It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

Said Jim, with confidence, "If you'd come another half-hour later, I lay you'd have found her, back with her Daddy. Six martal weeks she's been away. But you'll find her at the Master's, I take it, or meet on the road."

Challis's voice hung fire a little as he answered, "I'm not on my way to the Rectory now. I shall have to pay my respects to Miss Coupland later. Jolly glad she's back, though, Jim, for your sake! How's she coming on? All the better for the sea, I'll answer for it." Jim was not the one to be behindhand in optimism. "Done her a warld o' good, I'm told! Only, ye see, I haven't set eyes on the Master this week past, and I have to put my dependence on the two little ladies, seeing the old mother at the cottage has gone to London."

At this point Jim saw his way to still further flattering his certainty of Lizarann's return by sending a message about her to his sister, so he let Aunt Stingy into the conversation provisionally. He worded a couleur de rose account of his invalid, subject to reserves, and asked Challis to be the bearer of it.

"What's that, Jim?... Ah, to be sure; I had forgotten that. Mrs. Steptoe's your sister. Yes—I'll tell her." His manner was unsettled, tense, exalté, but not that of a man preoccupied with any but pleasant thoughts. Jim felt that some inquiry after this relative of his would not be out of place. He hoped she was giving satisfaction to "the mistress," and half suggested that her cooking was what he was asking about. His shrewd hearing detected discomfort in Challis's reply: "Oh aye—yes! Very good wholesome cooking!" Had he touched a sore subject? He decided that he had, and was sorry when the gentleman said abruptly: "That's all right enough. Can't stop now! Got to get to the Park Gate by nine. How far do you make it out to the Park Gate?" Jim gave what information he had to give; but Challis remembered quite enough of the ground to know that the fly-driver's estimate was a low one; in fact, it had been the interest of the latter to minimize the distance, in order to get away as soon as he could. "I shall have to look alive," said Challis. He shook Jim's hand cordially, and started.

In the accident of passing words it had so chanced that if either of these two men had been asked—how came he to know that Lizarann had returned to the Rectory?—he would have referred to the other as an authority. Challis's confidence that he would find Lizarann at the Well was only the echo of some words of the Rector's three weeks previously, fixing the date of her return; while Jim's assurance that she was at the Rectory was based on Challis's way of taking her presence at the Well for granted. Certainly when they parted, each had an image in his mind of the invalid back again, much improved, and looking forward to her meeting with her Daddy.

Such serene unconsciousness of the truth as Jim's was at this moment strikes harshly on one's sense of probability; but, probable or no, it was actual. Jim had not experienced such happiness since his child left him to live, during her absence, on hopes of her return in renewed health. She was coming now; not a doubt of it! She was actually near at hand; so near that, with a guide, he could almost have walked the distance on his wooden leg. She was coming....

Then a gust of disbelief that anything so good could be his, so soon, seized on his faculties, and made his judgment dizzy. He must be silent and patient, and wait.

But with this added assurance of Lizarann, pending or near at hand, Time got a quality of tediousness. The half-hour that followed on Challis's invasion seemed longer than all the previous half-hours of the morning added together. Till then Jim had been making all allowance for the chance that Lizarann was not due till to-morrow, or even next day. The question was an open one. Challis had managed to leave behind him an implication that she had arrived. How the sluggard minutes would crawl now, till she came! Well—patience!

Why was the gentleman going to the Park, not the Rectory? Pending Lizarann, Jim thought it worth while to wonder at this; or, indeed, at any other trifle that would hold his mind for a moment, and help his patience. He had hardly noticed Challis's distrait manner at the time, but it came back to him now. Yes—why was the gentleman not going to the Rectory? Of course, he was only known to him as a guest there; might have been a perfect stranger at the Hall, for anything that appeared to the contrary. But it was the way he had disclaimed the Rectory that clashed with Jim's slight knowledge of him. "Not on his way" there now! "However, it was no concern of Jim's, anyhow! Think of Lizarann again—only Lizarann!"

His mind ran back to the old match-selling days in Bladen Street. There was the terrible January night again, no darker than his day was now, for all he felt St. Augustin's sun on his hands and face; for all he knew at a guess how the white road would have glared on the eyes he had lost, even as his last memory of daylight blazed on them still, leagues away in Africa. There was he again!—a spot in the darkness that was his lot for ever; a something made of sick torture, borne in a litter; and then the voice of his little lass, and the touch of her lips as he lay.... Well!—at least he had a man's heart in him then, and, crushed as he was, made light of his agony, to spare her. That was a consolation to him now.