People of Position

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

He had put in two days of almost savagely hard work. Without money he would be helpless. True, most of his manuscripts had come back; but still three had actually appeared in print, and he could feel he had made a start. The old semi-indifference on the question of his ultimate success or failure had vanished completely. He was in deadly earnest now; Lalage should have no more bread-and-milk days, if he could help it.

Mrs. Marlow's letter had arrived by the first delivery, in the cheerful company of a returned manuscript. He had heard from Lalage, her first letter to him, the evening before, and he did not expect another till that night; but when the second postman knocked at the door, and, a moment later, Mrs. Benn came creaking upstairs, he hurried to meet her, hoping the envelope might bear the West London postmark. But he was doomed to disappointment. The letter was from Ida, his sister in Northampton. "When I heard from you last week you said any day this week would do," Ida Fenton wrote. "We find we shall be able to have you to-morrow, and hope you will stay four or five days. The best train is one at 2:15, and I will meet you by that, so you need not worry about answering this note. We are all looking forward to seeing you, and though, of course Joseph is at business all day, and the children at school, I daresay you will find the rest do you good."

Jimmy frowned as he folded it up and put it back into the envelope. He had arranged to spend the next day with Lalage; they were going to have a run out somewhere—"somewhere inexpensive, like the Crystal Palace," Lalage had said in her letter—and then they were going to have another of those delightful marketing expeditions in the grimy street where the barrows were. Now, all that would have to be postponed. Jimmy would not have scrupled greatly about disappointing Ida—she had been in no hurry to see him—but May's letter had shown him how he was being watched and his doings reported, and he did not want to arouse further suspicion. He intended to move very shortly, though his plans were as yet but half formed, and, moreover, he shrank from doing anything which would offend May. He might not be afraid of his relations; but at the back of his mind he was sufficiently conscious of his own departure from the paths of rectitude to feel the weakness of his position.

He wrote to Lalage that evening, explaining matters; consequently, she was not surprised when he came up next morning carrying a handbag. At first, it struck him that she was looking rather pale and worried, but she greeted him with frank pleasure, and, in a few minutes, she was her usual self again. As Jimmy learned later, she had in a peculiar degree the art of seeing the best side of things. In a sense, she was almost a fatalist, and though she made no disguise about the regret she felt for her ruined life, a moment later she always seemed to put the regrets aside as useless. "I try to keep as respectable as I can," she said to Jimmy.

Normal people, being respectable themselves, would probably have sneered, knowing that those who have fallen are all on the level, and that only in those far-off days when He who pitied the Magdalen and bade the sinless cast the first stone trod the earth was there forgiveness for this greatest of sins. But Jimmy, not being normal, and being anxious to find excuses for Lalage, did not sneer, and before long he found that, though she might not be able to rise again, she was determined to fall no lower. She was almost fastidious in her hatred of bad language, and there was, as a matter of fact, an immeasurable distance between her and the German women who formed the majority of the other tenants.

"Of course I am sorry to have to go away," Lalage said in answer to Jimmy's complaints of having to go to Northampton. "But still, it's only right. Your own people ought to come first, and I shall see you when you get back, if you haven't forgotten me."

Jimmy took both her hands in his. "I shall never forget you, Lalage, never."

She shook her head. "Others have said the same, and have forgotten, none the less. I'm afraid to hope too much sometimes, for fear of disappointment. It's easier when you haven't expected anything." She freed her hands and went across to the window, where she stood, apparently staring at the gigantic telephone post on the roof opposite.

Jimmy came up behind her. "Would you be sorry if I were to forget?" he asked.

She answered without looking round, "Of course I should."