Ann was still looking at him as if he had undergone a change into something new and strange.
“I hope you aren’t going to let the resemblance prejudice you against -me-?” said Jimmy. “Some are born Jimmy Crockers, others have Jimmy Crockers thrust upon them. I hope you’ll bear in mind that I belong to the latter class.”
“It’s such an extraordinary thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You often hear of doubles. There was a man in England a few years ago who kept getting sent to prison for things some genial stranger who happened to look like him had done.”
“I don’t mean that. Of course there are doubles. But it is curious that you should have come over here and that we should have met like this at just this time. You see, the reason I went over to England at all was to try to get Jimmy Crocker to come back here.”
“What!”
“I don’t mean that -I- did. I mean that I went with my uncle and aunt, who wanted to persuade him to come and live with them.”
Jimmy was now feeling completely out of his depth.
“Your uncle and aunt? Why?”
“I ought to have explained that they are his uncle and aunt, too. My aunt’s sister married his father.”
“But–”
“It’s quite simple, though it doesn’t sound so. Perhaps you haven’t read the -Sunday Chronicle- lately? It has been publishing articles about Jimmy Crocker’s disgusting behaviour in London–they call him Piccadilly Jim, you know–”
In print, that name had shocked Jimmy. Spoken, and by Ann, it was loathly. Remorse for his painful past tore at him.
“There was another one printed yesterday.”
“I saw it,” said Jimmy, to avert description.
“Oh, did you? Well, just to show you what sort of a man Jimmy Crocker is, the Lord Percy Whipple whom he attacked in the club was his very best friend. His step-mother told my aunt so. He seems to be absolutely hopeless.” She smiled. “You’re looking quite sad, Mr. Bayliss. Cheer up! You may look like him, but you aren’t him he?–him?–no, ‘he’ is right. The soul is what counts. If you’ve got a good, virtuous, Algernonish soul, it doesn’t matter if you’re so like Jimmy Crocker that his friends come up and talk to you in restaurants. In fact, it’s rather an advantage, really. I’m sure that if you were to go to my aunt and pretend to be Jimmy Crocker, who had come over after all in a fit of repentance, she would be so pleased that there would be nothing she wouldn’t do for you. You might realise your ambition of being adopted by a millionaire. Why don’t you try it? I won’t give you away.”
“Before they found me out and hauled me off to prison, I should have been near you for a time. I should have lived in the same house with you, spoken to you–!” Jimmy’s voice shook.
Ann turned her head to address an imaginary companion.
“You must listen to this, my dear,” she said in an undertone. “He speaks -wonderfully!- They used to call him the Boy Orator in his home-town. Sometimes that, and sometimes Eloquent Algernon!”
Jimmy eyed her fixedly. He disapproved of this frivolity.
“One of these days you will try me too high–!”
“Oh, you didn’t hear what I was saying to my friend, did you?” she said in concern. “But I meant it, every word. I love to hear you talk. You have such -feeling!-”
Jimmy attuned himself to the key of the conversation.
“Have you no sentiment in you?” he demanded.
“I was just warming up, too! In another minute you would have heard something worth while. You’ve damped me now. Let’s talk about my lifework again.”
“Have you thought of anything?”
“I’d like to be one of those fellows who sit in offices, and sign checks, and tell the office-boy to tell Mr. Rockerfeller they can give him five minutes. But of course I should need a check-book, and I haven’t got one. Oh well, I shall find something to do all right. Now tell me something about yourself. Let’s drop the future for awhile.”
…..
An hour later Jimmy turned into Broadway. He walked pensively, for he had much to occupy his mind. How strange that the Petts should have come over to England to try to induce him to return to New York, and how galling that, now that he was in New York, this avenue to a prosperous future was closed by the fact that something which he had done five years ago–that he could remember nothing about it was quite maddening–had caused Ann to nurse this abiding hatred of him. He began to dream tenderly of Ann, bumping from pedestrian to pedestrian in a gentle trance.