Jimmy did not attempt to go back to the cottage. Instead, he walked very
slowly up the street towards the hotel, the door of which he was just
entering when the Grimmer motor-car dashed past with the Canon sitting
very erect in the tonneau. As a matter of fact, that grave personage had
eventually entered the refreshment-room, feeling he needed something to
steady his nerves after such a trying interview. True, the brandy did
restore him a little, but the memory of Jimmy's words remained. He never
forgot them, and, as his wrath subsided, they began to affect him in
another way, making him ask himself whether, after all, he had read some
of his Master's words aright. As time went by, the matter troubled him
more and more--it is always a serious thing when a man past middle age,
and a dignitary of the Church at that, begins to think--and when, a year
later, Vera became engaged to the son of one of his own church-wardens,
a young City man of exemplary life and undoubted wealth, he was
conscious of a distinct sense of disappointment. He would have liked a
son-in-law who would have understood his new point of view. He married
them himself, in the blatantly new church with the sprawling texts round
the chancel arch; and the world, his world, congratulated him. But on
the following Sunday he preached a sermon which shocked his congregation
beyond measure, and really cost him that bishopric; for he took Jimmy's
suggested text, and argued, with an eloquent fire, quite alien to his
nature, that if the Master was ready to forgive, His followers must do
the same.
Ida voiced the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she
said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too
terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind."
But her new husband, Mr. Tugnell, himself a candidate for orders, the
owner of the living having promised that he should succeed the canon,
expressed the more general view, when he said sharply, "Nonsense, my
dear, the man had been drinking. Anyone could see that."
And Ida agreed, as she did to everything Mr. Tugnell said. Even when he
had suggested that she should settle half of Joseph Fenton's hard-earned
money on himself she had consented, knowing that he was a
philanthropist, and therefore would use it well.
May Farlow, on the other hand, grieved honestly for the canon, and
still retained sittings in the parish church, though she usually took
the children to the chapel-of-ease, "where is an old friend of ours,"
she said, "and I'm not going to turn my back on him. There are always
two sides to a question after all, and I want to hear both. Perhaps
we've been wrong in some things, Ida. At any rate, now that my children
are growing up, I want more than ever to be right, so that I can guide
them, and prevent them from making mistakes. Sometimes I think we were
too severe in the past."
* * * * *
Jimmy hardly noticed the canon passing him. His mind was too full of
other things. Vera was lost to him, he knew that, and, somehow, the fact
troubled him little. With her, also, he had lost all present chance of
going back to the Grierson world, of becoming a true and complete
Grierson again, and curiously enough, that troubled him equally little.
He had ceased to have the slightest desire for such a thing. A black
sheep himself, he preferred to herd with his kind.
His first feeling had been one of bitter wrath against his sisters. They
had betrayed him; they had thrust him back again when he was trying to
pull himself up; they were keeping him down, keeping him at a distance
for fear he should damage their position. And then his anger seemed to
pass away, and he laughed, first at them, then at himself. What did he
care about position, what did he care about Vera Farlow, what did he
care about anything--except Lalage?
He knew it now. He knew why his engagement had made him so utterly
miserable, knew why he had been unable to write that final letter to
Lalage. There was only one place in the world he wanted to be--where
Lalage was; only one object in life for him--to make Lalage happy, and
by so doing wipe out all memory of his intended unfaithfulness to her.
But would she have him back now, would she forgive his coldness and his
neglect, above all his repudiation of her in the London days? Did she
still love him, as he knew she had done once, love him enough to forgive
and forget, love him as he loved her? The thought drove everything else
out of his mind. Vera, her father, his sisters, all seemed to belong to
some distant past with which he now had no connection. His bitterness
against Ida and May, his anger against the canon, his first feeling of
grief, or rather of wounded pride, when he learnt that Vera was lost to
him--these were as nothing compared to the fear that Lalage would refuse
him. He was like a man who had awakened from a long sleep full of
dreams to find that, whilst he had slumbered, a deadly peril had come
down on him, a peril which could be averted only by immediate action.
Jimmy had ordered a drink, more or less mechanically, as a tribute
levied by the house; but he pushed it away untasted.
"I'm going to be absolutely sober when I do this," he muttered, then
went back into the hall, where he spent five minutes poring over a
timetable, following the trains down the lines of figures with a finger
which trembled slightly. Every hour seemed of supreme importance now.
Had he not been in dreamland for over a year? At last he found his
trains. He had three hours to wait in the town, two hours in London; but
he would finally arrive in the little Yorkshire town about half-past
seven in the morning, before Lalage had started work in that hateful
little shop.
There was no need for him to write the trains down. Their times of
departure were already graven on his memory; all he had to do now was
cross the road to the post-office and wire to Lalage. He was cool again,
a perfectly normal man. All his anger and his excitement had gone; but,
none the less, he did not hesitate a moment over taking what might be,
what he hoped would be, an irrevocable step.
An hour later, the kindly, grey-bearded old draper beckoned Lalage into
his private office. "There's a wire for you, Miss Penrose," he said.
Lalage opened the envelope with trembling fingers--only one person in
the world would wire to her--then she swayed a little and gripped the
table for support, as she read, "Meet me at the station half-past seven
to-morrow morning. Jimmy."
The draper was watching her anxiously. "No bad news, I hope," he said.
She looked at him with a smile which reassured him instantly. "No, it's
good news, the best of good news," she answered.
When she had gone out the old man shook his head sadly. His own wife had
died thirty years before, and he had passed nearly half of his life in
waiting for the meeting on the other side; so he knew what that smile
meant. Only a man, and the right man, can bring it to a woman's lips.
When Jimmy left the post-office he went straight back to the cottage.
The fear of meeting any of the Drylands people did not worry him in the
least. They all belonged to the dream, even Ethel, and now he had got
back to the reality. Yet, when he opened the door and found a note from
Mrs. Grimmer lying on the floor, he did not feel a twinge of uneasiness,
dreading reproaches from her, as his hostess.
But Ethel wrote kindly. "Don't take it to heart too much, dear old boy.
It was a nasty trick for Ida to play you, although just what I should
have expected from her or May. As for the canon, I am afraid I have
offended him mortally by sticking up for you. Vera is hopelessly weak. I
was never more disappointed in anyone in my life. Still, after all, it
was a mistake, and you would have never been happy. Take comfort from
that, and don't do anything rash."
Jimmy read it through a second time, then tore it up. Ethel was a good
sort, but if he did what he hoped to do, she would probably say he had
disregarded her advice and acted rashly. So she, too, had better become
part of the dream and be forgotten, which is the proper fate of dreams
and dream-people.
It did not take him long to pack his bag and shut up the cottage;
consequently, he had plenty of time to catch his train; but on this
occasion he did not go into the refreshment-room. He needed no stimulant
to keep him going now. If she refused to hear him it might be different;
but until he saw her he was going to touch nothing. He would speak
deliberately, in cold blood.
For a moment, when he came out of the terminus, London affected him as
it had done on the night of his home-coming; but the feeling passed
immediately, and the town became simply one stage on his journey to
Lalage. Moreover, as he drove across to the other terminus, he felt none
of that sickness at heart which he had dreaded so greatly, which had
made him avoid the place as a plague spot. All the old memories seemed
to have lost their bitterness. The women in the streets had not the
slightest kinship with Lalage. His jealousy of the past had vanished,
the hateful thoughts which had once gone nigh to driving him mad had
lost all their power, and now the only thing in his mind was the fear
that the new Lalage, which was the real Lalage, would not risk joining
her life to his again.
As the train came into the station he saw her standing there, tall, very
pale, and, as he thought, looking even more beautiful than ever in her
plain black dress. She was the only person on the platform, just as he
was the only passenger to alight; but, seeing the look in her eyes, it
would have been the same had there been a crowd.
"Lalage," he said, and took her in his arms.
When she disengaged herself, blushing, for the ticket collector had just
come out, she scanned his face eagerly, and then the colour left her
cheek again.
"Jimmy, oh, Jimmy, dear, you look so ill. Hasn't anyone taken care of
you all these months?"
He laughed happily, knowing now that everything was well. "I will tell
you all about it by and by." Then he stopped, regardless of the
indignant glances of the ticket collector, who was thinking of his
cooling breakfast. "Shall I send my bag to the hotel, or shall I leave
it here?"
She understood his meaning. "Send it to the hotel," she answered in a
low voice.
Nothing more was said until they were clear of the station yard, then,
"Where can we go and have a quiet talk?" he asked.
For answer she led him into a little public park near by. It was
deserted at that hour, and he got the chance to speak at once.
"Lalage," he said in a tone she hardly recognised, "I've broken my
promise to you. I've been ruining my health with liquor, trying to
forget you; and I've been engaged to another woman. I know you're
infinitely too good for me in every way; but I've come to ask you to
marry me, not in the distant future, but now, at once, as soon as I can
get a licence."
She stood very still, and, for a few seconds, he feared he had come too
late, then she spoke haltingly. "Jimmy, I'm afraid ... after the past
... that you wouldn't trust me. And that would be even worse than this."
He took her hand. "Lalage, dearest, there's no question of that now,
there can be no question of it when we're married. You say no one has
taken care of me. Won't you do it, sweetheart, and save me from myself?"
She looked at him with shining eyes. "You haven't said yet why you want
to marry me, Jimmy."
Once more he took her in his arms unresisting. "Because I love you,
dearest, because you're everything in this wide world to me, because I
honour you and trust you above all women, and because life would not be
worth living unless I had you as my wife."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's People of Position, by Stanley Portal Hyatt