[CHAPTER XXIII]
WHAT JESSIE WOULD SAY
JACK felt that matters were coming to a crisis. He would do as the Vicar had advised. He would see Jessie, and would put before her the state of affairs, and would ask her to decide.
If she were willing to wait until he should be free to marry her, so much the better. Jack felt that he could wait any number of years, with a prospect of Jessie as his wife at the end. If she were not willing, then he would have to give her up. He could not in either case fail towards his mother. She was and had to be the first claim upon him.
It was not quite easy to get hold of Jessie alone. She was busy over her dressmaking, and he was busy over plans and accounts; and by a kind of tacit agreement, they had put off confabulations upon their own affairs until other people's affairs should be settled. But Jack now felt that a quiet talk with Jessie must come off before those affairs of other people could be entirely settled. The question of the future home of his mother and of himself might hang upon that quiet talk.
When once a person sets himself to have a thing done, it is usually not long in being brought about. Despite business and other difficulties, Jack found himself only two days later walking with Jessie outside Old Maxham, through a muddy field under a grey sky.
Jessie was unusually silent, seeming more disposed to listen than to talk, and Jack was desperately puzzled how to begin. He had conned over so often beforehand what he had to say that it had grown to look quite easy; and now he could remember nothing of it. So he and Jessie marched along together in solemn silence.
"I thought you wanted particular to speak to me," Jessie at length said.
"I thought you'd talk to me," Jack answered, cowardly still as to what he had to say.
"Me talk! Yes, of course, if you like." Then she started off full swing, and chattered on every variety of subject. She allowed Jack no loophole for his say, and this was worse than her previous silence. For some minutes Jessie rattled on about the lifeboat, and the anonymous gift, and who could have been the donor; and then she slid off to her own work, and said how nice it was, and how well she was paid, and how kind Mildred was in teaching her. Next she was skipping off to some fresh subject; but she had afforded Jack an opportunity, and Jack at last had the courage to avail himself of it.