Mr. Grimmer looked up with a grin. "I don't know what the old joker will
say if you bring your scheme to a head," he remarked.
Ethel, who was standing in front of the fireplace, smoking daintily,
tried hard to look shocked.
"My dear Billy," she drawled. "That is hardly the way to speak of an
Honorary Canon who expects to become a bishop, if his father-in-law
lives long enough to get into another Cabinet. Then, for one thing,
Jimmy won't propose for some time yet, not until Vera has been away and
come back again; and when they are engaged what can the old joker, as
you call him, do to me?"
"He might preach about you," her husband suggested.
Ethel shrugged her shoulders. "I shouldn't be there to hear him; it
would make May Marlow blush and send that hateful Ida Fenton white with
passion. By the way, did I tell you that Ida had taken a house in town?
They think she's going to be married again, to that horrid, clean-shaven
man with the damp hands, who's always collecting for some mission or
other. You must know him, Billy. Surely you do; we used to call him the
Additional Curate. Well, to go back to Jimmy. He wouldn't give Vera up,
and her money is under her own control."
"He had to give you up," Grimmer said.
His wife laughed. "He never had me to give up, really. Besides, I hardly
knew you then, Billy, so it didn't count, did it?... Billy, you must not
behave in that ridiculous way; you have crushed my flowers, and the gong
will go in a moment."
It was a fortnight since Jimmy had met Ethel Grimmer again, and during
that time he had not written a line. Every day, and often twice a day,
he had been up at Drylands, at first, because Ethel had insisted on his
attendance; and latterly, because it seemed the natural thing to do. His
original feeling had been one of sincere relief at the break in the
monotony of his exile, and he had been equally glad to see both Vera and
Ethel; but after a while Ethel seemed to become almost uninteresting by
comparison with the younger woman. He was not passionately in love, as
he had been with Lalage. The thought of Vera gave him no sleepless
nights. In fact, now he slept far better than he had done for many
months past. He had a sense of restfulness to which he had long been a
stranger, as though he had taken some mental opiate to soothe the pain
of remembrance. London, and the flat, and the grinding drudgery of Fleet
Street, the miserable little creditors worrying at the door--all these
seemed now to belong to some former existence, to be part of the life of
a different Jimmy Grierson. Vera knew nothing of such things; and, in
her society, he himself managed to forget them.
Lalage's letter was still unanswered. Day after day he meant to write;
but, somehow, there was never time. He wanted to think it over
carefully, he kept on telling himself, and then deliberately turned his
mind to something else.
He had smartened himself up considerably so far as appearance went.
True, once or twice, it gave him a twinge of remorse when he found that
he was doing again the very things on which Lalage had insisted with
gentle patience in those now-distant days, observing little conventions
which he had dropped during his sojourn abroad, and had lately dropped
anew. Then, too, he was drinking far less. He did not need the spirit
now to bring him oblivion, and he did want to keep his hand steady and
his eye clear. Vera had once spoken very strongly on the subject of
intemperance, which she knew only in theory; and Jimmy had listened to
her words with respectful contrition. She would never forgive a man who
drank, she said, and he had gone a little cold at the thought. Yet,
forgetting that Lalage had known of his failing, and had tried to help
him fight his demon, he told himself that Vera's was the right view for
a girl of her position. She was too good and pure to come into contact
with the ugly things of life.
Already, he had made up his mind to ask her to marry him, later on, when
she came back from a promised visit of indefinite duration. There was no
hurry, Ethel had told him so frankly, no other suitor being in the
running. At first, the thought of the past troubled him a little, in the
abstract, as a kind of treason to Vera; but, after a while, he put that
thought aside. She need never know, and Lalage had gone out of his life
now.
His book had been published a week, and the one or two reviews which had
appeared had been satisfactory, almost flattering, though one reviewer
apparently voiced the general opinion when he said, "Mr. Grierson seems
anxious to uphold the conventions of modern society, and yet he writes
of them without conviction, as though he would like to believe in them,
and could not manage to do so."
Vera had frowned over the notice. "What rubbish, Mr. Grierson. It is as
much as to say that you would write one of the nasty kind of book, if
you dared. I think yours is very, very good and perfectly sincere."
Whereupon Jimmy had gone home well pleased, feeling that, at last, he
was receiving absolution, if not from his own family, at least from his
own people.
When Vera went back to town, Ethel deputed Jimmy to see her off at the
station, alleging that she herself had a headache.
"It's only _au revoir_," Jimmy said, as he shook hands at the railway
carriage door.
Miss Farlow smiled brightly. "That's all. I am coming down again very
soon. Father is going away for a couple of months' holiday; and, as he
is taking my younger sister, Florence, Ethel has made me promise to come
down here. She is awfully good-hearted, isn't she?"
Jimmy nodded emphatically. "She is indeed. One of the best I know."
As the train steamed out of the station, he stood a full minute deep in
thought, staring at it until it disappeared round a slight curve; then
he turned to find the doctor watching him with a grim smile.
"Hullo, Grierson," the old man said. "I've hardly seen you lately, only
caught glimpses of you whizzing past in a motor, surrounded by
millinery." Then he scanned the other's face critically. "You're
looking better. Found the cure for it, eh? I always thought that both
the reason and the remedy would prove to wear skirts."
Jimmy flushed awkwardly. He did not altogether admire Dr. Gregg's
frankness; and yet he was grateful for the implied testimony to his
reformation, so he answered with a laugh, and, after a few minutes'
conversation, willingly consented to go up to dinner at the doctor's
that night. After all, it would be dull alone in the cottage, and he
knew that Ethel would not want him, as she, too, was dining out.
The doctor was an old bachelor, or at least the town assumed him to be
one. True, when he had first bought the practice, thirty years
previously, he had made no definite statement on the matter; and, for a
time, people had shaken their heads, and, on that purely negative
evidence, had done what they called "drawing their own conclusions." His
wife had run away from him, and they would hear of her one day, in
connection with some scandal, and she would allege, and probably prove,
that he had ill-used her. However, as months went by, and they did not
hear--in fact they never heard anything--they admitted they had been
wrong, and began to pity him as the husband of an incurable lunatic, who
was confined in an asylum near London. But even that story had died a
lingering death from sheer want of nourishment, and long before Jimmy
had appeared in the neighbourhood, even the mothers' meetings had ceased
to discuss the doctor's private affairs. He was just the gruff and
well-beloved friend of everyone in the place, a man of whom even the
preacher in the Peculiar People's chapel spoke with respect.
"Old friends of yours at Drylands, after all?" the doctor asked
abruptly, as they sat smoking in his study after dinner.
Jimmy nodded. "Yes, you got the name wrong, you see, and, naturally, I
didn't recognise it. I've known the Grimmers, or at least Mrs. Grimmer,
all my life."
"It's a bad thing to get out of touch with people you know," the other
went on. "A very bad thing. Never have a family quarrel, if you can
avoid it, Grierson, or, rather, never have another."
"How do you know I have had one?" Jimmy demanded.
The old man smiled. "You've as good as told me so, a score of times. Bad
things family quarrels. After all, your relations are your own flesh and
blood."
Jimmy did not answer; latterly, he had begun to realise the truth of
what the other was saying; and he knew more than ever the value of
peace.
For a little while they smoked in silence, then, "How did you happen to
light on this town in the first instance?" the doctor asked.
"I hardly know myself," Jimmy answered. "I wanted some quiet place, and
someone--I have never been able to remember who it was--had once
mentioned it to me as the ideal spot. The name had stuck in my memory,
so I came down here on chance and liked it from the first. I must say,
though, I've found it dull at times."
"No place is dull when you know it well enough," the old man retorted.
"Yes, I mean it. You, as a writer, ought to understand that. It's only
dull if you make it so for yourself by being out of sympathy with its
people.... How's the book getting on?"
"Pretty well, I believe. The publishers say they're quite satisfied with
it for a first novel. One doesn't expect to make a big splash at the
start."
"Some never make a splash at all, even though they do good work. I knew
one." The doctor shook his head sadly. "He lived in this town, only a
few doors from here. He used to write scientific books, and was admitted
to be the best man in England on his own subject; yet he got more and
more hard up all the time. I don't know what he and his daughter really
did live on for the last year or two. It ended in something very like a
tragedy. Ah, it was a bad business, a terrible business," and he sighed
heavily.
Jimmy's lips seemed suddenly to have become dry and hard; but his voice
was almost normal as he asked, "What was it, doctor?"
The old man began to fill a pipe with rather exaggerated care. "It was
the daughter," he answered, without looking up. "She was a sweet girl,
the best, most unselfish girl I ever knew; but curiously young in many
ways, dangerously young--you understand? She had been brought up alone
with him--no woman to tell her things. That's bad. Confound it all,
sir,"--he raised his voice in a sudden explosion of wrath,--"parents
have no right to keep their girls in ignorance. It's criminal
negligence; at least it was in this case. They were desperately poor,
and he was dying; wanted all sorts of things." He paused again and made
a show of lighting his pipe, but the match burnt out ineffectually, then
he went on. "They hadn't a shilling, and none of the tradesmen would
trust them. And a man, a young scoundrel belonging to this very town,
offered her ten pounds to go away with him for a couple of days, showed
her the gold.... What was that?" he demanded quickly as Jimmy's pipe
stem snapped suddenly in his hands.
Jimmy himself had shifted slightly, so that the lamplight did not fall
on his face; but the old man was not looking at him as he resumed his
story.
"She said she was going to town, to beg his publishers for money, and
he, luckily, died believing it. But someone else had seen her; and the
women hunted her out. She fled to London, no money, no friends, and you
can guess what must have happened. Poor child!"
"What happened to the man?" Jimmy asked in a voice which made the doctor
give a grim little nod of approval as he answered:
"I felt that way myself. He abandoned her like a skunk, and his people
threw the blame on her for tempting him. Tempting him! He had a motor
smash soon after, and I tried my utmost to pull him through, because he
would have been a hideously disfigured cripple; but he died, and I never
regretted a patient more."
Jimmy got up abruptly. He knew now who it was who had mentioned that
town to him, and unconsciously sent him to live there. He had not the
slightest doubt in his own mind what the answer would be when he asked:
"What was their name?"
"Penrose," the doctor answered. "She was Lalage Penrose."