Jimmy Quixote Part 15

So Jimmy, with a curious feeling that was half fear and half elation, turned his back upon the warehouse he had known for some four years, and went out into the world in a new sense. He had plenty of money, as he counted money then, in hand; and there was work to be done for the young man who presided over that particular paper, and for other men doubtless, young as well as old.

The first thing Jimmy did was to leave that boarding-house in the neighbourhood of Camden Town, and to look about for a place more suited to his requirements as a literary man, and as an independent one to boot. After much searching, he discovered some rooms at the top of an old house in a small court leading out of Holborn; with an ancient wheezy dame to cook his breakfast and to make his bed, and to s.h.i.+ft the dust about his room on occasion. There he established himself with his books; from there, on the first evening, he went as a new luxury to a small restaurant, and partook of a modest meal.

Somehow or other, matters did not seem to go on so smoothly after that time. For example, he went one day to the office over which his first friend presided, to discover that first friend standing outside on the pavement, with his coat on for the first time, thoughtfully scratching his chin and staring at his boots. On Jimmy accosting him, he looked up, and laughed ruefully.

"We've doubled up, dear boy," he said. "The blessed old rag has held out as long as it could; and the circulation has gone down and down till we hadn't got a gasp left in us; and we couldn't even afford to give it away! Not but what we're doing the thing properly, mind you," he added hastily. "You'll find your money all right on Friday--but it's the last.

What's going to become of me I don't quite know; but I think there's a chance of my being mopped up by one of the big syndicates. I'm going to try, at any rate; it isn't quite so wearing a life."

Jimmy discovered that they had sold the novelettes; he had an introduction to the new proprietor, and contrived to get a little work out of him, though at a cheaper rate even than before. For the rest, with something like a new despair beginning to knock at his young heart, he scurried round, and wrote anything and everything he could.

Often and often, in those first few months, he knew what it was to have to think more than twice before spending a sixpence for food; he grew, too, to dread the coming of the wheezy old dame with a certain red-covered little book which contained the account for his breakfasts and for her own personal attendance upon him; invented excuses, now and then, to go out, so as to miss seeing her. But in some fas.h.i.+on he managed to pay that; managed also to put aside a little towards that big item--rent. Though that was a nightmare, indeed--a thing that meant the counting of days with a palpitating heart.

He found his way, quite naturally, to the British Museum and its reading-room; discovered also near it a tiny tea shop, where, provided you bought b.u.t.ter-and only one pat at that--you might eat as much bread as ever you liked. Oh--a blessed inst.i.tution, and one to be encouraged!

So, struggling along, with an occasional flutter of the heart--(only very occasional this) at the sight of his name on a list of contents of some small paper; often hungry, and much perplexed at times over the question of clothes; with a wistful eye to the great men at the top, who had begun long ago perhaps in some such fas.h.i.+on as this; Jimmy trod the ways of freedom with a fair amount of contentment.

CHAPTER III

THE COMPLETE LETTER-WRITER

"I've been making up my mind to it for a long time; now I shall do it."

Patience sat upright in her chair, and stared, not at the girl, but at the window of the room; she shook her head resolutely. "I shall do it in my own way--and it isn't as if it'll cost much. It'll only want two sheets--or an extra one, in case of a blot or anything like that, and I'll have 'em black-edged."

Moira looked at her for a moment in silence. "Why black-edged, Patience?" she asked at last.

"More respectable, if it isn't too deep. There's a something about a black edge that takes away any flippancy; with anybody elderly like me it's always more decent. If you wouldn't mind, my dear, getting three or four sheets--and envelopes to match--I could set about it."

The idea had been in the mind of Patience for some time; she had thought about it, and worried over it, until at last she had brought herself to undertake the extraordinary task itself. Distrustful always of anyone young and impulsive, such as she conceived Moira to be, and of anyone, moreover, with no knowledge or experience of life, she had felt that in some fas.h.i.+on or other the girl had blundered in writing to Alice. The Baffalls were people of quality; above all, they were people with money; was it not possible that Moira had let slip something about the narrow life she led with the old woman, and the care with which money had to be watched with an eye to the future. If that were the case--Patience bridled at the thought, and determined to set matters right in her own fas.h.i.+on. Filled with a fiery independence, the old woman seemed to see these people shrugging shoulders and pursing lips, in pity for her and her supposed poverty; she would tell a different tale, with the aid of that highly respectable black-edged paper.

Behold her, therefore, with the grimly-edged sheet spread on a newspaper before her on the table, and with Moira's inkstand and pen at her service. Behold her watching the girl furtively while she framed her first sentence. Her worn cheeks were hot at the thought of what she had to do, and what she had to say; feverishly, she wished that the girl would say something, if only something against which she could raise a protest.

"What are you going to say?" asked Moira unexpectedly, without glancing up from her needlework.

"Don't know yet; it's hard to begin," retorted Patience. "I've put the address at the top, and the day--and 'Dear Madam'--that's as far as I've got."

"What do you want to say?" asked Moira, without looking up.

"Well"--the thin old hand was guiding the pen over the newspaper, tracing lines in and out among the lines of print--"I want to put it so they'll understand what we do--and the people we see--and--and all that sort of thing."

"Surely it's easy to say that," said Moira, with a half smile. "But how will it interest them?"

"They've got to be interested," replied the old woman sharply as she looked up. "Anything you've put into their heads has got to be taken out again; they've got to understand that we're doing things rather well--going about--and that sort of thing."

Moira dropped her hands, and looked across at Patience with sudden interest. "But why?" she asked.

"Because I choose," said Patience stiffly. "Because I'm going to have 'em think different from what you've told 'em. Because I want 'em to know that we hold up our heads with the best of 'em. That's why. If I was younger, and hadn't forgot so many things, I could be able to write down just what I want. But my imagination seems to have got dead somehow."

"Are you going to put imagination in the letter?" asked the girl.

"What else is there to put?" Patience raised her head and looked at the girl; then lowered her eyes, and went on tracing the lines on the newspaper. "Oh, yes, I know; I understand more than you think. I'm a hard old woman--and you're a girl, with all the world calling to you.

You hear the beat of hundreds of feet all marching on the road you'd like to travel; don't you hear the beat of the feet sometimes?"

"Sometimes," replied Moira, lowering her eyes.

"I know you do. And I'm glad to forget that the feet are marching at all; glad to think that if they march my way, it'll only be perhaps over my grave. I've done with it, and I've thought sometimes that you could be done with it, too."

Moira stretched a hand across the table, and touched the hand of the woman. "I'm not ungrateful--and we lead our quiet lives here," she said.

"I know that," replied Patience sharply. "But I don't mean that anyone else shall know that; I've got my pride--more than most folk. Who's Alice, if it comes to that, that she should be taken about, and drive in her carriage--and all that? If they took one girl--didn't I take the other; me that they looked on as a servant? I'll soon show 'em."

"You wouldn't show what wasn't true, dear?" whispered Moira.

"Yes--I would," was the surprising answer, "and not think twice about it. Who's to know?"

"I wouldn't do it," said Moira. "You'll only be sorry afterwards."

"Shall I? You don't know me," she retorted. "My pride'll keep me from ever being sorry. Now for it!"

Moira leaned her elbows on the table, and rested her chin on her clasped hands, and watched. A slight flush of excitement had grown in the white face of Patience; her lips were set in grim determination as she poised the pen, and waited before setting down in black and white what was in her mind. It seemed difficult of expression; after a moment she raised her eyes hopelessly to the girl. "I don't know how to begin," she muttered, with a glance at the door, as though fearful of being overheard.

"I thought you'd find it difficult," was the reply. "Why not say at once that we drive every morning until luncheon; pay calls in the afternoon; are never to be found at home in the evening? If you want imagination----Why, what are you writing?"

The pen was jerking rapidly over the paper, and Patience was saying the words aloud as she wrote. "Dear Madam,--I have been meaning to write to you for a long time--but London life takes up so much of my time--and Moira--'is it one "r," Moira?'--is always out and about--when not with me, then with some young companion." She glanced up half shyly at Moira, who was watching.

"Can't you spell 'companion'?" asked Moira demurely.

"Of course I can," explained Patience. "My in-vest-ments having turned out better than I hoped, we are finding this house almost too large for us, but should not like to change. I do not think that we could go back to the country now; we seem to want more life than we used to have, especially now after my re-tire-ment. I am afraid sometimes"--she raised her eyes again to the face of the girl, and then lowered them--"afraid sometimes that the life is almost too gay for Moira; but then she is young, and----"

Her voice trailed off, and she finished the letter with a commonplace or two that she had dug out of the respectable past. Then she looked up again at the girl, half appealingly. "It ain't exactly what I wanted to say; 'tain't strong enough," she said. "Couldn't I write something underneath?"

"Tear it up," suggested Moira, in a whisper. "Why should you write such things--when they'll know----"

"The letter's going," exclaimed Patience sternly. She turned again to the page, and took up her pen; began to write, while she muttered the words aloud.

"P.S.--I name no names; but there may be parties that have said things about me, and it is my wish to right myself in the eyes of all. Moira sits opposite me while I write"--she raised her eyes again for a moment, and lowered them quickly; perhaps she thought of the many, many nights on which the girl had sat there, with the lamp between them--"having no engagement for this evening outside."

She addressed the envelope hurriedly, as though afraid her resolution might fail. Moira, glancing across at the thing when it was finished, raised a protest.

"It's no use sending it to Daisley Cross," she said; "they're in London."

"I ain't going to waste an envelope," retorted Patience, after gazing at it for a moment a little blankly. "It'll find 'em."