His first feeling had been one of bitter wrath against his sisters. They had betrayed him; they had thrust him back again when he was trying to pull himself up; they were keeping him down, keeping him at a distance for fear he should damage their position. And then his anger seemed to pass away, and he laughed, first at them, then at himself. What did he care about position, what did he care about Vera Farlow, what did he care about anything—except Lalage?
He knew it now. He knew why his engagement had made him so utterly miserable, knew why he had been unable to write that final letter to Lalage. There was only one place in the world he wanted to be—where Lalage was; only one object in life for him—to make Lalage happy, and by so doing wipe out all memory of his intended unfaithfulness to her.
But would she have him back now, would she forgive his coldness and his neglect, above all his repudiation of her in the London days? Did she still love him, as he knew she had done once, love him enough to forgive and forget, love him as he loved her? The thought drove everything else out of his mind. Vera, her father, his sisters, all seemed to belong to some distant past with which he now had no connection. His bitterness against Ida and May, his anger against the canon, his first feeling of grief, or rather of wounded pride, when he learnt that Vera was lost to him—these were as nothing compared to the fear that Lalage would refuse him. He was like a man who had awakened from a long sleep full of dreams to find that, whilst he had slumbered, a deadly peril had come down on him, a peril which could be averted only by immediate action.
Jimmy had ordered a drink, more or less mechanically, as a tribute levied by the house; but he pushed it away untasted.
"I'm going to be absolutely sober when I do this," he muttered, then went back into the hall, where he spent five minutes poring over a timetable, following the trains down the lines of figures with a finger which trembled slightly. Every hour seemed of supreme importance now. Had he not been in dreamland for over a year? At last he found his trains. He had three hours to wait in the town, two hours in London; but he would finally arrive in the little Yorkshire town about half-past seven in the morning, before Lalage had started work in that hateful little shop.
There was no need for him to write the trains down. Their times of departure were already graven on his memory; all he had to do now was cross the road to the post-office and wire to Lalage. He was cool again, a perfectly normal man. All his anger and his excitement had gone; but, none the less, he did not hesitate a moment over taking what might be, what he hoped would be, an irrevocable step.
An hour later, the kindly, grey-bearded old draper beckoned Lalage into his private office. "There's a wire for you, Miss Penrose," he said.
Lalage opened the envelope with trembling fingers—only one person in the world would wire to her—then she swayed a little and gripped the table for support, as she read, "Meet me at the station half-past seven to-morrow morning. Jimmy."
The draper was watching her anxiously. "No bad news, I hope," he said.
She looked at him with a smile which reassured him instantly. "No, it's good news, the best of good news," she answered.