Part 20 (1/2)

Then, with a new and cautious idea in my head, I turned to Kitty again.

”On second thoughts,” I said, ”_don't_ say anything to Archie about my wanting an explanation. I'll settle with him. After all, it was bound to come sooner or later. It doesn't much matter. I'll see to it.... Well, I'm off. Good-bye, dear. I don't think I shall be able to see you again till Friday.”

And I left her, nodded to Weston, and pa.s.sed out.

I daresay you guess what my new and cautious idea was. I had something of the last privacy to say to Archie; it was just as well that I should have the cloak of comparatively trivial personal remonstrance to cover it; but this was only part of it. The truth was that my brain had suddenly taken another of those startling leaps forward. In some conceivable last event (I was not planning one, you understand; it was merely that my mind was working somewhere ahead, independently and beyond my control) it might be necessary that I should have _no_ personal quarrel with him. In such an event none must suppose that our relation had been other than amicable. Yet I should be overdoing this (purely antic.i.p.atory) prudence to pa.s.s over the episode of the sky-blue uniform entirely. The thing was, or might become, a matter of nicely measured proportions. Already I was making the slight private affront serve my turn; presently I might want to make the pardon of that affront serve my turn also. This kind of thing is what I mean by the creation of an att.i.tude of mind and ”attention to detail.”

I made one more attempt to find Archie as I walked to St Pancras, but he was still not at home. Then I had to run for my train.

I worked in Pettinger's garden that week, carrying water, wheeling barrows, and filling baskets with fruit as I pa.s.sed between the canes.

Pettinger was away for two nights, but on the third evening he came up to me as I was pus.h.i.+ng a heavy roller over the lawn and began to talk. I think he began for the sake of a pleasant word or two, but something I said seemed to engage his interest, an hour or more pa.s.sed, and then, as the phlox and canterbury bells began to glimmer in the twilight, he suddenly said, ”Leave this and come inside--we can talk comfortably there.”

We went in. I shall never forget that night. It was made memorable by the fact that master and gardener talked till two o'clock in the morning.

”Well, Jeffries,” he said at last, with a sleepy yawn, ”you're an extraordinary chap. I'm afraid you've made rather a lot of work for me this last hour or two.”

”How so?” I asked.

”Well, I was going to try to get you a job something like your last, but you're a difficult man to find a job for. I won't ask you whether you know you're extraordinary; of course you know you are; and I'm going, if I can, to give you a chance--a real chance--not like that other--those cut-throats--what's their name.”

I had told him about Rixon Tebb & Masters' and the rest of it.

”I've a bit of a pull here and there,” he went on sleepily. ”There's the 'Freight and Ballast Company'--I know a couple of their men--but we'll talk about that in the morning. I'm off to bed. Hope they've made you comfortable?”

It does not come within the scope of my present tale to speak of my later rapid rise; but I may say now that I owed my chance to Pettinger and to the berth he got me, with the coming of winter, in the offices of the ”F. B. C.”

I remained in his house all that week; then, on the Friday evening, I took a return ticket to town in order to attend my cla.s.s.

I had not been half-an-hour in the college that evening before I was aware that something had happened. Archie Merridew was not there, but Evie was, and so was Kitty Windus. I went through my work as usual, and then, at half-past nine, sought Kitty. It was she who told me the news.

”You've not heard, have you?” she asked, with a glance towards the senior students' room, through which Evie had just pa.s.sed. Again she was, in some manner I could not understand, eager, reserved, apprehensive and fidgety all at once.

”Heard what?” I asked.

”About Evie. It's come off. She and Archie are properly engaged.”

From that moment dated a division of me into two separate men, of which I shall have more to say presently.

”Oh?” I replied, with complete calm. ”That's good news indeed! Wait here a minute--I'll speak to her--don't go, for I want to see you.”

I met Evie returning with her towel and celluloid box of soap. She too was excited, so excited that she would have pa.s.sed me, but I thought I understood that. I stopped her.

”Well, Evie?” I said, smiling.

She waited, painfully full, I couldn't help thinking, of emotion.

”It was you who congratulated me before,” I said. ”It's my turn now, I hear.”

She looked at me and away again, and again at me and away.