“Hush, dear!” he said, becoming grave. “A man's infirmities are his infirmities, and we are not called upon to be his judges. How much have we in the house altogether?” he asked with a sudden return to his bright manner.
“Ten pounds three and sixpence.”
“Why, that's a fortune. Of course we can help Renshaw. Wire him his four pounds ten when you go out.”
“But, Jimmie——” expostulated this royal person's minister of finance.
“Do what I say, my dear,” said Jimmie, quietly.
That note in his voice always brought about instant submission, fetched her down from heights of pitying protection to the prostrate humility of a little girl saying “Yes, Jimmie,” as to a directing providence. She did not know from which of the two positions, the height or the depth, she loved him the more. As a matter of fact, the two ranges of emotion were perfect complements one of the other, the sex in her finding satisfaction of its two imperious cravings, to shelter and to worship.
The Renshaw incident was closed, locked up as it were in her heart by the little snap of the “Yes, Jimmie.” One or two other letters were discussed gaily. The last to be opened was a note from Mrs. Deering. “Come to lunch on Sunday and bring Aline. I am asking your friend Norma Hardacre.” Aline clapped her hands. She had been longing to see that beautiful Miss Hardacre again. Of course Jimmie would go? He smiled.
“Another unconscious sitting for the portrait,” he said. His glance wandered to a strainer that stood with its face to the wall, at a further end of the room, and he became absent-minded. Lately he had been dreaming a boy's shadowy dreams, too sweet as yet for him to seek to give them form in his waking hours. A warm touch on his hand brought him back to diurnal things. It was the coffee-pot held by Aline.
“I have asked you twice if you would have more coffee,” she laughed.
“I suppose I'm the happiest being in existence,” he said irrelevantly.
Aline poured out the coffee. “You have n't got much to make you happy, poor dear!” she remarked, when the operation was concluded.
His retort was checked by a violent peal at the front door-bell and a thundering knock.
“That's Morland,” cried Jimmie. “He is like the day of doom—always heralds his approach by an earthquake.”
Morland it was, in riding tweeds, a whip in his hand. He pointed an upbraiding finger at the half-eaten breakfast. The sloth of these painters! Aline flew to the loved one's protection. Jimmie had not gone to bed till four. The poor dear had to sleep.
“I did n't get to bed till four, either,” said Morland, with the healthy, sport-loving man's contempt for people who require sleep, “but I was up at eight and was riding in the Park at nine. Then I thought I'd come up here. I've got some news for you.”
Aline escaped. Morland's air of health and prosperity overpowered her. She did not dare whisper detraction of him to Jimmie, in whose eyes he was incomparable, but to Tony Merewether she had made known her wish that he did not look always so provokingly clean, so eternally satisfied with himself. All the colour of his mind had gone into his face, was her uncharitable epigram. Aline, it will be observed, saw no advantage in a tongue perpetually tipped with honey.
“What is your news?” asked Jimmie, as soon as they were alone.
“I have done it at last,” said Morland.
“What?”
“Proposed. I'm engaged. I'm going to be married.”
Jimmie's honest face beamed pleasure. He wrung Morland's hand. The best news he had heard for a long time. When had he taken the plunge into the pool of happiness?
“Last night.”
“And you have come straight to tell me? It is like you. I am touched, it is good to know you carry me in your heart like that.”
Morland laughed. “My dear old Jimmie—”
“I am so glad. I never suspected anything of the kind. Well, she's an amazingly lucky young woman whoever she is. When can I have a timid peep at the divinity?”
“Whenever you like—why, don't you know who it is?”
“Lord, no, man; how should I?”
“It's Norma Hardacre.”
“Norma Hardacre!” The echo came from Jimmie as from a hollow cave, and was followed by a silence no less cavernous. The world was suddenly reduced to an empty shell, black, meaningless.
“Yes,” said Morland, with a short laugh. He carefully selected, cut, and lit a cigar, then turned his back and examined the half-finished picture. He felt the Briton's shamefacedness in the novelty of the position of affianced lover. The echo that in Jimmie's ears had sounded so forlorn was to him a mere exclamation of surprise. His solicitude as to the cigar and his inspection of the picture saved him by lucky chance from seeing Jimmie's face, which wore the blank, piteous look of a child that has had its most cherished possession snatched out of its hand and thrown into the fire. Such episodes in life cannot be measured by time as it is reckoned in the physical universe. To Jimmie, standing amid the chaos of his dreams, indefinite hours seemed to have passed since he had spoken. For indefinite hours he seemed to grope towards reconstruction. He lived intensely in the soul's realm, where time is not, was swept through infinite phases of emotion; finally awoke to a consciousness of renunciation, full and generous. Perhaps a minute and a half had elapsed. He crossed swiftly to Morland and clapped him on the shoulder.
“The woman among all women I could have wished for you.”
His voice quavered a little; but Morland, turning round, saw nothing in Jimmie's eyes but the honest gladness he had taken for granted he should find there. The earnest scrutiny he missed. He laughed again.
“There are not many in London to touch her,” he said in his self-satisfied way.
“Is there one?”
“You seem more royalist than—well, than Morland King,” said the happy lover, chuckling at his joke. “I wish I had the artist's command of superlatives as you have, Jimmie. It would come in deuced handy sometimes. Now if, for instance, you wanted to describe the reddest thing that ever was, you would find some hyperbolic image for it, whereas I could only say it was damned red. See what I mean?”
“It does n't matter what you say, but what you feel,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps we hyperbolic people fritter away emotions in the mere frenzy of expressing them. The mute man often has deeper feelings.”
“Oh, I'm not going to set up as an unerupted volcano,” laughed Morland. “I'm only the average man that has got the girl he has set his heart on—and of course I think her in many ways a paragon, otherwise I should n't have set my heart on her. There are plenty to pick from, God knows. And they let you know it too, by Jove. You're lucky enough to live out of what is called Society, so you can't realise how they shy themselves at you. Sometimes one has to be simply a brute and dump 'em down hard. That's what I liked about Norma Hardacre. She required no dumping.”
“I should think not,” said Jimmie.
“There's one thing that pleases me immensely,” Morland remarked, “and that is the fancy she has taken for you. It's genuine. I've never heard her talk of any one else as she does of you. She is not given to gush, as you may have observed.”
“It's a very deep pleasure to me to hear it,” said Jimmie, looking bravely in the eyes of the happy man. “My opinion of Miss Hardacre I have told you already.”
Morland waved his cigar as a sign of acceptance of the tribute to the lady.
“I was thinking of myself,” he said. “There