"Of course I always felt, Jimmy, that you did care for me; something in your manner seemed to suggest it," she whispered. "Also I think Aunt Baffall and Uncle Baffall have thought so too—although anything they said would make not the slightest difference to me. I love them, and all that kind of thing; but there's the end of it. As for Ashby Feak—well, he's very nice as a friend—and I've felt a little sorry for him; but anything else, Jimmy dear, was absolutely out of the question. And I must say that whatever happens I feel easier in my mind about everything."
"There's one thing, Alice," said Jimmy, a little lamely—"one thing that's rather important. I haven't mentioned it before, and it is a matter about which you'll have to trust me. Love means trust and confidence, you know—and I've got a secret that I must keep even from you."
She looked at him quickly and eagerly; he avoided her eyes. "It's nothing awful—is it?" she asked.
"Nothing at all awful," replied Jimmy casually. "It simply means that—well—for a time you would have—we should have, I mean—to wait—to be true to each other, knowing that things will come right in the future. You would have to take my hands in yours, in a manner of speaking, and to say that you trusted me; to walk blindly with me. Afterwards I should be able to tell you why I had kept you and myself waiting. But not yet."
"Yes, Jimmy—that sounds very nice," replied Alice, a little doubtfully. "Of course I'm not in any desperate hurry to get married—or—or anything of that sort; but why should we have to wait? If it's money, Aunt and Uncle Baffall are sure to be awfully good to me—and you're becoming a greater man every day. Do tell me what it is, Jimmy? I won't breathe it to a living soul. Please, Jimmy dear?"
"It is impossible," replied Jimmy dramatically. "The difficulty—the secret difficulty—may be got rid of—sooner, in fact, than I imagine. But you must trust me. Surely, if you love me, there should be no difficulty about that."
"Very well," said Alice after a pause. "It certainly sounds a little romantic—and I love romance. And now, I suppose"—she glanced quickly round the room, and then turned to him—"now, I suppose, we may consider ourselves—what's the horrid word?"
"Engaged," said Jimmy, with a smile, but with secret misgiving.
Thus it happened that for a week or two Jimmy went to the house in a new character; and Ashby Feak came no more. The Baffalls made no secret of their delight; indeed, Mrs. Baffall said, more than once, that she had "seen it coming for ages." And Jimmy, though very much in love, and though telling himself again and again that it would all come right, and that in some fashion or other the tangle could be smoothed out, yet went to the house like a thief—even looking about him with the needless fear that he might be watched. And now more than ever the quiet figure of the woman in black, with her dark head bent over a sleeping child, was with him; it sprang, indeed, between him and Alice when he would sometimes have taken her into his arms.
It was on a night when his misgivings had been deeper than usual, and when he had walked the streets for an hour or more, fighting out the problem for himself, and finding no answer, that he went back to his new rooms, to be told by the porter that a lady had come to see him, and had been shown up. She would not give a name; but she wanted to see Mr. Larrance particularly, and would wait. Mr. Larrance was an old friend, she had said.
Jimmy climbed the stairs, wondering a little who could have called at such an hour.
He went in a little eagerly; although he had left her but an hour or two before, there was the vague possibility in his mind that this might be Alice. Always expecting something to happen that should show him a way out of the tangle, or increase it—for ever dreading that Alice should confront him with a full knowledge of all the circumstances—he felt, even as he mounted the stairs, that someone might have been to her, and might have told her; and that here she was, hot and indignant, to tax him with what he had done.
He opened the outer door, and went in. His visitor rose from a chair in which she had been seated, and came towards him; it was Moira. And in that moment—in the mere flash of a second, as it seemed—he saw with something of astonishment that her hands were held out towards him, and that she was smiling. So quick was it, that when, a moment later (perhaps at sight of something in his face, or some gesture, half of repulsion), she dropped her hands, and the smile faded from her eyes, he could almost have sworn that she had not moved at all.
"You didn't mind my waiting—Jimmy," she said, a little hesitatingly. "I wanted so much to see you—and it doesn't matter—with us—does it?"
"What doesn't matter?" he asked dully.
"My coming to see you—so late," she replied; and again he thought that there was a tremor in her voice, and again it seemed almost as though she would have stretched out her hands towards him. She stood still, nervously clasping them together, her eyes devouring his face.
"Won't you sit down?" he asked, in a more kindly tone, as he moved a chair for her. She seated herself, and he crossed the room and looked out of the window; his back was almost turned towards her. "What can I do for you?"
"I have not seen you, Jimmy, since—since our marriage day," she said at last, in a low voice. "That—that seems funny—doesn't it; but then, of course—everything is different—isn't it?"
"Of course," he replied. "How have you got on—and how are you living?"
"Very quietly; it is a little place—a mere tiny cottage, far away from everyone; and Patience and I have spent a lot of time out of doors lately. Patience tells me I have roses coming in my cheeks for the first time in my life. That seems strange, too—doesn't it? But then, of course, I'm very happy."
"I'm glad to know that," he forced himself to say.
"Very happy indeed. There is—there's the child; such a lot to do for her. You don't ask about the child, Jimmy?"
"You are going to tell me about her," he said more gently.
She laughed softly, and leaned forward, with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped; she seemed to be looking far away beyond him. "I think she's the prettiest baby in all the world, Jimmy," she said. "When I wake up in the morning she is there to smile at me; and that begins the day so well, you know. Sometimes she wakes me; a little soft hand digging at me, and trying to open my eyes. I woke in a fright the other night, dreaming that I had lost her; I was almost mad for a moment; I cried out in the darkness; I called on God. And there she was, when the dream had got out of my brain, lying soft and rosy and well beside me. She has dark eyes—like mine; and little hands that double just round one's finger, and hold it. I could sit all day with her holding me like that. But there"—she laughed again, and sat upright—"I'm boring you with all this that means so much to me—aren't I?"
"Oh—no," he replied. "I am—glad to know that you are so happy; I had thought it might be otherwise. Why did you send back the money?"
"I did not need it," she replied. "Our wants are so few, Jimmy—just the tiny house, and the garden—and the baby; I never thought I could be so happy."
"You were very unhappy when I saw you last," he reminded her.
"I've tried to forget—I've almost succeeded," she whispered, with her head bent. "Other thoughts have come to me as time has gone on—thoughts that seemed to grow first when I knew that the child was to be born. I could not tell you what they were, Jimmy; they were wonderful holy thoughts, that came most to me at night; they made everything that had happened seem so poor and so paltry." She sat for a minute or two in silence, and then got up hastily. "Well—I must say good night, Jimmy; I only waited to see you—just for a minute."
"You're not going back to the country to-night?" he said, holding her hand for a moment.
"No—we are staying to-night in London, at the house of a friend of Patience. Patience is looking after little Moira till I get back; so you see I must hurry. It would be dreadful if she woke and called to me, and I wasn't there—wouldn't it?" She laughed again, in that quick nervous fashion of hers, and drew away her hand gently.
"You must let me put you in a cab, at any rate," he said, moving towards the door. But she stopped him.
"It is only a little way, and I shall walk," she said. "I couldn't sit still in any vehicle, however fast; I shall almost run to see her. Good-bye, Jimmy; thank you for this long talk we've had. While I was waiting for you I looked all round your rooms—just peeped at everything, you know; I want to carry away the recollection of them in my mind. I shall tell the child in a whisper where you live, and what it looks like—and what a lot of books there are. Now I'm getting silly again—so I'll go."
She was moving towards the door, with yet some hesitation in her manner—some reluctance at going so abruptly—when there came a sharp knock on the outer door. She drew back, and glanced at Jimmy.
"Someone to see me, I expect—or it may be a message," he said. "Wait one moment, please."
Moira drew back into the room at his bidding. Jimmy strode through the little lobby outside, and opened the door. Ashby Feak stood there, lounging against the side of the doorway, with his hands thrust into his pockets; he nodded coolly, and made a movement to come in. But Jimmy barred the way.
"I'm sorry, Feak," he exclaimed quickly—"but you can't come in now; I—I'm busy. What do you want?"
"I want to have a bit of a talk with you," replied Ashby Feak—"and I mean to have it, if I wait here all night. Five minutes will do—or perhaps less; but it's rather important."
As Jimmy in some dismay fell back before him, the man strode through the lobby, and into the room. He stopped short on seeing Moira standing there; glanced quickly round at Jimmy, who had followed.
"I beg your pardon," said Ashby Feak slowly, with a glance from one to the other—"I did not know you were engaged; you said you were busy. What I have to say——"
Moira broke in quickly. "I was just going. I need not stay a moment. Good-night, Jimmy dear."
The last words were said in a lower tone as she crossed the room to where Jimmy stood; but Ashby Feak heard them; he started, and turned swiftly.
"'Jimmy dear'?" He looked from one to the other with a growing smile on his face. "Won't you introduce me, Larrance?" he asked at last.
"No; this lady is nothing to you," said Jimmy, in a low voice. "Stand aside, please; she is just going."
"She is not going," exclaimed Feak—"not until I know who she is. You know why I ask the question; I am not going to drag in names, especially of women—but this is more than life or death to me. Now, madam—perhaps you'll answer for yourself. Who are you?"
Bewildered, she looked at him for a moment, and then glanced at Jimmy as if for permission; he slowly bowed his head. "I am Mr. Larrance's wife," she said.
Jimmy put up a hand quickly as Ashby Feak would have spoken. "It's quite true; you need not say anything, and I am not going to explain. This leaves you free of course; I will write a letter to-night, putting myself right in that quarter. Good night!"
Ashby Feak, with a nod and a shrug of the shoulders, went out; they heard the door slam behind him. Jimmy moved slowly across to the window, without looking at Moira at all; she was watching him intently. After a pause, in which it seemed that they could hear their very hearts beat, she whispered a question:
"Jimmy—is there someone else?" He did not reply. "Someone else you love, I mean?"
He did not look round at her; he stared down into the dark street below. Across it a man was going hurriedly, and he was going in one direction—straight to Alice.
"Yes," he said at last, in a heavy tone—"there is someone else."
CHAPTER IV
THE LONG NIGHT
Much in the fashion of a bear that has hibernated through a long winter, and has come out lean and hungry into the warmth and brightness of the new summer—so Anthony Ditchburn crawled out of his mean lodging one sunny morning, and looked about him. He was a frowsy, unwholesome-looking bear at the best, and he blinked at the sunshine, basking a little in it with some faint show of pleasure, and facing life again with some show of hope.
Exactly how he had lived during the winter he did not know; it had been a matter of crouching over fires in mean kitchens of lodging houses—sometimes cooking poor food for himself, and sometimes begging it, already cooked, from others; a mean, scraping, starveling existence, going on from day to day. Some part of it had been spent in an infirmary, where he had given much trouble, and had lectured the doctors and nurses cantankerously about his own case and his own symptoms; they had been rather glad to get rid of him. Now, with the sun warming his veins, and putting some strength into his shrunken limbs, he cast about in his mind for someone to whom he could appeal.
A pathetic letter from him had reached Patience in the country; the old woman had been careful to reply, although, somewhat to his disgust, she had merely expressed sorrow for his difficulties, but had sent no money. Finding the letter now, after searching his pockets carefully, he discovered that the address of the place was a comparatively short distance from London; and, the country appealing to him on this bright day, and the chance of free lodging appealing even more strongly, he determined to make his way there. The shiftless life he had led had taught him to make the most of small opportunities; he knew that he might count on a lift in a cart now and then, and might even beg a little on the way, so low had he sunk.
Behold him, therefore, once more stirring in our story—creeping into it, as it were, with no thought of harm, and with only the desire for food and to shelter himself. See him going on his way, counting small possibilities in his mind, and wondering if by chance he might be able to quarter himself upon the two women for some indefinite period.
Drivers proved obdurate, and he got but few lifts upon the road; more than that, the begging was not a success, and he spent one night asleep under a hedge, cursing the stars that shone down upon him and the wind that ruffled his garments. But he went on hopefully, and came at last to the place to which Moira had retreated, and where she lived with old Patience and with the child.
Then it was that Anthony Ditchburn threw himself, with something of zeal, into what appeared to be a curious story. For he was informed merely that Moira was married, and that this was her child; he heard with astonishment that her husband was that Jimmy Larrance who had done great things in London, and who was reputed to be well-to-do. He questioned Patience artfully, but got no nearer to the real heart of the mystery.
They were good friends, he was told; but they preferred to live apart. Yes—Moira was perfectly happy; but they did not see anything of each other, and Jimmy had never been down to the place at all. More than that, they did not expect to see him there. The child, Anthony Ditchburn was told, was more than a year old.
They did not exactly welcome him; but he was by this time an adept in the art of forcing himself upon the unwary, and refusing to be got rid of. There was a small odd room in the house that had in it some old boxes and trunks; and out of these and some rugs and blankets he contrived a bed without their knowledge; and was actually discovered asleep there late at night. And there he camped for a week by night, and shamelessly lived upon them by day.
Also, he made discoveries which might in the future prove useful to himself. Creeping about in a noiseless fashion he had, he came upon Moira and the child more than once in the garden, and listened to what she said; saw her in tears, and saved up that picture in his mind for future use. He meant to turn everything to account; he was presently to visit a certain Mr. James Larrance in London, and to wring his heart (and incidentally his purse) with harrowing tales of a devoted woman, neglected and pining for love; of a child that was being taught to prattle his name.
He made other discoveries too. He found that at a certain still hour of the afternoon, when the child slept, and when old Patience nodded in a shadowy corner of a darkened room, Moira stole out into the garden carrying with her a worn, old writing-case, and that she wrote steadily for quite a long time. And while she wrote she smiled always; the tears were not for that time.
Yet the strange thing was that no letters were ever posted. The post office was quite a long way off, and Anthony more than once proffered his services; but he was smilingly told that there were no letters to go. Yet he certainly saw envelopes; concealing himself in the garden one afternoon, like the base unnatural creature he was, he saw without a blush that she kissed a letter she had put into an envelope and sealed and addressed. That evening he alluded pointedly to the carelessness of people who omitted to post letters, and even told a lengthy anecdote concerning a college friend of his who had lost a valuable appointment by missing a mail; but Moira only smiled and said nothing.
Then he set himself to watch more carefully, and he found that the letters were kept in an old box which stood under a table in the little sitting-room, and that the old box was not locked. Patience not being devoured by curiosity, and the baby taking no interest in such matters, it had not occurred to Moira to put these things away more securely; so that they were at Anthony's mercy. He slipped his shoes one night, and crept down into the room; and went on his knees before the old box, and opened it.
He took out a bundle of letters; noted that each envelope was addressed carefully to "James Larrance, Esq." He noted also that in the bottom of the box were some small garments, delicately made, for the child—mere baby garments. He turned them over ruthlessly in his search for other letters, but found none. He took all the underneath letters from the packet, and deftly arranged the box again so that it should not seem that they were gone—leaving a few of the more recent ones with the garments. Then he closed the box, and crept back to his room.
He felt that he held in his hands material which should indirectly bring him money. He saw a curious romance here, with misunderstandings marring it; two young people separated—and the woman writing to the man, and yet feeling too proud or too much afraid to post the letters. Anthony Ditchburn had no ideas at all regarding the beauty of any such possible story; nor was he working for the good of either side directly. He saw only that they might—young fools that they were!—be brought to some understanding which should make them feel that Anthony Ditchburn was a man to be rewarded. He decided that he would go back to London next day, and would seek out Jimmy; would bring him to his senses, as it were, with a blow from this most powerful weapon; and would then claim his reward afterwards. He slept well, and woke with that determination more strongly in his mind in the morning.
Not daring to approach Patience for necessary money to return to London (for this was a time for haste, and no mere walking methods would serve), he decided that he would get something from Moira; that was legitimate, because, in a sense, he was working for her, and for her future happiness. He waited until he could find her alone in the garden; he pitched a tale of a sudden chance that had come to him in London—a chance for honest work not to be missed. She, for her part, saw only a chance of getting rid of a disagreeable tenant cheaply; she gave him the money at once.
He got back to London, but did not go at once in search of Jimmy; with the little extra money in his pocket, and with the certainty, as he felt, of much more to follow, he determined that he would find a comfortable spot wherein to smoke many pipes, and to drink strong waters, and to while away an hour or two. So that it was quite late in the afternoon when he got to Jimmy's rooms.
The porter told him, with a strange sort of shrug, that Mr. Larrance was at home; it seemed, as the man somewhat disdainfully put it, that Mr. Larrance was generally at home. Not understanding, Anthony Ditchburn climbed the stairs, and knocked at the door; after an extraordinary delay the door was opened, and Jimmy stood there, blinking out at him.
A new Jimmy. A Jimmy with no smartness about him, as it seemed in that first casual glance—a reckless-looking Jimmy, with unkempt hair and unbrushed clothes; moreover, a Jimmy who swayed a little as he stood.
"Good-afternoon, my dear friend," said Anthony, hesitating on the landing. "It is long since I have seen you. I trust you are well."
"No—I'm not; but that doesn't concern you," retorted Jimmy. "You can come in if you like."
It seemed a new sort of room to which Anthony was introduced—not the old hard-working place he had known before. The desk was an untidy wilderness of papers—and yet not the untidy wilderness of the man who works. This was the room of a drone; of a man who slept the days away, and had no future to look to. Anthony Ditchburn saw more than ever, as he thought, that this was an unhappy story which he was to set right; on the one side of the picture—the woman who wept, and who wrote letters that were never sent; on the other side—the man who sat here, gloomy and miserable, and probably longing for the woman he loved and was too proud to approach. This was going to be quite an easy matter, Anthony thought—and the easy reward to follow.
Jimmy had gone back into his rooms, and had dropped in a listless attitude into a chair. Anthony Ditchburn, glancing about, saw a bottle and glass on the table, and smacked his lips audibly. The younger man turned towards him, and after looking at him sourly for a moment, nodded at the bottle.
"You'll find a glass over there; help yourself," he said.
Anthony lost no time in doing so; he mixed a generous measure, and raised his glass to his host. "To your good fortune!" he exclaimed.
Jimmy laughed bitterly; then went to the table and mixed for himself. "Good fortune?" he said, as he drank; "my good fortune has gone long ago. You don't know what you're talking about, Ditchburn, when you talk so glibly of good fortune. I was lucky once," he went on more excitedly, and seeming scarcely to realise to whom he talked, so that he might have a listener. "I had the world at my feet; I was envied by everyone; the game was in my hands. Look at me now!"
He spread out his hands and looked about him; his eyes were bloodshot and savage. Tears of bitterness sprang into them now, and he turned away his head. Mr. Anthony Ditchburn, feeling that the right moment had arrived, began warily to unfold his delicate plot.
"I have had the pleasure, during the past few days, of seeing Mrs. Larrance—your wife," he said. "Sweet girl—I wish I could have seen her happier!"
He stopped on glancing at Jimmy; the young man's eyes were deadly. "So you come from her—do you?" he asked; then, without giving Anthony time to reply, he went on more quickly: "You bring something of a message from her, I suppose? I don't want to hear it; I won't hear it."
Anthony Ditchburn, somewhat taken aback, hesitatingly drew the packet from his pocket, and held it out. "I bring no actual message from her," he began; "but I have some letters here——"
"I won't read them."
"Letters which were never intended to be sent, I believe; quite a number of them—all addressed to you. I saw her weeping once when she mentioned your name to the child; I was quite moved, I assure you."
"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.
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."
"I'm sure now, Patience," whispered Jimmy humbly. "I'm going to take the child—my child, she called it—and I'm going to trust to her to follow. You must help me, Patience; I'll leave a message for her that shall bring her—not to me, because I don't deserve it—but to the baby. I didn't understand before; I've been a blind fool—groping in the dark."
"You seem to understand yourself pretty well, Mr. Jimmy," replied the old woman; and Jimmy laughed.
Behold, then, Jimmy in a hurry; see him writing a note (not literary this time, but something from the old Jimmy to the old Moira) and leaving it for her. See also Patience, keenly alive to what was in his mind and eager to help him, and hear the baby crowing through it all! This is the note he left:
"I have taken the child; she is the prettiest baby I have ever seen, and you were right to say so. She belongs to me, and I shall keep her. She is a child, as we once were; she is going to teach me what is best and brightest in the world that once was good to us. I am taking her back to the beginning of things—I want to show her how her mother was once a child who loved the sun and the fields and the woods.
"Jimmy."
In the strangest fashion this new Jimmy and the conspiring Patience took the child and went away; the note was left in a familiar place, where, as the old woman assured him, Moira must be certain to discover it. They travelled up to London, and later in the day started for Daisley Cross; Patience marvelling, but trusting all things to this man who seemed at last to have grasped the situation. Indeed when she looked at him in surprise at his suggestion that they should go down there, he had answered, as it seemed with perfect understanding: "I can speak to her there as I cannot speak in any other place."
The old place, when he walked through it on the first night of their arrival, seemed very familiar and yet very strange; it had not grown up with him. More than that, people he met turned to stare after him as after a stranger. He walked through the places he remembered so well, with something of the thought in his mind of what he had lost—something of a perception of what he had forgotten and thrown away. Almost it seemed that he saw her swinging down the road before him, a slim girl in short skirts, and with eyes that looked back at him with a friendly smile. Eyes, he remembered now, always for him!
He had taken rooms for Patience and himself at the little old-fashioned inn in the town; the landlord, whom he had seen standing at his door many, many times on former sunny days, but who did not in the least recognise him, seemed to wonder a little at the coming of this young man and the old woman and the child; murmured about it, with lifted eyebrows, to his spouse. For Jimmy, going in and out of the place, and asking always if anyone had inquired for him, was a mystery in himself.
He went back to the old house they had known in their childhood; stood looking over a low part of the wall he remembered into the grounds, seeing alien lights in the windows of the rooms that once had been his and Moira's. From there he dived down into the woods, to find the happy places they had known as children; only to find them grown over and changed. Yet he stood in one spot under the light of the moon and the stars, and called her name softly, as though it might be possible that she could come out of the shadows of the past, and look into his eyes again, and touch his hand, as she had done when a child. Those eyes, he remembered again with a pang, that had been always for him!
He wandered about miserably the next day; told Patience at intervals that she had been wrong, and that Moira would not come back. More than that, in his restlessness he rushed back to London, and from London down to the cottage. Going to the place where the note had been secreted he found it gone, and went back to Daisley Cross with renewed hope.
There Patience met him with great news. Patience, with the hope of renewing some memories of her past life in the place, had entrusted the child to a plump and sympathetic daughter of the landlady, and had gone out to Daisley Place. The rest she told in whispers.
"I saw her, Mr. Jimmy—saw her like a ghost this late afternoon, creeping round the old place. God knows what was in my mind that kept me still; but I couldn't call to her then; she didn't seem to belong to me any longer. I watched her flit away again, taking the road that leads away from the town, and I lost her in the darkness. But she's here, Mr. Jimmy—she's come back again!"
His fear was lest he might frighten her—lest he might send her flying from him again, shamed and hurt and indignant. Patience had said that the child would draw her surely, and Patience should know. He would have given much to know if the child had drawn her, or if she had come in the hope to see him; but in this later time Jimmy was learning patience—learning, with a new humility, to understand the woman he had never understood before.
He tramped for miles that evening, in the hope of finding her; came back at last to the sleepy little inn, and went up to the sitting-room. A fire had been lighted, for the autumn evening was chill; Patience, seated beside it, looked up at him quickly, and then turned away her eyes. Jimmy seated himself beside the fire, and took the child into his arms; already they were quite friendly, and she nestled to him now naturally enough. So he sat for a long time, with his arm about her, looking into the fire, and thinking of the woman who was her mother, wandering forlorn and frightened outside. So, as the shadows fell and the fire died down, and old Patience, worn out with the excitements and fatigue of the day, slumbered heavily in her chair, Jimmy, as in a dream, talked half to himself and half to the child in his arms.
"Little Moira—in the days when you were a child I loved you—was jealous for you—fought for you. You didn't understand that—did you? We had not learnt our lesson then; the world was so busy with us that we had not had time to learn the better lesson of love. I wonder if we understand it now?"
Someone was listening. From the shadows of the house another shadow had emerged, and had crept up the stairs; it stood now at the door, listening. For Moira had travelled far that day, and now had come to the point when, as it seemed, she could not go back, and yet dared not remain where she was. She had seen the familiar figure of Patience in the streets of Daisley Cross for a minute that afternoon, and so had discovered where the three were to be found. More than once she had ventured to the very doors of the inn, only to turn away again; for in a strange fashion she was afraid of this man who knew her secret.
The passionate starved heart of her demanded him fully, or not at all. Once in pity he had given her his name; once in charity he had offered to take her and her child, and to give them the protection that was their right; but she would not have that. Her tragedy was that she was bound to the man whom she loved with all her heart and soul; but she must know that what he might say to her, in this better time, was not a matter of mere words, but a thing of the heart, before ever she stretched out glad hands to meet his. She must be certain of that—absolutely certain.
Again—the child. She yearned for that; passionately wanted her baby. Almost she hated the man for a moment, in a laughing, whimsical way, because he had tried to reach her like this; yet was glad to think now, as she peered in through the doorway, that the child was so naturally in the arms of the man. So she listened with her starved heart beating for them both.
"You don't seem to understand, little Moira, what you've done for me—or what I am—through you. Years ago you wove fairy tales for me—peopled the great world for me with beings other than those my dull eyes could see. Had I but known it, all that was best in me came from you; only I did not understand. I love you, Moira——Can you hear me, dear woman, out in the darkness"—(he could not know how near to him she stood!)—"and will you love me a little, in pity for me?"
She drew away from the door, and covered her face with her hands; then bent again a moment later, to listen to the murmuring voice within.
"I want to make up to you for all the wrong I've done you, dear," he went on. "For it was I who did the deepest wrong of all, in that I drove you away from me; I can never atone for that. I asked you if there was no man in all the world you loved—shameful beast that I was!—and still did not understand, when you said there was. Don't let me lose you now; there is no life for me without you!"
She turned away and stole down the stairs. She could not trust herself yet to meet him; she wanted to be alone. For now that this thing had happened for which she had prayed and longed and hoped, she was fearful of it; more than that, she wanted to hold it from her for a time the better to grasp it afterwards. She sobbed and laughed like a mad thing as she went; whispered to herself, over and over again, all that he had said; saw, over and over again, that picture in the firelight of the man with the child in his arms.
She came, as it were unconsciously, to the place towards which her heart had yearned so often in the stony London streets—the grave of Old Paul. To this everything had beautifully brought her; here, most of all to-night, she desired to be; because, most of all others, Old Paul would have understood. Old Paul had wondered what love would do to her in the world; and lo! love that had threatened to fling her, bruised and broken, to the mercy of the world, had but shown her, after all, that he jested a little roughly, and that all was well. Love had been kind—and Old Paul need not have feared. Before anything else she must tell Old Paul that.
Jimmy, coming presently almost as by an instinct to that spot, found her kneeling; and stood aloof for a time, watching her, and wondering what she would say. But when she raised her eyes at last, and got to her feet, she came towards him, smiling, with the glory of the autumn moon as it seemed about her; and she came like a maid that meets her lover shyly. And for a time they held hands, and looked into each other's eyes, as though they could never look away again.
"Jimmy!" she whispered at last, with a lingering note of tenderness on the name, "I was afraid before—but I heard all you said to the child. You—you like the baby?"
In that most surprising love story, when she asked that most surprising question she was in his arms, and he held her close, and looked deep into her eyes. "She's mine—my baby; you said so," he whispered, and kissed her.
So in the end it was only a man and a woman walking hand in hand through the darkness along a country lane; only an old woman peering out of a window on a scene which had been familiar years and years before, the while the tears dropped softly and yet happily on her withered hands. Yet they were all satisfied.
Love had shown them the way, after all; love went before them now, through the darkness—and into the brighter promise of a new day.