; and then dropping the work, and never going back to it with any energy at all. Now and then he railed against his ill-luck; more often he laughed, and said it didn't matter. And slowly saw the fifty pounds dwindling, and told himself—or tried to tell himself—that that didn't matter. If only he had had the chance that Jimmy had had; if only he had had to fight his way as Jimmy had done; if only it had happened that he had not possessed a dear good father (much too good for him, he added sometimes in generous moments); he might really have done something. People had been a jolly sight too good to him—all the dear people he had met in the world had made the mistake of not treating him seriously. However, if once he did see the sort of work that would suit his temperament—well, he would astonish some people; and then they'd be sorry for some of the things they had said!
Weak himself, he carried with him a very pestilence of weakness; painted the world in grey and feeble colours for other people. Moira, seeing him apparently striving against dreadful odds, pitied him, and called the world hard for his sake; those who succeeded had been but lucky, she thought, and good-natured, laughing Charlie had been bruised by the world, and had not deserved his bruises. In a sense, setting the one man against the other, she wavered a little in her favour of Charlie; seemed to see in him one of those failures that yet are half-successes, because the failure is taken with a shrug, good-humouredly, and because he who fails is not strong enough to fight against it. Jimmy was all right; Jimmy had seemed to succeed from the very first, and his moments of poverty had been mere light accidents, to be set aside and forgotten. She knew but little of Jimmy's fight; she had only touched his life, as it were, when first that life blossomed, however humbly, into print.
The starved heart of the girl longed and hoped always for love; hoped unconsciously, just as it had done in the old days, when she had struggled so fiercely to be first with Old Paul. Above all, it has to be remembered that Charlie had come into her life—full of gaiety and light-heartedness—at a moment when that life was dull and grey and commonplace; and he bore upon him always, either in failure or success, the stamp of youth, and hope and cheeriness. On the darkest mornings, when the streets outside were hideous, and the young spirit of the girl was fighting fiercely against the restraint of those few sombre rooms, it was Charlie who could always come up the stairs two at a time; Charlie who could burst into the room with a laugh and a joke; Charlie who could drag her out into the streets for a walk; Charlie whose cheery tongue was never still. It was what she needed; it was more than food and drink to her then.
Jimmy, in a sense, stood aloof; Jimmy was on quite another plane. Once or twice, when she had mustered courage to go round to his rooms, he had been either very busy or else not there at all; she had had the long tramp back to Locker Street, Chelsea, with the thought uppermost in her mind that Jimmy was slipping away from her. She had hoped so much at the first; she was to draw Jimmy into that magic circle again; to open up afresh the half-worked gold mines of their childhood. But Jimmy was in a sense inaccessible.
To be put to the account of Charlie Purdue was his poverty, and the disaster that had fallen upon him. Moira made no count of right or wrong in such a matter as this; her friend was in trouble, and that was sufficient. Charlie had only to point to all he had endeavoured to do—his medical knowledge, in the right use of which he had failed (or so he told her) on a mere technical quibble of the examiners; his easel and brushes, in the use of which again he had failed because he had not had a fair start; his manuscripts—in which he had not been so lucky as a certain Jimmy Larrance. Only give him an opportunity, he asserted passionately again and again, and he'd soon show them.
But the opportunity did not come, and the money steadily dwindled. Charlie became for the first time in his life a little careless in regard to his dress, and a little shabby; took to sitting in his room the greater part of the day, staring into the fire, and smoking much. Moira would creep down to see him; opening the door a little way, and looking in, and calling to him softly; on which he would look round, and make a valiant effort to call up something resembling the old genial smile; and tell her with a nod that "it was all right; he was thinking about things." And she would go away heavy-hearted.
She went down one night, to find him sitting in the light of the fire, with his chin cocked in his hands; he did not look round as she entered. She crossed the room softly, and stood near him; put out a hand nervously, and touched him on the shoulder. He looked round at her with a whimsical smile; then stared again into the flames.
"Charlie—Charlie!" she whispered. "What are you going to do?"
"The Lord He knows best—and I don't!" said Charlie, without looking up at her. "I've thought of everything; I don't seem to have any energy left—or any hope. It doesn't seem fair somehow that I should fight like this—or try to fight—with no result."
"You've tried a great many things," assented Moira.
"Haven't I?" He looked round at her gratefully. "That's where it is; my worst enemy can't say I haven't tried. I'm a fellow of energy really; no sooner does an idea enter my head than I'm off after it like a shot. It's a matter of luck, my dear. I haven't got the luck. A fellow like Jimmy simply drops into the thing at once."
"Jimmy works very hard," suggested Moira.
"And I don't, I suppose?" he broke in quickly. "Oh, you may as well say it; I don't mind. Yet if Jimmy had failed, the boot might have been on the other leg. I thought you believed in me a little," he added bitterly.
"Of course I do," she said quietly. "I only wish I could help you."
"Why, so you do," he replied, with a sudden change of tone. "You put heart into me, many and many a time; you've been a sort of good angel to me." He got up suddenly, and dropped his hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. "If I'd known you earlier, Moira, I might have done big things; I wanted guiding."
It was, of course, the cry of the coward—the despairing cry of the man who, having failed, shifts the blame on Fate, and cries out what might have been, had everything been different! But of course she did not know that; her young heart warmed to him at that blessed thought that she might have helped him—that she might even help him now. She was lonely—as he was; her life seemed to have gone down into the shadows—as his had done. She looked at him with shining eyes.
"Oh, it isn't too late, Charlie; you're young, and you can fight the world easily enough. All your energy will come back. You must fight."
"Not alone, dear." He said it then, as he said most things, on the impulse of the moment; perhaps because her eyes were shining as they looked into his; perhaps because her mouth was soft and tender as it pleaded with him. He dropped the hands upon her shoulders to her elbows, and drew her towards him. "Not alone, Moira; I haven't the strength."
"But how could I help you?" she whispered.
"As only a woman can help a man," he went on more eagerly, pleased with the sudden idea that had come to him, and almost feeling that it had been in his mind for a long time. "I love you, Moira; with you beside me I can fight such a battle as never man fought yet. You shall help me; we'll fight together."
"But, Charlie"—her hands were on his breast, and she was holding him away for a moment—"we are so poor, both of us—so young. After all, although I want to help you—why should I add to your burden? How should we live?"
"Oh, the old parrot cry of living!" he exclaimed, getting his arms about her, and drawing her towards him. "Look here, my dear; the world has behaved pretty roughly to both of us; to me most of all. I've been a bit wild, I know; but no one has properly understood me yet. I can do big things; I can do anything; but I want steadying. Besides—I've always loved you, you know; didn't I hunt for you in London, directly I knew you were here? Say you love me, dear."
"Of course—of course I love you, Charlie," she faltered. "At least, I think——"
"Oh, never mind what you think," he exclaimed impetuously. "The words are enough—you've said you love me. Kiss me; I'll be awfully good to you—and you'll find you've made a new man of me. Don't look so frightened; I've been meaning to say this to you for a long time."
Her lips met his, but with no ardour in the touch; she seemed to be thinking. He kissed her again, and strove to look into her eyes; and asked a little roughly what was the matter. She looked up into his face; perhaps she strove to read there some fulfilment of the dreams that had been hers during these past few years; perhaps she remembered, in that hour, certain words of Old Paul's—spoken a long, long time ago; they seemed to rise like an echo in her heart now. "What will love do to you in the big world, Moira?"
"There is nothing the matter, Charlie; I—I was only trying to think how happy I ought to be," she whispered, with a faint laugh. "Because I thought once—dreamed it, I think—that when love came to me it would be something like the angels one thinks about in childhood—something great and marvellous."
"And isn't it?" he asked, quite simply.
"I don't know—yet," she replied, disengaging herself from his arms. "Perhaps it's because I haven't had time to think about it."
"I didn't need to think about it," he exclaimed. "I knew in a moment."
"Yes—but then you're different," she replied. "Let me go now; we'll talk about this—some other time."
"But you've said you loved me," he cried, striving to detain her.
"I—I think so," she breathed. "Oh—won't you let me get a little used to it?" she asked whimsically, and ran out of the room.
Charlie thoughtfully filled a pipe, and lit it, and threw himself back in his easy chair. "Now," he said, as he puffed thoughtfully—"now I shall really have something to work for, when I've made up my mind what's the best work to tackle. Why didn't I think of this before?"