Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

by Tom Gallon

Mr. Baffall's brows contracted. "Not a word," he replied. "I'm disappointed in that boy; we both seem to have been a bit unlucky in that respect, Mr. Purdue. I got Jimmy into a good situation—provided for him, in a way; and he left it—or was turned out of it—for incompetence; and that's the last we've heard of him. It wants a strong boy or a strong man to hold his own in London."

The Rev. Temple Purdue sighed. "And Charlie is not strong—in that way," he said.

The Rev. Temple Purdue wrote two letters that evening in his study. The one was to astonish Patience Roe on the following day, and to cause her to regret that she had sent a letter to Daisley Cross at all. It suggested that Mr. Purdue was glad to hear of her continued prosperity; it mentioned incidentally that his son was in London, and would in all probability call upon them at an early date; concerning that particular item of news Patience said nothing to Moira.

The second letter was to Charlie; it was a letter written with some shakings of the head and many pauses for reflection. It addressed Charlie as "My dear boy," and it reminded him once again that his father was not a rich man, and that much money had already travelled Londonwards for Charlie's benefit. It contained some advice (which Charlie was afterwards to skim through hurriedly with a frowning face), and it mentioned the address of Patience Roe and Moira. More than that, it finished with the suggestion that Charlie might find it pleasant to visit them, and that he might perhaps care to make a change of lodging, and to take up his quarters with friends.

And while the rector penned that letter in his quiet study at Daisley Cross, a man in a little squalid coffee-house in a turning off Fleet Street was writing a letter to him.

The man was one of that great army of men in London who have no means, and no hopes, and no prospects; who, in some fashion or other, manage to keep a frowsy bed to which to retire when the long, scheming, hungry, pitiful day is ended; who have come down from borrowing sovereigns to borrowing shillings and even sixpences; who are acquainted with every cheap place in the great city where, for the expenditure even of a penny, shelter may be had for an indefinite number of hours. And his name was Anthony Ditchburn.

It had taken Anthony Ditchburn a long time to get to this coffee-house (which was also, by the way, a species of reading-room, to which admittance was to be gained by the payment of one penny, and the luxuries of which included chess and draughts and dominoes); yet the road he had traversed to it had been a fairly straight one. He had begun with the borrowing of sovereigns from such men as had known him in university days, and were sorry for the position in which the man had suddenly found himself by the death of Paul Nannock at Daisley Cross—Paul Nannock, who had died so inconsiderately, and left Ditchburn in the lurch. Then, when that source of income had gone, and men closed their doors against him, Anthony Ditchburn took to writing begging letters, and found it quite a profitable business for a time.

He got easily into the reading-room of the British Museum; it was warm there, and writing materials were at his hand for the asking. He flew at high game; wrote to people he had never met, but whose titles seemed to promise something substantial; quoted the letters which he had a right to set down after his name, and referred to the university lists boldly. To his surprise money came in readily; he fell so quickly into the business that he prepared lists of his patrons, and of others to whom he might apply, and set down against them the amounts they had given, or which might be expected.

It took a long time to exhaust his list, but the hour dawned when he was met with rebuff after rebuff, and when even the mention of the great work on which he had been so long engaged failed to attract the attention it should have done. Then, remembering those people in whose midst he had lived in the flourishing times of Old Paul, he looked in the direction of Daisley Cross, and sent a missive winging towards it.

That was the missive written in the little squalid coffee-house. Anthony Ditchburn had quarrelled bitterly with another shabby, greasy individual, who had dared to occupy the table at which Ditchburn usually sat in the dark little reading-room; had quoted Latin at him, and had been retorted to in the same tongue; had gone away discomfited. Finally, he had haggled with a contemptuous young lady in charge of the room for an outside soiled sheet of paper, and had got it for a halfpenny; had managed to secure an envelope for himself, at no expenditure at all, while her back was turned. And then had sat down to write to the Rev. Temple Purdue.