Jimmy was looking at him intently; the words seemed to sing through his ears like some tune he had remembered. "I wronged her!—I wronged her!"
"I was a beast—but I've promised—promised faithfully it would be all right. She'll die—kill herself, I think—shame, you know. There's going to be—a child. Jimmy—what shall we do?"
In that last hour, as it seemed, the two were drawn together; the great city that had sucked their lives into itself, and made of them what it would, was a thing forgotten; almost they were boys again in the woods and the fields; almost it seemed that the one stretched out hands to the other, and craved for help.
"It won't be long—before I'm gone, Jimmy"—the other hand was feebly groping for the stronger hand of the man beside the bed—"Jimmy—she'll be all alone—and—and the child. You loved her—I think you did—and she was fond of you——"
This was what he had meant to say; even if it was unfinished in words, his eyes said the rest. Jimmy, looking at him, seemed to have a vision of something else beyond him; seemed to see this woman bowed in shame, and left lonely and helpless. And in a curious, ironical, half-whimsical way, quite apart from the tragedy of it, this fitted in with Jimmy's mood of the day—was but the legitimate complement of the bitterness of the morning. Alice was not for him; Alice turned to another man; and here was something that Jimmy might do that must for ever place him on a lonely and wonderful pedestal, far above Alice, and far above the petty things of the world in which he lived. He saw it all; saw that, wonderfully, he must step forward to rescue this girl, and must perforce occupy that lonely position, because of her and of the sacrifice he made for her—that position he had long ago seemed to map out for himself in his mind.
So swift was his thought that even before he answered he seemed to see a radiant figure standing before him—and he obdurate; he, with some sadness, declaring that it could never be—that he had sacrificed himself for someone else. And so rising to a point in her view, and in the view of others, to which he could never under more commonplace circumstances have reached. He voiced that thought, in a measure, when he answered the dying man.
"I think I understand," he whispered. "You would have done the right thing for her?"
"Yes—yes—I would!"
"But there is no time? I understand; she shall not be left alone. I did love her—I'll marry her."
"Oh—may God bless you!" The feeble spluttering lips were pressed against his hands; Charlie was laughing and crying hysterically. "Swear it—swear you'll make her marry you!"