JIMMIE
Robin found running away amazingly simple. Poor Jimmie, at her urging,
went out quite unsuspecting. She was so excited and there was so much to
be done at the last moment, that she had no time to think what the
parting with all she loved so dearly must mean to her.
Promptly at three o'clock Cornelius Allendyce tapped on the door. His
face was very red and moist and his hand, as he reached out for Robin's
bag, shook, but Robin did not notice all that; she slipped quickly
through the door and shut it behind her, as though fearful that at the
last moment she might find it impossible to go.
Out in the thin sunshine, whirring through the traffic of the crowded
streets, neither spoke for breathlessness. Cornelius Allendyce stared at
the buildings and swallowed at regular intervals to steady his nerves--a
trick he had always found most helpful in important legal trials. Robin
kept her eyes glued on the back of the taxi driver's head but he might
have had two heads and one upside down for all she noticed. Her hands in
her lap were clenched very tight and her lips were pressed in a
straight, thin, resolute line.
But as they kept on past Forty-second street and headed toward Central
Park West the lawyer explained that he was taking her to his own home
for the night.
"My sister will make you quite comfortable. Tomorrow we will go out to
Wassumsic." He did not say that it was important, too, to give Madame
Forsyth ample opportunity to get away from Gray Manor.
Robin drew a long breath and relaxed. It had taken so very much courage
to run away that she had little left with which to face her new life.
Tomorrow it might be easier.
Miss Effie Allendyce took her under her wing in a fluttery, mothery sort
of a way with a great many "my dear's."
"I suppose," the lawyer had said, looking at the two, "you, Effie, will
have to get Miss Forsyth some clothes tomorrow--"
"Clothes," Robin cried, astonished. "I--brought some."
"Well, you probably ought to have some other kind. You see, my dear, you
are a Forsyth of Gray Manor now." He turned to his sister. "Effie, can
you get all she needs--everything, before tomorrow at three o'clock?"
Effie's eyes danced at such a task--indeed, she could. She knew a shop
where she could buy everything that a girl might need.
"Well, I'll leave you two to make out lists. Isn't that what you have to
do?"
So, for a few hours the making of these amazing lists kept Robin's
thoughts from that little fifth floor home and Jimmie. Miss Effie began
with shoes and finished with hats, with little abbreviations in brackets
to include caps and scarfs and all sorts of things. "It is very cold in
Wassumsic," she explained, "and you will live a great deal out of doors.
It is very lovely," she added, making a round period after "sweater."
And there was another list which included a wrist watch and a writing
set. "They can send on most of these things," she pondered.
Robin slyly pinched herself to know that she was still a
living-breathing girl; all seemed as unreal as though she had slipped
away into a magician's world.
But the lists completed, dinner over, alone with her new guardian, an
overwhelming loneliness swept her. Cornelius Allendyce, turning from a
protracted study of the blazing fire, was startled to find the girl's
head pillowed in her arm, her shoulders shaking with smothered sobs.
"My dear! My dear!" he exclaimed, very much as Miss Effie would have
done.
"I--I can't help it. I tried--"
Poor Robin looked so very small in the big chair that remorse seized
Cornelius Allendyce. How could he have taken this little girl from her
corner, shabby as it was?
It was not too late--
"Miss Gordon," he began a little uneasily, wondering what guardians did
when their wards were hysterical. "My dear, don't cry, I beg of you.
Come, it is not too late to go back. We will explain--"
Robin lifted her head. "I--I don't want to go back. But I was thinking
of Jimmie. He must be awfully lonesome--now. You see you don't know
Jimmie. He depends on me to remind him of things like his hot milk. And
just at first, it will be hard. But, no, no, I don't want to go back."
"Then I would suggest that you go to bed. You are doubtless very tired
from the excitement of everything. And tomorrow will be a busy day--and
an interesting day."
Robin drew herself slowly from the chair. She limped over to the divan
upon which Cornelius Allendyce sat. Her eyes were very steady, dark with
earnestness.
"I'm ashamed I cried. I won't do it again. But I want you to know, oh,
you must know, that I'm not going to Gray Manor because of all those
clothes and the money or anything like that. There could not be anything
at Gray Manor as nice as Jimmie's and my bird-cage. But I want Jimmie to
have his chance--"
Left alone, Cornelius Allendyce found himself haunted by Robin's "Jimmie
must be awfully lonesome." What a strange pair--the quaint old-young
girl living in a world which circled around this father--the father, by
the girl's own assertion, "depending" upon the girl. And little Robin,
scarcely more than a child, realizing that she hindered the man's
development, talking about giving him "his chance" and at such cost--and
promising that she would not cry again. "There's bravery for you!"
muttered the lawyer aloud.
He believed that Miss Effie's lists of finery and knick-knacks held
little attraction for the girl.
He recalled Madame Forsyth's scornful "that other branch of the family."
Yet this James Forsyth and Gordon had lived for years and often in want
in New York City, and had never approached Madame for as much as a
penny. Robin had said Jimmie couldn't paint if he were rich. Could he
paint if he lost her?
Suddenly Cornelius Allendyce had a vivid understanding of the tie that
bound these two. And it was unthinkable that this man would let the girl
go and do nothing. Yet it was not of any possible embarrassment _he_
might suffer that Cornelius Allendyce thought at this moment; it was of
the heartbreak of the father. He had not considered him at all; carried
away by a mad impulse he had let himself listen to a child and had lost
his own sense of justice. Why, it had been rank robbery! He must go to
this man at once. Muttering to himself he went in search of his hat and
coat.
* * * * *
For the third time the little lawyer climbed the flights of stairs at 22
Patchin Place. And this time, so eager was he to square himself with
Robin's Jimmie, he ran up the steps. He knocked twice and when no one
answered he opened the door quietly and walked in.
A man sat at the little table, his head dropped in his outflung arms.
Cornelius Allendyce knew it was Jimmie. Another man stood over him, his
face flushed with impatience. "Mr. Tony," thought the lawyer. He was
evidently just drawing breath after a heated argument.
"Pardon my intrusion, gentlemen. I knocked but I do not think you heard
me." Allendyce stopped short, for his usual measured words seemed out of
place at this moment. "I am Cornelius Allendyce," he finished humbly and
guiltily. "I came back to--explain."
James Forsyth made a lightning-quick movement as though he would spring
at the little lawyer's throat. Mr. Tony held him back.
"Jimmie--wait. Let him talk."
"It was Miss Robin's wish to slip away without telling you. She said
you would not let her go and she had quite made up her mind to give
you--what she calls--your chance. She has an idea that she ties you
down--"
Jimmie choked as a sob strangled in his throat. His anger suddenly
melted to abjection. Mr. Tony laid a comforting hand on his shoulder and
turned to the lawyer.
"The girl is right. She's a wonderful little thing. She always could see
further ahead than her Dad. I have been telling my pal that this is the
best thing all around that could happen--a fine bit of luck for
everyone. Robin will go up to Gray Manor and be as happy and safe as can
be and her father can travel and work--the way Robin wants him to. Robin
took rather unusual means to gain her end but--well, she knew what she
was doing."
Jimmie turned to Cornelius Allendyce and studied his face with a
desperate keenness.
"She isn't like other children," he began slowly. "Poor little crooked
kiddie. She's sensitive. I've kept her away from everything that could
hurt her. I've tried--to make up to her. I thought she was happy; I did
not know she guessed--or knew--"
Mr. Tony had taken a few steps down the room. He wheeled now and came
back with a set expression on his face as though he had to say something
disagreeable and must get it over with.
"Jimmie, suppose, just for once, you look your soul straight in the
eye--honest. Now isn't it the artist heart of you that's hurt by Robin's
crooked little body--and not the child? Don't you keep her shut up in
here because, when people stare at her--_you_ suffer? Have you been fair
to her? Oh, yes--you love her, all right. Well, then, let her go. Robin
thinks she's giving you your chance--well, _I_ say, give the girl her
own."
"I tell you Robin's different--she doesn't want money or clothes!"
"Well, pretty things--and good food--can make even a 'different' girl's
heart lighter. Come, old man, go off with me on this cruise and work
your head off and at the end of the year--if Robin's not happy there,
well, you can make other plans. I'm like Robin, I believe that give you
a year, you'll do something rather big."
James Forsyth suddenly lifted a face so boyishly helpless, so defeated,
that Allendyce's heart went out to him. He understood, all at once, what
little Robin had meant when she had said, "You don't know Jimmie!" He
certainly was not like other men.
"I feel such a--quitter. I promised Robin's mother--I'd make up to the
child for her being lame--the way _she_ would have, if she'd lived. And
I've failed. Why, only last night she went to bed hungry." There
followed a moment of tense silence, then the man went on dully, in a
tone that implied yielding. "I suppose I may know all the circumstances
that led up to--this."
Cornelius Allendyce proceeded to tell everything from the day of his
interview with Madame to the moment of his consternation upon
discovering that Gordon Forsyth was a girl and not a boy. He repeated
word for word Robin's and his conspiring; he described their flight and
Robin's break down in his library.
"She had not lost courage--oh, no. But she was thinking of you. She was
afraid you'd forget to take your hot milk at night or something like
that," he finished simply.
There were other details for the lawyer to explain to James Forsyth,
having to do with allowances and schooling. Then, when everything had
been said that was necessary to be said, James Forsyth rose wearily.
"If that's all, I'd like it if you two would leave me here--alone." He
held out his hand to Mr. Allendyce. "Understand, if she's not happy--"
"Our agreement ends."