People of Position

by Stanley Portal Hyatt

Despite his protests, Lalage always insisted on sitting up for him. "You must have something hot when you come in," she declared, "even if we can only run to a cup of cocoa and a little bit of plaice from the fried fish shop. You can't do brain work on nothing."

Jimmy gladly left all the finances to her. Sometimes he wondered how she contrived to feed him as well as she did, besides paying the rent, and letting him have at least a shilling a night when he went down to the office. She even managed to get some bottled stout for him, and yet, at any rate whilst he was at home, no one came to the door to dun her for money. Had he been stronger, he would probably have been suspicious and have made inquiries; but he was thoroughly run down and weary, and only too ready to be free from household worries. He had never kept house himself, knew but little of the cost of things, and had infinite faith in Lalage's capacity for management.

Once or twice, during the first three months of Jimmy's engagement at the Record, Dodgson asked him to write a special article with reference to something which had happened abroad, and, when he went to draw his money for the first of these, Jimmy found that his rate had been raised to three guineas a column; but his weekly wage remained the same, and, somehow, he could not summon up courage to ask boldly for a raise. He was, as Lalage could see plainly, growing a little thinner, a little more weary and nervous, every week.

At the end of the second month, Lalage sprang a surprise on him. They were at breakfast when, with a rather heightened colour, she brought five sovereigns out of her purse and gave them to him. "Jimmy," she said, hurriedly, "you must get a new suit, and some collars and ties and things, really you must."

He looked at the money, then at her. "Where did you get this, Lalage?" he asked, very quietly.

She faced him so bravely that his suspicions vanished at once. "I saved it up, from those articles of yours."

"And how about you? You want things far more than I do, sweetheart. I don't think you have had any new clothes since I met you."

Lalage shook her head vehemently. "That's for you. You have to go to work, and it worries me terribly when I see you shabby. You will feel ever so much better when you've got a new suit, and they'll think more of you at the office. Clothes give one confidence. Now, you shall come out this morning and order a nice dark tweed, or a grey. I'm not sure I shan't like you best in grey. Anyway, we'll see."

The new clothes certainly made Jimmy look better, and, for a little while, Lalage deluded herself into the belief that he really was growing stronger; then one night he came home shivering, with a severe chill, and his old enemy, the malaria, gripped him again. True, he was only absent from the office two nights; but the trouble seemed to remain, and Lalage had to redouble her efforts to feed him up. Often, during those days, she tried to steel herself into sending him away, into forcing him to go back to his own people to be nursed as they could afford to nurse him; but when it came to the point of speaking, her resolution always failed her. She could not bear to part from him—yet. And, if she did send him away, there was always the fear, amounting almost to a certainty, that he would drink to drown remembrance of her.

No, she told herself, she must keep him as long as she could, for his own sake, as well as for hers. What would happen to herself if the parting did come, she never tried to consider. The thought of it was too awful. Jimmy had been so sweet and kind and thoughtful that it was absolutely impossible for her to imagine anyone replacing him. The fact that the question of marriage between them had been tacitly dropped did not weigh with her now. She had never dared to hope that he would redeem his promise eventually; and, latterly, she had tried to make herself forget that the matter had ever been mentioned between them.