He flung out of the house, and across the garden, and disappeared into the wind-swept road. After a moment of silence the old man turned, and put a hand across his eyes; then swayed to the door, and went out quickly. "Charlie!" he called. "Charlie!" But there was no response, and the garden and the road seemed empty.
Charlie paced the station for an hour or more, waiting for a train to take him back to London; and the longer he paced, and the more he thought about matters, the deeper and the more fixed became his resolution to do that right thing on which he had set his mind, and regarding which he had made so many promises. Even in the railway carriage at last, on his way back to London, he nodded across at the opposite seat, as though the girl sat there and could hear him, and told her what he would do.
"It'll be all right," he said. "Money, or no money, we'll get married—and no one shall point a finger at you. Then the old man'll be sorry; he'll understand that I've done the right thing, and am in that sense a better Christian than he is, in spite of his cloth. Don't you worry, Moira—because there's nothing to worry about. When once I get back to London, I'm going to take up real work; I'll decide before the end of the week whether I'll go in for painting, or writing, or something else easy like that. After all, perhaps it's best that this has happened; it'll put strength into me, and make me do things for the sake of somebody else. I shouldn't be surprised to find in the long run that there was quite a Providence in it for us both."
He was still troubled, however, about the business; he felt a lump coming in his throat more than once at the thought of the bitter injustice to which he had been subjected by his father. It wasn't fair. Here was a young man, trying to do his solemn duty in the face of tremendous odds, and his own father refused to help him. Oh, it wasn't right at all!
He had had but a scanty breakfast, and he was faint and tired and discouraged by the time his slow train got to London. There was still a shilling or two in his pockets; he went into the bar of the refreshment room, and ordered something that should put new courage into him for that indefinite fight with the world that was beginning that very week. It put such courage into him that he told himself he was going to be very good to Moira; she should live to bless the day on which she had met him. So he had some more of that liquid courage—and yet some more—telling himself, in a despairing, half-whimsical way, that for this lapse his poor old father was directly responsible, had he but known it. And then went out into the streets, with his hat on the back of his head and his hands in his pockets to make his way to Moira.
I think he must have been murmuring to himself again that it would be all right when the accident happened. He never knew very much about it; he was crossing a road, and there were shouts and the screaming of a woman, and the thunder of horses' hoofs; then he turned about, and beat feeble protesting hands against the moving thing that was crushing him, and then lost consciousness.
When he woke up, as it were, he was in a strange place, with strange faces about him; there seemed to be a great weight on his lungs and in his head; he could not breathe well, and he found it difficult to speak. Someone, bending an ear down to him to get a faint whisper, and wondering a little perhaps why he smiled so cheerfully, seemed to think that he said twice over that it would be all right, and that he wanted to see Jimmy. And so, with some labour, they got a name and an address from him, and wrote them down. And as soon as possible sent for a certain Mr. James Larrance to come in all haste to see a man who had but an hour to live.