Jimmy Quixote Part 10

"To Moira, beloved of my heart now and always, I give----"

At the last, with some growing faintness upon him, and with the pen trailing off illegibly, he must have tried to get to the children. For they found him at the foot of the stairs, lying there with his hands stretched up towards the room, and with a smile upon his face, as though at the last he had striven to call to them. Patience found him like that, early in the morning, before anyone was stirring; and the old woman sat for a long time on the stairs, holding him in her arms, as she had done many and many a time when he had been a child, and whispering to him, and striving to wake him. But he was quite dead.

There is a courage born of love and devotion greater than ever sprang from pa.s.sion or from hate; and such a courage was given to the woman then. When she knew that her dead was past recall, she determined that no other hand should touch him--no other eyes look upon him, until presently he should lie calm and peaceful as she would have him lie.

With a love-given strength that seemed impossible for her withered limbs, she got her arms about him, and got him toilsomely up the stairs; being so gentle with him, and whispering so tenderly, that he might have been a thing alive, and only sick and faint. And so got him to his room, and laid him on his bed; and only then, for the first time, gave way.

For when that was done, and the door closed upon her and her dead, she wept her withered heart out; with only his cold hand against her cheek and her tears upon it.

Afterwards, while she gathered her wits, she kept up the amazing pretence that he had not yet come home. Everyone had gone to bed on the previous night before Old Paul had let himself into the house; and the woman told herself that she must seek some advice, before the children or Anthony Ditchburn knew what had happened. She did not quite know to whom to go; for the present she turned the key in the lock, and left him there, and set about her ordinary duties. For those must be done always, she thought, whether men lived or died.

Jimmy and the two girls spoke wonderingly about Old Paul at the breakfast table; Patience silenced them querulously, as she had done any time these ten years over awkward questions. And all the time she wondered what she should do, or to whom she should go; Anthony Ditchburn was impossible, and there seemed no one else. Yet someone must be told, and that soon.

The difficulty grew with Anthony Ditchburn. The going of Paul to London had always spelt for Ditchburn tobacco; and in this case it happened that, seeing fresh tobacco near at hand, the man had smoked more than usual, and his supply was exhausted. He came piteously to Patience, after she had dismissed the children to the rectory, and held out a ragged, empty pouch.

"He should have been back before this, Patience," he whimpered. "Even if he couldn't get back, he might have sent it. My work at a standstill--and my nerves shattered; it isn't fair. It's so little I ask----"

She turned a stony face to him. "There's no tobacco for you--and I know nothing about it," she said. "Did he ever forget any one of you?"

"He was never as careful as he might have been," retorted Anthony; and was staggered when she turned upon him fiercely, and drove him from the room.

She went up more than once during the day to that room; she was a little proud of the fact that she alone knew what had happened, and that she had him there to herself. Coming down on the last occasion, she heard someone moving about quietly in the room Old Paul had used as his study; with a raging heart against Anthony Ditchburn, she went straight in, with set teeth, to face him. And faced instead, the girl Moira--looking at her with eyes before the light of which her own fell.

The girl held a paper in her hand; she held it out towards the woman.

"He's been here--last night," she said, in a whisper.

"Why, dearie, whatever are you talking about?" asked Patience, fearfully. "And what brings you back now?"

"I couldn't stay; I knew that he had come back," whispered Moira, watching the woman. "I knew it this morning; in a dream I had he called to me last night. And look at this; see what he's written!"

Patience went tremblingly towards the child; but in an instant Moira had s.n.a.t.c.hed back the paper, and was rapidly folding it. "No--not for you to see--not for anyone to see," she said. "It was written for me--meant only for me. Where is he?"

Patience broke down at once; spread out tremulous hands towards the child, to soothe and silence her. "Now, my dear, there's nothing for you to ask about--nothing for you to know. And even if he did come back last night----"

The girl had raced out of the room, and was half-way up the stairs before the old woman had reached the door. Patience stood there, trembling and cowering against the wall; she heard the rattling of the handle of the door above. And that roused her as nothing else could have done; she stumbled up the stairs, whispering entreaties as she went.

"For the love of G.o.d, child, don't make a noise there!" she breathed.

"He lies so quiet; tread soft, my dear--tread very soft!"

So they faced each other outside the door of the locked room--the white-faced child and the woman who wept and wrung her hands. And for a long moment, nothing was said.

"He's in there; I know it," whispered Moira. "You needn't think I'm afraid; and I shan't cry out. Let me go in!"

"No--no--dearie----"

"I will! I'll beat down the door if you don't let me in!" came the tense whisper.

She had not looked on death before; and this was not what she had expected. For this was the Old Paul that she had loved, lying asleep, with a smile on his lips, and that smile for her. He was gone; but sorrow was too mean a thing, in the ordinary sense, for him now. Child though she was, she knew that at the last he had written of her; that one little phrase, "beloved of my heart--now and always," lay warm against her heart even now, and comforted her. He had gone to that last sleep thinking of her; and nothing in that sleep was terrible. It had been his creed always to teach her to be brave; he had not taught that in vain. The old woman, standing fearfully within the door watching her, understood for the first time what this child was; seemed to look for the first time upon a new being that surprised and held her silent and dried her tears. She saw the slim figure of the girl, with hands clasped at her breast, bend forward; wonderingly heard her speak.

"Old Paul--it was kind of you," whispered the child. "I knew it always--that I was beloved of your heart; but it was sweet of you to remember to tell me."

She came out quite firmly, and locked the door, and took the key; the amazed woman followed her downstairs; ventured at the foot of them to touch her on the arm. "You--you weren't afraid?" she breathed.

Moira looked at her with raised eyebrows. "Afraid?--of Old Paul?" She turned away and went into his room.

Nor did she break down when presently Mrs. Baffall came in, with raised hands and streaming eyes, to comfort her. This was no question of callousness. Old Paul had been everything to her in life, and he must, therefore, be everything to her in death, and always. Nor was it affectation; it was only what Old Paul would have wished--part of that fine, strong, smiling philosophy that had been the very fibre of the man himself. Truth to tell, the child was a little impatient of what she regarded as a mere parading of grief. Old Paul would never speak to her again, and in that only did her grief lay; but he had spoken to her at the last--to her specially; and in that was her exquisite comfort.

Others had, of course, to be told, and they took the news in varying fashion. Alice became wide-eyed and tearful; she was a very appeal in herself. For the blue eyes, half obscured in a mist of tears, and the beautiful drooping mouth, quivering and pitiful, demanded sympathy and secured it. Jimmy wore a frightened aspect; for this was something he did not understand, and something that touched him unexpectedly.

Curiously enough, only Mrs. Baffall seemed to know what was in the mind of Moira.

"It's quite uncanny," she said to Baffall, with a shake of the head. "It isn't as though the man had died at all; he lives in that very house with her and for her; he's always lived like that for her. She doesn't seem to know what death means--at least, not in his case. You see, Daniel, it makes me feel younger than she is--and ignorant, in a way.

When I spoke to her this morning--and I was crying at the time--she didn't seem to understand that there was anything to cry for. 'You don't know Old Paul,' she keeps on saying; and she smiles at me in that queer way I want to hug her--and yet I dare not."

Mrs. Baffall, feeling it inc.u.mbent upon her to tell her friends what had happened, searched her mind for the names of friends; and discovered that not many were left outside that business that had been left behind in London. And, therefore, it happened that she thought, with the pens and paper actually before her, of Honora Jackman, with something of grat.i.tude for the inspiration; and wrote to her, to that obscure address in London. And so evoked a black whirlwind.

For Honora came down as the whirlwind, preceded by a tempestuous telegram. Arriving in the evening, she was welcomed sombrely by Mrs.

Baffall; and thereafter sat in a dejected att.i.tude, sipping tea and saying little. She heard in whispers from Mrs. Baffall, and in low growls from Baffall, all that had taken place; she learned that the funeral was to be on the morrow. She nodded gloomily once or twice; strove to fix her eyegla.s.s, and failed; and listened to a whispered account of the bravery of Old Paul, and of how the end had come. Then she sat up and spoke her mind, and Mrs. Baffall, though amazed, had a sneaking feeling that Honora had got to the truth of things.

"Oh, it's a d.a.m.ned rough world!" said Honora, viciously. "Here was a man that ought, in the proper course of things, to have been in armour, with a face turned towards the sun--going out to do n.o.ble things, and to fight for women--and all that sort of thing. You knew him--and you'd seen him. Instead of that, he comes down here among the woods and the flowers; and he walks steadfastly--before his G.o.d, I verily believe--and any feeble little child that raises a cry out of a hideous world is s.n.a.t.c.hed up by him and glorified. And then they cut him off--all in a minute--and leave all sorts of other whelps to live, and do harm, and prosper."

"It's hard on the children," said Mrs. Baffall, after a pause in which she had striven to digest Honora's vehement statement.

Miss Jackman sat up, and smote her hands together. "The children! I'd forgotten the children," she said, breathlessly. "What's going to become of them?"

Mr. Baffall coughed, and stroked the grey beard on his chin; Mrs.

Baffall smiled at him, and drew herself up a little proudly.

"We're taking Alice," she said softly. "I think we took her because there's something lady-like about her, and we seem to have understood her best," she added apologetically. "Then Baffall's got the idea that something might be done for the boy in London--in a matter of business; but we haven't quite had time to think about it yet."

"I remember the boy--Jimmy, didn't they call him?" said Honora thoughtfully. "A nice boy. And wasn't there another girl--dark-haired--bit of a spitfire?"

"Moira," said Mrs. Baffall. "We don't quite know what is going to be done with Moira; no one seems to know how to begin about her. We shall know better after to-morrow."

"After to-morrow?" Honora Jackman nodded and pursed up her lips. "What are the children going to do to-morrow?" she demanded suddenly.

"Well, my dear," began Mrs. Baffall, "in a little place like this, where everybody knows everybody--I suppose they'll go to the funeral; it's what might be expected----"

Honora suddenly brought down a fist smartly on the table beside her.

"No--and no again--a thousand times over!" she exclaimed, with what seemed quite unnecessary violence. "You're wrong. The man is done with--so far as the mere flesh of him is concerned; what have children to do with that? Don't I know myself what I've suffered as a child; don't I know and remember how I've been dragged into dark rooms by the hand, and shown people in coffins; can I ever forget it? It isn't fair--it isn't right. Death comes soon enough to us all; never should a child see it or brood about it. _I'll_ see to the children to-morrow,"

she added, with sudden alacrity. "I'll take them away, and let them know about it only afterwards. It's a hard world, but we might let the children sometimes see the best side of it; the worst comes soon enough."

"'Ear! 'ear!" exclaimed Mr. Baffall, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Honora Jackman kept her word in that matter valiantly. Whether as a tribute to the man who had stirred her careless time-beaten heart as few others had done, or whether simply on an impulse of generosity, it is impossible to say; but she determined to take charge of the young people for that day. She put in an appearance at the house quite early in the morning; was greeted by Jimmy somewhat shyly, and with but small recollection of past days. Alice, for her part, lifted a face which seemed all br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes and quivering mouth, as she had done to everyone about her for days past; Moira was not to be discovered.

Patience, appealed to, had not seen the girl that day; she had apparently slipped out of the house before anyone was stirring.

Honora Jackman drew Patience aside; spoke to her in her usual energetic and impetuous way.