Piccadilly Jim Part 43

He extracted the volume from the shelf in a sort of stupor. Even now he was inclined to give his G.o.ddess of the red hair the benefit of the doubt, and a.s.sume that some one else of the same name had written it. For it was a defect in Jimmy's character--one of his many defects--that he loathed and scorned minor poetry and considered minor poets, especially when feminine, an unnecessary affliction. He declined to believe that Ann, his Ann, a girl full of the finest traits of character, the girl who had been capable of encouraging a comparative stranger to break the law by impersonating her cousin Jimmy Crocker, could also be capable of writing The Lonely Heart and other poems. He skimmed through the first one he came across, and shuddered. It was pure slush. It was the sort of stuff they filled up pages with in the magazines when the detective story did not run long enough. It was the sort of stuff which long-haired blighters read alone to other long-haired blighters in English suburban drawing-rooms. It was the sort of stuff which--to be brief--gave him the w.i.l.l.i.e.s. No, it could not be Ann who had written it.

The next moment the horrid truth was thrust upon him. There was an inscription on the t.i.tle page.

"To my dearest uncle Peter, with love from the author, Ann Chester."

The room seemed to reel before Jimmy's eyes. He felt as if a friend had wounded him in his tenderest feelings. He felt as if some loved one had smitten him over the back of the head with a sandbag. For one moment, in which time stood still, his devotion to Ann wobbled. It was as if he had found her out in some terrible crime that revealed unsuspected flaws in her hitherto ideal character.

Then his eye fell upon the date on the t.i.tle page, and a strong spasm of relief shook him. The clouds rolled away, and he loved her still. This frightful volume had been published five years ago.

A wave of pity swept over Jimmy. He did not blame her now. She had been a mere child five years ago, scarcely old enough to distinguish right from wrong. You couldn't blame her for writing sentimental verse at that age. Why, at a similar stage in his own career he had wanted to be a vaudeville singer. Everything must be excused to Youth. It was with a tender glow of affectionate forgiveness that he turned the pages.

As he did so a curious thing happened to him. He began to have that feeling, which every one has experienced at some time or other, that he had done this very thing before. He was almost convinced that this was not the first time he had seen that poem on page twenty-seven ent.i.tled "A Lament." Why, some of the lines seemed extraordinarily familiar. The people who understood these things explained this phenomenon, he believed, by some stuff about the cells of the brain working simultaneously or something.

Something about cells, anyway. He supposed that that must be it.

But that was not it. The feeling that he had read all this before grew instead of vanis.h.i.+ng, as is generally the way on these occasions. He _had_ read this stuff before. He was certain of it.

But when? And where? And above all why? Surely he had not done it from choice.

It was the total impossibility of his having done it from choice that led his memory in the right direction. There had only been a year or so in his life when he had been obliged to read things which he would not have read of his own free will, and that had been when he worked on the _Chronicle_. Could it have been that they had given him this book of poems to review? Or--?

And then memory, in its usual eccentric way, having taken all this time to make the first part of the journey, finished the rest of it with one lightning swoop, and he knew.

And with the illumination came dismay. Worse than dismay. Horror.

"Gos.h.!.+" said Jimmy.

He knew now why he had thought on the occasion of their first meeting in London that he had seen hair like Ann's before. The mists rolled away and he saw everything clear and stark. He knew what had happened at that meeting five years before, to which she had so mysteriously alluded. He knew what she had meant that evening on the boat, when she had charged one Jimmy Crocker with having cured her of sentiment. A cold sweat sprang into being about his temples. He could remember that interview now, as clearly as if it had happened five minutes ago instead of five years. He could recall the article for the _Sunday Chronicle_ which he had written from the interview, and the ghoulish gusto with which he had written it. He had had a boy's undisciplined sense of humour in those days, the sense of humour which riots like a young colt, careless of what it bruises and crushes. He shuddered at the recollection of the things he had hammered out so gleefully on his typewriter down at the _Chronicle_ office. He found himself recoiling in disgust from the man he had been, the man who could have done a wanton thing like that without compunction or ruth. He had read extracts from the article to an appreciative colleague... .

A great sympathy for Ann welled up in him. No wonder she hated the memory of Jimmy Crocker.

It is probable that remorse would have tortured him even further, had he not chanced to turn absently to page forty-six and read a poem ent.i.tled "Love's Funeral." It was not a long poem, and he had finished it inside of two minutes; but by that time a change had come upon his mood of self-loathing. He no longer felt like a particularly mean murderer. "Love's Funeral" was like a tonic.

It braced and invigourated him. It was so unspeakably absurd, so poor in every respect. All things, he now perceived, had worked together for good. Ann had admitted on the boat that it was his satire that had crushed out of her the fondness for this sort of thing. If that was so, then the part he had played in her life had been that of a rescuer. He thought of her as she was now and as she must have been then to have written stuff like this, and he rejoiced at what he had done. In a manner of speaking the Ann of to-day, the glorious creature who went about the place kidnapping Ogdens, was his handiwork. It was he who had destroyed the minor poetry virus in her.

The refrain of an old song came to him.

"You made me what I am to-day!

I hope you're satisfied!"

He was more than satisfied. He was proud of himself.

He rejoiced, however, after the first flush of enthusiasm, somewhat moderately. There was no disguising the penalty of his deed of kindness. To Ann Jimmy Crocker was no rescuer, but a sort of blend of ogre and vampire. She must never learn his real ident.i.ty--or not until he had succeeded by a.s.siduous toil, as he hoped he would, in neutralising that prejudice of the distant past.

A footstep outside broke in on his thoughts. He thrust the book quickly back into its place. Ann came in, and shut the door behind her.

"Well?" she said eagerly.

Jimmy did not reply for a moment. He was looking at her and thinking how perfect in every way she was now, as she stood there purged of sentimentality, all aglow with curiosity to know how her nefarious plans had succeeded. It was his Ann who stood there, not the author of "The Lonely Heart."

"Did you ask her?"

"Yes. But--"

Ann's face fell.

"Oh! She won't let him come back?"

"She absolutely refused. I did my best."

"I know you did."

There was a silence.

"Well, this settles it," said Jimmy. "Now you will have to let me help you."

Ann looked troubled.

"But it's such a risk. Something terrible might happen to you.

Isn't impersonation a criminal offence?"

"What does it matter? They tell me prisons are excellent places nowadays. Concerts, picnics--all that sort of thing. I shan't mind going there. I have a nice singing-voice. I think I will try to make the glee-club."

"I suppose we are breaking the law," said Ann seriously. "I told Jerry that nothing could happen to us except the loss of his place to him and being sent to my grandmother to me, but I'm bound to say I said that just to encourage him. Don't you think we ought to know what the penalty is, in case we are caught?"

"It would enable us to make our plans. If it's a life sentence, I shouldn't worry about selecting my future career."

"You see," explained Ann, "I suppose they would hardly send me to prison, as I'm a relation--though I would far rather go there than to grandmother's. She lives all alone miles away in the country, and is strong on discipline--but they might do all sorts of things to you, in spite of my pleadings. I really think you had better give up the idea, I'm afraid my enthusiasm carried me away. I didn't think of all this before."

"Never. This thing goes through, or fails over my dead body. What are you looking for?"

Ann was deep in a bulky volume which stood on a lectern by the window.

"Catalogue," she said briefly, turning the pages. "Uncle Peter has heaps of law books. I'll look up kidnapping. Here we are. Law Encyclopedia. Shelf X. Oh, that's upstairs. I shan't be a minute."

She ran to the little staircase, and disappeared. Her voice came from the gallery.

"Here we are. I've got it."

"Shoot," said Jimmy.

"There's such a lot of it," called the voice from above. "Pages and pages. I'm just skimming. Wait a moment."

A rustling followed from the gallery, then a sneeze.

"This is the dustiest place I was ever in," said the voice. "It's inches deep everywhere. It's full of cigarette ends, too. I must tell uncle. Oh, here it is. Kidnapping--penalties--"

"Hush" called Jimmy. "There's some one coming."

The door opened.