Jimmy flushed. He wanted some money badly, how badly only a man in his position, the lover of Lalage, could know; but still he could not take it from Fenton, for that purpose. Joseph would never understand his motives. So he stood up, suddenly.
"Thanks, very much, Joe; but I can rub along, at least I think so. If I am dead stuck, I will come to you; but I believe I can pull through." Then he said good night, and went upstairs, to think of Lalage, and to curse his own idiocy in not taking the proffered loan. Twenty pounds would have been nothing to his brother-in-law, yet to Lalage and himself it would have meant a new start. Before he lay down he had made up his mind to ask Joseph for it, after all, and he went to sleep with that resolution in his mind; but when he awoke in the morning things somehow seemed different, and before breakfast was over he had changed his mind. This was his world, and these were his own people, living ordered lives, with soles and grilled kidneys for breakfast, and family plate on the table, knowing nothing of ham and beef shops, or of milkmen who demanded cash in exchange for their milk. He belonged to them, he was one of them, sharing their principles and their prejudices, worshipping their gods, as his ancestors and theirs had done. What real kinship had he with Lalage, who made her breakfast tea out of a quarter-pound packet bought the evening before at the little general shop round the corner, and took an obvious delight in the sixpenny haddock they had purchased off the barrow with the glaring oil lamps over it?
And yet, when the postman brought him no letter from that same Lalage, he grew silent and restless, as his sister's eyes were quick to note. When Joseph had departed to his office, he himself went to the smoking-room and wrote three whole sheets to the girl who lived in the flat, for the first time throwing all prudence to the winds, and saying the things he felt. His pen travelled quickly, and, whilst he was writing, he forgot all about his surroundings, his mind being full of Lalage. When, at last, he had finished and signed his name, in full, as a sign of his trust in her, disdaining any subterfuge, he looked round the luxuriously furnished room, and for an instant he was filled with a sense of his own folly; then, hurriedly, as though ashamed of what he was doing, he thrust the letter into an envelope and sealed it down, afterwards posting it with his own hands.
The hours dragged by slowly. The Marlow house had seemed dull; but the Fentons' was almost unbearable. Ida meant to be kind; but, perhaps, because she tried to show her intention, she only succeeded in making Jimmy feel his position as a poor relation. She took him for a drive in the afternoon to call on one or two elderly ladies in reduced circumstances, whom she patronised unconsciously, greatly to the discomfort of her brother, who had a kind of fellow feeling for her victims. Yet, on the other hand, he was conscious of a grim admiration for Ida; she was so sure of her own rectitude, so convinced that her husband's wealth—which meant her own position—entitled her to lecture and to interfere. It was all interesting, even amusing, or it would have been so, had Lalage never come into his life, in which case he could have regarded Mrs. Fenton from a more or less impersonal point of view. Now, however, she was a possible danger, to be guarded against, and—though he did not like to put it that way—to be lied to, if occasion demanded.
That night, Jimmy hardly closed his eyes, being occupied with the problem of inventing an excuse for getting back to town. The evening post had brought him no letters; and, though it was improbable that Lalage would have any real news for him, he was terribly worried at her silence. Lying then through the long hours, praying for the sleep which would not come to ease him from the hideous pain of jealousy, he suffered as few men can suffer in their lives. He had no right to control Lalage, no more claim on her than anyone else had, he was mad to trouble about her, knowing what he did of her, and having ten years' experience of women behind him. Yet he lay there, wide-eyed, wondering, and tormenting himself. Twice he got up and endeavoured to smoke a cigarette, but all to no purpose. The tobacco tasted rank, and, after a few whiffs, he let the thing go out. When, towards morning, he did fall into a heavy sleep, it was only to dream of Lalage, with the mud and rain squelching through her shoes, looking for someone to give her shelter.
CHAPTER XIII
If Ida felt any relief when, at the end of four miserably long days, Jimmy returned to town, she did not say so, even to her husband. It had been a trial in many ways, but, at the same time, she was conscious of having done her duty. She had impressed her brother with a sense of what he owed to the family in the matter of conduct, and his very depression seemed to show that he had taken the matter to heart.
"Jimmy's nerves are all wrong. He's like a man on wires. He wants a comfortable home and a wife to look after him," Fenton ventured to remark whilst his brother-in-law was upstairs, packing; but Ida brushed the theory aside scornfully.