"Tell her--tell her from me--I said it'd be--be all right!"
Then someone drew a screen about the bed, and Jimmy went out into the
late winter afternoon, with some of his elation gone; and thinking
deeply of the man who lay so quiet in the big ward with the high
windows.
At first he was all for going straight to Moira, and telling her; he saw
himself breaking the news of this sudden death; and then soothing her by
telling her what he had done, and what he had promised; perhaps he began
to wonder a little how she would receive him under those circumstances.
But when he had walked a little way towards Chelsea, he suddenly decided
that he must not see her yet; when he went to her she must be prepared,
and must know beforehand all that had happened. Therefore he hurried
home, and wrote a letter to Patience--telling her what had happened, and
begging her to break the news to the girl as gently as possible. He
added in the letter that he would come the next day, and see Moira; he
wanted to talk to her. He made it clear that he had seen Charlie at the
last, and had been with him when he died; he made it clear also that he
had a message from the dead man to Moira.
That despatched, he sat down to think over the situation--to consider
fairly and clearly the position in which he found himself. He discovered
that he rather liked it; he felt that this was in a sense altogether
appropriate. He was to do a great and noble thing--and in the doing of
it was to have two women at his feet in one moment. The first, because
he gave up everything for her and to preserve her good name; the second,
in wonder and awe that any man could do such a thing. He quite saw Alice
blaming herself that she had trifled, even for a moment, with such a man
as this.
Being, as it were, the executor of Charlie Purdue's poor affairs, he
wrote also to the Rev. Temple Purdue, telling him of what had happened;
he did not know, of course, that Charlie had been returning from a visit
to his father at the time of the accident.
He went on the following morning to Locker Street, Chelsea. If the truth
be told he rather dreaded the coming interview--rather wondered, in
fact, how Moira--this new Moira of whom he knew nothing--would take the
suggestion he had to offer. He had always thought of her in a curious,
indefinite, detached fashion--as of someone he did not really
understand; he wondered now how he was to be met--whether by tears and
self-reproaches--or in what other fashion.
But he was destined not to meet her then. He found his way upstairs, and
was met at the door of the room by Patience--Patience with an
inscrutable face, save that the eyes were tragic. They shook hands in
silence, and he followed her into the room.
"Where's Moira?" he asked; and it was curious that he spoke in the
subdued tones of one speaking of someone ill or dead. "I want to see
her."
"She's not here," replied Patience. "I--I don't know where she is."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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