“Oh, Daddy, when can we go?”
“Quite soon, my dear. Perhaps in a few weeks.”
When he had closed the door, he dabbed his eyes again, and thought:
“It was unthinking of me. I oughtn’t to have woken her up, but—she is all I have.”
A week later he wrote to Clara:
“Dear Clara,
“I understand that for the last week you have been living with Ted Woollams. I do not critticize your action. We are all as God made us. I shall in the dew course take divorse proceedings not as an act of hostility to you but that you may marry the man of your choice and be respectable. I also shall share with you the result of a good deal last week in order that you may not want and so close with check for £2020. I think this fair.
“Jim.”
It was Isaac who helped him over all the difficult problems which occurred at that time, and it was Isaac who persuaded him that he was overdoing the “fairness” to Clara. He said that under the circumstances he had no moral obligation to Clara, and that £500 would be lavish. So in the end Jim altered the cheque to that amount. It was Isaac who took over the little shop, which he used as a kind of dumping-ground of his superfluous stock. And it was Isaac who, a year after, returned letters addressed to Jim in a handwriting he recognized, “Gone away. Address not known.” And it was he who in later years bore the brunt of the wild invective of a drunken harridan who said that her husband had deserted her, and would not hand her any of the fortune he must have inherited. He shook his head sadly, and replied that he knew nothing. Mr. Canning and his daughter had left London. He thought they had gone to Australia.
When she had gone, he said to himself: