Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

by Tom Gallon

Ashby Feak was a tall fair man, at whose age it would be difficult to guess, and concerning whose life various stories were told. He had been abroad a great deal, and had done something in the way of exploration in a mild way in various places; had written a little concerning his travels. That he was interesting there was not the slightest doubt; that he had a wider and a deeper knowledge and experience of the world than Jimmy was also beyond question. Daniel Baffall did not like him, and Mrs. Baffall was a little afraid of him; but he came often, nevertheless, and in a sense he monopolised the girl, after a time, as no other man had done. She still held to Jimmy in a half-hearted way; but Jimmy found it difficult to discover her alone, and the old cordial talks were things of the past.

He manœuvred to see more of her, and was sometimes successful; sometimes, in fact, he was able to take the girl, with Mrs. Baffall for company, to places into which Ashby Feak could not go; while Ashby Feak, on his side, could return that compliment easily enough. And Alice received both men apparently on equal terms—now and then bestowing a favour upon Jimmy, and the next moment taking it away from him, in a sense, for the better encouragement of Mr. Feak. In the long run, however, Jimmy told himself that Ashby Feak seemed to score more than he did.

Jimmy was in that bitter mood engendered by the receipt of a note from her, suggesting that she would be unable to keep an appointment made with him, and suggesting further that he had been "horrid" to her the night before, when that hurried message came which summoned him to Charlie's bedside. All he heard was that a man was dying, and had craved to see him; he had no suspicion of who the man was. But the summons drove from his mind that lighter business of jealousy, and sent him off at once to find the man.

That poor, broken, misguided thing called Charlie Purdue was fast losing his strong grip on life by the time Jimmy—subdued and wondering and sorry—was brought to him. There had been no time to summon anyone else; indeed, but for that faint glimmer of intelligence which had allowed of the getting of the address and the sending for Jimmy, Charlie had lain passive, watching the light change outside the high windows in the great ward in which he lay, and solemnly facing this, the last phase in his tumultuous life. Watching it so solemnly even, that he was able to see only one dark-eyed girl (he remembered with a pang that the eyes had been filled with tears when last he had looked into them), and the remembrance of a promise he had made—long, long ago, as it seemed—that it would be all right! Strangely enough, the instinct to make it all right had urged him, racked with pain though he was, and with death looking in at the great windows, to send for Jimmy. He did not know yet what Jimmy was to do; but Jimmy had loved her, and they had fought together over her—this dying man and the other—years before. Jimmy would know—Jimmy would remember.

For a time the man in the bed and the man standing beside it held hands and said nothing; perhaps because there was so much to be said. A doctor had shaken his head, and pursed up his lips, and turned away; a nurse, at a nod from the doctor, had held something to the man's lips and had turned away, too. Jimmy bent down, and put his face close to that of the other; and even then, in that hour, Charlie was laughing as it seemed; at all events his eyes laughed.

"It's going to be quick," he whispered. "I may slip away while you look at me. I know enough of the game—quite enough for that. It's a bit—bit of a silly ending—isn't it?"

Jimmy said nothing; he could only hold the hand, and stare into the face of this man who had been his friend as a boy—this man who had made such a poor business, as it seemed, of the life that had been given him.

"Only—for God's sake—listen to me." Charlie's eyes closed for a moment, and he seemed to set his teeth to keep back a groan. "It isn't me—it's someone—someone else. It's a woman."

Jimmy nodded. It seemed, as he bent over the other man, that he must remember all his life this quiet ward, with the high windows, and the fading light outside, and the man in the bed whispering. It was as though he had entered upon another life—something stronger and more forceful than anything he had yet understood. He was miles away from the petty smallnesses and jealousies that had been his for some time past.

"You know her—Moira. One of the best, Jimmy—damn sight too good for me. We were going—going to be married. I—you needn't look at me for a minute—I wronged her."