Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

"It ain't no good, Daniel; they didn't understand us, and we don't understand them," she said at last, slowly. "I never got the trick of it, having none of my own; and it's too late to learn it now. But I think if one of 'em ever came up to me – spontaneous – and put their arms round my neck – well, I think I should dance, Daniel!" And the tears were in the old woman's eyes as she spoke, although she laughed and brushed them away.

Incidentally the Baffalls were responsible for Honora Jackman, and for her introduction to Paul Nannock. Honora Jackman had casually, and somewhat scornfully, made the acquaintance of the Baffalls in London; but the Baffalls in the country, remote from trade, were people to be cultivated. So that it came about that they received one day a gushing telegram (with reply prepaid), demanding to know if she might come and "rusticate." And the Baffalls had looked at each other in some dismay, even while they had felt vaguely flattered. For Honora had been a person of consequence in their limited circle in London.

"Mother, what's 'rusticate'?" asked Mr. Baffall, feebly.

"It's a general term," Mrs. Baffall responded; "means picking flowers, and walking about, and – and looking at the trees and things, I believe. It's what we're doing now, father."

"Well, it's easy enough," said Mr. Baffall. "Tell her to come down at once, and mention the best train."

Honora Jackman descended upon the Baffalls with a series of little shrieks of delight; which was Honora's way. She was a lady with a high, clear voice and a high, clear colour; perfectly self-possessed; one of those people who assure you volubly and loudly that they are having "a fine old time." She was always busy over doing nothing; always in splendid health; and never in any one place for more than a week or two at a time. Possessed of very small means, Honora had seen the years slipping away beneath her well-shod, quick feet, and the "fine old time" had come down to be a mere matter of hunting up friends, and doing anything that should keep her away from a small and poky set of rooms in an obscure street in London. She had reached that stage when the hunt for friends had developed into a somewhat stern chase.

She landed at Daisley Cross with her battered trunks, and looked about her good-humouredly through a single eyeglass. She decided at once that she would be bored to death; she drew a mental picture of Mr. Baffall falling asleep after dinner, and of Mrs. Baffall knitting, or doing embroidery, and striving vainly to find subjects for conversation. She wondered if they kept anything she could ride. But she was all smiles and hearty good humour when presently the old couple drove up in the carriage to meet her; she exclaimed delightedly about the picturesqueness of the place, and vowed they should never get rid of her; shrieked with delight when a small urchin chased a hen across the road, and borrowed a penny from Mr. Baffall to throw to him.

She made rather a brilliant figure after dinner that night in the subdued light of the shaded lamps, what time she lazily smoked a cigarette, and drew Mr. and Mrs. Baffall out concerning the neighbours. And then, for the first time, she heard about Old Paul Nannock. She leaned across the table, with her white elbows on it, deeply interested, asking questions with a perplexed frown.

"A rich old bachelor – adopting babies?" she asked, in her high voice.

"Oh, dear no – not a bit old," replied Mrs. Baffall, laughing. "Quite young, as a matter of fact – and certainly good looking. At least, I think he's got nice eyes."

"Gracious!" Honora Jackman puffed out a cloud of smoke very suddenly, and leaned forward again over the table. "What's the matter with the man? Has he been crossed in love – or what is it?"

"Well, you see," said Baffall solemnly, "we haven't cared to ask him, Miss. He's a nice fellow; and he seems fond of the children, and that's all there is to it. I'm told he's got plenty of money."

"And certainly there isn't what you'd call any stint," corroborated Mrs. Baffall.

"I never heard of such a thing," exclaimed Honora, appealing to the very furniture and the pictures in her astonishment. "A rich young man – collecting babies as though they were postage stamps – and living all alone with 'em in the country. Do you know him well?"

"Oh, yes; the children often come here," replied Mrs. Baffall.

"And he doesn't?" said Honora, drily. Then, suddenly changing her tone, she added beseechingly, "I say, you positively must take me to see him; I revel in children, and I should simply love to meet a man like that. I'm sure he's a dear."

The Baffalls looked at each other a little doubtfully; perhaps into the mind of each came the thought that Honora Jackman might scarcely fit in well with Old Paul or Old Paul's ways. However, something had to be said, and Mr. Baffall was the one weakly to capitulate.

"I'm sure he'd be pleased," he said. "Mother and I'll take you over – whenever you like."

"How perfectly heavenly of you!" exclaimed Honora. "I'm simply dying to know him."

Honora Jackman took her loud-voiced way upstairs that night, and sat for some time thoughtfully twisting her rings round and round on her fingers. She had dreams – absolutely mercenary, let it be said – of a certain tall, blue-eyed man, who had much money, and was encumbered by children he had been foolish enough to adopt. Honora gave a short, quick laugh when she thought of them.

"Idiot!" she exclaimed scornfully. "After all, there may be something to be got out of this dead-and-alive hole; you never can tell. I expect he's a bit raw; but that won't matter. And as for the children" – Honora laughed again, as she rose and yawned and stretched her white arms above her head – "well, we can easily dispose of that sort of nonsense."

CHAPTER III

"JIMMY QUIXOTE"

Exactly at what date Jimmy fell in love with Honora Jackman it would be difficult to say; it was a subtle affair growing out of circumstances; it would have been impossible even for Jimmy to have written a diary of it. For be it known that Jimmy was some thirteen years of age, with certain large ideas of his own regarding the world in general and ladies in particular; and Honora had burst upon him, and had captured him in quite an innocent and pretty fashion.

With the thought of a larger capture in her mind, Honora had wavered in her going from the hospitable house of the Baffalls, and had ended by not going at all. She had discovered that one of the horses fitted her "adorably"; and she had pretty well ridden him to death after that discovery. Then she had contrived to stir the Baffalls into giving a dinner party, to which the Rev. Temple Purdue was invited, and came, mildly apologetic for his very presence; and to which Old Paul, greatly against his own wish, also came. Then for the first time Honora looked upon him and found him exceedingly good. She had visions of years stretching before her, during which she wound him gaily round her little finger; and had, so far as herself was concerned, that "fine old time" to which reference has been made.

On that occasion Honora did not smoke; more than that, she subdued that high and somewhat grating laugh of hers. There was a new shyness upon her, and she inquired sympathetically and kindly about the children. She turned her rather good eyes upon Paul, and let them sparkle at him while she asked for full particulars; nodded brightly and sympathetically over the account of the coming of each child; threw in a word or two here and there, which showed Paul that she understood very perfectly his own intimate feelings concerning them; and stated that she was dying to meet them. Only in the drawing-room afterwards, amid gusts of stifled laughter, did she tell the perplexed Mrs. Baffall what she thought of Paul Nannock and of the children; only then did she suggest something of a programme that had been mapped out in her mind.

"He wants waking up – he wants stirring, and showing what the world is!" she exclaimed. "Fancy a man with that money pottering about country lanes with other people's children clinging to his skirts. Skirts is the right word; the man isn't a proper man at all. He's wasted here; I should like to do something with him."

Mrs. Baffall flutteringly thought it possible that Honora might do something with the man not altogether to the taste of his friends, but she said nothing. She only noted the change in Honora Jackman when the tall young man presently came into the drawing-room – that change to sweetness and gentleness that seemed a little foreign to the woman's nature. When presently Paul, with a glance at the clock, stated that he must be getting home, Honora rather lost sight of the part she was playing, and expressed her contemptuous resentment.

"You don't mean to tell me that you've got to tuck up the babies?" she demanded, with a little shrill laugh. "Upon my word, Mr. Nannock, you are positively interesting; one seems to see you hovering over them with candles, and listening to their breathing."

"I'm afraid you don't quite understand," Paul said, a little stiffly.

"Indeed, I understand perfectly," she replied, with that softened manner and with that bright light in her eyes. "And to-morrow I'm coming round to see them, if I may."

"I should like you to see them," said Paul; and went away with the feeling that the woman had a heart in her, after all, and was only flippant by accident.

She appeared at the house quite early the next morning, striding in with that appearance of gay good-nature and boundless health that best became her. And long before Paul had appeared to greet her, she had in some miraculous fashion discovered the children, and had made their acquaintance, and learnt something of their lives, and of their pet haunts and hobbies. Jimmy had quite naturally taken the lead as guide and deputy host, and Jimmy had therewith lost his heart.

At first the loss had not been serious; he merely sighed a little after she had gone, and remembered with gratitude how naturally and easily she had spoken with him, and how frankly she had laughed with him, instead of at him. He remembered, in particular, certain adroit questions she had asked him in regard to himself, and how, when he had admitted that except for Old Paul he was quite alone in the world, she had made a demure, wry grimace, and had whispered that she, too, was alone in the world; which was distinctly a bond between them. He remembered that after Old Paul had quite unnecessarily put in an appearance, Miss Jackman had walked with a hand on his (Jimmy's) shoulder; and it had been, "Jimmy says this," or, "Jimmy thinks the other," until the boy's head had swum a little, and the light hand on his shoulder had seemed to press it with a caress. Then, too, she had suggested, with that charming laugh of hers, to Old Paul that she was alone in the world; had made rather a point of it, in fact. When, after inspecting everything, and expressing shrill delight at everyone, she was taking her leave, she had said, with a little whimsical shrug of the shoulders, that she really didn't know what was going to become of her unless she settled down soon. "I suppose I'm not like other people," she said, toying with her eyeglass, and laughing a little confusedly. "You see, Mr. Nannock, I'm a nomad; I've simply got a stuffy place in London, and so many trunks, and I" – she threw out one arm gracefully and laughed again – "I simply wander. Various people are kind enough to put me up – like those dear, sweet Baffalls, and then I go off again somewhere else. Nice in the summer, but a bit rough for a woman in the winter."

"I'm sorry," said Paul, for no particular reason.

"Though I don't know why I should bore you about myself," she added more brightly. "Mr. Nannock" – she held out her hand to him and laughed frankly – "you're one of the people it is good to meet. You've refreshed me – helped me; I shall face the world more bravely, remembering this place – and remembering you."

"We – we shall hope to see you again," said Paul, though he did not quite mean it at the time. "Kind of you to have called – most kind of you."

Honora Jackman knew the people with whom she had to deal, and knew perfectly well that she could stay in the place as long as she liked. To do her credit, she managed the thing rather well. She began by declaring on the third or fourth day that she must trespass no longer on the hospitality of the Baffalls; and on Mrs. Baffall murmuring that they were only too glad to have her there, while glancing at Mr. Baffall, and so eliciting a growling murmur from him, had impetuously rushed round the table to kiss Mrs. Baffall, and had declared, somewhat to the consternation of the worthy couple, that she would "make it another week."

At the end of the week she was discovered by Mrs. Baffall, among a confusion of trunks and clothing, diffidently attempting to begin the task of packing; the eyes she raised to the kindly old woman were suffused with tears. Never had she felt it so difficult to tear herself away from any place; never had she felt before, in this strange fashion, the loss of that mother who had died when Honora most needed her. She made a desperate business of drying her eyes, and of going on with the packing; she wondered, a little incoherently, what was going to become of her. So that it ended in Mrs. Baffall, with unwonted firmness, insisting on the trunks being put aside and on Honora Jackman, after protests and tears and embraces, consenting to stay a little longer. She was a beast, and it was a shame, and the Baffalls were angels – a couple of people in a beastly hard world who had hearts in 'em, and were not ashamed to acknowledge it. And oh – if dear mother had only lived!

Old Paul proved inaccessible more than once, and Honora, biting her lip to save an exclamation of impatience, had to put up with the children. It occurred to her that through the children she might best attack that stronghold to which she desired to win; and, to the future heart-breaking of Jimmy, she chose that susceptible boy as the first line of defence to be demolished; though, had she but known it, she had better have attempted to secure the allegiance of Moira. Jimmy, nothing loth, fell an easy victim, and dimly wondered how such a glorious creature could have stooped to him.

At first it was a mere matter of showing her the nearest way to the village, and Jimmy strode along willingly enough and proud of his new responsibilities. Truth to tell, it had been the design of Honora to capture all the children, and so incidentally to reach to Paul himself; but Moira stood in the way. When Honora Jackman had swung up to the house with a cheery call and a light laugh, she had been met by the dark-eyed girl; the child held out a hand calmly, and put up a cold cheek for the proffered kiss. But she could not go out; there were things she had to do for Old Paul.

"Why do you call him 'Old Paul'?" asked Honora.

The child looked at her in surprise. "We all call him that," she replied. "You see, he's not an ordinary relation – not a father, nor an uncle – nor anything of that kind; and we've got to call him something. We talked it over a long time ago with him, and we came to the conclusion" – Moira stepped delicately over her words at this point – "came to the conclusion that it would not be quite respectful to call him 'Paul' so we called him 'Old Paul'; and no one can have a word to say against that – can they? You see," the child concluded simply, "it's really because you don't know Old Paul that you don't understand."

"Gracious!" Honora ejaculated under her breath; but she smiled at Moira with apparent understanding.

Jimmy coming out at that moment flung himself joyfully into the breach, but he had a suspicion that the child regarded him coldly as he walked away with Miss Jackman. He must really explain to Moira afterwards that there were things in life she could not possibly hope yet to understand – affairs of the heart, vague but beautiful. Meanwhile, Honora Jackman, inwardly fuming, was smiling upon him and extracting information. Jimmy, with his cap upon the back of his head and his hands in his pockets, supplied answers cheerfully.

So it came about that Honora learnt more than she had learnt already from the Baffalls; understood how this large-hearted man had stood in his loneliness, as it were, with wide-opened arms ready to welcome these children who drifted in from the world he had gladly left behind; understood, with no real sense of the beauty and generosity of it, how all and sundry who came had been welcomed, for the simple and perfect reason that they were children. That point never appealed to the woman; she saw only a foolish man, easily imposed upon by a tale of distress.

"So that I suppose you all have different names?" she suggested. "I mean, of course, names other than Jimmy – and Moira – and the other child."

"My name is James Larrance," said Jimmy, "and Alice's mother (she went away and quite forgot to come back, you know) was Mrs. Vickery. Only Moira has got the real name," he added.

"The real name?" She turned and looked at him sharply. "What's the real name?"

"Nannock," replied Jimmy. "That's Old Paul's name, you know; and he gave it to Moira because I believe he couldn't bear that other one – the name that really belonged to her. He got Moira from someone he was awfully fond of."

Honora began to see daylight; began to sniff suspiciously at a possible but impossible love story – an awkward jumbled thing, buried away in the years that Old Paul was trying to forget. She became interested in spite of herself, but she saw that she must use this boy to further her ends. She dropped that light hand again upon his shoulder as they walked, and spoke confidentially, playing upon his heartstrings as upon a new and untried instrument, easily stirred.

"Jimmy, I'm quite sure that you and I are going to be great friends," she said. "Of course, you understand, Jimmy, that I have very few friends – not people that I really like – people I can talk to."

Jimmy gulped, and began dimly to call to mind all the romances of which he had heard or which he had read. Almost he wished that something wonderful might happen – some danger that should threaten her; it seemed then that he would have known perfectly what to do. Strong boy though he was, he was almost on the verge of tears at his own helplessness – at the thought that she must go away, and leave him as she had found him but a few days since. For this was not love in the ordinary sense; this was but that fine chivalry that lies deep in the hearts of all of us, and can be wakened at a whisper or at the touch of a hand; only in some of us it grows and springs to full life earlier than in others. Jimmy did not understand what the very word woman meant; only he stretched out warm impulsive young hands into the future, and craved to do that which the best of men had done before him and had laid down their lives for. The woman did not matter; the fact that she was a woman sufficed.

Even when she began to reveal a little of her purpose he did not understand; he was glad only to help her. Still keeping that hand upon his shoulder as they walked towards the village, she began delicately to ask him about the lives they led – he and the others and Old Paul – and how they spent their days. And by the guileless Jimmy was let suddenly into the secret heart of it all.

The betrayal was disgraceful; but, then, Honora knew the ways of youth, and she meant to gain her point. She fished delicately, with slow, easy questions for bait, until Jimmy had led her – in words, at least – into the very heart of that paradise which Old Paul had made for himself and the children, in certain deep woods unexplored by others. Honora had a vision of the man hidden away there, surrounded by the children, and reading and talking to them on sunny afternoons. There, apparently, he was to be taken off his guard; there discovered in his most intimate moments, and taken unawares. Honora laid her plans, and determined heartlessly enough to use the boy to further them. Jimmy was to meet her on the morrow; the infatuated boy was actually to bring this loud-voiced hearty woman into the holy of holies, and to spring her suddenly upon his friends.

Only when Jimmy had parted from her, and was taking his way back to the house, did he realise what he had promised, and what it involved. He remembered how first he had been taken – walking on tip-toe and breathing carefully – deep down into that place of trees and ferns and birds and rustling things; remembered with what pride he had assisted to bring Moira and Alice into it afterwards. The place had been Old Paul's discovery; you had to plunge through masses of undergrowth and drop down a bank to get to it, and no one in the world had ever found it before! Alice had been properly frightened, and had torn her frock; Moira had gone into it with her eyes wide open, and her lips parted a little in sheer delight. And to-morrow Honora Jackman was to scramble into it, and to take them all by surprise.

Jimmy thought deeply about the prospect. In the first place, it might be well to break it to the others; to explain that the lady was really very nice, and that he adored her, and to try and recollect a few of the things she had said when speaking about their retreat. On the other hand (a wiser and more subtle thought, this), it might be well to meet Miss Jackman, and take her by another route to another place, and so get over the difficulty in that way. But Jimmy had not yet learnt to be absolutely dishonest; he faced the thought resolutely that to-morrow he must redeem his promise, and must thrust the lady, willy-nilly, into the paradise.

This new Judas had revealed the very time when Paul might be discovered with his young people; Jimmy woke with the thought of that in the morning, and carried that leaden thought all day; or, at least, until the time when he was to meet Honora Jackman. He had made an excuse for deserting the party; had slipped away at the last moment, and now hung about, flushed and irresolute, but strangely happy, to wait for the lady with the eyeglass. And presently saw her swinging along towards him, and already noting him with a smile. Jimmy discovered, too, that another miracle was to happen at the very moment of meeting; for she dropped an arm about his shoulders, and stooped and brushed his lips with her own.

"You're the best friend I have in the world," she whispered, truthfully enough.

The intoxicated Jimmy stumbled on through the wood with the woman behind him. His lips were wet with her kiss, and had it been anyone else who had done this thing, he would have rubbed the lips hard to get rid of the taint of it. But now he dared not even lick them. Honora Jackman sang softly as she walked, and Jimmy, with that wondrous being behind spelling indefinite happiness, faced resolutely the dreadful moment when he must meet those he had betrayed. He wished desperately that she might have been content with any other place in the wood in which to sit and talk with him; why she should choose this particular spot, and be so anxious about it, had not yet dawned upon the mind of Jimmy. So, with fear knocking at his heart, he came to the top of the bank and parted the bushes and looked down.

"Hullo!" he called feebly.

There was a shriek of delight, changing instantly to a dead silence as the head of Honora appeared beside his own, looking down at them. Old Paul was upon his hands and knees working out an elaborate design with fir cones; he looked up at the apparition and straightened himself, and got ceremoniously to his feet, treading out the design as he moved. Honora, nothing daunted, looked down and nodded cheerfully, and surveyed the paradise out of her bright eyes through a brighter eyeglass.

"How perfectly heavenly!" she exclaimed. "Will you help me down?"

Now Old Paul was something of a coward; moreover, he had lived so long that hermit life away from women that he had nothing wherewith to meet the situation. Jimmy had jumped down, and was industriously kicking away at the ground beneath his feet, without caring very much to look at anyone, and Paul glanced round at the girls. Most of all he looked at Moira, and he read the shameful answer he was to give clearly in her eyes. After that he faced Honora Jackman with some sternness, though with a little laughter in his eyes.

"I'm afraid you must go back," he said. "You see, this is private property, in a manner of speaking; it's our enchanted garden – and all that sort of thing. I'm afraid you must go back."