The money he had carried him, half crazily, back to London and to Jimmy.
To Jimmy he told his woes; told of this strange madness that had come
upon the woman he desired to help. And to his surprise and disgust Jimmy
seemed to have caught this new fever too; for he also turned him roughly
from the place, cursing him for a fool.
And here we may take our leave of Anthony Ditchburn; may see him, in
imagination, going on for years yet, borrowing innumerable coins, and
prating of his woes and of the treatment he had received from the world.
And dying at last obscurely, and still railing, to any who may hear him,
of the ingratitude of friends.
Meanwhile Jimmy made all speed to find Moira. All speed for him, that
is; for, hesitating as ever, he must needs sit down to think about her,
and to dream of how beautifully he was to bring her back into his life.
So that when, in sudden and desperate haste, he started from London for
the cottage where he had seen her under such different circumstances not
so long before, a fear began to creep into his heart that Anthony
Ditchburn might have spoiled the business after all. Which proved to be
true.
He found Patience at the cottage; she shook her head even as he hurried
through the garden towards her. Moira was gone, the old woman said; had
left within an hour of Ditchburn's visit. She had implored Patience to
look after the child; when the old woman had clung to her, and begged to
know when she would return, she had said with tears: "Never!" But the
old woman was wiser than Jimmy; she smiled and shook her head, and
whispered what only a woman could whisper with perfect understanding of
another:
"She will come back to the child," she said.
Jimmy looked at her sharply; seemed to understand a little what she
meant. He caught the hand of Patience and wrung it; laughed like a boy
at what he read in her eyes.
"Then--if I took the child----"
"Oh--Mr. Jimmy," said Patience with a sob, "she'll come back to the
child!"
CHAPTER VI
THE SPIRIT OF OLD PAUL
THE thought that was growing in Jimmy's mind, and which had started from
what Patience had said, bore fruit upon the morrow. Jimmy slept that
night at the cottage--having in his mind perhaps the hope that Moira
might come back. Yet morning dawned and she had not been seen.
With the dawn he roused himself from his uneasy slumbers on a couch, and
went to find Patience, to seek the news of the night. He found her with
the baby; the baby a dark-eyed mite, scarcely dressed, and giving the
old woman a bad time in matters of hair pulling and general infantile
wickedness; yet Patience seemed to like it. Jimmy stood just within the
door, looking at the child shyly and awkwardly; Patience whispered what
she had to say over the child's head, much as though that small mortal
might have understood.
"No news, Mr. Jimmy; no word of her."
"You seemed so sure that she would come back," said Jimmy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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