Tommy and Grizel

By J. M. Barrie

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Title: Tommy and Grizel

Author: J.M. Barrie

Release Date: April 4, 2004 [EBook #11901]

Language: English


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TOMMY AND GRIZEL

BY

J. M. BARRIE

ILLUSTRATED BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE

1900, 1912





CONTENTS


PART I

CHAPTER

     I HOW TOMMY FOUND A WAY

    II THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE

   III SANDYS ON WOMAN

    IV GRIZEL OF THE CROOKED SMILE

     V THE TOMMY MYTH

    VI GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN

   VII THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL

  VIII WHAT GRIZEL'S EYES SAID

    IX GALLANT BEHAVIOUR OF T. SANDYS

     X GAVINIA ON THE TRACK

    XI THE TEA-PARTY

   XII IN WHICH A COMEDIAN CHALLENGES TRAGEDY TO BOWLS

  XIII LITTLE WELLS OF GLADNESS

   XIV ELSPETH

    XV BY PROSEN WATER

   XVI "HOW COULD YOU HURT YOUR GRIZEL SO!"

  XVII HOW TOMMY SAVED THE FLAG


PART II

CHAPTER

 XVIII THE GIRL SHE HAD BEEN

   XIX OF THE CHANGE IN THOMAS

    XX A LOVE-LETTER

   XXI THE ATTEMPT TO CARRY ELSPETH BY NUMBERS

  XXII GRIZEL'S GLORIOUS HOUR

 XXIII TOMMY LOSES GRIZEL

  XXIV THE MONSTER

   XXV MR. T. SANDYS HAS RETURNED TO TOWN

  XXVI GRIZEL ALL ALONE

 XXVII GRIZEL'S JOURNEY

XXVIII TWO OF THEM

  XXIX THE RED LIGHT

   XXX THE LITTLE GODS DESERT HIM

  XXXI "THE MAN WITH THE GREETIN' EYES"

 XXXII TOMMY'S BEST WORK

XXXIII THE LITTLE GODS RETURN WITH A LADY

 XXXIV A WAY IS FOUND FOR TOMMY

  XXXV THE PERFECT LOVER




ILLUSTRATIONS


PART I

And clung to it, his teeth set.

"She is standing behind that tree looking at us."

She did not look up, she waited.


PART II

"I sit still by his arm-chair and tell him what is happening to his
Grizel."

They told Aaron something.

"But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry," she said softly.

"I woke up," she said  He heard their seductive voices, they danced
around him in numbers.




TOMMY AND GRIZEL





 PART I




CHAPTER I

HOW TOMMY FOUND A WAY


O.P. Pym, the colossal Pym, that vast and rolling figure, who never
knew what he was to write about until he dipped grandly, an author in
such demand that on the foggy evening which starts our story his
publishers have had his boots removed lest he slip thoughtlessly round
the corner before his work is done, as was the great man's way--shall
we begin with him, or with Tommy, who has just arrived in London,
carrying his little box and leading a lady by the hand? It was Pym, as
we are about to see, who in the beginning held Tommy up to the public
gaze, Pym who first noticed his remarkable indifference to female
society, Pym who gave him----But alack! does no one remember Pym for
himself? Is the king of the _Penny Number_ already no more than a
button that once upon a time kept Tommy's person together? And we are
at the night when they first met! Let us hasten into Marylebone before
little Tommy arrives and Pym is swallowed like an oyster.

This is the house, 22 Little Owlet Street, Marylebone, but which were
his rooms it is less easy to determine, for he was a lodger who
flitted placidly from floor to floor according to the state of his
finances, carrying his apparel and other belongings in one great
armful, and spilling by the way. On this particular evening he was on
the second floor front, which had a fireplace in the corner, furniture
all his landlady's and mostly horsehair, little to suggest his calling
save a noble saucerful of ink, and nothing to draw attention from Pym,
who lolled, gross and massive, on a sofa, one leg over the back of it,
the other drooping, his arms extended, and his pipe, which he could
find nowhere, thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, an
agreeable pipe-rack. He wore a yellow dressing-gown, or could scarcely
be said to wear it, for such of it as was not round his neck he had
converted into a cushion for his head, which is perhaps the part of
him we should have turned to first It was a big round head, the
plentiful gray hair in tangles, possibly because in Pym's last
flitting the comb had dropped over the banisters; the features were
ugly and beyond life-size, yet the forehead had altered little except
in colour since the day when he was near being made a fellow of his
college; there was sensitiveness left in the thick nose, humour in the
eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at
last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had
resisted the body for a space before the whole man rolled contentedly
downhill.

He had no beard. "Young man, let your beard grow." Those who have
forgotten all else about Pym may recall him in these words. They were
his one counsel to literary aspirants, who, according as they took it,
are now bearded and prosperous or shaven and on the rates. To shave
costs threepence, another threepence for loss of time--nearly ten
pounds a year, three hundred pounds since Pym's chin first bristled.
With his beard he could have bought an annuity or a cottage in the
country, he could have had a wife and children, and driven his
dog-cart, and been made a church-warden. All gone, all shaved, and for
what? When he asked this question he would move his hand across his
chin with a sigh, and so, bravely to the barber's.

Pym was at present suffering from an ailment that had spread him out
on that sofa again and again--acute disinclination to work.

Meanwhile all the world was waiting for his new tale; so the
publishers, two little round men, have told him. They have blustered,
they have fawned, they have asked each other out to talk it over
behind the door.

Has he any idea of what the story is to be about?

He has no idea.

Then at least, Pym--excellent Pym--sit down and dip, and let us see
what will happen.

He declined to do even that. While all the world waited, this was
Pym's ultimatum:

"I shall begin the damned thing at eight o'clock."

Outside, the fog kept changing at intervals from black to white, as
lazily from white to black (the monster blinking); there was not a
sound from the street save of pedestrians tapping with their sticks on
the pavement as they moved forward warily, afraid of an embrace with
the unknown; it might have been a city of blind beggars, one of them a
boy.

At eight o'clock Pym rose with a groan and sat down in his
stocking-soles to write his delicious tale. He was now alone. But
though his legs were wound round his waste-paper basket, and he dipped
often and loudly in the saucer, like one ringing at the door of Fancy,
he could not get the idea that would set him going. He was still
dipping for inspiration when T. Sandys, who had been told to find the
second floor for himself, knocked at the door, and entered, quaking.

"I remember it vividly," Pym used to say when questioned in the after
years about this his first sight of Tommy, "and I hesitate to decide
which impressed me more, the richness of his voice, so remarkable in a
boy of sixteen, or his serene countenance, with its noble forehead,
behind which nothing base could lurk."

Pym, Pym! it is such as you that makes the writing of biography
difficult. The richness of Tommy's voice could not have struck you,
for at that time it was a somewhat squeaky voice; and as for the noble
forehead behind which nothing base could lurk, how could you say that,
Pym, you who had a noble forehead yourself?

No; all that Pym saw was a pasty-faced boy sixteen years old, and of
an appearance mysteriously plain; hair light brown, and waving
defiance to the brush; nothing startling about him but the expression
of his face, which was almost fearsomely solemn and apparently
unchangeable. He wore his Sunday blacks, of which the trousers might
with advantage have borrowed from the sleeves; and he was so nervous
that he had to wet his lips before he could speak. He had left the
door ajar for a private reason; but Pym, misunderstanding, thought he
did it to fly the more readily if anything was flung at him, and so
concluded that he must be a printer's devil.  Pym had a voice that
shook his mantelpiece ornaments; he was all on the same scale as his
ink-pot. "Your Christian name, boy?" he roared hopefully, for it was
thus he sometimes got the idea that started him.

"Thomas," replied the boy.

Pym gave him a look of disgust "You may go," he said. But when he
looked up presently, Thomas was still there. He was not only there,
but whistling--a short, encouraging whistle that seemed to be directed
at the door. He stopped quickly when Pym looked up, but during the
remainder of the interview he emitted this whistle at intervals,
always with that anxious glance at his friend the door; and its
strained joviality was in odd contrast with his solemn face, like a
cheery tune played on the church organ.

"Begone!" cried Pym.

"My full name," explained Tommy, who was speaking the English
correctly, but with a Scots accent, "is Thomas Sandys. And fine you
know who that is," he added, exasperated by Pym's indifference. "I'm
the T. Sandys that answered your advertisement."

Pym knew who he was now. "You young ruffian," he gasped, "I never
dreamt that you would come!"

"I have your letter engaging me in my pocket," said Tommy, boldly, and
he laid it on the table. Pym surveyed it and him in comic dismay,
then with a sudden thought produced nearly a dozen letters from a
drawer, and dumped them down beside the other. It was now his turn to
look triumphant and Tommy aghast.

Pym's letters were all addressed from the Dubb of Prosen Farm, near
Thrums, N.B., to different advertisers, care of a London agency, and
were Tommy's answers to the "wants" in a London newspaper which had
found its way to the far North. "X Y Z" was in need of a chemist's
assistant, and from his earliest years, said one of the letters,
chemistry had been the study of studies for T. Sandys. He was glad to
read, was T. Sandys, that one who did not object to long hours would
be preferred, for it seemed to him that those who objected to long
hours did not really love their work, their heart was not in it, and
only where the heart is can the treasure be found.

"123" had a vacancy for a page-boy, "Glasgow Man" for a photographer;
page-boy must not be over fourteen, photographer must not be under
twenty. "I am a little over fourteen, but I look less," wrote T.
Sandys to "123"; "I am a little under twenty," he wrote to "Glasgow
Man," "but I look more." His heart was in the work.

To be a political organizer! If "H and H," who advertised for one,
only knew how eagerly the undersigned desired to devote his life to
political organizing!

In answer to "Scholastic's" advertisement for janitor in a boys'
school, T. Sandys begged to submit his name for consideration.

Undoubtedly the noblest letter was the one applying for the
secretaryship of a charitable society, salary to begin at once, but
the candidate selected must deposit one hundred pounds. The
application was noble in its offer to make the work a labour of love,
and almost nobler in its argument that the hundred pounds was
unnecessary.

"Rex" had a vacancy in his drapery department. T. Sandys had made a
unique study of drapery.

Lastly, "Anon" wanted an amanuensis. "Salary," said "Anon," who seemed
to be a humourist, "salary large but uncertain." He added with equal
candour: "Drudgery great, but to an intelligent man the pickings may
be considerable." Pickings! Is there a finer word in the language? T.
Sandys had felt that he was particularly good at pickings. But
amanuensis? The thing was unknown to him; no one on the farm could
tell him what it was. But never mind; his heart was in it.

All this correspondence had produced one reply, the letter on which
Tommy's hand still rested. It was a brief note, signed "O.P. Pym," and
engaging Mr. Sandys on his own recommendation, "if he really felt
quite certain that his heart (treasure included) was in the work." So
far good, Tommy had thought when he received this answer, but there
was nothing in it to indicate the nature of the work, nothing to show
whether O.P. Pym was "Scholastic," or "123," or "Rex," or any other
advertiser in particular. Stop, there was a postscript: "I need not go
into details about your duties, as you assure me you are so well
acquainted with them, but before you join me please send (in writing)
a full statement of what you think they are."

There were delicate reasons why Mr. Sandys could not do that, but oh,
he was anxious to be done with farm labour, so he decided to pack and
risk it. The letter said plainly that he was engaged; what for he must
find out slyly when he came to London. So he had put his letter firmly
on Pym's table; but it was a staggerer to find that gentleman in
possession of the others.

One of these was Pym's by right; the remainder were a humourous gift
from the agent who was accustomed to sift the correspondence of his
clients. Pym had chuckled over them, and written a reply that he
flattered himself would stump the boy; then he had unexpectedly come
into funds (he found a forgotten check while searching his old pockets
for tobacco-crumbs), and in that glory T. Sandys escaped his memory.
Result, that they were now face to face.

A tiny red spot, not noticeable before, now appeared in Tommy's eyes.
It was never there except when he was determined to have his way. Pym,
my friend, yes, and everyone of you who is destined to challenge
Tommy, 'ware that red light!

"Well, which am I?" demanded Pym, almost amused, Tommy was so
obviously in a struggle with the problem.

The saucer and the blank pages told nothing. "Whichever you are," the
boy answered heavily, "it's not herding nor foddering cattle, and so
long as it's not that, I'll put my heart in it, and where the heart
is, there the treasure--"

He suddenly remembered that his host must be acquainted with the
sentiment.

Easy-going Pym laughed, then said irritably, "Of what use could a mere
boy be to me?"

"Then it's not the page-boy!" exclaimed Tommy, thankfully.

"Perhaps I am 'Scholastic,'" suggested Pym.

"No," said Tommy, after a long study of his face.

Pym followed this reasoning, and said touchily, "Many a schoolmaster
has a red face."

"Not that kind of redness," explained Tommy, without delicacy.

"I am 'H and H,'" said Pym.

"You forget you wrote to me as one person," replied Tommy.  "So I
did. That was because I am the chemist; and I must ask you, Thomas,
for your certificate."

Tommy believed him this time, and Pym triumphantly poured himself a
glass of whisky, spilling some of it on his dressing-gown.

"Not you," said Tommy, quickly; "a chemist has a steady hand."

"Confound you!" cried Pym, "what sort of a boy is this?"

"If you had been the draper you would have wiped the drink off your
gown," continued Tommy, thoughtfully, "and if you had been 'Glasgow
Man' you would have sucked it off, and if you had been the charitable
society you wouldn't swear in company." He flung out his hand. "I'll
tell you who you are," he said sternly, "you're 'Anon.'"

Under this broadside Pym succumbed. He sat down feebly. "Right," he
said, with a humourous groan, "and I shall tell you who you are. I am
afraid you are my amanuensis!"

Tommy immediately whistled, a louder and more glorious note than
before.

"Don't be so cocky," cried Pym, in sudden rebellion. "You are only my
amanuensis if you can tell me what that is. If you can't--out you go!"

He had him at last!  Not he!

"An amanuensis," said Tommy, calmly, "is one who writes to dictation.
Am I to bring in my box? It's at the door."

This made Pym sit down again. "You didn't know what an amanuensis was
when you answered my advertisement," he said.

"As soon as I got to London," Tommy answered, "I went into a
bookseller's shop, pretending I wanted to buy a dictionary, and I
looked the word up."

"Bring in your box," Pym said, with a groan.

But it was now Tommy's turn to hesitate. "Have you noticed," he asked
awkwardly, "that I sometimes whistle?"

"Don't tell me," said Pym, "that you have a dog out there."

"It's not a dog," Tommy replied cautiously.

Pym had resumed his seat at the table and was once more toying with
his pen. "Open the door," he commanded, "and let me see what you have
brought with you."

Tommy obeyed gingerly, and then Pym gaped, for what the open door
revealed to him was a tiny roped box with a girl of twelve sitting on
it. She was dressed in some dull-coloured wincey, and looked cold and
patient and lonely, and as she saw the big man staring at her she
struggled in alarm to her feet, and could scarce stand on them. Tommy
was looking apprehensively from her to Pym.

"Good God, boy!" roared Pym, "are you married?"

"No," cried Tommy, in agony, "she's my sister, and we're orphans, and
did you think I could have the heart to leave Elspeth behind?" He took
her stoutly by the hand.

"And he never will marry," said little Elspeth, almost fiercely; "will
you, Tommy?"

"Never!" said Tommy, patting her and glaring at Pym.

But Pym would not have it. "Married!" he shouted. "Magnificent!" And
he dipped exultantly, for he had got his idea at last. Forgetting even
that he had an amanuensis, he wrote on and on and on.

"He smells o' drink," Elspeth whispered.

"All the better," replied Tommy, cheerily. "Make yourself at home,
Elspeth; he's the kind I can manage. Was there ever a kind I couldna
manage?" he whispered, top-heavy with conceit.

"There was Grizel," Elspeth said, rather thoughtlessly; and then
Tommy frowned.




CHAPTER II

THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE


Six years afterwards Tommy was a famous man, as I hope you do not need
to be told; but you may be wondering how it came about. The whole
question, in Pym's words, resolves itself into how the solemn little
devil got to know so much about women. It made the world marvel when
they learned his age, but no one was quite so staggered as Pym, who
had seen him daily for all those years, and been damning him for his
indifference to the sex during the greater part of them.

It began while he was still no more than an amanuensis, sitting with
his feet in the waste-paper basket, Pym dictating from the sofa, and
swearing when the words would not come unless he was perpendicular.
Among the duties of this amanuensis was to remember the name of the
heroine, her appearance, and other personal details; for Pym
constantly forgot them in the night, and he had to go searching back
through his pages for them, cursing her so horribly that Tommy signed
to Elspeth to retire to her tiny bedroom at the top of the house. He
was always most careful of Elspeth, and with the first pound he earned
he insured his life, leaving all to her, but told her nothing about
it, lest she should think it meant his early death. As she grew older
he also got good dull books for her from a library, and gave her a
piano on the hire system, and taught her many things about life, very
carefully selected from his own discoveries.

Elspeth out of the way, he could give Pym all the information wanted.
"Her name is Felicity," he would say at the right moment; "she has
curly brown hair in which the sun strays, and a blushing neck, and her
eyes are like blue lakes."

"Height!" roared Pym. "Have I mentioned it?"

"No; but she is about five feet six."

"How the ---- could you know that?"

"You tell Percy's height in his stocking-soles, and when she reached
to his mouth and kissed him she had to stand on her tiptoes so to do."

Tommy said this in a most businesslike tone, but could not help
smacking his lips. He smacked them again when he had to write: "Have
no fear, little woman; I am by your side." Or, "What a sweet child you
are!"

Pym had probably fallen into the way of making the Percys revel in
such epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but this
delicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies,
went to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had some
narrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissed
her on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in,
little woman?" He came to himself with a start.

"I forgot," he said hurriedly, and got out of the room without telling
her what he had forgotten.

Pym's publishers knew their man, and their arrangement with him was
that he was paid on completion of the tale. But always before he
reached the middle he struck for what they called his honorarium; and
this troubled them, for the tale was appearing week by week as it was
written. If they were obdurate, he suddenly concluded his story in
such words as these:

"Several years have passed since these events took place, and the
scene changes to a lovely garden by the bank of old Father Thames. A
young man sits by the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as the scene
itself; for the storm has passed away, and Percy (for it is no other)
has found an anchorage. As he sits musing over the past, Felicity
steals out by the French window and puts her soft arms around his
neck. 'My little wife!' he murmurs. _The End--unless you pay up by
messenger._"

This last line, which was not meant for the world (but little would
Pym have cared though it had been printed), usually brought his
employers to their knees; and then, as Tommy advanced in experience,
came the pickings--for Pym, with money in his pockets, had important
engagements round the corner, and risked intrusting his amanuensis
with the writing of the next instalment, "all except the bang at the
end."

Smaller people, in Tommy's state of mind, would have hurried straight
to the love-passages; but he saw the danger, and forced his Pegasus
away from them. "Do your day's toil first," he may be conceived saying
to that animal, "and at evenfall I shall let you out to browse." So,
with this reward in front, he devoted many pages to the dreary
adventures of pretentious males, and even found a certain pleasure in
keeping the lady waiting. But as soon as he reached her he lost his
head again.

"Oh, you beauty! oh, you small pet!" he said to himself, with solemn
transport.

As the artist in him was stirred, great problems presented themselves;
for instance, in certain circumstances was "darling" or "little one"
the better phrase? "Darling" in solitary grandeur is more pregnant of
meaning than "little one," but "little" has a flavour of the
patronizing which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets over
such questions; but they were in his pocket when Pym or Elspeth opened
the door. It is wonderful how much you can conceal between the touch
on the handle and the opening of the door, if your heart is in it.

Despite this fine practice, however, he was the shyest of mankind in
the presence of women, and this shyness grew upon him with the years.
Was it because he never tried to uncork himself? Oh, no! It was about
this time that he, one day, put his arm round Clara, the servant--not
passionately, but with deliberation, as if he were making an
experiment with machinery. He then listened, as if to hear Clara
ticking. He wrote an admirable love-letter--warm, dignified,
sincere--to nobody in particular, and carried it about in his pocket
in readiness. But in love-making, as in the other arts, those do it
best who cannot tell how it is done; and he was always stricken with a
palsy when about to present that letter. It seemed that he was only
able to speak to ladies when they were not there. Well, if he could
not speak, he thought the more; he thought so profoundly that in time
the heroines of Pym ceased to thrill him.

This was because he had found out that they were not flesh and blood.
But he did not delight in his discovery: it horrified him; for what he
wanted was the old thrill. To make them human so that they could be
his little friends again--nothing less was called for. This meant
slaughter here and there of the great Pym's brain-work, and Tommy
tried to keep his hands off; but his heart was in it. In Pym's pages
the ladies were the most virtuous and proper of their sex (though
dreadfully persecuted), but he merely told you so at the beginning,
and now and again afterwards to fill up, and then allowed them to act
with what may be called rashness, so that the story did not really
suffer. Before Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. Out went this
because she would not have done it, and that because she could not
have done it. Fathers might now have taken a lesson from T. Sandys in
the upbringing of their daughters. He even sternly struck out the
diminutives. With a pen in his hand and woman in his head, he had such
noble thoughts that his tears of exaltation damped the pages as he
wrote, and the ladies must have been astounded as well as proud to see
what they were turning into.

That was Tommy with a pen in his hand and a handkerchief hard by; but
it was another Tommy who, when the finest bursts were over, sat back
in his chair and mused. The lady was consistent now, and he would
think about her, and think and think, until concentration, which is a
pair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her out of the pages to his side,
and then he and she sported in a way forbidden in the tale. While he
sat there with eyes riveted, he had her to dinner at a restaurant, and
took her up the river, and called her "little woman"; and when she
held up her mouth he said tantalizingly that she must wait until he
had finished his cigar. This queer delight enjoyed, back he popped her
into the story, where she was again the vehicle for such glorious
sentiments that Elspeth, to whom he read the best of them, feared he
was becoming too good to live.

In the meantime the great penny public were slowly growing restive,
and at last the two little round men called on Pym to complain that he
was falling off; and Pym turned them out of doors, and then sat down
heroically to do what he had not done for two decades--to read his
latest work.

"Elspeth, go upstairs to your room," whispered Tommy, and then he
folded his arms proudly. He should have been in a tremble, but
latterly he had often felt that he must burst if he did not soon read
some of his bits to Pym, more especially the passages about the
hereafter; also the opening of Chapter Seventeen.

At first Pym's only comment was, "It is the same old drivel as before;
what more can they want?"

But presently he looked up, puzzled. "Is this chapter yours or mine?"
he demanded.

"It is about half and half," said Tommy.

"Is mine the first half? Where does yours begin?"  "That is not
exactly what I mean," explained Tommy, in a glow, but backing a
little; "you wrote that chapter first, and then I--I--"

"You rewrote it!" roared Pym. "You dared to meddle with--" He was
speechless with fury.

"I tried to keep my hand off," Tommy said, with dignity, "but the
thing had to be done, and they are human now."

"Human! who wants them to be human? The fiends seize you, boy! you
have even been tinkering with my heroine's personal appearance; what
is this you have been doing to her nose?"

"I turned it up slightly, that's all," said Tommy.

"I like them down," roared Pym.

"I prefer them up," said Tommy, stiffly.

"Where," cried Pym, turning over the leaves in a panic, "where is the
scene in the burning house?"

"It's out," Tommy explained, "but there is a chapter in its place
about--it's mostly about the beauty of the soul being everything, and
mere physical beauty nothing. Oh, Mr. Pym, sit down and let me read it
to you."

But Pym read it, and a great deal more, for himself. No wonder he
stormed, for the impossible had been made not only consistent, but
unreadable. The plot was lost for chapters. The characters no longer
did anything, and then went and did something else: you were told
instead how they did it. You were not allowed to make up your own mind
about them: you had to listen to the mind of T. Sandys; he described
and he analyzed; the road he had tried to clear through the thicket
was impassable for chips.

"A few more weeks of this," said Pym, "and we should all three be
turned out into the streets."

Tommy went to bed in an agony of mortification, but presently to his
side came Pym.

"Where did you copy this from?" he asked. "'It is when we are thinking
of those we love that our noblest thoughts come to us, and the more
worthy they are of our love the nobler the thought; hence it is that
no one has done the greatest work who did not love God.'"

"I copied it from nowhere," replied Tommy, fiercely; "it's my own."

"Well, it has nothing to do with the story, and so is only a blot on
it, and I have no doubt the thing has been said much better before.
Still, I suppose it is true."

"It's true," said Tommy; "and yet--"

"Go on. I want to know all about it."

"And yet," Tommy said, puzzled, "I've known noble thoughts come to me
when I was listening to a brass band."

Pym chuckled. "Funny things, noble thoughts," he agreed. He read
another passage:  "'It was the last half-hour of day when I was
admitted, with several others, to look upon my friend's dead face. A
handkerchief had been laid over it. I raised the handkerchief. I know
not what the others were thinking, but the last time we met he had
told me something, it was not much--only that no woman had ever kissed
him. It seemed to me that, as I gazed, the wistfulness came back to
his face. I whispered to a woman who was present, and stooping over
him, she was about to--but her eyes were dry, and I stopped her. The
handkerchief was replaced, and all left the room save myself. Again I
raised the handkerchief. I cannot tell you how innocent he looked.'"

"Who was he?" asked Pym.

"Nobody," said Tommy, with some awe; "it just came to me. Do you
notice how simple the wording is? It took me some time to make it so
simple."

"You are just nineteen, I think?"

"Yes."

Pym looked at him wonderingly.

"Thomas," he said, "you are a very queer little devil."

He also said: "And it is possible you may find the treasure you are
always talking about. Don't jump to the ceiling, my friend, because I
say that. I was once after the treasure, myself; and you can see
whether I found it."

From about that time, on the chances that this mysterious treasure
might spring up in the form of a new kind of flower, Pym zealously
cultivated the ground, and Tommy had an industrious time of it. He was
taken off his stories, which at once regained their elasticity, and
put on to exercises.

"If you have nothing to say on the subject, say nothing," was one of
the new rules, which few would have expected from Pym. Another was:
"As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person
has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man."

"Without concentration, Thomas, you are lost; concentrate, though your
coat-tails be on fire.

"Try your hand at description, and when you have done chortling over
the result, reduce the whole by half without missing anything out.

"Analyze your characters and their motives at the prodigious length in
which you revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analysis out. It is for
your own guidance, not the reader's.

"'I have often noticed,' you are always saying. The story has nothing
to do with you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will be your stiffest
job.

"Stop preaching. It seems to me the pulpit is where you should look
for the treasure. Nineteen, and you are already as didactic as
seventy."

And so on.  Over his exercises Tommy was now engrossed for so long a
period that, as he sits there, you may observe his legs slowly
lengthening and the coming of his beard. No, his legs lengthened as he
sat with his feet in the basket; but I feel sure that his beard burst
through prematurely some night when he was thinking too hard about the
ladies.

There were no ladies in the exercises, for, despite their altercation
about noses, Pym knew that on this subject Tommy's mind was a blank.
But he recognized the sex's importance, and becoming possessed once
more of a black coat, marched his pupil into the somewhat shoddy
drawing-rooms that were still open to him, and there ordered Tommy to
be fascinated for his future good. But it was as it had always been.
Tommy sat white and speechless and apparently bored; could not even
say, "You sing with so much expression!" when the lady at the
pianoforte had finished.

"Shyness I could pardon," the exasperated Pym would roar; "but want of
interest is almost immoral. At your age the blood would have been
coursing through my veins. Love! You are incapable of it. There is not
a drop of sentiment in your frozen carcass."

"Can I help that?" growled Tommy. It was an agony to him even to speak
about women.

"If you can't," said Pym, "all is over with you. An artist without
sentiment is a painter without colours. Young man, I fear you are
doomed."

And Tommy believed him, and quaked. He had the most gallant struggles
with himself. He even set his teeth and joined a dancing-class; though
neither Pym nor Elspeth knew of it, and it never showed afterwards in
his legs. In appearance he was now beginning to be the Sandys of the
photographs: a little over the middle height and rather heavily built;
nothing to make you uncomfortable until you saw his face. That solemn
countenance never responded when he laughed, and stood coldly by when
he was on fire; he might have winked for an eternity, and still the
onlooker must have thought himself mistaken. In his boyhood the mask
had descended scarce below his mouth, for there was a dimple in the
chin to put you at ease; but now the short brown beard had come, and
he was for ever hidden from the world.

He had the dandy's tastes for superb neckties, velvet jackets, and he
got the ties instead of dining; he panted for the jacket, knew all the
shop-windows it was in, but for years denied himself, with a moan, so
that he might buy pretty things for Elspeth. When eventually he got
it, Pym's friends ridiculed him. When he saw how ill his face matched
it he ridiculed himself. Often when Tommy was feeling that now at last
the ladies must come to heel, he saw his face suddenly in a mirror,
and all the spirit went out of him. But still he clung to his velvet
jacket.

I see him in it, stalking through the terrible dances, a heroic figure
at last. He shuddered every time he found himself on one leg; he got
sternly into everybody's way; he was the butt of the little noodle of
an instructor. All the social tortures he endured grimly, in the hope
that at last the cork would come out. Then, though there were all
kinds of girls in the class, merry, sentimental, practical,
coquettish, prudes, there was no kind, he felt, whose heart he could
not touch. In love-making, as in the favourite Thrums game of the
dambrod, there are sixty-one openings, and he knew them all. Yet at
the last dance, as at the first, the universal opinion of his partners
(shop-girls, mostly, from the large millinery establishments, who had
to fly like Cinderellas when the clock struck a certain hour) was that
he kept himself to himself, and they were too much the lady to make up
to a gentleman who so obviously did not want them.

Pym encouraged his friends to jeer at Tommy's want of interest in the
sex, thinking it a way of goading him to action. One evening, the
bottles circulating, they mentioned one Dolly, goddess at some bar, as
a fit instructress for him. Coarse pleasantries passed, but for a time
he writhed in silence, then burst upon them indignantly for their
unmanly smirching of a woman's character, and swept out, leaving them
a little ashamed. That was very like Tommy.

But presently a desire came over him to see this girl, and it came
because they had hinted such dark things about her. That was like him
also.

There was probably no harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right to
question it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, and
stretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change with
disdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of the
minor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the only
one who could have given an artistic justification for it.

This one was a bearded stranger who, when he knew that Pym and his
friends were elsewhere, would enter the bar with a cigar in his mouth,
and ask for a whisky-and-water, which was heroism again, for smoking
was ever detestable to him, and whisky more offensive than quinine.
But these things are expected of you, and by asking for the whisky you
get into talk with Dolly; that is to say, you tell her several times
what you want, and when she has served every other body you get it.
The commercial must be served first; in the barroom he blocks the way
like royalty in the street. There is a crown for us all somewhere.

Dolly seldom heard the bearded one's "good-evening"; she could not
possibly have heard the "dear," for though it was there, it remained
behind his teeth. She knew him only as the stiff man who got separated
from his glass without complaining, and at first she put this down to
forgetfulness, and did nothing, so that he could go away without
drinking; but by and by, wherever he left his tumbler, cunningly
concealed behind a water-bottle, or temptingly in front of a
commercial, she restored it to him, and there was a twinkle in her
eye.

"You little rogue, so you see through me!" Surely it was an easy thing
to say; but what he did say was "Thank you." Then to himself he said,
"Ass, ass, ass!"

Sitting on the padded seat that ran the length of the room, and
surreptitiously breaking his cigar against the cushions to help it on
its way to an end, he brought his intellect to bear on Dolly at a
distance, and soon had a better knowledge of her than could be claimed
by those who had Dollied her for years. He also wove romances about
her, some of them of too lively a character, and others so noble and
sad and beautiful that the tears came to his eyes, and Dolly thought
he had been drinking. He could not have said whether he would prefer
her to be good or bad.

These were but his leisure moments, for during the long working hours
he was still at the exercises, toiling fondly, and right willing to
tear himself asunder to get at the trick of writing. So he passed
from exercises to the grand experiment.

It was to be a tale, for there, they had taken for granted, lay the
treasure. Pym was most considerate at this time, and mentioned woman
with an apology.

"I have kept away from them in the exercises," he said in effect,
"because it would have been useless (as well as cruel) to force you to
labour on a subject so uncongenial to you; and for the same reason I
have decided that it is to be a tale of adventure, in which the
heroine need be little more than a beautiful sack of coals which your
cavalier carries about with him on his left shoulder. I am afraid we
must have her to that extent, Thomas, but I am not asking much of you;
dump her down as often as you like."

And Thomas did his dogged best, the red light in his eye; though he
had not, and never could have had, the smallest instinct for
story-writing, he knew to the finger-tips how it is done; but for ever
he would have gone on breaking all the rules of the game. How he
wrestled with himself! Sublime thoughts came to him (nearly all about
that girl), and he drove them away, for he knew they beat only against
the march of his story, and, whatever befall, the story must march.
Relentlessly he followed in the track of his men, pushing the dreary
dogs on to deeds of valour. He tried making the lady human, and then
she would not march; she sat still, and he talked about her; he
dumped her down, and soon he was yawning. This weariness was what
alarmed him most, for well he understood that there could be no
treasure where the work was not engrossing play, and he doubted no
more than Pym that for him the treasure was in the tale or nowhere.
Had he not been sharpening his tools in this belief for years? Strange
to reflect now that all the time he was hacking and sweating at that
novel (the last he ever attempted) it was only marching towards the
waste-paper basket!

He had a fine capacity, as has been hinted, for self-deception, and in
time, of course, he found a way of dodging the disquieting truth.
This, equally of course, was by yielding to his impulses. He allowed
himself an hour a day, when Pym was absent, in which he wrote the
story as it seemed to want to write itself, and then he cut this piece
out, which could be done quite easily, as it consisted only of
moralizings. Thus was his day brightened, and with this relaxation to
look forward to be plodded on at his proper work, delving so hard that
he could avoid asking himself why he was still delving. What shall we
say? He was digging for the treasure in an orchard, and every now and
again he came out of his hole to pluck an apple; but though the apple
was so sweet to the mouth, it never struck him that the treasure
might be growing overhead. At first he destroyed the fruit of his
stolen hour, and even after he took to carrying it about fondly in his
pocket, and to rewriting it in a splendid new form that had come to
him just as he was stepping into bed, he continued to conceal it from
his overseer's eyes. And still he thought all was over with him when
Pym said the story did not march.

"It is a dead thing," Pym would roar, flinging down the
manuscript,--"a dead thing because the stakes your man is playing for,
a woman's love, is less than a wooden counter to you. You are a fine
piece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, but you are a watch that
won't go because you are not wound up. Nobody can wind the artist up
except a chit of a girl; and how you are ever to get one to take pity
on you, only the gods who look after men with a want can tell.

"It becomes more impenetrable every day," he said. "No use your
sitting there tearing yourself to bits. Out into the street with you!
I suspend these sittings until you can tell me you have kissed a
girl."

He was still saying this sort of thing when the famous "Letters" were
published--T. Sandys, author. "Letters to a Young Man About to be
Married" was the full title, and another almost as applicable would
have been "Bits Cut Out of a Story because They Prevented its
Marching." If you have any memory you do not need to be told how that
splendid study, so ennobling, so penetrating, of woman at her best,
took the town. Tommy woke a famous man, and, except Elspeth, no one
was more pleased than big-hearted, hopeless, bleary Pym.

"But how the ---- has it all come about!" he kept roaring.

"A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have her
be," says the "Letters"; and "Oh," said woman everywhere, "if all men
had the same idea of us as Mr. Sandys!"

"To meet Mr. T. Sandys." Leaders of society wrote it on their
invitation cards. Their daughters, athirst for a new sensation,
thrilled at the thought, "Will he talk to us as nobly as he writes?"
And oh, how willing he was to do it, especially if their noses were
slightly tilted!




CHAPTER III

SANDYS ON WOMAN


"Can you kindly tell me the name of the book I want?"

It is the commonest question asked at the circulating library by
dainty ladies just out of the carriage; and the librarian, after
looking them over, can usually tell. In the days we have now to speak
of, however, he answered, without looking them over:

"Sandys's 'Letters,'"

"Ah, yes, of course. May I have it, please?"

"I regret to find that it is out."

Then the lady looked naughty. "Why don't you have two copies?" she
pouted.

"Madam," said the librarian, "we have a thousand."

A small and very timid girl of eighteen, with a neat figure that
shrank from observation, although it was already aware that it looked
best in gray, was there to drink in this music, and carried it home in
her heart. She was Elspeth, and that dear heart was almost too full
at this time. I hesitate whether to tell or to conceal how it even
created a disturbance in no less a place than the House of Commons.
She was there with Mrs. Jerry, and the thing was recorded in the
papers of the period in these blasting words: "The Home Secretary was
understood to be quoting a passage from 'Letters to a Young Man,' but
we failed to catch its drift, owing to an unseemly interruption from
the ladies' gallery."

"But what was it you cried out?" Tommy asked Elspeth, when she thought
she had told him everything. (Like all true women, she always began in
the middle.)

"Oh, Tommy, have I not told you? I cried out, 'I'm his sister.'"

Thus, owing to Elspeth's behaviour, it can never be known which was
the passage quoted in the House; but we may be sure of one thing--that
it did the House good. That book did everybody good. Even Pym could
only throw off its beneficent effects by a tremendous effort, and
young men about to be married used to ask at the bookshops, not for
the "Letters," but simply for "Sandys on Woman," acknowledging Tommy
as the authority on the subject, like Mill on Jurisprudence, or
Thomson and Tait on the Differential Calculus. Controversies raged
about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw
too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last
how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from
the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had
Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and
risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to
be) wrote to the papers suggesting that he might yield a little in the
next edition. But Sandys remained firm.

At first they took for granted that he was a very aged gentleman; he
had, indeed, hinted at this in the text; and when the truth came out
("And just fancy, he is not even married!") the enthusiasm was
doubled. "Not engaged!" they cried. "Don't tell that to me. No
unmarried man could have written such a eulogy of marriage without
being on the brink of it." Perhaps she was dead? It ran through the
town that she was dead. Some knew which cemetery.

The very first lady Mr. Sandys ever took in to dinner mentioned this
rumour to him, not with vulgar curiosity, but delicately, with a hint
of sympathy in waiting, and it must be remembered, in fairness to
Tommy, that all artists love sympathy. This sympathy uncorked him, and
our Tommy could flow comparatively freely at last. Observe the
delicious change.

"Has that story got abroad?" he said simply. "The matter is one which,
I need not say, I have never mentioned to a soul."

"Of course not," the lady said, and waited eagerly.

If Tommy had been an expert he might have turned the conversation to
brighter topics, but he was not; there had already been long pauses,
and in dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling on any faggot
rather than let the fire go out. "It is odd that I should be talking
of it now," he said musingly.

"I suppose," she said gently, to bring him out of the reverie into
which he had sunk, "I suppose it happened some time ago?"

"Long, long ago," he answered. (Having written as an aged person, he
often found difficulty in remembering suddenly that he was two and
twenty.)

"But you are still a very young man."

"It seems long ago to me," he said with a sigh.

"Was she beautiful?"

"She was beautiful to my eyes."

"And as good, I am sure, as she was beautiful."

"Ah me!" said Tommy.

His confidante was burning to know more, and hoping they were being
observed across the table; but she was a kind, sentimental creature,
though stout, or because of it, and she said, "I am so afraid that my
questions pain you."

"No, no," said Tommy, who was very, very happy.

"Was it very sudden?"

"Fever."

"Ah! but I meant your attachment."

"We met and we loved," he said with gentle dignity.

"That is the true way," said the lady.

"It is the only way," he said decisively.

"Mr. Sandys, you have been so good, I wonder if you would tell me her
name?"

"Felicity," he said, with emotion. Presently he looked up. "It is very
strange to me," he said wonderingly, "to find myself saying these
things to you who an hour ago were a complete stranger to me. But you
are not like other women."

"No, indeed!" said the lady, warmly.

"That," he said, "must be why I tell you what I have never told to
another human being. How mysterious are the workings of the heart!"

"Mr. Sandys," said the lady, quite carried away, "no words of mine can
convey to you the pride with which I hear you say that. Be assured
that I shall respect your confidences." She missed his next remark
because she was wondering whether she dare ask him to come to dinner
on the twenty-fifth, and then the ladies had to retire, and by the
time he rejoined her he was as tongue-tied as at the beginning. The
cork had not been extracted; it had been knocked into the bottle,
where it still often barred the way, and there was always, as we shall
see, a flavour of it in the wine.

"You will get over it yet; the summer and the flowers will come to you
again," she managed to whisper to him kind-heartedly, as she was
going.

"Thank you," he said, with that inscrutable face. It was far from his
design to play a part. He had, indeed, had no design at all, but an
opportunity for sentiment having presented itself, his mouth had
opened as at a cherry. He did not laugh afterwards, even when he
reflected how unexpectedly Felicity had come into his life; he thought
of her rather with affectionate regard, and pictured her as a tall,
slim girl in white. When he took a tall, slim girl in white in to
dinner, he could not help saying huskily:

"You remind me of one who was a very dear friend of mine. I was much
startled when you came into the room."

"You mean some one who is dead?" she asked in awe-struck tones.

"Fever," he said.

"You think I am like her in appearance?"

"In every way," he said dreamily; "the same sweet--pardon me, but it
is very remarkable. Even the tones of the voice are the same. I
suppose I ought not to ask your age?"

"I shall be twenty-one in August."  "She would have been twenty-one
in August had she lived," Tommy said with fervour. "My dear young
lady--"

This was the aged gentleman again, but she did not wince; he soon
found out that they expect authors to say the oddest things, and this
proved to be a great help to him.

"My dear young lady, I feel that I know you very well."

"That," she said, "is only because I resemble your friend outwardly.
The real me (she was a bit of philosopher also) you cannot know at
all."

He smiled sadly. "Has it ever struck you," he asked, "that you are
very unlike other women?"

"Oh, how ever could you have found that out?" she exclaimed, amazed.

Almost before he knew how it came about, he was on terms of very
pleasant sentiment with this girl, for they now shared between them a
secret that he had confided to no other. His face, which had been so
much against him hitherto, was at last in his favour; it showed so
plainly that when he looked at her more softly or held her hand longer
than is customary, he was really thinking of that other of whom she
was the image. Or if it did not precisely show that, it suggested
something or other of that nature which did just as well. There was a
sweet something between them which brought them together and also
kept them apart; it allowed them to go a certain length, while it was
also a reason why they could never, never exceed that distance; and
this was an ideal state for Tommy, who could be most loyal and tender
so long as it was understood that he meant nothing in particular. She
was the right kind of girl, too, and admired him the more (and perhaps
went a step further) because he remained so true to Felicity's memory.

You must not think him calculating and cold-blooded, for nothing could
be less true to the fact. When not engaged, indeed, on his new work,
he might waste some time planning scenes with exquisite ladies, in
which he sparkled or had a hidden sorrow (he cared not which); but
these scenes seldom came to life. He preferred very pretty girls to be
rather stupid (oh, the artistic instinct of the man!), but instead of
keeping them stupid, as he wanted to do, he found himself trying to
improve their minds. They screwed up their noses in the effort.
Meaning to thrill the celebrated beauty who had been specially invited
to meet him, he devoted himself to a plain woman for whose plainness a
sudden pity had mastered him (for, like all true worshippers of beauty
in women, he always showed best in the presence of plain ones). With
the intention of being a gallant knight to Lady I-Won't-Tell-the-Name,
a whim of the moment made him so stiff to her that she ultimately
asked the reason; and such a charmingly sad reason presented itself to
him that she immediately invited him to her riverside party on
Thursday week. He had the conversations and incidents for that party
ready long before the day arrived; he altered them and polished them
as other young gentlemen in the same circumstances overhaul their
boating costumes; but when he joined the party there was among them
the children's governess, and seeing her slighted, his blood boiled,
and he was her attendant for the afternoon.

Elspeth was not at this pleasant jink in high life. She had been
invited, but her ladyship had once let Tommy kiss her hand for the
first and last time, so he decided sternly that this was no place for
Elspeth. When temptation was nigh, he first locked Elspeth up, and
then walked into it.

With two in every three women he was still as shy as ever, but the
third he escorted triumphantly to the conservatory. She did no harm to
his work--rather sent him back to it refreshed. It was as if he were
shooting the sentiment which other young men get rid of more gradually
by beginning earlier, and there were such accumulations of it that I
don't know whether he ever made up on them. Punishment sought him in
the night, when he dreamed constantly that he was married--to whom
scarcely mattered; he saw himself coming out of a church a married
man, and the fright woke him up. But with the daylight came again his
talent for dodging thoughts that were lying in wait, and he yielded as
recklessly as before to every sentimental impulse. As illustration,
take his humourous passage with Mrs. Jerry. Geraldine Something was
her name, but her friends called her Mrs. Jerry.

She was a wealthy widow, buxom, not a day over thirty when she was
merry, which might be at inappropriate moments, as immediately after
she had expressed a desire to lead the higher life. "But I have a
theory, my dear," she said solemnly to Elspeth, "that no woman is able
to do it who cannot see her own nose without the help of a mirror."
She had taken a great fancy to Elspeth, and made many engagements with
her, and kept some of them, and the understanding was that she
apprenticed herself to Tommy through Elspeth, he being too terrible to
face by himself, or, as Mrs. Jerry expressed it, "all nose." So Tommy
had seen very little of her, and thought less, until one day he called
by passionate request to sign her birthday-book, and heard himself
proposing to her instead!

For one thing, it was twilight, and she had forgotten to ring for the
lamps. That might have been enough, but there was more: she read to
him part of a letter in which her hand was solicited in marriage.
"And, for the life of me," said Mrs. Jerry, almost in tears, "I cannot
decide whether to say yes or no."

This put Tommy in a most awkward position. There are probably men who
could have got out of it without proposing; but to him there seemed at
the moment no other way open. The letter complicated matters also by
beginning "Dear Jerry," and saying "little Jerry" further
on--expressions which stirred him strangely.

"Why do you read this to me?" he asked, in a voice that broke a
little.

"Because you are so wise," she said. "Do you mind?"

"Do I mind!" he exclaimed bitterly. ("Take care, you idiot!" he said
to himself.)

"I was asking your advice only. Is it too much?"

"Not at all. I am quite the right man to consult at such a moment, am
I not?"

It was said with profound meaning; but his face was as usual.

"That is what I thought," she said, in all good faith.

"You do not even understand!" he cried, and he was also looking
longingly at his hat.

"Understand what?"

"Jerry," he said, and tried to stop himself, with the result that he
added, "dear little Jerry!" ("What am I doing!" he groaned.)

She understood now. "You don't mean--" she began, in amazement.

"Yes," he cried passionately. "I love you. Will you be my wife?" ("I
am lost!")

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Jerry; and then, on reflection, she became
indignant. "I would not have believed it of you," she said scornfully.
"Is it my money, or what? I am not at all clever, so you must tell
me."

With Tommy, of course, it was not her money. Except when he had
Elspeth to consider, he was as much a Quixote about money as Pym
himself; and at no moment of his life was he a snob.

"I am sorry you should think so meanly of me," he said with dignity,
lifting his hat; and he would have got away then (which, when you come
to think of it, was what he wanted) had he been able to resist an
impulse to heave a broken-hearted sigh at the door.

"Don't go yet, Mr. Sandys," she begged. "I may have been hasty. And
yet--why, we are merely acquaintances!"

He had meant to be very careful now, but that word sent him off again.
"Acquaintances!" he cried. "No, we were never that."

"It almost seemed to me that you avoided me."

"You noticed it!" he said eagerly. "At least, you do me that justice.
Oh, how I tried to avoid you!"

"It was because--"

"Alas!"

She was touched, of course, but still puzzled. "We know so little of
each other," she said.

"I see," he replied, "that you know me very little, Mrs. Jerry; but
you--oh, Jerry, Jerry! I know you as no other man has ever known you!"

"I wish I had proof of it," she said helplessly.

Proof! She should not have asked Tommy for proof. "I know," he cried,
"how unlike all other women you are. To the world you are like the
rest, but in your heart you know that you are different; you know it,
and I know it, and no other person knows it."

Yes, Mrs. Jerry knew it, and had often marvelled over it in the
seclusion of her boudoir; but that another should have found it out
was strange and almost terrifying.

"I know you love me now," she said softly. "Only love could have shown
you that. But--oh, let me go away for a minute to think!" And she ran
out of the room.

Other suitors have been left for a space in Tommy's state of doubt,
but never, it may be hoped, with the same emotions. Oh, heavens! if
she should accept him! He saw Elspeth sickening and dying of the news.

His guardian angel, however, was very good to Tommy at this time; or
perhaps, like cannibals with their prisoner, the god of sentiment (who
has a tail) was fattening him for a future feast; and Mrs. Jerry's
answer was that it could never be.

Tommy bowed his head.

But she hoped he would let her be his very dear friend. It would be
the proudest recollection of her life that Mr. Sandys had entertained
such feelings for her.

Nothing could have been better, and he should have found difficulty in
concealing his delight; but this strange Tommy was really feeling his
part again. It was an unforced tear that came to his eye. Quite
naturally he looked long and wistfully at her.

"Jerry, Jerry!" he articulated huskily, and whatever the words mean in
these circumstances he really meant; then he put his lips to her hand
for the first and last time, and so was gone, broken but brave. He was
in splendid fettle for writing that evening. Wild animals sleep after
gorging, but it sent this monster, refreshed, to his work.

Nevertheless, the incident gave him some uneasy reflections. Was he,
indeed, a monster? was one that he could dodge, as yet; but suppose
Mrs. Jerry told his dear Elspeth of what had happened? She had said
that she would not, but a secret in Mrs. Jerry's breast was like her
pug in her arms, always kicking to get free.  "Elspeth," said Tommy,
"what do you say to going north and having a sight of Thrums again?"

He knew what she would say. They had been talking for years of going
back; it was the great day that all her correspondence with old
friends in Thrums looked forward to.

"They made little of you, Tommy," she said, "when we left; but I'm
thinking they will all be at their windows when you go back."

"Oh," replied Thomas, "that's nothing. But I should like to shake Corp
by the hand again."

"And Aaron," said Elspeth. She was knitting stockings for Aaron at
that moment.

"And Gavinia," Tommy said, "and the Dominie."

"And Ailie."

And then came an awkward pause, for they were both thinking of that
independent girl called Grizel. She was seldom discussed. Tommy was
oddly shy about mentioning her name; he would have preferred Elspeth
to mention it: and Elspeth had misgivings that this was so, with the
result that neither could say "Grizel" without wondering what was in
the other's mind. Tommy had written twice to Grizel, the first time
unknown to Elspeth, but that was in the days when the ladies of the
penny numbers were disturbing him, and, against his better judgment
(for well he knew she would never stand it), he had begun his letter
with these mad words: "Dear Little Woman." She did not answer this,
but soon afterwards she wrote to Elspeth, and he was not mentioned in
the letter proper, but it carried a sting in its tail. "P.S.," it said
"How is Sentimental Tommy?"

None but a fiend in human shape could have written thus, and Elspeth
put her protecting arms round her brother. "Now we know what Grizel
is," she said. "I am done with her now."

But when Tommy had got back his wind he said nobly: "I'll call her no
names. If this is how she likes to repay me for--for all my
kindnesses, let her. But, Elspeth, if I have the chance, I shall go on
being good to her just the same."

Elspeth adored him for it, but Grizel would have stamped had she
known. He had that comfort.

The second letter he never posted. It was written a few months before
he became a celebrity, and had very fine things indeed in it, for old
Dr. McQueen, Grizel's dear friend, had just died at his post, and it
was a letter of condolence. While Tommy wrote it he was in a quiver of
genuine emotion, as he was very pleased to feel, and it had a
specially satisfying bit about death, and the world never being the
same again. He knew it was good, but he did not send it to her, for no
reason I can discover save that postscripts jarred on him.




CHAPTER IV

GRIZEL OF THE CROOKED SMILE


To expose Tommy for what he was, to appear to be scrupulously fair to
him so that I might really damage him the more, that is what I set out
to do in this book, and always when he seemed to be finding a way of
getting round me (as I had a secret dread he might do) I was to
remember Grizel and be obdurate. But if I have so far got past some of
his virtues without even mentioning them (and I have), I know how many
opportunities for discrediting him have been missed, and that would
not greatly matter, there are so many more to come, if Grizel were on
my side. But she is not; throughout those first chapters a voice has
been crying to me, "Take care; if you hurt him you will hurt me"; and
I know it to be the voice of Grizel, and I seem to see her, rocking
her arms as she used to rock them when excited in the days of her
innocent childhood. "Don't, don't, don't!" she cried at every cruel
word I gave him, and she, to whom it was ever such agony to weep,
dropped a tear upon each word, so that they were obliterated; and
"Surely I knew him best," she said, "and I always loved him"; and she
stood there defending him, with her hand on her heart to conceal the
gaping wound that Tommy had made.

Well, if Grizel had always loved him there was surely something fine
and rare about Tommy. But what was it, Grizel? Why did you always love
him, you who saw into him so well and demanded so much of men? When I
ask that question the spirit that hovers round my desk to protect
Tommy from me rocks her arms mournfully, as if she did not know the
answer; it is only when I seem to see her as she so often was in life,
before she got that wound and after, bending over some little child
and looking up radiant, that I think I suddenly know why she always
loved Tommy. It was because he had such need of her.

I don't know whether you remember, but there were once some children
who played at Jacobites in the Thrums Den under Tommy's leadership.
Elspeth, of course, was one of them, and there were Corp Shiach, and
Gavinia, and lastly, there was Grizel. Had Tommy's parents been alive
she would not have been allowed to join, for she was a painted lady's
child; but Tommy insisted on having her, and Grizel thought it was
just sweet of him. He also chatted with her in public places, as if
she were a respectable character; and oh, how she longed to be
respectable! but, on the other hand, he was the first to point out how
superbly he was behaving, and his ways were masterful, so the
independent girl would not be captain's wife; if he said she was
captain's wife he had to apologize, and if he merely looked it he had
to apologize just the same.

One night the Painted Lady died in the Den, and then it would have
gone hard with the lonely girl had not Dr. McQueen made her his little
housekeeper, not out of pity, he vowed (she was so anxious to be told
that), but because he was an old bachelor sorely in need of someone to
take care of him. And how she took care of him! But though she was so
happy now, she knew that she must be very careful, for there was
something in her blood that might waken and prevent her being a good
woman. She thought it would be sweet to be good.

She told all this to Tommy, and he was profoundly interested, and
consulted a wise man, whose advice was that when she grew up she
should be wary of any man whom she liked and mistrusted in one breath.
Meaning to do her a service, Tommy communicated this to her; and then,
what do you think? Grizel would have no more dealings with him! By and
by the gods, in a sportive mood, sent him to labour on a farm,
whence, as we have seen, he found a way to London, and while he was
growing into a man Grizel became a woman. At the time of the doctor's
death she was nineteen, tall and graceful, and very dark and pale.
When the winds of the day flushed her cheek she was beautiful; but it
was a beauty that hid the mystery of her face. The sun made her merry,
but she looked more noble when it had set; then her pallor shone with
a soft, radiant light, as though the mystery and sadness and serenity
of the moon were in it. The full beauty of Grizel came out only at
night, like the stars.

I had made up my mind that when the time came to describe Grizel's
mere outward appearance I should refuse her that word "beautiful"
because of her tilted nose; but now that the time has come, I wonder
at myself. Probably when I am chapters ahead I shall return to this
one and strike out the word "beautiful," and then, as likely as not, I
shall come back afterwards and put it in again. Whether it will be
there at the end, God knows. Her eyes, at least, were beautiful. They
were unusually far apart, and let you look straight into them, and
never quivered; they were such clear, gray, searching eyes, they
seemed always to be asking for the truth. And she had an adorable
mouth. In repose it was, perhaps, hard, because it shut so decisively;
but often it screwed up provokingly at one side, as when she smiled,
or was sorry, or for no particular reason; for she seemed unable to
control this vagary, which was perhaps a little bit of babyhood that
had forgotten to grow up with the rest of her. At those moments the
essence of all that was characteristic and delicious about her seemed
to have run to her mouth; so that to kiss Grizel on her crooked smile
would have been to kiss the whole of her at once. She had a quaint way
of nodding her head at you when she was talking. It made you forget
what she was saying, though it was really meant to have precisely the
opposite effect. Her voice was rich, with many inflections. When she
had much to say it gurgled like a stream in a hurry; but its cooing
note was best worth remembering at the end of the day. There were
times when she looked like a boy. Her almost gallant bearing, the
poise of her head, her noble frankness--they all had something in them
of a princely boy who had never known fear.

I have no wish to hide her defects; I would rather linger over them,
because they were part of Grizel, and I am sorry to see them go one by
one. Thrums had not taken her to its heart. She was a proud-purse,
they said, meaning that she had a haughty walk. Her sense of justice
was too great. She scorned frailties that she should have pitied. (How
strange to think that there was a time when pity was not the feeling
that leaped to Grizel's bosom first!) She did not care for study. She
learned French and the pianoforte to please the doctor; but she
preferred to be sewing or dusting. When she might have been reading,
she was perhaps making for herself one of those costumes that annoyed
every lady of Thrums who employed a dressmaker; or, more probably, it
was a delicious garment for a baby; for as soon as Grizel heard that
there was a new baby anywhere, all her intellect deserted her, and she
became a slave. Books often irritated her because she disagreed with
the author; and it was a torment to her to find other people holding
to their views when she was so certain that hers were right. In church
she sometimes rocked her arms; and the old doctor by her side knew
that it was because she could not get up and contradict the minister.
She was, I presume, the only young lady who ever dared to say that she
hated Sunday because there was so much sitting still in it.

Sitting still did not suit Grizel. At all other times she was happy;
but then her mind wandered back to the thoughts that had lived too
closely with her in the old days, and she was troubled. What woke her
from these reveries was probably the doctor's hand placed very
tenderly on her shoulder, and then she would start, and wonder how
long he had been watching her, and what were the grave thoughts
behind his cheerful face; for the doctor never looked more cheerful
than when he was drawing Grizel away from the ugly past, and he talked
to her as if he had noticed nothing; but after he went upstairs he
would pace his bedroom for a long time; and Grizel listened, and knew
that he was thinking about her. Then, perhaps, she would run up to
him, and put her arms around his neck. These scenes brought the doctor
and Grizel very close together; but they became rarer as she grew up,
and then for once that she was troubled she was a hundred times
irresponsible with glee, and "Oh, you dearest, darlingest," she would
cry to him, "I must dance,--I must, I must!--though it is a fast-day;
and you must dance with your mother this instant--I am so happy, so
happy!" "Mother" was his nickname for her, and she delighted in the
word. She lorded it over him as if he were her troublesome boy.

How could she be other than glorious when there was so much to do? The
work inside the house she made for herself, and outside the doctor
made it for her. At last he had found for nurse a woman who could
follow his instructions literally, who understood that if he said five
o'clock for the medicine the chap of six would not do as well, who did
not in her heart despise the thermometer, and who resolutely prevented
the patient from skipping out of bed to change her pillow-slips
because the minister was expected. Such tyranny enraged every sufferer
who had been ill before and got better; but what they chiefly
complained of to the doctor (and he agreed with a humourous sigh) was
her masterfulness about fresh air and cold water. Windows were opened
that had never been opened before (they yielded to her pressure with a
groan); and as for cold water, it might have been said that a bath
followed her wherever she went--not, mark me, for putting your hands
and face in, not even for your feet; but in you must go, the whole of
you, "as if," they said indignantly, "there was something the matter
with our skin."

She could not gossip, not even with the doctor, who liked it of an
evening when he had got into his carpet shoes. There was no use
telling her a secret, for she kept it to herself for evermore. She had
ideas about how men should serve a woman, even the humblest, that made
the men gaze with wonder, and the women (curiously enough) with
irritation. Her greatest scorn was for girls who made themselves cheap
with men; and she could not hide it. It was a physical pain to Grizel
to hide her feelings; they popped out in her face, if not in words,
and were always in advance of her self-control. To the doctor this
impulsiveness was pathetic; he loved her for it, but it sometimes
made him uneasy.

He died in the scarlet-fever year. "I'm smitten," he suddenly said at
a bedside; and a week afterwards he was gone.

"We must speak of it now, Grizel," he said, when he knew that he was
dying.

She pressed his hand. She knew to what he was referring. "Yes," she
said, "I should love you to speak of it now."

"You and I have always fought shy of it," he said, "making a pretence
that it had altogether passed away. I thought that was best for you."

"Dearest, darlingest," she said, "I know--I have always known."

"And you," he said, "you pretended because you thought it was best for
me."

She nodded. "And we saw through each other all the time," she said.

"Grizel, has it passed away altogether now?"

Her grip upon his hand did not tighten in the least. "Yes," she could
say honestly, "it has altogether passed away."

"And you have no more fear?"

"No, none."

It was his great reward for all that he had done for Grizel.

"I know what you are thinking of," she said, when he did not speak.
"You are thinking of the haunted little girl you rescued seven years
ago."

"No," he answered; "I was thanking God for the brave, wholesome woman
she has grown into; and for something else, Grizel--for letting me
live to see it."

"To do it," she said, pressing his hand to her breast.

She was a strange girl, and she had to speak her mind. "I don't think
God has done it all," she said. "I don't even think that He told you
to do it. I think He just said to you, 'There is a painted lady's
child at your door. You can save her if you like.'

"No," she went on, when he would have interposed; "I am sure He did
not want to do it all. He even left a little bit of it to me to do
myself. I love to think that I have done a tiny bit of it myself. I
think it is the sweetest thing about God that He lets us do some of it
ourselves. Do I hurt you, darling?"

No, she did not hurt him, for he understood her. "But you are
naturally so impulsive," he said, "it has often been a sharp pain to
me to see you so careful."

"It was not a pain to me to be careful; it was a joy. Oh, the thousand
dear, delightful joys I have had with you!"

"It has made you strong, Grizel, and I rejoice in that; but sometimes
I fear that it has made you too difficult to win."

"I don't want to be won," she told him.

"You don't quite mean that, Grizel."

"No," she said at once. She whispered to him impulsively: "It is the
only thing I am at all afraid of now."

"What?"

"Love."

"You will not be afraid of it when it comes."

"But I want to be afraid," she said.

"You need not," he answered. "The man on whom those clear eyes rest
lovingly will be worthy of it all. If he were not, they would be the
first to find him out."

"But need that make any difference?" she asked. "Perhaps though I
found him out I should love him just the same."

"Not unless you loved him first, Grizel."

"No," she said at once again. "I am not really afraid of love," she
whispered to him. "You have made me so happy that I am afraid of
nothing."

Yet she wondered a little that he was not afraid to die, but when she
told him this he smiled and said: "Everybody fears death except those
who are dying." And when she asked if he had anything on his mind, he
said: "I leave the world without a care. Not that I have seen all I
would fain have seen. Many a time, especially this last year, when I
have seen the mother in you crooning to some neighbour's child, I have
thought to myself, 'I don't know my Grizel yet; I have seen her in the
bud only,' and I would fain--" He broke off. "But I have no fears," he
said. "As I lie here, with you sitting by my side, looking so serene,
I can say, for the first time for half a century, that I have nothing
on my mind.

"But, Grizel, I should have married," he told her. "The chief lesson
my life has taught me is that they are poor critturs--the men who
don't marry."

"If you had married," she said, "you might never have been able to
help me."

"It is you who have helped me," he replied. "God sent the child; He is
most reluctant to give any of us up. Ay, Grizel, that's what my life
has taught me, and it's all I can leave to you." The last he saw of
her, she was holding his hand, and her eyes were dry, her teeth were
clenched; but there was a brave smile upon her face, for he had told
her that it was thus he would like to see her at the end. After his
death, she continued to live at the old house; he had left it to her
("I want it to remain in the family," he said), with all his savings,
which were quite sufficient for the needs of such a manager. He had
also left her plenty to do, and that was a still sweeter legacy.

And the other Jacobites, what of them? Hi, where are you, Corp? Here
he comes, grinning, in his spleet new uniform, to demand our tickets
of us. He is now the railway porter. Since Tommy left Thrums "steam"
had arrived in it, and Corp had by nature such a gift for giving
luggage the twist which breaks everything inside as you dump it down
that he was inevitably appointed porter. There was no travelling to
Thrums without a ticket. At Tilliedrum, which was the junction for
Thrums, you showed your ticket and were then locked in. A hundred
yards from Thrums. Corp leaped upon the train and fiercely demanded
your ticket. At the station he asked you threateningly whether you had
given up your ticket. Even his wife was afraid of him at such times,
and had her ticket ready in her hand.

His wife was one Gavinia, and she had no fear of him except when she
was travelling. To his face she referred to him as a doited sumph, but
to Grizel pleading for him she admitted that despite his warts and
quarrelsome legs he was a great big muckle sonsy, stout, buirdly well
set up, wise-like, havering man. When first Corp had proposed to her,
she gave him a clout on the head; and so little did he know of the sex
that this discouraged him. He continued, however, to propose and she
to clout him until he heard, accidentally (he woke up in church), of a
man in the Bible who had wooed a woman for seven years, and this
example he determined to emulate; but when Gavinia heard of it she
was so furious that she took him at once. Dazed by his good fortune,
he rushed off with it to his aunt, whom he wearied with his repetition
of the great news.

"To your bed wi' you," she said, yawning.

"Bed!" cried Corp, indignantly. "And so, auntie, says Gavinia, 'Yes,'
says she, 'I'll hae you.' Those were her never-to-be-forgotten words."

"You pitiful object," answered his aunt. "Men hae been married afore
now without making sic a stramash."

"I daursay," retorted Corp; "but they hinna married Gavinia." And this
is the best known answer to the sneer of the cynic.

He was a public nuisance that night, and knocked various people up
after they had gone to bed, to tell them that Gavinia was to have him.
He was eventually led home by kindly though indignant neighbours; but
early morning found him in the country, carrying the news from farm to
farm.

"No, I winna sit down," he said; "I just cried in to tell you Gavinia
is to hae me." Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a
hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old
lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them
again. "Auld wifie," said Corp, "I dinna ken you, but I've just
stepped up to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me."

It made him the butt of the sportive. If he or Gavinia were nigh, they
gathered their fowls round them and then said: "Hens, I didna bring
you here to feed you, but just to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me."
This flustered Gavinia; but Grizel, who enjoyed her own jokes too
heartily to have more than a polite interest in those of other people,
said to her: "How can you be angry! I think it was just sweet of him."

"But was it no vulgar?"

"Vulgar!" said Grizel. "Why, Gavinia, that is how every lady would
like a man to love her."

And then Gavinia beamed. "I'm glad you say that," she said; "for,
though I wouldna tell Corp for worlds, I fell likit it."

But Grizel told Corp that Gavinia liked it.

"It was the proof," she said, smiling, "that you have the right to
marry her. You have shown your ticket. Never give it up, Corp."

About a year afterwards Corp, armed in his Sunday stand, rushed to
Grizel's house, occasionally stopping to slap his shiny knees.
"Grizel," he cried, "there's somebody come to Thrums without a
ticket!" Then he remembered Gavinia's instructions. "Mrs. Shiach's
compliments," he said ponderously, "and it's a boy."

"Oh, Corp!" exclaimed Grizel, and immediately began to put on her hat
and jacket.  Corp watched her uneasily. "Mrs. Shiach's compliments,"
he said firmly, "and he's ower young to be bathed yet; but she's awid
to show him off to you," he hastened to add. "'Tell Grizel,' was her
first words."

"Tell Grizel"! They were among the first words of many mothers. None,
they were aware, would receive the news with quite such glee as she.
They might think her cold and reserved with themselves, but to see the
look on her face as she bent over a baby, and to know that the baby
was yours! What a way she had with them! She always welcomed them as
if in coming they had performed a great feat. That is what babies are
agape for from the beginning. Had they been able to speak they would
have said "Tell Grizel" themselves.

"And Mrs. Shiach's compliments," Corp remembered, "and she would be
windy if you would carry the bairn at the christening."

"I should love it, Corp! Have you decided on the name?"

"Lang syne. Gin it were a lassie we were to call her Grizel--"

"Oh, how sweet of you!"

"After the finest lassie we ever kent," continued Corp, stoutly. "But
I was sure it would be a laddie."

"Why?"  "Because if it was a laddie it was to be called after Him,"
he said, with emphasis on the last word; "and thinks I to mysel',
'He'll find a way.' What a crittur he was for finding a way, Grizel!
And he lookit so holy a' the time. Do you mind that swear word o'
his--'stroke'? It just meant 'damn'; but he could make even 'damn'
look holy."

"You are to call the baby Tommy?"

"He'll be christened Thomas Sandys Shiach," said Corp. "I hankered
after putting something out o' the Jacobites intil his name; and I
says to Gavinia, 'Let's call him Thomas Sandys Stroke Shiach,' says I,
'and the minister'll be nane the wiser'; but Gavinia was scandalized."

Grizel reflected. "Corp," she said, "I am sure Gavinia's sister will
expect to be asked to carry the baby. I don't think I want to do it."

"After you promised!" cried Corp, much hurt. "I never kent you to
break a promise afore."

"I will do it, Corp," she said, at once.

She did not know then that Tommy would be in church to witness the
ceremony, but she knew before she walked down the aisle with T.S.
Shiach in her arms. It was the first time that Tommy and she had seen
each other for seven years. That day he almost rivalled his namesake
in the interests of the congregation, who, however, took prodigious
care that he should not see it--all except Grizel; she smiled a
welcome to him, and he knew that her serene gray eyes were watching
him.




CHAPTER V

THE TOMMY MYTH


On the evening before the christening, Aaron Latta, his head sunk
farther into his shoulders, his beard gone grayer, no other
perceptible difference in a dreary man since we last saw him in the
book of Tommy's boyhood, had met the brother and sister at the
station, a barrow with him for their luggage. It was a great hour for
him as he wheeled the barrow homeward, Elspeth once more by his side;
but he could say nothing heartsome in Tommy's presence, and Tommy was
as uncomfortable in his. The old strained relations between these two
seemed to begin again at once. They were as self-conscious as two
mastiffs meeting in the street; and both breathed a sigh of relief
when Tommy fell behind.

"You're bonny, Elspeth," Aaron then said eagerly. "I'm glad, glad to
see you again."

"And him too, Aaron?" Elspeth pleaded.

"He took you away frae me."

"He has brought me back."  "Ay, and he has but to whistle to you and
away you go wi' him again. He's ower grand to bide lang here now."

"You don't know him, Aaron. We are to stay a long time. Do you know
Mrs. McLean invited us to stay with her? I suppose she thought your
house was so small. But Tommy said, 'The house of the man who
befriended us when we were children shall never be too small for us.'"

"Did he say that? Ay, but, Elspeth, I would rather hear what you
said."

"I said it was to dear, good Aaron Latta I was going back, and to no
one else."

"God bless you for that, Elspeth."

"And Tommy," she went on, "must have his old garret room again, to
write as well as sleep in, and the little room you partitioned off the
kitchen will do nicely for me."

"There's no a window in it," replied Aaron; "but it will do fine for
you, Elspeth." He was almost chuckling, for he had a surprise in
waiting for her. "This way," he said excitedly, when she would have
gone into the kitchen, and he flung open the door of what had been his
warping-room. The warping-mill was gone--everything that had been
there was gone. What met the delighted eyes of Elspeth and Tommy was a
cozy parlour, which became a bedroom when you opened that other door.
 "You are a leddy now, Elspeth," Aaron said, husky with pride, "and
you have a leddy's room. Do you see the piano?"

He had given up the warping, having at last "twa three hunder'" in the
bank, and all the work he did now was at a loom which he had put into
the kitchen to keep him out of languor. "I have sorted up the garret,
too, for you," he said to Tommy, "but this is Elspeth's room."

"As if Tommy would take it from me!" said Elspeth, running into the
kitchen to hug this dear Aaron.

"You may laugh," Aaron replied vindictively, "but he is taking it frae
you already"; and later, when Tommy was out of the way, he explained
his meaning. "I did it all for you, Elspeth; 'Elspeth's room,' I
called it. When I bought the mahogany arm-chair, 'That's Elspeth's
chair,' I said to mysel'; and when I bought the bed, 'It's hers,' I
said. Ay; but I was soon disannulled o' that thait, for, in spite of
me, they were all got for him. Not a rissom in that room is yours or
mine, Elspeth; every muhlen belongs to him."

"But who says so, Aaron? I am sure he won't."

"I dinna ken them. They are leddies that come here in their carriages
to see the house where Thomas Sandys was born."

"But, Aaron, he was born in London!"  "They think he was born in this
house," Aaron replied doggedly, "and it's no for me to cheapen him."

"Oh, Aaron, you pretend----"

"I was never very fond o' him," Aaron admitted, "but I winna cheapen
Jean Myles's bairn, and when they chap at my door and say they would
like to see the room Thomas Sandys was born in, I let them see the
best room I have. So that's how he has laid hands on your parlor,
Elspeth. Afore I can get rid o' them they gie a squeak and cry, 'Was
that Thomas Sandys's bed?' and I says it was. That's him taking the
very bed frae you, Elspeth."

"You might at least have shown them his bed in the garret," she said.

"It's a shilpit bit thing," he answered, "and I winna cheapen him.
They're curious, too, to see his favourite seat."

"It was the fender," she declared.

"It was," he assented, "but it's no for me to cheapen him, so I let
them see your new mahogany chair. 'Thomas Sandys's chair,' they call
it, and they sit down in it reverently. They winna even leave you the
piano. 'Was this Thomas Sandys's piano?' they speir. 'It was,' says I,
and syne they gowp at it." His under lip shot out, a sure sign that he
was angry. "I dinna blame him," he said, "but he had the same
masterful way of scooping everything into his lap when he was a
laddie, and I like him none the mair for it"; and from this position
Aaron would not budge.

"Quite right, too," Tommy said, when he heard of it. "But you can tell
him, Elspeth, that we shall allow no more of those prying women to
come in." And he really meant this, for he was a modest man that day,
was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, perhaps, a little annoyed to find, as
the days went on, that no more ladies came to be turned away.

He heard that they had also been unable to resist the desire to shake
hands with Thomas Sandys's schoolmaster. "It must have been a pleasure
to teach him," they said to Cathro.

"Ah me, ah me!" Cathro replied enigmatically. It had so often been a
pleasure to Cathro to thrash him!

"Genius is odd," they said. "Did he ever give you any trouble?"

"We were like father and son," he assured them. With natural pride he
showed them the ink-pot into which Thomas Sandys had dipped as a boy.
They were very grateful for his interesting reminiscence that when the
pot was too full Thomas inked his fingers. He presented several of
them with the ink-pot.

Two ladies, who came together, bothered him by asking what the Hugh
Blackadder competition was. They had been advised to inquire of him
about Thomas Sandys's connection therewith by another schoolmaster, a
Mr. Ogilvy, whom they had met in one of the glens.

Mr. Cathro winced, and then explained with emphasis that the Hugh
Blackadder was a competition in which the local ministers were the
sole judges; he therefore referred the ladies to them. The ladies did
go to a local minister for enlightenment, to Mr. Dishart; but, after
reflecting, Mr. Dishart said that it was too long a story, and this
answer seemed to amuse Mr. Ogilvy, who happened to be present.

It was Mr. McLean who retailed this news to Tommy. He and Ailie had
walked home from church with the newcomers on the day after their
arrival, the day of the christening. They had not gone into Aaron's
house, for you are looked askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on
Sundays, but they had stood for a long time gossiping at the door,
which is permitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a twitter, as of
old, and not able even yet to speak of her husband without an
apologetic look to the ladies who had none. And oh, how proud she was
of Tommy's fame! Her eyes were an offering to him.

"Don't take her as a sample of the place, though," Mr. McLean warned
him, "for Thrums does not catch fire so readily as London." It was
quite true. "I was at the school wi' him," they said up there, and
implied that this damned his book.

But there were two faithful souls, or, more strictly, one, for Corp
could never have carried it through without Gavinia's help. Tommy
called on them promptly at their house in the Bellies Brae (four
rooms, but a lodger), and said, almost before he had time to look,
that the baby had Corp's chin and Gavinia's eyes. He had made this up
on the way. He also wanted to say, so desirous was he of pleasing his
old friends, that he should like to hold the baby in his arms; but it
was such a thundering lie that even an author could not say it.

Tommy sat down in that house with a very warm heart for its inmates;
but they chilled him--Gavinia with her stiff words, and Corp by
looking miserable instead of joyous.

"I expected you to come to me first, Corp," said Tommy, reproachfully.
"I had scarcely a word with you at the station."

"He couldna hae presumed," replied Gavinia, primly.

"I couldna hae presumed," said Corp, with a groan.

"Fudge!" Tommy said. "You were my greatest friend, and I like you as
much as ever, Corp."  Corp's face shone, but Gavinia said at once,
"You werena sic great friends as that; were you, man?"

"No," Corp replied gloomily.

"Whatever has come over you both?" asked Tommy, in surprise. "You will
be saying next, Gavinia, that we never played at Jacobites in the
Den!"

"I dinna deny that Corp and me played," Gavinia answered determinedly,
"but you didna. You said to us, 'Think shame,' you said, 'to be
playing vulgar games when you could be reading superior books.' They
were his very words, were they no, man?" she demanded of her unhappy
husband, with a threatening look.

"They were," said Corp, in deepest gloom.

"I must get to the bottom of this," said Tommy, rising, "and as you
are too great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth with that shameless
woman glowering at you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your disgraced
bairn with you. Do as you are told, you besom, for I am Captain Stroke
again."

Corp was choking with delight as Gavinia withdrew haughtily. "I was
sure you would sort her," he said, rubbing his hands, "I was sure you
wasna the kind to be ashamed o' auld friends."

"But what does it mean?"

"She has a notion," Corp explained, growing grave again, "that it
wouldna do for you to own the like o' us. 'We mauna cheapen him,' she
said. She wanted you to see that we hinna been cheapening you." He
said, in a sepulchral voice, "There has been leddies here, and they
want to ken what Thomas Sandys was like as a boy. It's me they speir
for, but Gavinia she just shoves me out o' sight, and says she, 'Leave
them to me.'"

Corp told Tommy some of the things Gavinia said about Thomas Sandys as
a boy: how he sat rapt in church, and, instead of going bird-nesting,
lay on the ground listening to the beautiful little warblers overhead,
and gave all his pennies to poorer children, and could repeat the
Shorter Catechism, beginning at either end, and was very respectful to
the aged and infirm, and of a yielding disposition, and said, from his
earliest years, "I don't want to be great; I just want to be good."

"How can she make them all up?" Tommy asked, with respectful homage to
Gavinia.

Corp, with his eye on the door, produced from beneath the bed a little
book with coloured pictures. It was entitled "Great Boyhoods," by
"Aunt Martha." "She doesna make them up," he whispered; "she gets them
out o' this."

"And you back her up, Corp, even when she says I was not your friend!"

"It was like a t' knife intil me," replied loyal Corp; "every time I
forswore you it was like a t' knife, but I did it, ay, and I'll go on
doing it if you think my friendship cheapens you."

Tommy was much moved, and gripped his old lieutenant by the hand. He
also called Gavinia ben, and, before she could ward him off, the
masterful rogue had saluted her on the cheek. "That," said Tommy, "is
to show you that I am as fond of the old times and my old friends as
ever, and the moment you deny it I shall take you to mean, Gavinia,
that you want another kiss."

"He's just the same!" Corp remarked ecstatically, when Tommy had gone.

"I dinna deny," Gavinia said, "but what he's fell taking"; and for a
time they ruminated.

"Gavinia," said Corp, suddenly, "I wouldna wonder but what he's a gey
lad wi' the women!"

"What makes you think that?" she replied coldly, and he had the
prudence not to say. He should have followed his hero home to be
disabused of this monstrous notion, for even while it was being
propounded Tommy was sitting in such an agony of silence in a woman's
presence that she could not resist smiling a crooked smile at him. His
want of words did not displease Grizel; she was of opinion that young
men should always be a little awed by young ladies.

He had found her with Elspeth on his return home. Would Grizel call
and be friendly? he had asked himself many times since he saw her in
church yesterday, and Elspeth was as curious. Each wanted to know
what the other thought of her, but neither had the courage to inquire,
they both wanted to know so much. Her name had been mentioned but
casually, not a word to indicate that she had grown up since they saw
her last. The longer Tommy remained silent, the more, he knew, did
Elspeth suspect him. He would have liked to say, in a careless voice,
"Rather pretty, isn't she?" but he felt that this little Elspeth would
see through him at once.

For at the first glance he had seen what Grizel was, and a thrill of
joy passed through him as he drank her in; it was but the joy of the
eyes for the first moment, but it ran to his heart to say, "This is
the little hunted girl that was!" and Tommy was moved with a manly
gladness that the girl who once was so fearful of the future had grown
into this. The same unselfish delight in her for her own sake came
over him again when he shook hands with her in Aaron's parlor. This
glorious creature with the serene eyes and the noble shoulders had
been the hunted child of the Double Dykes! He would have liked to race
back into the past and bring little Grizel here to look. How many
boyish memories he recalled! and she was in every one of them. His
heart held nothing but honest joy in this meeting after so many years;
he longed to tell her how sincerely he was still her friend. Well, why
don't you tell her, Tommy? It is a thing you are good at, and you
have been polishing up the phrases ever since she passed down the
aisle with Master Shiach in her arms; you have even planned out a way
of putting Grizel at her ease, and behold, she is the only one of the
three who is at ease. What has come over you? Does the reader think it
was love? No, it was only that pall of shyness; he tried to fling it
off, but could not. Behold Tommy being buried alive!

Elspeth showed less contemptibly than her brother, but it was Grizel
who did most of the talking. She nodded her head and smiled crookedly
at Tommy, but she was watching him all the time. She wore a dress in
which brown and yellow mingled as in woods on an autumn day, and the
jacket had a high collar of fur, over which she watched him. Let us
say that she was watching to see whether any of the old Tommy was left
in him. Yet, with this problem confronting her, she also had time to
study the outer man, Tommy the dandy--his velvet jacket (a new one),
his brazen waistcoat, his poetic neckerchief, his spotless linen. His
velvet jacket was to become the derision of Thrums, but Tommy took his
bonneting haughtily, like one who was glad to suffer for a Cause.
There were to be meetings here and there where people told with awe
how many shirts he sent weekly to the wash. Grizel disdained his dandy
tastes; why did not Elspeth strip him of them? And oh, if he must
wear that absurd waistcoat, could she not see that it would look
another thing if the second button was put half an inch farther back?
How sinful of him to spoil the shape of his silly velvet jacket by
carrying so many letters in the pockets! She learned afterwards that
he carried all those letters because there was a check in one of them,
he did not know which, and her sense of orderliness was outraged.
Elspeth did not notice these things. She helped Tommy by her
helplessness. There is reason to believe that once in London, when she
had need of a new hat, but money there was none, Tommy, looking very
defiant, studied ladies' hats in the shop-windows, brought all his
intellect to bear on them, with the result that he did concoct out of
Elspeth's old hat a new one which was the admired of O.P. Pym and
friends, who never knew the name of the artist. But obviously he could
not take proper care of himself, and there is a kind of woman, of whom
Grizel was one, to whose breasts this helplessness makes an unfair
appeal. Oh, to dress him properly! She could not help liking to be a
mother to men; she wanted them to be the most noble characters, but
completely dependent on her.

Tommy walked home with her, and it seemed at first as if Elspeth's
absence was to be no help to him. He could not even plagiarize from
"Sandys on Woman." No one knew so well the kind of thing he should be
saying, and no one could have been more anxious to say it, but a
weight of shyness sat on the lid of Tommy. Having for half an hour
raged internally at his misfortune, he now sullenly embraced it. "If I
am this sort of an ass, let me be it in the superlative degree," he
may be conceived saying bitterly to himself. He addressed Grizel
coldly as "Miss McQueen," a name she had taken by the doctor's wish
soon after she went to live with him.

"There is no reason why you should call me that," she said. "Call me
Grizel, as you used to do."

"May I?" replied Tommy, idiotically. He knew it was idiotic, but that
mood now had grip of him.

"But I mean to call you Mr. Sandys," she said decisively.

He was really glad to hear it, for to be called Tommy by anyone was
now detestable to him (which is why I always call him Tommy in these
pages). So it was like him to say, with a sigh, "I had hoped to hear
you use the old name."

That sigh made her look at him sharply. He knew that he must be
careful with Grizel, and that she was irritated, but he had to go on.

"It is strange to me," said Sentimental Tommy, "to be back here after
all those years, walking this familiar road once more with you. I
thought it would make me feel myself a boy again, but, heigh-ho, it
has just the opposite effect: I never felt so old as I do to-day."

His voice trembled a little, I don't know why. Grizel frowned.

"But you never were as old as you are to-day, were you?" she inquired
politely. It whisked Tommy out of dangerous waters and laid him at her
feet. He laughed, not perceptibly or audibly, of course, but somewhere
inside him the bell rang. No one could laugh more heartily at himself
than Tommy, and none bore less malice to those who brought him to
land.

"That, at any rate, makes me feel younger," he said candidly; and now
the shyness was in full flight.

"Why?" asked Grizel, still watchful.

"It is so like the kind of thing you used to say to me when we were
boy and girl. I used to enrage you very much, I fear," he said, half
gleefully.

"Yes," she admitted, with a smile, "you did."

"And then how you rocked your arms at me, Grizel! Do you remember?"

She remembered it all so well! This rocking of the arms, as they
called it, was a trick of hers that signified sudden joy or pain. They
hung rigid by her side, and then shook violently with emotion.

"Do you ever rock them now when people annoy you?" he asked.

"There has been no one to annoy me," she replied demurely, "since you
went away."

"But I have come back," Tommy said, looking hopefully at her arms.

"You see they take no notice of you."

"They don't remember me yet. As soon as they do they will cry out."

Grizel shook her head confidently, and in this she was pitting herself
against Tommy, always a bold thing to do.

"I have been to see Corp's baby," he said suddenly; and this was so
important that she stopped in the middle of the road.

"What do you think of him?" she asked, quite anxiously.

"I thought," replied Tommy, gravely, and making use of one of Grizel's
pet phrases, "I thought he was just sweet."

"Isn't he!" she cried; and then she knew that he was making fun of
her. Her arms rocked.

"Hurray!" cried Tommy, "they recognize me now! Don't be angry,
Grizel," he begged her. "You taught me, long ago, what was the right
thing to say about babies, and how could I be sure it was you until I
saw your arms rocking?"

"It was so like you," she said reproachfully, "to try to make me do
it."

"It was so unlike you," he replied craftily, "to let me succeed. And,
after all, Grizel, if I was horrid in the old days I always
apologized."

"Never!" she insisted.

"Well, then," said Tommy, handsomely, "I do so now"; and then they
both laughed gaily, and I think Grizel was not sorry that there was a
little of the boy who had been horrid left in Tommy--just enough to
know him by.

"He'll be vain," her aged maid, Maggy Ann, said curiously to her that
evening. They were all curious about Tommy.

"I don't know that he is vain," Grizel replied guardedly.

"If he's no vain," Maggy Ann retorted, "he's the first son of Adam it
could be said o'. I jalouse it's his bit book."

"He scarcely mentioned it."

"Ay, then, it's his beard."

Grizel was sure it was not that.

"Then it'll be the women," said Maggy Ann.

"Who knows!" said Grizel of the watchful eyes; but she smiled to
herself. She thought not incorrectly that she knew one woman of whom
Mr. Sandys was a little afraid.

About the same time Tommy and Elspeth were discussing her. Elspeth was
in bed, and Tommy had come into the room to kiss her good-night--he
had never once omitted doing it since they went to London, and he was
always to do it, for neither of them was ever to marry.

"What do you think of her?" Elspeth asked. This was their great time
for confidences.

"Of whom?" Tommy inquired lightly.

"Grizel."

He must be careful.

"Rather pretty, don't you think?" he said, gazing at the ceiling.

She was looking at him keenly, but he managed to deceive her. She was
much relieved, and could say what was in her heart. "Tommy," she said,
"I think she is the most noble-looking girl I ever saw, and if she
were not so masterful in her manner she would be beautiful." It was
nice of Elspeth to say it, for she and Grizel were never very great
friends.

Tommy brought down his eyes. "Did you think as much of her as that?"
he said. "It struck me that her features were not quite classic. Her
nose is a little tilted, is it not?"

"Some people like that kind of nose," replied Elspeth.  "It is not
classic," Tommy said sternly.




CHAPTER VI

GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN


Looking through the Tommy papers of this period, like a conscientious
biographer, I find among them manuscripts that remind me how
diligently he set to work at his new book the moment he went North,
and also letters which, if printed, would show you what a wise and
good man Tommy was. But while I was fingering those, there floated
from them to the floor a loose page, and when I saw that it was a
chemist's bill for oil and liniment I remembered something I had nigh
forgotten. "Eureka!" I cried. "I shall tell the story of the chemist's
bill, and some other biographer may print the letters."

Well, well! but to think that this scrap of paper should flutter into
view to damn him after all those years!

The date is Saturday, May 28, by which time Tommy had been a week in
Thrums without doing anything very reprehensible, so far as Grizel
knew. She watched for telltales as for a mouse to show at its hole,
and at the worst, I think, she saw only its little head. That was when
Tommy was talking beautifully to her about her dear doctor. He would
have done wisely to avoid this subject; but he was so notoriously good
at condolences that he had to say it. He had thought it out, you may
remember, a year ago, but hesitated to post it; and since then it had
lain heavily within him, as if it knew it was a good thing and pined
to be up and strutting.

He said it with emotion; evidently Dr. McQueen had been very dear to
him, and any other girl would have been touched; but Grizel stiffened,
and when he had finished, this is what she said, quite snappily:

"He never liked you."

Tommy was taken aback, but replied, with gentle dignity, "Do you
think, Grizel, I would let that make any difference in my estimate of
him?"

"But you never liked him," said she; and now that he thought of it,
this was true also. It was useless to say anything about the artistic
instinct to her; she did not know what it was, and would have had
plain words for it as soon as he told her. Please to picture Tommy
picking up his beautiful speech and ramming it back into his pocket as
if it were a rejected manuscript.

"I am sorry you should think so meanly of me, Grizel," he said with
manly forbearance, and when she thought it all out carefully that
night she decided that she had been hasty. She could not help watching
Tommy for backslidings, but oh, it was sweet to her to decide that she
had not found any.

"It was I who was horrid," she announced to him frankly, and Tommy
forgave her at once. She offered him a present: "When the doctor died
I gave some of his things to his friends; it is the Scotch custom, you
know. He had a new overcoat; it had been worn but two or three times.
I should be so glad if you would let me give it to you for saying such
sweet things about him. I think it will need very little alteration."

Thus very simply came into Tommy's possession the coat that was to
play so odd a part in his history. "But oh, Grizel," said he, with
mock reproach, "you need not think that I don't see through you! Your
deep design is to cover me up. You despise my velvet jacket!"

"It does not--" Grizel began, and stopped.

"It is not in keeping with my doleful countenance," said Tommy,
candidly; "that was what you were to say. Let me tell you a secret,
Grizel: I wear it to spite my face. Sha'n't give up my velvet jacket
for anybody, Grizel; not even for you." He was in gay spirits, because
he knew she liked him again; and she saw that was the reason, and it
warmed her. She was least able to resist Tommy when he was most a
boy, and it was actually watchful Grizel who proposed that he and she
and Elspeth should revisit the Den together. How often since the days
of their childhood had Grizel wandered it alone, thinking of those
dear times, making up her mind that if ever Tommy asked her to go into
the Den again with him she would not go, the place was so much sweeter
to her than it could be to him. And yet it was Grizel herself who was
saying now, "Let us go back to the Den."

Tommy caught fire. "We sha'n't go back," he cried defiantly, "as men
and women. Let us be boy and girl again, Grizel. Let us have that
Saturday we missed long ago. I missed a Saturday on purpose, Grizel,
so that we should have it now."

She shook her head wistfully, but she was glad that Tommy would fain
have had one of the Saturdays back. Had he waxed sentimental she would
not have gone a step of the way with him into the past, but when he
was so full of glee she could take his hand and run back into it.

"But we must wait until evening," Tommy said, "until Corp is
unharnessed; we must not hurt the feelings of Corp by going back to
the Den without him."

"How mean of me not to think of Corp!" Grizel cried; but the next
moment she was glad she had not thought of him, it was so delicious to
have proof that Tommy was more loyal.  "But we can't turn back the
clock, can we, Corp?" she said to the fourth of the conspirators, to
which Corp replied, with his old sublime confidence, "He'll find a
way."

And at first it really seemed as if Tommy had found a way. They did
not go to the Den four in a line or two abreast--nothing so common as
that. In the wild spirits that mastered him he seemed to be the boy
incarnate, and it was always said of Tommy by those who knew him best
that if he leaped back into boyhood they had to jump with him. Those
who knew him best were with him now. He took command of them in the
old way. He whispered, as if Black Cathro were still on the prowl for
him. Corp of Corp had to steal upon the Den by way of the Silent Pool,
Grizel by the Queen's Bower, Elspeth up the burn-side, Captain Stroke
down the Reekie Brothpot. Grizel's arms rocked with delight in the
dark, and she was on her way to the Cuttle Well, the trysting-place,
before she came to and saw with consternation that Tommy had been
ordering her about.

She was quite a sedate young lady by the time she joined them at the
well, and Tommy was the first to feel the change. "Don't you think
this is all rather silly?" she said, when he addressed her as the Lady
Griselda, and it broke the spell. Two girls shot up into women, a
beard grew on Tommy's chin, and Corp became a father. Grizel had
blown Tommy's pretty project to dust just when he was most gleeful
over it; yet, instead of bearing resentment, he pretended not even to
know that she was the culprit.

"Corp," he said ruefully, "the game is up!" And "Listen," he said,
when they had sat down, crushed, by the old Cuttle Well, "do you hear
anything?"

It was a very still evening. "I hear nocht," said Corp, "but the
trickle o' the burn. What did you hear?"

"I thought I heard a baby cry," replied Tommy, with a groan. "I think
it was your baby, Corp. Did you hear it, Grizel?"

She understood, and nodded.

"And you, Elspeth?"

"Yes."

"My bairn!" cried the astounded Corp.

"Yours," said Tommy, reproachfully; "and he has done for us. Ladies
and gentlemen, the game is up."

Yes, the game was up, and she was glad, Grizel said to herself, as
they made their melancholy pilgrimage of what had once been an
enchanted land. But she felt that Tommy had been very forbearing to
her, and that she did not deserve it. Undoubtedly he had ordered her
about, but in so doing had he not been making half-pathetic sport of
his old self--and was it with him that she was annoyed for ordering,
or with herself for obeying? And why should she not obey, when it was
all a jest? It was as if she still had some lingering fear of Tommy.
Oh, she was ashamed of herself. She must say something nice to him at
once. About what? About his book, of course. How base of her not to
have done so already! but how good of him to have overlooked her
silence on that great topic!

It was not ignorance of its contents that had kept her silent. To
confess the horrid truth, Grizel had read the book suspiciously,
looking as through a microscope for something wrong--hoping not to
find it, but peering minutely. The book, she knew, was beautiful; but
it was the writer of the book she was peering for--the Tommy she had
known so well, what had he grown into? In her heart she had exulted
from the first in his success, and she should have been still more
glad (should she not?) to learn that his subject was woman; but no,
that had irritated her. What was perhaps even worse, she had been
still more irritated on hearing that the work was rich in sublime
thoughts. As a boy, he had maddened her most in his grandest moments.
I can think of no other excuse for her.

She would not accept it as an excuse for herself now. What she saw
with scorn was that she was always suspecting the worst of Tommy.
Very probably there was not a thought in the book that had been put
in with his old complacent waggle of the head. "Oh, am I not a
wonder!" he used to cry, when he did anything big; but that was no
reason why she should suspect him of being conceited still. Very
probably he really and truly felt what he wrote--felt it not only at
the time, but also next morning. In his boyhood Mr. Cathro had
christened him Sentimental Tommy; but he was a man now, and surely the
sentimentalities in which he had dressed himself were flung aside for
ever, like old suits of clothes. So Grizel decided eagerly, and she
was on the point of telling him how proud she was of his book, when
Tommy, who had thus far behaved so well, of a sudden went to pieces.

He and Grizel were together. Elspeth was a little in front of them,
walking with a gentleman who still wondered what they meant by saying
that they had heard his baby cry. "For he's no here," Corp had said
earnestly to them all; "though I'm awid for the time to come when I'll
be able to bring him to the Den and let him see the Jacobites' Lair."

There was nothing startling in this remark, so far as Grizel could
discover; but she saw that it had an immediate and incomprehensible
effect on Tommy. First, he blundered in his talk as if he was thinking
deeply of something else; then his face shone as it had been wont to
light up in his boyhood when he was suddenly enraptured with himself;
and lastly, down his cheek and into his beard there stole a tear of
agony. Obviously, Tommy was in deep woe for somebody or something.

It was a chance for a true lady to show that womanly sympathy of which
such exquisite things are said in the first work of T. Sandys: but it
merely infuriated Grizel, who knew that Tommy did not feel nearly so
deeply as she this return to the Den, and, therefore, what was he in
such distress about? It was silly sentiment of some sort, she was sure
of that. In the old days she would have asked him imperiously to tell
her what was the matter with him; but she must not do that now--she
dare not even rock her indignant arms; she could only walk silently by
his side, longing fervently to shake him.

He had quite forgotten her presence; indeed, she was not really there,
for a number of years had passed, and he was Corp Shiach, walking the
Den alone. To-morrow he was to bring his boy to show him the old Lair
and other fondly remembered spots; to-night he must revisit them
alone. So he set out blithely, but, to his bewilderment, he could not
find the Lair. It had not been a tiny hollow where muddy water
gathered; he remembered an impregnable fortress full of men whose
armour rattled as they came and went; so this could not be the Lair.
He had taken the wrong way to it, for the way was across a lagoon, up
a deep-flowing river, then by horse till the rocky ledge terrified all
four-footed things; no, up a grassy slope had never been the way. He
came night after night, trying different ways; but he could not find
the golden ladder, though all the time he knew that the Lair lay
somewhere over there. When he stood still and listened he could hear
the friends of his youth at play, and they seemed to be calling: "Are
you coming, Corp? Why does not Corp come back?" but he could never see
them, and when he pressed forward their voices died away. Then at last
he said sadly to his boy: "I shall never be able to show you the Lair,
for I cannot find the way to it." And the boy was touched, and he
said: "Take my hand, father, and I will lead you to the Lair; I found
the way long ago for myself."

It took Tommy about two seconds to see all this, and perhaps another
half-minute was spent in sad but satisfactory contemplation of it.
Then he felt that, for the best effect, Corp's home life was too
comfortable; so Gavinia ran away with a soldier. He was now so sorry
for Corp that the tear rolled down. But at the same moment he saw how
the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his
friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between
the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It
was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long
rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not
feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame."
And Tommy woke with a start, to see that he was hobbling as if one of
his legs were timber to the knee.

"It is nothing," he said modestly. "Something Corp said set me
thinking; that is all."

He had told the truth, and if what he imagined was twenty times more
real to him than what was really there, how could Tommy help it?
Indignant Grizel, however, who kept such a grip of facts, would make
no such excuse for him.

"Elspeth!" she called.

"There is no need to tell her," said Tommy. But Grizel was obdurate.

"Come here, Elspeth," she cried vindictively. "Something Corp said a
moment ago has made your brother lame."

Tommy was lame; that was all Elspeth and Corp heard or could think of
as they ran back to him. When did it happen? Was he in great pain? Had
he fallen? Oh, why had he not told Elspeth at once?

"It is nothing," Tommy insisted, a little fiercely.

"He says so," Grizel explained, "not to alarm us. But he is suffering
horribly. Just before I called to you his face was all drawn up in
pain."

This made the sufferer wince. "That was another twinge," she said
promptly. "What is to be done, Elspeth?"

"I think I could carry him," suggested Corp, with a forward movement
that made Tommy stamp his foot--the wooden one.

"I am all right," he told them testily, and looking uneasily at
Grizel.

"How brave of you to say so!" said she.

"It is just like him," Elspeth said, pleased with Grizel's remark.

"I am sure it is," Grizel said, so graciously.

It was very naughty of her. Had she given him a chance he would have
explained that it was all a mistake of Grizel's. That had been his
intention; but now a devil entered into Tommy and spoke for him.

"I must have slipped and sprained my ankle," he said. "It is slightly
painful; but I shall be able to walk home all right, Corp, if you let
me use you as a staff."

I think he was a little surprised to hear himself saying this; but, as
soon as it was said, he liked it. He was Captain Stroke playing in the
Den again, after all, and playing as well as ever. Nothing being so
real to Tommy as pretence, I daresay he even began to feel his ankle
hurting him. "Gently," he begged of Corp, with a gallant smile, and
clenching his teeth so that the pain should not make him cry out
before the ladies. Thus, with his lieutenant's help, did Stroke manage
to reach Aaron's house, making light of his mishap, assuring them
cheerily that he should be all right to-morrow, and carefully avoiding
Grizel's eye, though he wanted very much to know what she thought of
him (and of herself) now.

There were moments when she did not know what to think, and that
always distressed Grizel, though it was a state of mind with which
Tommy could keep on very friendly terms. The truth seemed too
monstrous for belief. Was it possible she had misjudged him? Perhaps
he really had sprained his ankle. But he had made no pretence of that
at first, and besides,--yes, she could not be mistaken,--it was the
other leg.

She soon let him see what she was thinking. "I am afraid it is too
serious a case for me," she said, in answer to a suggestion from Corp,
who had a profound faith in her medical skill, "but, if you
like,"--she was addressing Tommy now,--"I shall call at Dr. Gemmell's,
on my way home, and ask him to come to you."

"There is no necessity; a night's rest is all I need," he answered
hastily.

"Well, you know best," she said, and there was a look on her face
which Thomas Sandys could endure from no woman.  "On second
thoughts," he said, "I think it would be advisable to have a doctor.
Thank you very much, Grizel. Corp, can you help me to lift my foot on
to that chair? Softly--ah!--ugh!"

His eyes did not fall before hers. "And would you mind asking him to
come at once, Grizel?" he said sweetly.  She went straight to the
doctor.




CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL


It was among old Dr. McQueen's sayings that when he met a man who was
certified to be in no way remarkable he wanted to give three cheers.
There are few of them, even in a little place like Thrums; but David
Gemmell was one.

So McQueen had always said, but Grizel was not so sure. "He is very
good-looking, and he does not know it," she would point out. "Oh, what
a remarkable man!"

She had known him intimately for nearly six years now, ever since he
became the old doctor's assistant on the day when, in the tail of some
others, he came to Thrums, aged twenty-one, to apply for the post.
Grizel had even helped to choose him; she had a quaint recollection of
his being submitted to her by McQueen, who told her to look him over
and say whether he would do--an odd position in which to place a
fourteen-year-old girl, but Grizel had taken it most seriously, and,
indeed, of the two men only Gemmell dared to laugh.

"You should not laugh when it is so important," she said gravely; and
he stood abashed, although I believe he chuckled again when he retired
to his room for the night. She was in that room next morning as soon
as he had left it, to smell the curtains (he smoked), and see whether
he folded his things up neatly and used both the brush and the comb,
but did not use pomade, and slept with his window open, and really
took a bath instead of merely pouring the water into it and laying the
sponge on top (oh, she knew them!)--and her decision, after some days,
was that, though far from perfect, he would do, if he loved her dear
darling doctor sufficiently. By this time David was openly afraid of
her, which Grizel noticed, and took to be, in the circumstances, a
satisfactory sign.

She watched him narrowly for the next year, and after that she ceased
to watch him at all. She was like a congregation become so sure of its
minister's soundness that it can risk going to sleep. To begin with,
he was quite incapable of pretending to be anything he was not. Oh,
how unlike a boy she had once known! His manner, like his voice, was
quiet. Being himself the son of a doctor, he did not dodder through
life amazed at the splendid eminence he had climbed to, which is the
weakness of Scottish students when they graduate, and often for fifty
years afterwards. How sweet he was to Dr. McQueen, never forgetting
the respect due to gray hairs, never hinting that the new school of
medicine knew many things that were hidden from the old, and always
having the sense to support McQueen when she was scolding him for his
numerous naughty ways. When the old doctor came home now on cold
nights it was not with his cravat in his pocket, and Grizel knew very
well who had put it round his neck. McQueen never had the humiliation,
so distressing to an old doctor, of being asked by patients to send
his assistant instead of coming himself. He thought they preferred
him, and twitted David about it; but Grizel knew that David had
sometimes to order them to prefer the old man. She knew that when he
said good-night and was supposed to have gone to his lodgings, he was
probably off to some poor house where, if not he, a tired woman must
sit the long night through by a sufferer's bedside, and she realized
with joy that his chief reason for not speaking of such things was
that he took them as part of his natural work and never even knew that
he was kind. He was not specially skilful, he had taken no honours
either at school or college, and he considered himself to be a very
ordinary young man. If you had said that on this point you disagreed
with him, his manner probably would have implied that he thought you
a bit of an ass.

When a new man arrives in Thrums, the women come to their doors to see
whether he is good-looking. They said No of Tommy when he came back,
but it had been an emphatic Yes for Dr. Gemmell. He was tall and very
slight, and at twenty-seven, as at twenty-one, despite the growth of a
heavy moustache, there was a boyishness about his appearance, which
is, I think, what women love in a man more than anything else. They
are drawn to him by it, and they love him out of pity when it goes. I
suppose it brings back to them some early, beautiful stage in the
world's history when men and women played together without fear.
Perhaps it lay in his smile, which was so winning that wrinkled old
dames spoke of it, who had never met the word before, smiles being
little known in Thrums, where in a workaday world we find it
sufficient either to laugh or to look thrawn. His dark curly hair was
what Grizel was most suspicious of; he must be vain of that, she
thought, until she discovered that he was quite sensitive to its being
mentioned, having ever detested his curls as an eyesore, and in his
boyhood clipped them savagely to the roots. He had such a firm chin,
if there had been another such chin going a-begging, I should have
liked to clap it on to Tommy Sandys.

Tommy Sandys! All this time we have been neglecting that brave
sufferer, and while we talk his ankle is swelling and swelling. Well,
Grizel was not so inconsiderate, for she walked very fast and with an
exceedingly determined mouth to Dr. Gemmell's lodgings. He was still
in lodgings, having refused to turn Grizel out of her house, though
she had offered to let it to him. She left word, the doctor not being
in, that he was wanted at once by Mr. Sandys, who had sprained his
ankle.

Now, then, Tommy!

For an hour, perhaps until she went to bed, she remained merciless.
She saw the quiet doctor with the penetrating eyes examining that
ankle, asking a few questions, and looking curiously at his patient;
then she saw him lift his hat and walk out of the house.

It gave her pleasure; no, it did not. While she thought of this Tommy
she despised, there came in front of him a boy who had played with her
long ago when no other child would play with her, and now he said,
"You have grown cold to me, Grizel," and she nodded assent, and little
wells of water rose to her eyes and lay there because she had nodded
assent.

She had never liked Dr. Gemmell so little as when she saw him
approaching her house next morning. The surgery was still attached to
it, and very often he came from there, his visiting-book in his hand,
to tell her of his patients, even to consult her; indeed, to talk to
Grizel about his work without consulting her would have been
difficult, for it was natural to her to decide what was best for
everybody. These consultations were very unprofessional, but from her
first coming to the old doctor's house she had taken it as a matter of
course that in his practice, as in affairs relating to his boots and
buttons, she should tell him what to do and he should do it. McQueen
had introduced his assistant to this partnership half-shamefacedly and
with a cautious wink over the little girl's head; and Gemmell fell
into line at once, showing her his new stethoscope as gravely as if he
must abandon it at once should not she approve, which fine behaviour,
however, was quite thrown away on Grizel, who, had he conducted
himself otherwise, would merely have wondered what was the matter with
the man; and as she was eighteen or more before she saw that she had
exceeded her duties, it was then, of course, too late to cease doing
it.

She knew now how good, how forbearing, he had been to the little girl,
and that it was partly because he was acquainted with her touching
history. The grave courtesy with which he had always treated her--and
which had sometimes given her as a girl a secret thrill of delight, it
was so sweet to Grizel to be respected--she knew now to be less his
natural manner to women than something that came to him in her
presence because he who knew her so well thought her worthy of
deference; and it helped her more, far more, than if she had seen it
turn to love. Yet as she received him in her parlor now--her too
spotless parlor, for not even the ashes in the grate were visible,
which is a mistake--she was not very friendly. He had discovered what
Tommy was, and as she had been the medium she could not blame him for
that, but how could he look as calm as ever when such a deplorable
thing had happened?

"What you say is true; I knew it before I asked you to go to him, and
I knew you would find it out; but please to remember that he is a man
of genius, whom it is not for such as you to judge."

That was the sort of haughty remark she held ready for him while they
talked of other cases; but it was never uttered, for by and by he
said:

"And then, there is Mr. Sandys's ankle. A nasty accident, I am
afraid."

Was he jesting? She looked at him sharply. "Have you not been to see
him yet?" she asked.

He thought she had misunderstood him. He had been to see Mr. Sandys
twice, both last night and this morning.

And he was sure it was a sprain?

Unfortunately it was something worse--dislocation; further mischief
might show itself presently.

"Haemorrhage into the neighbouring joint on inflammation?" she asked
scientifically and with scorn.

"Yes."

Grizel turned away from him. "I think not," she said.

Well, possibly not, if Mr. Sandys was careful and kept his foot from
the ground for the next week. The doctor did not know that she was
despising him, and he proceeded to pay Tommy a compliment. "I had to
reduce the dislocation, of course," he told her, "and he bore the
wrench splendidly, though there is almost no pain more acute."

"Did he ask you to tell me that?" Grizel was thirsting to inquire, but
she forbore. Unwittingly, however, the doctor answered the question.
"I could see," he said, "that Mr. Sandys made light of his sufferings
to save his sister pain. I cannot recall ever having seen a brother
and sister so attached."

That was quite true, Grizel admitted to herself. In all her
recollections of Tommy she could not remember one critical moment in
which Elspeth had not been foremost in his thoughts. It passed through
her head, "Even now he must make sure that Elspeth is in peace of mind
before he can care to triumph over me," and she would perhaps have
felt less bitter had he put his triumph first.

His triumph! Oh, she would show him whether it was a triumph. He had
destroyed for ever her faith in David Gemmell. The quiet, observant
doctor, who had such an eye for the false, had been deceived as easily
as all the others, and it made her feel very lonely. But never mind;
Tommy should find out, and that within the hour, that there was one
whom he could not cheat. Her first impulse, always her first impulse,
was to go straight to his side and tell him what she thought of him.
Her second, which was neater, was to send by messenger her compliments
to Mr. and Miss Sandys, and would they, if not otherwise engaged, come
and have tea with her that afternoon? Not a word in the note about the
ankle, but a careful sentence to the effect that she had seen Dr.
Gemmell to-day, and proposed asking him to meet them.

Maggy Ann, who had conveyed the message, came back with the reply.
Elspeth regretted that they could not accept Grizel's invitation,
owing to the accident to her brother being _very much more_ serious
than Grizel seemed to think. "I can't understand," Elspeth added, "why
Dr. Gemmell did not tell you this when he saw you."

"Is it a polite letter?" asked inquisitive Maggy Ann, and Grizel
assured her that it was most polite. "I hardly expected it," said the
plain-spoken dame, "for I'm thinking by their manner it's more than
can be said of yours."

"I merely invited them to come to tea."

"And him wi' his leg broke! Did you no ken he was lying on chairs?"

"I did not know it was so bad as that, Maggy Ann. So my letter seemed
to annoy him, did it?" said Grizel, eagerly, and, I fear, well
pleased.

"It angered her most terrible," said Maggy Ann, "but no him. He gave a
sort of a laugh when he read it."

"A laugh!"

"Ay, and syne she says, 'It is most heartless of Grizel; she does not
even ask how you are to-day; one would think she did not know of the
accident'; and she says, 'I have a good mind to write her a very stiff
letter.' And says he in a noble, melancholic voice, 'We must not hurt
Grizel's feelings,' he says. And she says, 'Grizel thinks it was
nothing because you bore it so cheerfully; oh, how little she knows
you!' she says; and 'You are too forgiving,' she says. And says he,
'If I have anything to forgive Grizel for, I forgive her willingly.'
And syne she quieted down and wrote the letter."

Forgive her! Oh, how it enraged Grizel! How like the Tommy of old to
put it in that way. There never had been a boy so good at forgiving
people for his own crimes, and he always looked so modest when he did
it. He was reclining on his chairs at this moment, she was sure he
was, forgiving her in every sentence. She could have endured it more
easily had she felt sure that he was seeing himself as he was; but she
remembered him too well to have any hope of that.

She put on her bonnet, and took it off again; a terrible thing,
remember, for Grizel to be in a state of indecision. For the remainder
of that day she was not wholly inactive. Meeting Dr. Gemmell in the
street, she impressed upon him the advisability of not allowing Mr.
Sandys to move for at least a week.

"He might take a drive in a day or two," the doctor thought, "with his
sister."

"He would be sure to use his foot," Grizel maintained, "if you once
let him rise from his chair; you know they all do." And Gemmell agreed
that she was right. So she managed to give Tommy as irksome a time as
possible.

But next day she called. To go through another day without letting him
see how despicable she thought him was beyond her endurance. Elspeth
was a little stiff at first, but Tommy received her heartily and with
nothing in his manner to show that she had hurt his finer feelings.
His leg (the wrong leg, as Grizel remembered at once) was extended on
a chair in front of him; but instead of nursing it ostentatiously as
so many would have done, he made humourous remarks at its expense.
"The fact is," he said cheerily, "that so long as I don't move I never
felt better in my life. And I daresay I could walk almost as well as
either of you, only my tyrant of a doctor won't let me try."  "He
told me you had behaved splendidly," said Grizel, "while he was
reducing the dislocation. How brave you are! You could not have
endured more stoically though there had been nothing the matter with
it."

"It was soon over," Tommy replied lightly. "I think Elspeth suffered
more than I."

Elspeth told the story of his heroism. "I could not stay in the room,"
she said; "it was too terrible." And Grizel despised too
tender-hearted Elspeth for that; she was so courageous at facing pain
herself. But Tommy had guessed that Elspeth was trembling behind the
door, and he had called out, "Don't cry, Elspeth; I am all right; it
is nothing at all."

"How noble!" was Grizel's comment, when she heard of this; and then
Elspeth was her friend again, insisted on her staying to tea, and went
into the kitchen to prepare it. Aaron was out.

The two were alone now, and in the circumstances some men would have
given the lady the opportunity to apologize, if such was her desire.
But Tommy's was a more generous nature; his manner was that of one
less sorry to be misjudged than anxious that Grizel should not suffer
too much from remorse. If she had asked his pardon then and there, I
am sure he would have replied, "Right willingly, Grizel," and begged
her not to give another thought to the matter. What is of more
importance, Grizel was sure of this also, and it was the magnanimity
of him that especially annoyed her. There seemed to be no disturbing
it. Even when she said, "Which foot is it?" he answered, "The one on
the chair," quite graciously, as if she had asked a natural question.

Grizel pointed out that the other foot must be tired of being a foot
in waiting. It had got a little exercise, Tommy replied lightly, last
night and again this morning, when it had helped to convey him to and
from his bed.

Had he hopped? she asked brutally.

No, he said; he had shuffled along. Half rising, he attempted to show
her humourously how he walked nowadays--tried not to wince, but had
to. Ugh, that was a twinge! Grizel sarcastically offered her
assistance, and he took her shoulder gratefully. They crossed the
room--a tedious journey. "Now let me see if you can manage alone," she
says, and suddenly deserts him.

He looked rather helplessly across the room. Few sights are so
pathetic as the strong man of yesterday feeling that the chair by the
fire is a distant object to-day. Tommy knew how pathetic it was, but
Grizel did not seem to know.

"Try it," she said encouragingly; "it will do you good."

[Illustration: And clung to it, his teeth set.]

He got as far as the table, and clung to it, his teeth set. Grizel
clapped her hands. "Excellently done!" she said, with fell meaning,
and recommended him to move up and down the room for a little; he
would feel ever so much the better for it afterwards.

The pain--was--considerable, he said. Oh, she saw that, but he had
already proved himself so good at bearing pain, and the new school of
surgeons held that it was wise to exercise an injured limb.

Even then it was not a reproachful glance that Tommy gave her, though
there was some sadness in it. He moved across the room several times,
a groan occasionally escaping him. "Admirable!" said his critic.
"Bravo! Would you like to stop now?"

"Not until you tell me to," he said determinedly, but with a gasp.

"It must be dreadfully painful," she replied coldly, "but I should
like you to go on." And he went on until suddenly he seemed to have
lost the power to lift his feet. His body swayed; there was an
appealing look on his face. "Don't be afraid; you won't fall," said
Grizel. But she had scarcely said it when he fainted dead away, and
went down at her feet.

"Oh, how dare you!" she cried in sudden flame, and she drew back from
him. But after a moment she knew that he was shamming no longer--or
she knew it and yet could not quite believe it; for, hurrying out of
the room for water, she had no sooner passed the door than she swiftly
put back her head as if to catch him unawares; but he lay motionless.

The sight of her dear brother on the floor paralyzed Elspeth, who
could only weep for him, and call to him to look at her and speak to
her. But in such an emergency Grizel was as useful as any doctor, and
by the time Gemmell arrived in haste the invalid was being brought to.
The doctor was a practical man who did not ask questions while there
was something better to do. Had he asked any as he came in, Grizel
would certainly have said: "He wanted to faint to make me believe he
really has a bad ankle, and somehow he managed to do it." And if the
doctor had replied that people can't faint by wishing, she would have
said that he did not know Mr. Sandys.

But, with few words, Gemmell got his patient back to the chairs, and
proceeded to undo the bandages that were round his ankle. Grizel stood
by, assisting silently. She had often assisted the doctors, but never
before with that scornful curl of her lip. So the bandages were
removed and the ankle laid bare. It was very much swollen and
discoloured, and when Grizel saw this she gave a little cry, and the
ointment she was holding slipped from her hand. For the first time
since he came to Thrums, she had failed Gemmell at a patient's side.

"I had not expected it to be--like this," she said in a quivering
voice, when he looked at her in surprise.

"It will look much worse to-morrow," he assured them, grimly. "I can't
understand, Miss Sandys, how this came about."

"Miss Sandys was not in the room," said Grizel, abjectly, "but I was,
and I--"

Tommy's face was begging her to stop. He was still faint and in pain,
but all thought of himself left him in his desire to screen her. "I
owe you an apology, doctor," he said quickly, "for disregarding your
instructions. It was entirely my own fault; I would try to walk."

"Every step must have been agony," the doctor rapped out; and Grizel
shuddered.

"Not nearly so bad as that," Tommy said, for her sake.

"Agony," insisted the doctor, as if, for once, he enjoyed the word.
"It was a mad thing to do, as surely you could guess, Grizel. Why did
you not prevent him?"

"She certainly did her best to stop me," Tommy said hastily; "but I
suppose I had some insane fit on me, for do it I would. I am very
sorry, doctor."

His face was wincing with pain, and he spoke jerkily; but the doctor
was still angry. He felt that there was something between these two
which he did not understand, and it was strange to him, and
unpleasant, to find Grizel unable to speak for herself. I think he
doubted Tommy from that hour. All he said in reply, however, was: "It
is unnecessary to apologize to me; you yourself are the only
sufferer."

But was Tommy the only sufferer? Gemmell left, and Elspeth followed
him to listen to those precious words which doctors drop, as from a
vial, on the other side of a patient's door; and then Grizel, who had
been standing at the window with head averted, turned slowly round and
looked at the man she had wronged. Her arms, which had been hanging
rigid, the fists closed, went out to him to implore forgiveness. I
don't know how she held herself up and remained dry-eyed, her whole
being wanted so much to sink by the side of his poor, tortured foot,
and bathe it in her tears.

So, you see, he had won; nothing to do now but forgive her
beautifully. Go on, Tommy; you are good at it.

But the unexpected only came out of Tommy. Never was there a softer
heart. In London the old lady who sold matches at the street corner
had got all his pence; had he heard her, or any other, mourning a son
sentenced to the gallows, he would immediately have wondered whether
he might take the condemned one's place. (What a speech Tommy could
have delivered from the scaffold!) There was nothing he would not jump
at doing for a woman in distress, except, perhaps, destroy his
note-book. And Grizel was in anguish. She was his suppliant, his
brave, lonely little playmate of the past, the noble girl of to-day,
Grizel whom he liked so much. As through a magnifying-glass he saw her
top-heavy with remorse for life, unable to sleep of nights, crushed
and----

He was not made of the stuff that could endure it. The truth must out.
"Grizel," he said impulsively, "you have nothing to be sorry for. You
were quite right. I did not hurt my foot that night in the Den, but
afterwards, when I was alone, before the doctor came. I wricked it
here intentionally in the door. It sounds incredible; but I set my
teeth and did it, Grizel, because you had challenged me to a duel, and
I would not give in."

As soon as it was out he was proud of himself for having the
generosity to confess it. He looked at Grizel expectantly.

Yes, it sounded incredible, and yet she saw that it was true. As
Elspeth returned at that moment, Grizel could say nothing. She stood
looking at him only over her high collar of fur. Tommy actually
thought that she was admiring him.




CHAPTER VIII

WHAT GRIZEL'S EYES SAID


To be the admired of women--how Tommy had fought for it since first he
drank of them in Pym's sparkling pages! To some it seems to be easy,
but to him it was a labour of Sisyphus. Everything had been against
him. But he concentrated. No labour was too Herculean; he was
prepared, if necessary, to walk round the world to get to the other
side of the wall across which some men can step. And he did take a
roundabout way. It is my opinion, for instance, that he wrote his book
in order to make a beginning with the ladies.

That as it may be, at all events he is on the right side of the wall
now, and here is even Grizel looking wistfully at him. Had she admired
him for something he was not (and a good many of them did that) he
would have been ill satisfied. He wanted her to think him splendid
because he was splendid, and the more he reflected the more clearly
he saw that he had done a big thing. How many men would have had the
courage to wrick their foot as he had done? (He shivered when he
thought of it.) And even of these Spartans how many would have let the
reward slip through their fingers rather than wound the feelings of a
girl? These had not been his thoughts when he made confession; he had
spoken on an impulse; but now that he could step out and have a look
at himself, he saw that this made it a still bigger thing. He was
modestly pleased that he had not only got Grizel's admiration, but
earned it, and he was very kind to her when next she came to see him.
No one could be more kind to them than he when they admired him. He
had the most grateful heart, had our Tommy.

When next she came to see him! That was while his ankle still nailed
him to the chair, a fortnight or so during which Tommy was at his
best, sending gracious messages by Elspeth to the many who called to
inquire, and writing hard at his new work, pad on knee, so like a
brave soul whom no unmerited misfortune could subdue that it would
have done you good merely to peep at him through the window. Grizel
came several times, and the three talked very ordinary things, mostly
reminiscences; she was as much a plain-spoken princess as ever, but
often he found her eyes fixed on him wistfully, and he knew what they
were saying; they spoke so eloquently that he was a little nervous
lest Elspeth should notice. It was delicious to Tommy to feel that
there was this little unspoken something between him and Grizel; he
half regretted that the time could not be far distant when she must
put it into words--as soon, say, as Elspeth left the room; an
exquisite moment, no doubt, but it would be the plucking of the
flower.

Don't think that Tommy conceived Grizel to be in love with him. On my
sacred honour, that would have horrified him.

Curiously enough, she did not take the first opportunity Elspeth gave
her of telling him in words how much she admired his brave confession.
She was so honest that he expected her to begin the moment the door
closed, and now that the artistic time had come for it, he wanted it;
but no. He was not hurt, but he wondered at her shyness, and cast
about for the reason. He cast far back into the past, and caught a
little girl who had worn this same wistful face when she admired him
most. He compared those two faces of the anxious girl and the serene
woman, and in the wistfulness that sometimes lay on them both they
looked alike. Was it possible that the fear of him which the years had
driven out of the girl still lived a ghost's life to haunt the woman?

At once he overflowed with pity. As a boy he had exulted in Grizel's
fear of him; as a man he could feel only the pain of it. There was no
one, he thought, less to be dreaded of a woman than he; oh, so sure
Tommy was of that! And he must lay this ghost; he gave his whole heart
to the laying of it.

Few men, and never a woman, could do a fine thing so delicately as he;
but of course it included a divergence from the truth, for to Tommy
afloat on a generous scheme the truth was a buoy marking sunken rocks.
She had feared him in her childhood, as he knew well; he therefore
proceeded to prove to her that she had never feared him. She had
thought him masterful, and all his reminiscences now went to show that
it was she who had been the masterful one.

"You must often laugh now," he said, "to remember how I feared you.
The memory of it makes me afraid of you still. I assure you, I joukit
back, as Corp would say, that day I saw you in church. It was the
instinct of self-preservation. 'Here comes Grizel to lord it over me
again,' I heard something inside me saying. You called me masterful,
and yet I had always to give in to you. That shows what a gentle,
yielding girl you were, and what a masterful character I was!"

His intention, you see, was, without letting Grizel know what he was
at, to make her think he had forgotten certain unpleasant incidents in
their past, so that, seeing they were no longer anything to him, they
might the sooner become nothing to her. And she believed that he had
forgotten, and she was glad. She smiled when he told her to go on
being masterful, for old acquaintance had made him like it. Hers,
indeed, was a masterful nature; she could not help it; and if the time
ever came when she must help it, the glee of living would be gone from
her.

She did continue to be masterful--to a greater extent than Tommy, thus
nobly behaving, was prepared for; and his shock came to him at the
very moment when he was modestly expecting to receive the prize. She
had called when Elspeth happened to be out; and though now able to
move about the room with the help of a staff, he was still an
interesting object. He saw that she thought so, and perhaps it made
him hobble slightly more, not vaingloriously, but because he was such
an artist. He ceased to be an artist suddenly, however, when Grizel
made this unexpected remark:

"How vain you are!"

Tommy sat down, quite pale. "Did you come here to say that to me,
Grizel?" he inquired, and she nodded frankly over her high collar of
fur. He knew it was true as Grizel said it, but though taken aback, he
could bear it, for she was looking wistfully at him, and he knew well
what Grizel's wistful look meant; so long as women admired him Tommy
could bear anything from them. "God knows I have little to be vain
of," he said humbly.

"Those are the people who are most vain," she replied; and he laughed
a short laugh, which surprised her, she was so very serious.

"Your methods are so direct," he explained. "But of what am I vain,
Grizel? Is it my book?"

"No," she answered, "not about your book, but about meaner things.
What else could have made you dislocate your ankle rather than admit
that you had been rather silly?"

Now "silly" is no word to apply to a gentleman, and, despite his
forgiving nature, Tommy was a little disappointed in Grizel.

"I suppose it was a silly thing to do," he said, with just a touch of
stiffness.

"It was an ignoble thing," said she, sadly.

"I see. And I myself am the meaner thing than the book, am I?"

"Are you not?" she asked, so eagerly that he laughed again.

"It is the first compliment you have paid my book," he pointed out.

"I like the book very much," she answered gravely. "No one can be more
proud of your fame than I. You are hurting me very much by pretending
to think that it is a pleasure to me to find fault with you."  There
was no getting past the honesty of her, and he was touched by it.
Besides, she did admire him, and that, after all, is the great thing.

"Then why say such things, Grizel?" he replied good-naturedly.

"But if they are true?"

"Still let us avoid them," said he; and at that she was most
distressed.

"It is so like what you used to say when you were a boy!" she cried.

"You are so anxious to have me grow up," he replied, with proper
dolefulness. "If you like the book, Grizel, you must have patience
with the kind of thing that produced it. That night in the Den, when I
won your scorn, I was in the preliminary stages of composition. At
such times an author should be locked up; but I had got out, you see.
I was so enamoured of my little fancies that I forgot I was with you.
No wonder you were angry."

"I was not angry with you for forgetting me," she said sharply. (There
was no catching Grizel, however artful you were.) "But you were
sighing to yourself, you were looking as tragic as if some dreadful
calamity had occurred--"

"The idea that had suddenly come to me was a touching one," he said.

"But you looked triumphant, too."

"That was because I saw I could make something of it."  "Why did you
walk as if you were lame?"

"The man I was thinking of," Tommy explained, "had broken his leg. I
don't mind telling you that it was Corp."

He ought to have minded telling her, for it could only add to her
indignation; but he was too conceited to give weight to that.

"Corp's leg was not broken," said practical Grizel.

"I broke it for him," replied Tommy; and when he had explained, her
eyes accused him of heartlessness.

"If it had been my own," he said, in self-defence, "it should have
gone crack just the same."

"Poor Gavinia! Had you no feeling for her?"

"Gavinia was not there," Tommy replied triumphantly. "She had run off
with a soldier."

"You dared to conceive that?"

"It helped."

Grizel stamped her foot. "You could take away dear Gavinia's character
with a smile!"

"On the contrary," said Tommy, "my heart bled for her. Did you not
notice that I was crying?" But he could not make Grizel smile; so, to
please her, he said, with a smile that was not very sincere: "I wish I
were different, but that is how ideas come to me--at least, all those
that are of any value."

"Surely you could fight against them and drive them away?"

This to Tommy, who held out sugar to them to lure them to him! But
still he treated her with consideration.

"That would mean my giving up writing altogether, Grizel," he said
kindly.

"Then why not give it up?"

Really! But she admired him, and still he bore with her.

"I don't like the book," she said, "if it is written at such a cost."

"People say the book has done them good, Grizel."

"What does that matter, if it does you harm?" In her eagerness to
persuade him, her words came pell-mell. "If writing makes you live in
such an unreal world, it must do you harm. I see now what Mr. Cathro
meant, long ago, when he called you Senti----"

Tommy winced. "I remember what Mr. Cathro called me," he said, with
surprising hauteur for such a good-natured man. "But he does not call
me that now. No one calls me that now, except you, Grizel."

"What does that matter," she replied distressfully, "if it is true? In
the definition of sentimentality in the dictionary--"

He rose indignantly. "You have been looking me up in the dictionary,
have you, Grizel?"

"Yes, the night you told me you had hurt your ankle intentionally."

He laughed, without mirth now. "I thought you had put that down to
vanity."

"I think," she said, "it was vanity that gave you the courage to do
it." And he liked one word in this remark.

"Then you do give me credit for a little courage?"

"I think you could do the most courageous things," she told him, "so
long as there was no real reason why you should do them."

It was a shot that rang the bell. Oh, our Tommy heard it ringing. But,
to do him justice, he bore no malice; he was proud, rather, of
Grizel's marksmanship. "At least," he said meekly, "it was courageous
of me to tell you the truth in the end?" But, to his surprise, she
shook her head.

"No," she replied; "it was sweet of you. You did it impulsively,
because you were sorry for me, and I think it was sweet. But impulse
is not courage."

So now Tommy knew all about it. His plain-spoken critic had been
examining him with a candle, and had paid particular attention to his
defects; but against them she set the fact that he had done something
chivalrous for her, and it held her heart, though the others were in
possession of the head. "How like a woman!" he thought, with a
pleased smile. He knew them!

Still he was chagrined that she made so little of his courage, and it
was to stab her that he said, with subdued bitterness: "I always had a
suspicion that I was that sort of person, and it is pleasant to have
it pointed out by one's oldest friend. No one will ever accuse you of
want of courage, Grizel."

She was looking straight at him, and her eyes did not drop, but they
looked still more wistful. Tommy did not understand the courage that
made her say what she had said, but he knew he was hurting her; he
knew that if she was too plain-spoken it was out of loyalty, and that
to wound Grizel because she had to speak her mind was a shame--yes, he
always knew that.

But he could do it; he could even go on: "And it is satisfactory that
you have thought me out so thoroughly, because you will not need to
think me out any more. You know me now, Grizel, and can have no more
fear of me."

"When was I ever afraid of you?" she demanded. She was looking at him
suspiciously now.

"Never as a girl?" he asked. It jumped out of him. He was sorry as
soon as he had said it.

There was a long pause. "So you remembered it all the time," she said
quietly. "You have been making pretence--again!"  He asked her to
forgive him, and she nodded her head at once. "But why did you pretend
to have forgotten?"

"I thought it would please you, Grizel."

"Why should pretence please me?" She rose suddenly, in a white heat.
"You don't mean to say that you think I am afraid of you still?"

He said No a moment too late. He knew it was too late.

"Don't be angry with me, Grizel," he begged her, earnestly. "I am so
glad I was mistaken. It made me miserable. I have been a terrible
blunderer, but I mean well; I misread your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"They have always seemed to be watching me, and often there was such a
wistful look in them--it reminded me of the past."

"You thought I was still afraid of you! Say it," said Grizel, stamping
her foot. But he would not say it. It was not merely fear that he
thought he had seen in her eyes, you remember. This was still his
comfort, and, I suppose, it gave the touch of complacency to his face
that made Grizel merciless. She did not mean to be merciless, but only
to tell the truth. If some of her words were scornful, there was
sadness in her voice all the time, instead of triumph. "For years and
years," she said, standing straight as an elvint, "I have been able to
laugh at all the ignorant fears of my childhood; and if you don't
know why I have watched you and been unable to help watching you since
you came back, I shall tell you. But I think you might have guessed,
you who write books about women. It is because I liked you when you
were a boy. You were often horrid, but you were my first friend when
every other person was against me. You let me play with you when no
other boy or girl would let me play. And so, all the time you have
been away, I have been hoping that you were growing into a noble man;
and when you came back, I watched to see whether you were the noble
man I wanted you so much to be, and you are not. Do you see now why my
eyes look wistful? It is because I wanted to admire you, and I can't."

She went away, and the great authority on women raged about the room.
Oh, but he was galled! There had been five feet nine of him, but he
was shrinking. By and by the red light came into his eyes.




CHAPTER IX

GALLANT BEHAVIOUR OF T. SANDYS


There were now no fewer than three men engaged, each in his own way,
in the siege of Grizel, nothing in common between them except insulted
vanity. One was a broken fellow who took for granted that she
preferred to pass him by in the street. His bow was also an apology to
her for his existence. He not only knew that she thought him wholly
despicable, but agreed with her. In the long ago (yesterday, for
instance) he had been happy, courted, esteemed; he had even esteemed
himself, and so done useful work in the world. But she had flung him
to earth so heavily that he had made a hole in it out of which he
could never climb. There he lay damned, hers the glory of destroying
him--he hoped she was proud of her handiwork. That was one Thomas
Sandys, the one, perhaps, who put on the velvet jacket in the morning.
But it might be number two who took that jacket off at night. He was
a good-natured cynic, vastly amused by the airs this little girl put
on before a man of note, and he took a malicious pleasure in letting
her see that they entertained him. He goaded her intentionally into
expressions of temper, because she looked prettiest then, and trifled
with her hair (but this was in imagination only), and called her a
quaint child (but this was beneath his breath). The third--he might be
the one who wore the jacket--was a haughty boy who was not only done
with her for ever, but meant to let her see it. (His soul cried, Oh,
oh, for a conservatory and some of society's darlings, and Grizel at
the window to watch how he got on with them!) And now that I think of
it, there was also a fourth: Sandys, the grave author, whose life (in
two vols. 8vo.) I ought at this moment to be writing, without a word
about the other Tommies. They amused him a good deal. When they were
doing something big he would suddenly appear and take a note of it.

The boy, who was stiffly polite to her (when Tommy was angry he became
very polite), told her that he had been invited to the Spittal, the
seat of the Rintoul family, and that he understood there were some
charming girls there.

"I hope you will like them," Grizel said pleasantly.

"If you could see how they will like me!" he wanted to reply; but of
course he could not, and unfortunately there was no one by to say it
for him. Tommy often felt this want of a secretary.

The abject one found a glove of Grizel's, that she did not know she
had lost, and put it in his pocket. There it lay, unknown to her. He
knew that he must not even ask them to bury it with him in his grave.
This was a little thing to ask, but too much for him. He saw his
effects being examined after all that was mortal of T. Sandys had been
consigned to earth, and this pathetic little glove coming to light.
Ah, then, then Grizel would know! By the way, what would she have
known? I am sure I cannot tell you. Nor could Tommy, forced to face
the question in this vulgar way, have told you. Yet, whatever it was,
it gave him some moist moments. If Grizel saw him in this mood, her
reproachful look implied that he was sentimentalizing again. How
little this chit understood him!

The man of the world sometimes came upon the glove in his pocket, and
laughed at it, as such men do when they recall their callow youth. He
took walks with Grizel without her knowing that she accompanied him;
or rather, he let her come, she was so eager. In his imagination (for
bright were the dreams of Thomas!) he saw her looking longingly after
him, just as the dog looks; and then, not being really a cruel man, he
would call over his shoulder, "Put on your hat, little woman; you can
come." Then he conceived her wandering with him through the Den and
Caddam Wood, clinging to his arm and looking up adoringly at him.
"What a loving little soul it is!" he said, and pinched her ear,
whereat she glowed with pleasure. "But I forgot," he would add,
bantering her; "you don't admire me. Heigh-ho! Grizel wants to admire
me, but she can't!" He got some satisfaction out of these flights of
fancy, but it had a scurvy way of deserting him in the hour of
greatest need; where was it, for instance, when the real Grizel
appeared and fixed that inquiring eye on him?

He went to the Spittal several times, Elspeth with him when she cared
to go; for Lady Rintoul and all the others had to learn and remember
that, unless they made much of Elspeth, there could be no T. Sandys
for them. He glared at anyone, male or female, who, on being
introduced to Elspeth, did not remain, obviously impressed, by her
side. "Give pleasure to Elspeth or away I go," was written all over
him. And it had to be the right kind of pleasure, too. The ladies must
feel that she was more innocent than they, and talk accordingly. He
would walk the flower-garden with none of them until he knew for
certain that the man walking it with little Elspeth was a person to be
trusted. Once he was convinced of this, however, he was very much at
their service, and so little to be trusted himself that perhaps they
should have had careful brothers also. He told them, one at a time,
that they were strangely unlike all the other women he had known, and
held their hands a moment longer than was absolutely necessary, and
then went away, leaving them and him a prey to conflicting and
puzzling emotions.

Lord Rintoul, whose hair was so like his skin that in the family
portraits he might have been painted in one colour, could never rid
himself of the feeling that it must be a great thing to a writing chap
to get a good dinner; but her ladyship always explained him away with
an apologetic smile which went over his remarks like a piece of
india-rubber, so that in the end he had never said anything. She was a
slight, pretty woman of nearly forty, and liked Tommy because he
remembered so vividly her coming to the Spittal as a bride. He even
remembered how she had been dressed--her white bonnet, for instance.

"For long," Tommy said, musing, "I resented other women in white
bonnets; it seemed profanation."

"How absurd!" she told him, laughing. "You must have been quite a
small boy at the time."

"But with a lonely boy's passionate admiration for beautiful things,"
he answered; and his gravity was a gentle rebuke to her. "It was all a
long time ago," he said, taking both her hands in his, "but I never
forget, and, dear lady, I have often wanted to thank you." What he was
thanking her for is not precisely clear, but she knew that the
artistic temperament is an odd sort of thing, and from this time Lady
Rintoul liked Tommy, and even tried to find the right wife for him
among the families of the surrounding clergy. His step was sometimes
quite springy when he left the Spittal; but Grizel's shadow was always
waiting for him somewhere on the way home, to take the life out of
him, and after that it was again, oh, sorrowful disillusion! oh, world
gone gray! Grizel did not admire him. T. Sandys was no longer a wonder
to Grizel. He went home to that as surely as the labourer to his
evening platter.

And now we come to the affair of the Slugs. Corp had got a holiday,
and they were off together fishing the Drumly Water, by Lord Rintoul's
permission. They had fished the Drumly many a time without it, and
this was to be another such day as those of old. The one who woke at
four was to rouse the other. Never had either waked at four; but one
of them was married now, and any woman can wake at any hour she
chooses, so at four Corp was pushed out of bed, and soon thereafter
they took the road. Grizel's blinds were already up. "Do you mind,"
Corp said, "how often, when we had boasted we were to start at four
and didna get roaded till six, we wriggled by that window so that
Grizel shouldna see us?"

"She usually did see us," Tommy replied ruefully. "Grizel always
spotted us, Corp, when we had anything to hide, and missed us when we
were anxious to be seen."

"There was no jouking her," said Corp. "Do you mind how that used to
bother you?" a senseless remark to a man whom it was bothering
still--or shall we say to a boy? For the boy came back to Tommy when
he heard the Drumly singing; it was as if he had suddenly seen his
mother looking young again. There had been a thunder-shower as they
drew near, followed by a rush of wind that pinned them to a dike,
swept the road bare, banged every door in the glen, and then sank
suddenly as if it had never been, like a mole in the sand. But now the
sun was out, every fence and farm-yard rope was a string of diamond
drops. There was one to every blade of grass; they lurked among the
wild roses; larks, drunken with song, shook them from their wings. The
whole earth shone so gloriously with them that for a time Tommy ceased
to care whether he was admired. We can pay nature no higher
compliment.

But when they came to the Slugs! The Slugs of Kenny is a wild crevice
through which the Drumly cuts its way, black and treacherous, into a
lovely glade where it gambols for the rest of its short life; you
would not believe, to see it laughing, that it had so lately escaped
from prison. To the Slugs they made their way--not to fish, for any
trout that are there are thinking for ever of the way out and of
nothing else, but to eat their luncheon, and they ate it sitting on
the mossy stones their persons had long ago helped to smooth, and
looking at a roan-branch, which now, as then, was trailing in the
water.

There were no fish to catch, but there was a boy trying to catch them.
He was on the opposite bank; had crawled down it, only other boys can
tell how, a barefooted urchin of ten or twelve, with an enormous
bagful of worms hanging from his jacket button. To put a new worm on
the hook without coming to destruction, he first twisted his legs
about a young birch, and put his arms round it. He was after a big
one, he informed Corp, though he might as well have been fishing in a
treatise on the art of angling.

Corp exchanged pleasantries with him; told him that Tommy was Captain
Ure, and that he was his faithful servant Alexander Bett, both of
Edinburgh. Since the birth of his child, Corp had become something of
a humourist. Tommy was not listening. As he lolled in the sun he was
turning, without his knowledge, into one of the other Tommies. Let us
watch the process.

He had found a half-fledged mavis lying dead in the grass. Remember
also how the larks had sung after rain.

Tommy lost sight and sound of Corp and the boy. What he seemed to see
was a baby lark that had got out of its nest sideways, a fall of half
a foot only, but a dreadful drop for a baby. "You can get back this
way," its mother said, and showed it the way, which was quite easy,
but when the baby tried to leap, it fell on its back. Then the mother
marked out lines on the ground, from one to the other of which it was
to practise hopping, and soon it could hop beautifully so long as its
mother was there to say every moment, "How beautifully you hop!" "Now
teach me to hop up," the little lark said, meaning that it wanted to
fly; and the mother tried to do that also, but in vain; she could soar
up, up, up bravely, but could not explain how she did it. This
distressed her very much, and she thought hard about how she had
learned to fly long ago last year, but all she could recall for
certain was that you suddenly do it. "Wait till the sun comes out
after rain," she said, half remembering. "What is sun? What is rain?"
the little bird asked. "If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to
sing." "When the sun comes out after rain," the mother replied, "then
you will know how to sing." The rain came, and glued the little bird's
wings together. "I shall never be able to fly nor to sing," it wailed.
Then, of a sudden, it had to blink its eyes; for a glorious light had
spread over the world, catching every leaf and twig and blade of grass
in tears, and putting a smile into every tear. The baby bird's breast
swelled, it did not know why; and it fluttered from the ground, it did
not know how. "The sun has come out after the rain," it trilled.
"Thank you, sun; thank you, thank you! Oh, mother, did you hear me? I
can sing!" And it floated up, up, up, crying, "Thank you, thank you,
thank you!" to the sun. "Oh, mother, do you see me? I am flying!" And
being but a baby, it soon was gasping, but still it trilled the same
ecstasy, and when it fell panting to earth it still trilled, and the
distracted mother called to it to take breath or it would die, but it
could not stop. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" it sang to the sun
till its little heart burst.

With filmy eyes Tommy searched himself for the little pocket-book in
which he took notes of such sad thoughts as these, and in place of the
book he found a glove wrapped in silk paper. He sat there with it in
his hand, nodding his head over it so broken-heartedly you could not
have believed that he had forgotten it for several days.

Death was still his subject; but it was no longer a bird he saw: it
was a very noble young man, and his white, dead face stared at the sky
from the bottom of a deep pool. I don't know how he got there, but a
woman who would not admire him had something to do with it. No sun
after rain had come into that tragic life. To the water that had ended
it his white face seemed to be saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank
you." It was the old story of a faithless woman. He had given her his
heart, and she had played with it. For her sake he had striven to be
famous; for her alone had he toiled through dreary years in London,
the goal her lap, in which he should one day place his book--a poor,
trivial little work, he knew (yet much admired by the best critics).
Never had his thoughts wandered for one instant of that time to
another woman; he had been as faithful in life as in death; and now
she came to the edge of the pool and peered down at his staring eyes
and laughed.

He had got thus far when a shout from Corp brought him, dazed, to his
feet. It had been preceded by another cry, as the boy and the sapling
he was twisted round toppled into the river together, uprooted stones
and clods pounding after them and discolouring the pool into which the
torrent rushes between rocks, to swirl frantically before it dives
down a narrow channel and leaps into another caldron.

There was no climbing down those precipitous rocks. Corp was shouting,
gesticulating, impotent. "How can you stand so still?" he roared.

For Tommy was standing quite still, like one not yet thoroughly
awake. The boy's head was visible now and again as he was carried
round in the seething water; when he came to the outer ring down that
channel he must infallibly go, and every second or two he was in a
wider circle.

Tommy was awake now, and he could not stand still and see a boy drown
before his eyes. He knew that to attempt to save him was to face a
terrible danger, especially as he could not swim; but he kicked off
his boots. There was some gallantry in the man.

"You wouldna dare!" Corp cried, aghast.

Tommy hesitated for a moment, but he had abundance of physical
courage. He clenched his teeth and jumped. But before he jumped he
pushed the glove into Corp's hand, saying, "Give her that, and tell
her it never left my heart." He did not say who she was; he scarcely
knew that he was saying it. It was his dream intruding on reality, as
a wheel may revolve for a moment longer after the spring breaks.

Corp saw him strike the water and disappear. He tore along the bank as
he had never run before, until he got to the water's edge below the
Slugs, and climbed and fought his way to the scene of the disaster.
Before he reached it, however, we should have had no hero had not the
sapling, the cause of all this pother, made amends by barring the way
down the narrow channel. Tommy was clinging to it, and the boy to
him, and, at some risk, Corp got them both ashore, where they lay
gasping like fish in a creel.

The boy was the first to rise to look for his fishing-rod, and he was
surprised to find no six-pounder at the end of it. "She has broke the
line again!" he said; for he was sure then and ever afterwards that a
big one had pulled him in.

Corp slapped him for his ingratitude; but the man who had saved this
boy's life wanted no thanks. "Off to your home with you, wherever it
is," he said to the boy, who obeyed silently; and then to Corp: "He is
a little fool, Corp, but not such a fool as I am." He lay on his face,
shivering, not from cold, not from shock, but in a horror of himself.
I think it may fairly be said that he had done a brave if foolhardy
thing; it was certainly to save the boy that he had jumped, and he had
given himself a moment's time in which to draw back if he chose, which
vastly enhances the merit of the deed. But sentimentality had been
there also, and he was now shivering with a presentiment of the length
to which it might one day carry him.

They lit a fire among the rocks, at which he dried his clothes, and
then they set out for home, Corp doing all the talking. "What a town
there will be about this in Thrums!" was his text; and he was
surprised when Tommy at last broke silence by saying passionately:
"Never speak about this to me again, Corp, as long as you live.
Promise me that. Promise never to mention it to anyone. I want no one
to know what I did to-day, and no one will ever know unless you tell;
the boy can't tell, for we are strangers to him."

"He thinks you are a Captain Ure, and that I'm Alexander Bett, his
servant," said Corp. "I telled him that for a divert."

"Then let him continue to think that."

Of course Corp promised. "And I'll go to the stake afore I break my
promise," he swore, happily remembering one of the Jacobite oaths. But
he was puzzled. They would make so much of Tommy if they knew. They
would think him a wonder. Did he not want that?

"No," Tommy replied.

"You used to like it; you used to like it most michty."

"I have changed."

"Ay, you have; but since when? Since you took to making printed
books?"

Tommy did not say, but it was more recently than that. What he was
surrendering no one could have needed to be told less than he; the
magnitude of the sacrifice was what enabled him to make it. He was
always at home among the superlatives; it was the little things that
bothered him. In his present fear of the ride that sentimentality
might yet goad him to, he craved for mastery over self; he knew that
his struggles with his Familiar usually ended in an embrace, and he
had made a passionate vow that it should be so no longer. The best
beginning of the new man was to deny himself the glory that would be
his if his deed were advertised to the world. Even Grizel must never
know of it--Grizel, whose admiration was so dear to him. Thus he
punished himself, and again I think he deserves respect.




CHAPTER X

GAVINIA ON THE TRACK


Corp, you remember, had said that he would go to the stake rather than
break his promise; and he meant it, too, though what the stake was,
and why such a pother about going to it, he did not know. He was to
learn now, however, for to the stake he had to go. This was because
Gavinia, when folding up his clothes, found in one of the pockets a
glove wrapped in silk paper.

Tommy had forgotten it until too late, for when he asked Corp for the
glove it was already in Gavinia's possession, and she had declined to
return it without an explanation. "You must tell her nothing," Tommy
said sternly. He was uneasy, but relieved to find that Corp did not
know whose glove it was, nor even why gentlemen carry a lady's glove
in their pocket.

At first Gavinia was mildly curious only, but her husband's refusal to
answer any questions roused her dander. She tried cajolery, fried his
take of trout deliciously for him, and he sat down to them sniffing.
They were small, and the remainder of their brief career was in two
parts. First he lifted them by the tail, then he laid down the tail.
But not a word about the glove.

She tried tears. "Dinna greet, woman," he said in distress. "What
would the bairn say if he kent I made you greet?"

Gavinia went on greeting, and the baby, waking up, promptly took her
side.

"D----n the thing!" said Corp.

"Your ain bairn!"

"I meant the glove!" he roared.

It was curiosity only that troubled Gavinia. A reader of romance, as
you may remember, she had encountered in the printed page a score of
ladies who, on finding such parcels in their husbands' pockets, left
their homes at once and for ever, and she had never doubted but that
it was the only course to follow; such is the power of the writer of
fiction. But when the case was her own she was merely curious; such
are the limitations of the writer of fiction. That there was a woman
in it she did not believe for a moment. This, of course, did not
prevent her saying, with a sob, "Wha is the woman?"

With great earnestness Corp assured her that there was no woman. He
even proved it: "Just listen to reason, Gavinia. If I was sich a
black as to be chief wi' ony woman, and she wanted to gie me a
present, weel, she might gie me a pair o' gloves, but one glove, what
use would one glove be to me? I tell you, if a woman had the impidence
to gie me one glove, I would fling it in her face."

Nothing could have been clearer, and he had put it thus considerately
because when a woman, even the shrewdest of them, is excited (any man
knows this), one has to explain matters to her as simply and patiently
as if she were a four-year-old; yet Gavinia affected to be
unconvinced, and for several days she led Corp the life of a lodger in
his own house.

"Hands off that poor innocent," she said when he approached the baby.

If he reproved her, she replied meekly, "What can you expect frae a
woman that doesna wear gloves?"

To the baby she said: "He despises you, my bonny, because you hae no
gloves. Ay, that's what maks him turn up his nose at you. But your
mother is fond o' you, gloves or no gloves."

She told the baby the story of the glove daily, with many monstrous
additions.

When Corp came home from his work, she said that a poor, love-lorn
female had called with a boot for him, and a request that he should
carry it in the pocket of his Sabbath breeks.

Worst of all, she listened to what he said in the night. Corp had a
habit of talking in his sleep. He was usually taking tickets at such
times, and it had been her custom to stop him violently; but now she
changed her tactics: she encouraged him. "I would be lying in my bed,"
he said to Tommy, "dreaming that a man had fallen into the Slugs, and
instead o' trying to save him I cried out, 'Tickets there, all tickets
ready,' and first he hands me a glove and neist he hands me a boot and
havers o' that kind sich as onybody dreams. But in the middle o' my
dream it comes ower me that I had better waken up to see what
Gavinia's doing, and I open my een, and there she is, sitting up,
hearkening avidly to my every word, and putting sly questions to me
about the glove."

"What glove?" Tommy asked coldly.

"The glove in silk paper."

"I never heard of it," said Tommy.

Corp sighed. "No," he said loyally, "neither did I"; and he went back
to the station and sat gloomily in a wagon. He got no help from Tommy,
not even when rumours of the incident at the Slugs became noised
abroad.

"A'body kens about the laddie now," he said.

"What laddie?" Tommy inquired.

"Him that fell into the Slugs."

"Ah, yes," Tommy said; "I have just been reading about it in the
paper. A plucky fellow, this Captain Ure who saved him. I wonder who
he is."

"I wonder!" Corp said with a groan.

"There was an Alexander Bett with him, according to the papers," Tommy
went on. "Do you know any Bett?"

"It's no a Thrums name," Corp replied thankfully. "I just made it up."

"What do you mean?" Tommy asked blankly.

Corp sighed, and went back again to the wagon. He was particularly
truculent that evening when the six-o'clock train came in. "Tickets,
there; look slippy wi' your tickets." His head bobbed up at the window
of another compartment. "Tick----" he began, and then he ducked.

The compartment contained a boy looking as scared as if he had just
had his face washed, and an old woman who was clutching a large linen
bag as if expecting some scoundrel to appear through the floor and
grip it. With her other hand she held on to the boy, and being unused
to travel, they were both sitting very self-conscious, humble, and
defiant, like persons in church who have forgotten to bring their
Bible. The general effect, however, was lost on Corp, for whom it was
enough that in one of them he recognized the boy of the Slugs. He
thought he had seen the old lady before, also, but he could not give
her a name. It was quite a relief to him to notice that she was not
wearing gloves.

He heard her inquiring for one Alexander Bett, and being told that
there was no such person in Thrums, "He's married on a woman of the
name of Gavinia," said the old lady; and then they directed her to the
house of the only Gavinia in the place. With dark forebodings Corp
skulked after her. He remembered who she was now. She was the old
woman with the nut-cracker face on whom he had cried in, more than a
year ago, to say that Gavinia was to have him. Her mud cottage had
been near the Slugs. Yes, and this was the boy who had been supping
porridge with her. Corp guessed rightly that the boy had remembered
his unlucky visit. "I'm doomed!" Corp muttered to himself--pronouncing
it in another way.

The woman, the boy, and the bag entered the house of Gavinia, and
presently she came out with them. She was looking very important and
terrible. They went straight to Ailie's cottage, and Corp was
wondering why, when he suddenly remembered that Tommy was to be there
at tea to-day.




CHAPTER XI

THE TEA-PARTY


It was quite a large tea-party, and was held in what had been the
school-room; nothing there now, however, to recall an academic past,
for even the space against which a map of the world (Mercator's
projection) had once hung was gone the colour of the rest of the
walls, and with it had faded away the last relic of the Hanky School.

"It will not fade so quickly from my memory," Tommy said, to please
Mrs. McLean. His affection for his old schoolmistress was as sincere
as hers for him. I could tell you of scores of pretty things he had
done to give her pleasure since his return, all carried out, too, with
a delicacy which few men could rival, and never a woman; but they
might make you like him, so we shall pass them by.

Ailie said, blushing, that she had taught him very little. "Everything
I know," he replied, and then, with a courteous bow to the gentleman
opposite, "except what I learned from Mr. Cathro."

"Thank you," Cathro said shortly. Tommy had behaved splendidly to him,
and called him his dear preceptor, and yet the Dominie still itched to
be at him with the tawse as of old. "And fine he knows I'm itching,"
he reflected, which made him itch the more.

It should have been a most successful party, for in the rehearsals
between the hostess and her maid Christina every conceivable
difficulty had been ironed out. Ailie was wearing her black silk, but
without the Honiton lace, so that Miss Sophia Innes need not become
depressed; and she had herself taken the chair with the weak back. Mr.
Cathro, who, though a lean man, needed a great deal of room at table,
had been seated far away from the spinet, to allow Christina to pass
him without climbing. Miss Sophia and Grizel had the doctor between
them, and there was also a bachelor, but an older one, for Elspeth.
Mr. McLean, as stout and humoursome as of yore, had solemnly promised
his wife to be jocular but not too jocular. Neither minister could
complain, for if Mr. Dishart had been asked to say grace, Mr. Gloag
knew that he was to be called on for the benediction. Christina,
obeying strict orders, glided round the table leisurely, as if she
were not in the least excited, though she could be heard rushing
along the passage like one who had entered for a race. And, lastly,
there was, as chief guest, the celebrated Thomas Sandys. It should
have been a triumph of a tea-party, and yet it was not. Mrs. McLean
could not tell why.

Grizel could have told why; her eyes told why every time they rested
scornfully on Mr. Sandys. It was he, they said, who was spoiling the
entertainment, and for the pitiful reason that the company were not
making enough of him. He was the guest of the evening, but they were
talking admiringly of another man, and so he sulked. Oh, how she
scorned Tommy!

That other man was, of course, the unknown Captain Ure, gallant
rescuer of boys, hero of all who admire brave actions except the
jealous Sandys. Tommy had pooh-poohed him from the first, to Grizel's
unutterable woe.

"Have you not one word of praise for such a splendid deed?" she had
asked in despair.

"I see nothing splendid about it," he replied coldly.

"I advise you in your own interests not to talk in that way to
others," she said. "Don't you see what they will say?"

"I can't help that," answered Tommy the just. "If they ask my opinion,
I must give them the truth. I thought you were fond of the truth,
Grizel."  To that she could only wring her hands and say nothing; but
it had never struck her that the truth could be so bitter.

And now he was giving his opinion at Mrs. McLean's party, and they
were all against him, except, in a measure, Elspeth's bachelor, who
said cheerily, "We should all have done it if we had been in Captain
Ure's place; I would have done it myself, Miss Elspeth, though not
fond of the water." He addressed all single ladies by their Christian
name with a Miss in front of it. This is the mark of the confirmed
bachelor, and comes upon him at one-and-twenty.

"I could not have done it," Grizel replied decisively, though she was
much the bravest person present, and he explained that he meant the
men only. His name was James Bonthron; let us call him Mr. James.

"Men are so brave!" she responded, with her eyes on Tommy, and he
received the stab in silence. Had the blood spouted from the wound, it
would have been an additional gratification to him. Tommy was like
those superb characters of romance who bare their breast to the enemy
and say, "Strike!"

"Well, well," Mr. Cathro observed, "none of us was on the spot, and so
we had no opportunity of showing our heroism. But you were near by,
Mr. Sandys, and if you had fished up the water that day, instead of
down, you might have been called upon. I wonder what you would have
done?"

Yes, Tommy was exasperating to him still as in the long ago, and
Cathro said this maliciously, yet feeling that he did a risky thing,
so convinced was he by old experience that you were getting in the way
of a road-machine when you opposed Thomas Sandys.

"I wonder," Tommy replied quietly.

The answer made a poor impression, and Cathro longed to go on. "But he
was always most dangerous when he was quiet," he reflected uneasily,
and checked himself in sheer funk.

Mr. Gloag came, as he thought, to Tommy's defence. "If Mr. Sandys
questions," he said heavily, "whether courage would have been
vouchsafed to him at that trying hour, it is right and fitting that he
should admit it with Christian humility."

"Quite so, quite so," Mr. James agreed, with heartiness. He had begun
to look solemn at the word "vouchsafed."

"For we are differently gifted," continued Mr. Gloag, now addressing
his congregation. "To some is given courage, to some learning, to some
grace. Each has his strong point," he ended abruptly, and tucked
reverently into the jam, which seemed to be his.

"If he would not have risked his life to save the boy," Elspeth
interposed hotly, "it would have been because he was thinking of me."

"I should like to believe that thought of you would have checked me,"
Tommy said.

"I am sure it would," said Grizel.

Mr. Cathro was rubbing his hands together covertly, yet half wishing
he could take her aside and whisper: "Be canny; it's grand to hear
you, but be canny; he is looking most extraordinar meek, and unless he
has cast his skin since he was a laddie, it's not chancey to meddle
with him when he is meek."

The doctor also noticed that Grizel was pressing Tommy too hard, and
though he did not like the man, he was surprised--he had always
thought her so fair-minded.

"For my part," he said, "I don't admire the unknown half so much for
what he did as for his behaviour afterwards. To risk his life was
something, but to disappear quietly without taking any credit for it
was finer and I should say much more difficult."

"I think it was sweet of him," Grizel said.

"I don't see it," said Tommy, and the silence that followed should
have been unpleasant to him; but he went on calmly: "Doubtless it was
a mere impulse that made him jump into the pool, and impulse is not
courage." He was quoting Grizel now, you observe, and though he did
not look at her, he knew her eyes were fixed on him reproachfully.
"And so," he concluded, "I suppose Captain Ure knew he had done no
great thing, and preferred to avoid exaggerated applause."

Even Elspeth was troubled; but she must defend her dear brother. "He
would have avoided it himself," she explained quickly. "He dislikes
praise so much that he does not understand how sweet it is to smaller
people."

This made Tommy wince. He was always distressed when timid Elspeth
blurted out things of this sort in company, and not the least of his
merits was that he usually forbore from chiding her for it afterwards,
so reluctant was he to hurt her. In a world where there were no women
except Elspeths, Tommy would have been a saint. He saw the doctor
smiling now, and at once his annoyance with her changed to wrath
against him for daring to smile at little Elspeth. She saw the smile,
too, and blushed; but she was not angry: she knew that the people who
smiled at her liked her, and that no one smiled so much at her as Dr.
Gemmell.

The Dominie said fearfully: "I have no doubt that explains it, Miss
Sandys. Even as a boy I remember your brother had a horror of vulgar
applause."

"Now," he said to himself, "he will rise up and smite me." But no;
Tommy replied quietly;

"I am afraid that was not my character, Mr. Cathro; but I hope I have
changed since then, and that I could pull a boy out of the water
without wanting to be extolled for it."

That he could say such things before her was terrible to Grizel. It
was perhaps conceivable that he might pull the boy out of the water,
as he so ungenerously expressed it; but that he could refrain from
basking in the glory thereof, that, she knew, was quite impossible.
Her eyes begged him to take back those shameful words, but he bravely
declined; not even to please Grizel could he pretend that what was not
was. No more sentiment for T. Sandys.

"The spirit has all gone out of him; what am I afraid of?" reflected
the Dominie, and he rose suddenly to make a speech, tea-cup in hand.
"Cathro, Cathro, you tattie-doolie, you are riding to destruction,"
said a warning voice within him, but against his better judgment he
stifled it and began. He begged to propose the health of Captain Ure.
He was sure they would all join with him cordially in drinking it,
including Mr. Sandys, who unfortunately differed from them in his
estimation of the hero; that was only, however, as had been
conclusively shown, because he was a hero himself, and so could make
light of heroic deeds--with other sly hits at Mr. Sandys. But when all
the others rose to drink the toast, Tommy remained seated. The Dominie
coughed.  "Perhaps Mr. Sandys means to reply," Grizel suggested
icily. And it was at this uncomfortable moment that Christina appeared
suddenly, and in a state of suppressed excitement requested her
mistress to speak with her behind the door. All the knowing ones were
aware that something terrible must have happened in the kitchen. Miss
Sophia thought it might be the china tea-pot. She smiled reassuringly
to signify that, whatever it was, she would help Mrs. McLean through,
and so did Mr. James. He was a perfect lady.

How dramatic it all was, as Ailie said frequently afterwards. She was
back in a moment, with her hand on her heart. "Mr. Sandys," were her
astounding words, "a lady wants to see you."

Tommy rose in surprise, as did several of the others.

"Was it really you?" Ailie cried. "She says it was you!"

"I don't understand, Mrs. McLean," he answered; "I have done nothing."

"But she says--and she is at the door!"

All eyes turned on the door so longingly that it opened under their
pressure, and a boy who had been at the keyhole stumbled forward.

"That's him!" he announced, pointing a stern finger at Mr. Sandys.

"But he says he did not do it," Ailie said.

"He's a liar," said the boy.  His manner was that of the police, and
it had come so sharply upon Tommy that he looked not unlike a detected
criminal.

Most of them thought he was being accused of something vile, and the
Dominie demanded, with a light heart, "Who is the woman?" while Mr.
James had a pleasant feeling that the ladies should be requested to
retire. But just then the woman came in, and she was much older than
they had expected.

"That's him, granny," the boy said, still severely; "that's the man as
saved my life at the Slugs." And then, when the truth was dawning on
them all, and there were exclamations of wonder, a pretty scene
suddenly presented itself, for the old lady, who had entered with the
timidest courtesy, slipped down on her knees before Tommy and kissed
his hand. That young rascal of a boy was all she had.

They were all moved by her simplicity, but none quite so much as
Tommy. He gulped with genuine emotion, and saw her through a maze of
beautiful thoughts that delayed all sense of triumph and even made him
forget, for a little while, to wonder what Grizel was thinking of him
now. As the old lady poured out her thanks tremblingly, he was
excitedly planning her future. He was a poor man, but she was to be
brought by him into Thrums to a little cottage overgrown with roses.
No more hard work for these dear old hands. She could sell scones,
perhaps. She should have a cow. He would send the boy to college and
make a minister of him; she should yet hear her grandson preach in the
church to which as a boy--

But here the old lady somewhat imperilled the picture by rising
actively and dumping upon the table the contents of the bag--a fowl
for Tommy.

She was as poor an old lady as ever put a halfpenny into the church
plate on Sundays; but that she should present a hen to the preserver
of her grandson, her mind had been made up from the moment she had
reason to think she could find him, and it was to be the finest hen in
all the country round. She was an old lady of infinite spirit, and
daily, dragging the boy with her lest he again went a-fishing, she
trudged to farms near and far to examine and feel their hens. She was
a brittle old lady who creaked as she walked, and cracked like a
whin-pod in the heat, but she did her dozen miles or more a day, and
passed all the fowls in review, and could not be deceived by the
craftiest of farmers' wives; and in the tail of the day she became
possessor, and did herself thraw the neck of the stoutest and toughest
hen that ever entered a linen bag head foremost. By this time the boy
had given way in the legs, and hence the railway journey, its cost
defrayed by admiring friends.

With careful handling he should get a week out of her gift, she
explained complacently, besides two makes of broth; and she and the
boy looked as if they would like dearly to sit opposite Tommy during
those seven days and watch him gorging.

If you look at the matter aright it was a handsomer present than many
a tiara, but if you are of the same stuff as Mr. James it was only a
hen. Mr. James tittered, and one or two others made ready to titter.
It was a moment to try Tommy, for there are doubtless heroes as
gallant as he who do not know how to receive a present of a hen.
Grizel, who had been holding back, moved a little nearer. If he hurt
that sweet old woman's feelings, she could never forgive him--never!

He heard the titter, and ridicule was terrible to him; but he also
knew why Grizel had come closer, and what she wanted of him. Our
Tommy, in short, had emerged from his emotion, and once more knew what
was what. It was not his fault that he stood revealed a hero: the
little gods had done it; therefore let him do credit to the chosen of
the little gods. The way he took that old lady's wrinkled hand, and
bowed over it, and thanked her, was an ode to manhood. Everyone was
touched. Those who had been about to titter wondered what on earth Mr.
James had seen to titter at, and Grizel almost clapped her hands with
joy; she would have done it altogether had not Tommy just then made
the mistake of looking at her for approval. She fell back, and,
intoxicated with himself, he thought it was because her heart was too
full for utterance. Tommy was now splendid, and described the affair
at the Slugs with an adorable modesty.

"I assure you, it was a much smaller thing to do than you imagine; it
was all over in a few minutes; I knew that in your good nature you
would make too much of it, and so--foolishly, I can see now--I tried
to keep it from you. As for the name Captain Ure, it was an invention
of that humourous dog, Corp."

And so on, with the most considerate remarks when they insisted on
shaking hands with him: "I beseech you, don't apologize to me; I see
clearly that the fault was entirely my own. Had I been in your place,
Mr. James, I should have behaved precisely as you have done, and had
you been at the Slugs you would have jumped in as I did. Mr. Cathro,
you pain me by holding back; I assure you I esteem my old Dominie more
than ever for the way in which you stuck up for Captain Ure, though
you must see why I could not drink that gentleman's health."

And Mr. Cathro made the best of it, wringing Tommy's hand effusively,
while muttering, "Fool, donnard stirk, gowk!" He was addressing
himself and any other person who might be so presumptuous as to try to
get the better of Thomas Sandys. Cathro never tried it again. Had
Tommy died that week his old Dominie would have been very chary of
what he said at the funeral.

They were in the garden now, the gentlemen without their hats. "Have
you made your peace with him?" Cathro asked Grizel, in a cautious
voice. "He is a devil's buckie, and I advise you to follow my example,
Miss McQueen, and capitulate. I have always found him reasonable so
long as you bend the knee to him."

"I am not his enemy," replied Grizel, loftily, "and if he has done a
noble thing I am proud of him and will tell him so."

"I would tell him so," said the Dominie, "whether he had done it or
not."

"Do you mean," she asked indignantly, "that you think he did not do
it?"

"No, no, no," he answered hurriedly; "or mercy's sake, don't tell him
I think that." And then, as Tommy was out of ear-shot: "But I see
there is no necessity for my warning you against standing in his way
again, Miss McQueen, for you are up in arms for him now."

"I admire brave men," she replied, "and he is one, is he not?"

"You'll find him reasonable," said the Dominie, drily.

But though it was thus that she defended Tommy when others hinted
doubts, she had not yet said she was proud of him to the man who
wanted most to hear it. For one brief moment Grizel had exulted on
learning that he and Captain Ure were one, and then suddenly, to all
the emotions now running within her, a voice seemed to cry, "Halt!"
and she fell to watching sharply the doer of noble deeds. Her eyes
were not wistful, nor were they contemptuous, but had Tommy been less
elated with himself he might have seen that they were puzzled and
suspicious. To mistrust him in face of such evidence seemed half a
shame; she was indignant with herself even while she did it; but she
could not help doing it, the truth about Tommy was such a vital thing
to Grizel. She had known him so well, too well, up to a minute ago,
and this was not the man she had known.

How unfair she was to Tommy while she watched! When the old lady was
on her knees thanking him, and every other lady was impressed by the
feeling he showed, it seemed to Grizel that he was again in the arms
of some such absurd sentiment as had mastered him in the Den. When he
behaved so charmingly about the gift she was almost sure he looked at
her as he had looked in the old days before striding his legs and
screaming out, "Oh, am I not a wonder? I see by your face that you
think me a wonder!" All the time he was so considerately putting those
who had misjudged him at their ease she believed he did it
considerately that they might say to each other, "How considerate he
is!" When she misread Tommy in such comparative trifles as these, is
it to be wondered that she went into the garden still tortured by a
doubt about the essential? It was nothing less than torture to her;
when you discover what is in her mind, Tommy, you may console yourself
with that.

He discovered what was in her mind as Mr. Cathro left her. She felt
shy, he thought, of coming to him after what had taken place, and,
with the generous intention of showing that she was forgiven, he
crossed good-naturedly to her.

"You were very severe, Grizel," he said, "but don't let that distress
you for a moment; it served me right for not telling the truth at
once."

She did not flinch. "Do we know the truth now?" she asked, looking at
him steadfastly. "I don't want to hurt you--you know that; but please
tell me, did you really do it? I mean, did you do it in the way we
have been led to suppose?"

It was a great shock to Tommy. He had not forgotten his vows to change
his nature, and had she been sympathetic now he would have confessed
to her the real reason of his silence. He wanted boyishly to tell her,
though of course without mention of the glove; but her words hardened
him.

"Grizel!" he cried reproachfully, and then in a husky voice: "Can you
really think so badly of me as that?"

"I don't know what to think," she answered, pressing her hands
together, "I know you are very clever."

He bowed slightly.

"Did you?" she asked again. She was no longer chiding herself for
being over-careful; she must know the truth.

He was silent for a moment. Then, "Grizel," he said, "I am about to
pain you very much, but you give me no option. I did do it precisely
as you have heard. And may God forgive you for doubting me," he added
with a quiver, "as freely as I do."

You will scarcely believe this, but a few minutes afterwards, Grizel
having been the first to leave, he saw her from the garden going, not
home, but in the direction of Corp's house, obviously to ask him
whether Tommy had done it. Tommy guessed her intention at once, and he
laughed a bitter ho-ho-ha, and wiped her from his memory.

"Farewell, woman; I am done with you," are the terrible words you may
conceive Tommy saying. Next moment, however, he was hurriedly bidding
his hostess good-night, could not even wait for Elspeth, clapped his
hat on his head, and was off after Grizel. It had suddenly struck him
that, now the rest of the story was out, Corp might tell her about the
glove. Suppose Gavinia showed it to her!

Sometimes he had kissed that glove passionately, sometimes pressed his
lips upon it with the long tenderness that is less intoxicating but
makes you a better man; but now, for the first time, he asked himself
bluntly why he had done those things, with the result that he was
striding to Corp's house. It was not only for his own sake that he
hurried; let us do him that justice. It was chiefly to save Grizel the
pain of thinking that he whom she had been flouting loved her, as she
must think if she heard the story of the glove. That it could be
nothing but pain to her he was boyishly certain, for assuredly this
scornful girl wanted none of his love. And though she was scornful,
she was still the dear companion of his boyhood. Tommy was honestly
anxious to save Grizel the pain of thinking that she had flouted a man
who loved her.

He took a different road from hers, but, to his annoyance, they met at
Couthie's corner. He would have passed her with a distant bow, but she
would have none of that.  "You have followed me," said Grizel, with
the hateful directness that was no part of Tommy's character.

"Grizel!"

"You followed me to see whether I was going to question Corp. You were
afraid he would tell me what really happened. You wanted to see him
first to tell him what to say."

"Really, Grizel--"

"Is it not true?"

There are no questions so offensive to the artistic nature as those
that demand a Yes or No for answer. "It is useless for me to say it is
not true," he replied haughtily, "for you won't believe me."

"Say it and I shall believe you," said she.

Tommy tried standing on the other foot, but it was no help. "I presume
I may have reasons for wanting to see Corp that you are unacquainted
with," he said.

"Oh, I am sure of it!" replied Grizel, scornfully. She had been hoping
until now, but there was no more hope left in her.

"May I ask what it is that my oldest friend accuses me of? Perhaps you
don't even believe that I was Captain Ure?"

"I am no longer sure of it."

"How you read me, Grizel! I could hoodwink the others, but never you.
I suppose it is because you have such an eye for the worst in
anyone."

It was not the first time he had said something of this kind to her;
for he knew that she suspected herself of being too ready to find
blemishes in others, to the neglect of their better qualities, and
that this made her uneasy and also very sensitive to the charge.
To-day, however, her own imperfections did not matter to her; she was
as nothing to herself just now, and scarcely felt his insinuations.

"I think you were Captain Ure," she said slowly, "and I think you did
it, but not as the boy imagines."

"You may be quite sure," he replied, "that I would not have done it
had there been the least risk. That, I flatter myself, is how you
reason it out."

"It does not explain," she said, "why you kept the matter secret."

"Thank you, Grizel! Well, at least I have not boasted of it."

"No, and that is what makes me----" She paused.

"Go on," said he, "though I can guess what agreeable thing you were
going to say."

But she said something else: "You may have noticed that I took the boy
aside and questioned him privately."

"I little thought then, Grizel, that you suspected me of being an
impostor."

She clenched her hands again; it was all so hard to say, and yet she
must say it! "I did not. I saw he believed his story. I was asking him
whether you had planned his coming with it to Mrs. McLean's house at
that dramatic moment."

"You actually thought me capable of that!"

"It makes me horrid to myself," she replied wofully, "but if I thought
you had done that I could more readily believe the rest."

"Very well, Grizel," he said, "go on thinking the worst of me; I would
not deprive you of that pleasure if I could."

"Oh, cruel, cruel!" she could have replied; "you know it is no
pleasure; you know it is a great pain." But she did not speak.

"I have already told you that the boy's story is true," he said, "and
now you ask me why I did not shout it from the housetops myself.
Perhaps it was for your sake, Grizel; perhaps it was to save you the
distress of knowing that in a momentary impulse I could so far forget
myself as to act the part of a man."

She pressed her hands more tightly. "I may be wronging you," she
answered; "I should love to think so; but--you have something you want
to say to Corp before I see him."

"Not at all," Tommy said; "if you still want to see Corp, let us go
together."  She hesitated, but she knew how clever he was. "I prefer
to go alone," she replied. "Forgive me if I ask you to turn back."

"Don't go," he entreated her. "Grizel, I give you my word of honour it
is to save you acute pain that I want to see Corp first."  She smiled
wanly at that, for though, as we know, it was true, she misunderstood
him. He had to let her go on alone.




CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH A COMEDIAN CHALLENGES TRAGEDY TO BOWLS


When Grizel opened the door of Corp's house she found husband and wife
at home, the baby in his father's arms; what is more, Gavinia was
looking on smiling and saying, "You bonny litlin, you're windy to have
him dandling you; and no wonder, for he's a father to be proud o'."
Corp was accepting it all with a complacent smirk. Oh, agreeable
change since last we were in this house! oh, happy picture of domestic
bliss! oh--but no, these are not the words; what we meant to say was,
"Gavinia, you limmer, so you have got the better of that man of yours
at last."

How had she contrived it? We have seen her escorting the old lady to
the Dovecot, Corp skulking behind. Our next peep at them shows Gavinia
back at her house, Corp peering through the window and wondering
whether he dare venture in. Gavinia was still bothered, for though she
knew now the story of Tommy's heroism, there was no glove in it, and
it was the glove that maddened her.

"No, I ken nothing about a glove," the old lady had assured her.

"Not a sylup was said about a glove," maintained Christina, who had
given her a highly coloured narrative of what took place in Mrs.
McLean's parlour.

"And yet there's a glove in't as sure as there's a quirk in't,"
Gavinia kept muttering to herself. She rose to have another look at
the hoddy-place in which she had concealed the glove from her husband,
and as she did so she caught sight of him at the window. He bobbed at
once, but she hastened to the door to scarify him. The clock had given
only two ticks when she was upon him, but in that time she had
completely changed her plan of action. She welcomed him with smiles of
pride. Thus is the nimbleness of women's wit measured once and for
all. They need two seconds if they are to do the thing comfortably.

"Never to have telled me, and you behaved so grandly!" she cried, with
adoring glances that were as a carpet on which he strode pompously
into the house.

"It wasna me that did it; it was him," said Corp, and even then he
feared that he had told too much. "I kenna what you're speaking
about," he added loyally.

"Corp," she answered, "you needna be so canny, for the laddie is in
the town, and Mr. Sandys has confessed all."

"The whole o't?"

"Every risson."

"About the glove, too?"

"Glove and all," said wicked Gavinia, and she continued to feast her
eyes so admiringly on her deceived husband that he passed quickly from
the gratified to the dictatorial.

"Let this be a lesson to you, woman," he said sternly; and Gavinia
intimated with humility that she hoped to profit by it.

"Having got the glove in so solemn a way," he went on, "it would have
been ill done of me to blab to you about it. Do you see that now,
woman?"

She said it was as clear as day to her. "And a solemn way it was," she
added, and then waited eagerly.

"My opinion," continued Corp, lowering his voice as if this were not
matter for the child, "is that it's a love-token frae some London
woman."

"Behear's!" cried Gavinia.

"Else what," he asked, "would make him hand it to me so solemn-like,
and tell me to pass it on to her if he was drowned? I didna think o'
that at the time, but it has come to me, Gavinia; it has come."

This was a mouthful indeed to Gavinia. So the glove was the property
of Mr. Sandys, and he was in love with a London lady, and--no, this is
too slow for Gavinia; she saw these things in passing, as one who
jumps from the top of a house may have lightning glimpses through many
windows on the way down. What she jumped to was the vital question,
Who was the woman?

But she was too cunning to ask a leading question.

"Ay, she's his lady-love," she said, controlling herself, "but I
forget her name. It was a very wise-like thing o' you to speir the
woman's name."

"But I didna."

"You didna!"

"He was in the water in a klink."

Had Gavinia been in Corp's place she would have had the name out of
Tommy, water or no water; but she did not tell her husband what she
thought of him.

"Ay, of course," she said pleasantly. "It was after you helped him out
that he telled you her name."

"Did he say he telled me her name?"

"He did."

"Well, then, I've fair forgot it."

Instead of boxing his ears she begged him to reflect. Result of
reflection, that if the name had been mentioned to Corp, which he
doubted, it began with M.

Was it Mary?

That was the name.

Or was it Martha?

It had a taste of Martha about it.

It was not Margaret?

It might have been Margaret.

Or Matilda?

It was fell like Matilda.

And so on. "But wi' a' your wheedling," Corp reminded his wife,
bantering her from aloft, "you couldna get a scraping out o' me till I
was free to speak."

He thought it a good opportunity for showing Gavinia her place once
and for all. "In small matters," he said, "I gie you your ain way, for
though you may be wrang, thinks I to mysel', 'She's but a woman'; but
in important things, Gavinia, if I humoured you I would spoil you, so
let this be a telling to you that there's no diddling a determined
man"; to which she replied by informing the baby that he had a father
to be proud of.

A father to be proud of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she
entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in
that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who
had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep
the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been
won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy's
mistake, he was swaggering in that other's clothes (oh, baser still!).
Everything was revealed to her in a flash, and she stooped over the
baby to hide a sudden tear. She did not want to hear any more.

The baby cried. Babies are aware that they can't do very much; but all
of them who knew Grizel were almost contemptuously confident of their
power over her, and when this one saw (they are very sharp) that in
his presence she could actually think of something else, he was so
hurt that he cried.

Was she to be blamed for thinking so meanly of Tommy? You can blame
her with that tear in her eye if you choose; but I can think only of
the gladness that came afterwards when she knew she had been unjust to
him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the bird sang to its Creator
when the sun came out after rain, and it was Grizel's song as she
listened to Corp's story of heroic Tommy. There was no room in her
exultant heart for remorse. It would have shown littleness to be able
to think of herself at all when she could think so gloriously of him.
She was more than beautiful now; she was radiant; and it was because
Tommy was the man she wanted him to be. As those who are cold hold
out their hands to the fire did she warm her heart at what Corp had to
tell, and the great joy that was lit within her made her radiant. Now
the baby was in her lap, smiling back to her. He thought he had done
it all. "So you thought you could resist me!" the baby crowed.

The glove had not been mentioned yet. "The sweetest thing of all to
me," Grizel said, "is that he did not want me to hear the story from
you, Corp, because he knew you would sing his praise so loudly."

"I'm thinking," said Gavinia, archly, "he had another reason for no
wanting you to question Corp. Maybe he didna want you to ken about the
London lady and her glove. Will you tell her, man, or will I?"

They told her together, and what had been conjectures were now put
forward as facts. Tommy had certainly said a London lady, and as
certainly he had given her name, but what it was Corp could not
remember. But "Give her this and tell her it never left my heart"--he
could swear to these words.

"And no words could be stronger," Gavinia said triumphantly. She
produced the glove, and was about to take off its paper wrapping when
Grizel stopped her.

"We have no right, Gavinia."  "I suppose we hinna, and I'm thinking
the pocket it came out o' is feeling gey toom without it. Will you
take it back to him?"

"It was very wrong of you to keep it," Grizel answered, "but I can't
take it to him, for I see now that his reason for wanting me not to
come here was to prevent my hearing about it. I am sorry you told me.
Corp must take it back." But when she saw it being crushed in Corp's
rough hand, a pity for the helpless glove came over her. She said:
"After all, I do know about it, so I can't pretend to him that I
don't. I will give it to him, Corp"; and she put the little package in
her pocket with a brave smile.

Do you think the radiance had gone from her face now? Do you think the
joy that had been lit in her heart was dead? Oh, no, no! Grizel had
never asked that Tommy should love her; she had asked only that he
should be a fine man. She did not ask it for herself, only for him.
She could not think of herself now, only of him. She did not think she
loved him. She thought a woman should not love any man until she knew
he wanted her to love him.

But if Tommy had wanted it she would have been very glad. She knew,
oh, she knew so well, that she could have helped him best. Many a
noble woman has known it as she stood aside.

In the meantime Tommy had gone home in several states of
mind--reckless, humble, sentimental, most practical, defiant,
apprehensive. At one moment he was crying, "Now, Grizel, now, when it
is too late, you will see what you have lost." At the next he quaked
and implored the gods to help him out of his predicament. It was
apprehension that, on the whole, played most of the tunes, for he was
by no means sure that Grizel would not look upon the affair of the
glove as an offer of his hand, and accept him. They would show her the
glove, and she would, of course, know it to be her own. "Give her this
and tell her it never left my heart." The words thumped within him
now. How was Grizel to understand that he had meant nothing in
particular by them?

I wonder if you misread him so utterly as to believe that he thought
himself something of a prize? That is a vulgar way of looking at
things of which our fastidious Tommy was incapable. As much as Grizel
herself, he loathed the notion that women have a thirsty eye on man;
when he saw them cheapening themselves before the sex that should hold
them beyond price, he turned his head and would not let his mind dwell
on the subject. He was a sort of gentleman, was Tommy. And he knew
Grizel so well that had all the other women in the world been of this
kind, it would not have persuaded him that there was a drop of such
blood in her.  Then, if he feared that she was willing to be his, it
must have been because he thought she loved him? Not a bit of it. As
already stated, he thought he had abundant reason to think otherwise.
It was remorse that he feared might bring her to his feet, the
discovery that while she had been gibing at him he had been a heroic
figure, suffering in silence, eating his heart for love of her.
Undoubtedly that was how Grizel must see things now; he must seem to
her to be an angel rather than a mere man; and in sheer remorse she
might cry, "I am yours!" Vain though Tommy was, the picture gave him
not a moment's pleasure. Alarm was what he felt.

Of course he was exaggerating Grizel's feelings. She had too much
self-respect and too little sentiment to be willing to marry any man
because she had unintentionally wronged him. But this was how Tommy
would have acted had he happened to be a lady. Remorse, pity, no one
was so good at them as Tommy.

In his perturbation he was also good at maidenly reserve. He felt
strongly that the proper course for Grizel was not to refer to the
glove--to treat that incident as closed, unless he chose to reopen it.
This was so obviously the correct procedure that he seemed to see her
adopting it like a sensible girl, and relief would have come to him
had he not remembered that Grizel usually took her own way, and that
it was seldom his way.

There were other ways of escape. For instance, if she would only let
him love her hopelessly. Oh, Grizel had but to tell him there was no
hope, and then how finely he would behave! It would bring out all that
was best in him. He saw himself passing through life as her very
perfect knight. "Is there no hope for me?" He heard himself begging
for hope, and he heard also her firm answer: "None!" How he had always
admired the outspokenness of Grizel. Her "None!" was as splendidly
decisive as of yore.

The conversation thus begun ran on in him, Tommy doing the speaking
for both (though his lips never moved), and feeling the scene as
vividly as if Grizel had really been present and Elspeth was not.
Elspeth was sitting opposite him.

"At least let me wait, Grizel," he implored. "I don't care for how
long; fix a time yourself, and I shall keep to it, and I promise never
to speak one word of love to you until that time comes, and then if
you bid me go I shall go. Give me something to live for. It binds you
to nothing, and oh, it would make such a difference to me."

Then Grizel seemed to reply gently, but with the firmness he adored:
"I know I cannot change, and it would be mistaken kindness to do as
you suggest. No, I can give you no hope; but though I can never marry
you, I will watch your future with warm regard, for you have to-day
paid me the highest compliment a man can pay a woman."

(How charmingly it was all working out!)

Tommy bowed with dignity and touched her hand with his lips. What is
it they do next in Pym and even more expensive authors? Oh, yes! "If
at any time in your life, dear Grizel," he said, "you are in need of a
friend, I hope you will turn first to me. It does not matter where
your message reaches me, I will come to you without delay."

In his enthusiasm he saw the letter being delivered to him in Central
Africa, and immediately he wheeled round on his way to Thrums.

"There is one other little request I should like to make of you," he
said huskily. "Perhaps I ask too much, but it is this: may I keep your
glove?"

She nodded her head; she was so touched that she could scarcely trust
herself to speak. "But you will soon get over this," she said at last;
"another glove will take the place of mine; the time will come when
you will be glad that I said I could not marry you."

"Grizel!" he cried in agony. He was so carried away by his feelings
that he said the word aloud.

"Where?" asked Elspeth, looking at the window.

"Was it not she who passed just now?" he replied promptly; and they
were still discussing his mistake when Grizel did pass, but only to
stop at the door. She came in.

"My brother must have the second sight," declared Elspeth, gaily, "for
he saw you coming before you came"; and she told what had happened,
while Grizel looked happily at Tommy, and Tommy looked apprehensively
at her. Grizel, he might have seen, was not wearing the tragic face of
sacrifice; it was a face shining with gladness, a girl still too happy
in his nobility to think remorsefully of her own misdeeds. To let him
know that she was proud of him, that was what she had come for
chiefly, and she was even glad that Elspeth was there to hear. It was
an excuse to her to repeat Corp's story, and she told it with defiant
looks at Tommy that said, "You are so modest, you want to stop me, but
Elspeth will listen; it is nearly as sweet to Elspeth as it is to me,
and I shall tell her every word, yes, and tell her a great deal of it
twice."

It was not modesty which made Tommy so anxious that she should think
less of him, but naturally it had that appearance. The most heroic
fellows, I am told, can endure being extolled by pretty girls, but
here seemed to be one who could not stand it.

"You need not think it is of you we are proud," she assured him
light-heartedly; "it is really of ourselves. I am proud of being your
friend. To-morrow, when I hear the town ringing your praises, I shall
not say, 'Yes, isn't he wonderful?' I shall say, 'Talk of me; I, too,
am an object of interest, for I am his friend.'"

"I have often been pointed out as his sister," said Elspeth,
complacently.

"He did not choose his sister," replied Grizel, "but he chose his
friends."

For a time he could suck no sweetness from it. She avoided the glove,
he was sure, only because of Elspeth's presence. But anon there
arrived to cheer him a fond hope that she had not heard of it, and as
this became conviction, exit the Tommy who could not abide himself,
and enter another who was highly charmed therewith. Tommy had a notion
that certain whimsical little gods protected him in return for the
sport he gave them, and he often kissed his hand to them when they
came to the rescue. He would have liked to kiss it now, but gave a
grateful glance instead to the corner in the ceiling where they sat
chuckling at him. Grizel admired him at last. Tra, la, la! What a dear
girl she was! Into his manner there crept a certain masterfulness, and
instead of resisting it she beamed. Rum-ti-tum!

"If you want to spoil me," he said lazily, "you will bring me that
footstool to rest my heroic feet upon."  She smiled and brought it.
She even brought a cushion for his heroic head. Adoring little thing
that she was, he must be good to her.

He was now looking forward eagerly to walking home with her. I can't
tell you how delicious he meant to be. When she said she must go, he
skipped upstairs for his hat, and wafted the gods their kiss. But it
was always the unexpected that lay in wait for Tommy. He and she were
no sooner out of the house than Grizel said, "I did not mention the
glove, as I was not sure whether Elspeth knew of it."

He had turned stone-cold.

"Corp and Gavinia told me," she went on quietly, "before I had time to
stop them. Of course I should have preferred not to know until I heard
it from yourself."

Oh, how cold he was!

"But as I do know, I want to tell you that it makes me very happy."

They had stopped, for his legs would carry him no farther. "Get us out
of this," every bit of him was crying, but not one word could Tommy
say.

"I knew you would want to have it again," Grizel said brightly,
producing the little parcel from her pocket, "so I brought it to you."

The frozen man took it and held it passively in his hand. His gods had
flown away.

No, they were actually giving him another chance. What was this
Grizel was saying? "I have not looked at it, for to take it out of its
wrapping would have been profanation. Corp told me she was a London
girl; but I know nothing more, not even her name. You are not angry
with me for speaking of her, are you? Surely I may wish you and her
great happiness."

He was saved. The breath came back quickly to him. He filled like a
released ball. Had ever a heart better right to expand? Grizel,
looking so bright and pleased, had snatched him from the Slugs. Surely
you will be nice to your preserver, Tommy. You will not be less
grateful than a country boy?

Ah me! not even yet have we plumed his vanity. But we are to do it
now. He could not have believed it of himself, but in the midst of his
rejoicings he grew bitter, and for no better reason than that Grizel's
face was bright.

"I am glad," he said quite stiffly, "that it is such pleasant news to
you."

His tone surprised her; but she was in a humble mood, and answered,
without being offended: "It is sweet news to me. How could you think
otherwise?"

So it was sweet to her to think that he was another's! He who had been
modestly flattering himself a few moments ago that he must take care
not to go too far with this admiring little girl! O woman, woman, how
difficult it is to know you, and how often, when we think we know you
at last, have we to begin again at the beginning! He had never asked
an enduring love from her; but surely, after all that had passed
between them, he had a right to expect a little more than this. Was it
maidenly to bring the glove and hand it to him without a tremor? If
she could do no more, she might at least have turned a little pale
when Corp told her of it, and then have walked quietly away. Next day
she could have referred to it, with just the slightest break in her
voice. But to come straight to him, looking delighted--

"And, after all, I am entitled to know first," Grizel said, "for I am
your oldest friend."

Friend! He could not help repeating the word with bitter emphasis. For
her sake, as it seemed to him now, he had flung himself into the black
waters of the Drumly. He had worn her glove upon his heart. It had
been the world to him. And she could stand there and call herself his
friend. The cup was full. Tommy nodded his head sorrowfully three
times.

"So be it, Grizel," he said huskily; "so be it!" Sentiment could now
carry him where it willed. The reins were broken.

"I don't understand."

Neither did he; but, "Why should you? What is it to you!" he cried
wildly. "Better not to understand, for it might give you five
minutes' pain, Grizel, a whole five minutes, and I should be sorry to
give you that."

"What have I said! What have I done!"

"Nothing," he answered her, "nothing. You have been most exemplary;
you have not even got any entertainment out of it. The thing never
struck you as possible. It was too ludicrous!"

He laughed harshly at the package, which was still in his hand. "Poor
little glove," he said; "and she did not even take the trouble to look
at you. You might have looked at it, Grizel. I have looked at it a
good deal. It meant something to me once upon a time when I was a vain
fool. Take it and look at it before you fling it away. It will make
you laugh."

Now she knew, and her arms rocked convulsively. Joy surged to her
face, and she drove it back. She looked at him steadfastly over the
collar of her jacket; she looked long, as if trying to be suspicious
of him for the last time. Ah, Grizel, you are saying good-bye to your
best friend!

As she looked at him thus there was a mournfulness in her brave face
that went to Tommy's heart and almost made a man of him. It was as if
he knew that she was doomed.

"Grizel," he cried, "don't look at me in that way!" And he would have
taken the package from her, but she pressed it to her heart.

"Don't come with me," she said almost in a whisper, and went away.

He did not go back to the house. He wandered into the country, quite
objectless when he was walking fastest, seeing nothing when he stood
still and stared. Elation and dread were his companions. What elation
whispered he could not yet believe; no, he could not believe it. While
he listened he knew that he must be making up the words. By and by he
found himself among the shadows of the Den. If he had loved Grizel he
would have known that it was here she would come, to the sweet Den
where he and she had played as children, the spot where she had loved
him first. She had always loved him--always, always. He did not know
what figure it was by the Cuttle Well until he was quite close to
her. She was kissing the glove passionately, and on her eyes lay
little wells of gladness.




CHAPTER XIII

LITTLE WELLS OF GLADNESS


It was dusk, and she had not seen him. In the silent Den he stood
motionless within a few feet of her, so amazed to find that Grizel
really loved him that for the moment self was blotted out of his mind.
He remembered he was there only when he heard his heavy breathing, and
then he tried to check it that he might steal away undiscovered.
Divers emotions fought for the possession of him. He was in the
meeting of many waters, each capable of whirling him where it chose,
but two only imperious: the one the fierce joy of being loved; the
other an agonizing remorse. He would fain have stolen away to think
this tremendous thing over, but it tossed him forward. "Grizel," he
said in a husky whisper, "Grizel!"

She did not start; she was scarcely surprised to hear his voice: she
had been talking to him, and he had answered. Had he not been there
she would still have heard him answer. She could not see him more
clearly now than she had been seeing him through those little wells of
gladness. Her love for him was the whole of her. He came to her with
the opening and the shutting of her eyes; he was the wind that bit her
and the sun that nourished her; he was the lowliest object by the
Cuttle Well, and he was the wings on which her thoughts soared to
eternity. He could never leave her while her mortal frame endured.

When he whispered her name she turned her swimming eyes to him, and a
strange birth had come into her face. Her eyes said so openly they
were his, and her mouth said it was his, her whole being went out to
him; in the radiance of her face could be read immortal designs: the
maid kissing her farewell to innocence was there, and the reason why
it must be, and the fate of the unborn; it was the first stirring for
weal or woe of a movement that has no end on earth, but must roll on,
growing lusty on beauty or dishonour till the crack of time. This
birth which comes to every woman at that hour is God's gift to her in
exchange for what He has taken away, and when He has given it He
stands back and watches the man.

To this man she was a woman transformed. The new bloom upon her face
entranced him. He knew what it meant. He was looking on the face of
love at last, and it was love coming out smiling from its hiding-place
because it thought it had heard him call. The artist in him who had
done this thing was entranced, as if he had written an immortal page.

But the man was appalled. He knew that he had reached the critical
moment in her life and his, and that if he took one step farther
forward he could never again draw back. It would be comparatively easy
to draw back now. To remain a free man he had but to tell her the
truth; and he had a passionate desire to remain free. He heard the
voices of his little gods screaming to him to draw back. But it could
be done only at her expense, and it seemed to him that to tell this
noble girl, who was waiting for him, that he did not need her, would
be to spill for ever the happiness with which she overflowed, and sap
the pride that had been the marrow of her during her twenty years of
life. Not thus would Grizel have argued in his place; but he could not
change his nature, and it was Sentimental Tommy, in an agony of
remorse for having brought dear Grizel to this pass, who had to decide
her future and his in the time you may take to walk up a garden path.
Either her mistake must be righted now or kept hidden from her for
ever. He was a sentimentalist, but in that hard moment he was trying
to be a man. He took her in his arms and kissed her reverently,
knowing that after this there could be no drawing back. In that act he
gave himself loyally to her as a husband. He knew he was not worthy of
her, but he was determined to try to be a little less unworthy; and as
he drew her to him a slight quiver went through her, so that for a
second she seemed to be holding back--for a second only, and the
quiver was the rustle of wings on which some part of the Grizel we
have known so long was taking flight from her. Then she pressed close
to him passionately, as if she grudged that pause. I love her more
than ever, far more; but she is never again quite the Grizel we have
known.

He was not unhappy; in the near hereafter he might be as miserable as
the damned--the little gods were waiting to catch him alone and
terrify him; but for the time, having sacrificed himself, Tommy was
aglow with the passion he had inspired. He so loved the thing he had
created that in his exultation he mistook it for her. He believed all
he was saying. He looked at her long and adoringly, not, as he
thought, because he adored her, but because it was thus that look
should answer look; he pressed her wet eyes reverently because thus it
was written in his delicious part; his heart throbbed with hers that
they might beat in time. He did not love, but he was the perfect
lover; he was the artist trying in a mad moment to be as well as to
do.  Love was their theme; but how to know what was said when between
lovers it is only the loose change of conversation that gets into
words? The important matters cannot wait so slow a messenger; while
the tongue is being charged with them, a look, a twitch of the mouth,
a movement of a finger, transmits the story, and the words arrive,
like Blücher, when the engagement is over.

With a sudden pretty gesture--ah, so like her mother's!--she held the
glove to his lips. "It is sad because you have forgotten it."

"I have kissed it so often, Grizel, long before I thought I should
ever kiss you!"

She pressed it to her innocent breast at that. And had he really done
so? and which was the first time, and the second, and the third? Oh,
dear glove, you know so much, and your partner lies at home in a
drawer knowing nothing. Grizel felt sorry for the other glove. She
whispered to Tommy as a terrible thing, "I think I love this glove
even more than I love you--just a tiny bit more." She could not part
with it. "It told me before you did," she explained, begging him to
give it back to her.

"If you knew what it was to me in those unhappy days, Grizel!"

"I want it to tell me," she whispered.

And did he really love her? Yes, she knew he did, but how could he?

"Oh, Grizel, how could I help it!"

He had to say it, for it is the best answer; but he said it with a
sigh, for it sounded like a quotation.

But how could she love him? I think her reply disappointed him.

"Because you wanted me to," she said, with shining eyes. It is
probably the commonest reason why women love, and perhaps it is the
best; but his vanity was wounded--he had expected to hear that he was
possessed of an irresistible power.

"Not until I wanted you to?"

"I think I always wanted you to want me to," she replied, naïvely;
"but I would never have let myself love you," she continued very
seriously, "until I was sure you loved me."

"You could have helped it, Grizel!" He drew a blank face.

"I did help it," she answered. "I was always fighting the desire to
love you,--I can see that plainly,--and I always won. I thought God
had made a sort of compact with me that I should always be the kind of
woman I wanted to be if I resisted the desire to love you until you
loved me."

"But you always had the desire!" he said eagerly.

"Always, but it never won. You see, even you did not know of it. You
thought I did not even like you! That was why you wanted to prevent
Corp's telling me about the glove, was it not? You thought it would
pain me only! Do you remember what you said: 'It is to save you acute
pain that I want to see Corp first'?"

All that seemed so long ago to Tommy now!

"How could you think it would be a pain to me!" she cried.

"You concealed your feelings so well, Grizel."

"Did I not?" she said joyously. "Oh, I wanted to be so careful, and I
was careful. That is why I am so happy now." Her face was glowing. She
was full of odd, delightful fancies to-night. She kissed her hand to
the gloaming; no, not to the gloaming--to the little hunted, anxious
girl she had been.

[Illustration: "She is standing behind that tree looking at us."]

"She is looking at us," she said. "She is standing behind that tree
looking at us. She wanted so much to grow into a dear, good woman that
she often comes and looks at me eagerly. Sometimes her face is so
fearful! I think she was a little alarmed when she heard you were
coming back."

"She never liked me, Grizel."

"Hush!" said Grizel, in a low voice. "She always liked you; she always
thought you a wonder. But she would be distressed if she heard me
telling you. She thought it would not be safe for you to know. I must
tell him now, dearest, darlingest," she suddenly called out boldly to
the little self she had been so quaintly fond of because there was no
other to love her. "I must tell him everything now, for you are no
longer your own. You are his."

"She has gone away rocking her arms," she said to Tommy.

"No," he replied. "I can hear her. She is singing because you are so
happy."

"She never knew how to sing."

"She has learned suddenly. Everybody can sing who has anything to sing
about. And do you know what she said about your dear wet eyes, Grizel?
She said they were just sweet. And do you know why she left us so
suddenly? She ran home gleefully to stitch and dust and beat carpets,
and get baths ready, and look after the affairs of everybody, which
she is sure must be going to rack and ruin because she has been away
for half an hour!"

At his words there sparkled in her face the fond delight with which a
woman assures herself that the beloved one knows her little
weaknesses, for she does not truly love unless she thirsts to have him
understand the whole of her, and to love her in spite of the foibles
and for them. If he does not love you a little for the foibles, madam,
God help you from the day of the wedding.

But though Grizel was pleased, she was not to be cajoled. She
wandered with him through the Den, stopping at the Lair, and the
Queen's Bower, and many other places where the little girl used to
watch Tommy suspiciously; and she called, half merrily, half
plaintively: "Are you there, you foolish girl, and are you wringing
your hands over me? I believe you are jealous because I love him
best."

"We have loved each other so long, she and I," she said apologetically
to Tommy. "Ah," she said impulsively, when he seemed to be hurt,
"don't you see it is because she doubts you that I am so sorry for the
poor thing!"

"Dearest, darlingest," she called to the child she had been, "don't
think that you can come to me when he is away, and whisper things
against him to me. Do you think I will listen to your croakings, you
poor, wet-faced thing!"

"You child!" said Tommy.

"Do you think me a child because I blow kisses to her?"

"Do you like me to think you one?" he replied.

"I like you to call me child," she said, "but not to think me one."

"Then I shall think you one," said he, triumphantly. He was so perfect
an instrument for love to play upon that he let it play on and on, and
listened in a fever of delight. How could Grizel have doubted Tommy?
The god of love himself would have sworn that there were a score of
arrows in him. He wanted to tell Elspeth and the others at once that
he and Grizel were engaged. I am glad to remember that it was he who
urged this, and Grizel who insisted on its being deferred. He even
pretended to believe that Elspeth would exult in the news; but Grizel
smiled at him for saying this to please her. She had never been a
great friend of Elspeth's, they were so dissimilar; and she blamed
herself for it now, and said she wanted to try to make Elspeth love
her before they told her. Tommy begged her to let him tell his sister
at once; but she remained obdurate, so anxious was she that her
happiness, when revealed, should bring only happiness to others. There
had not come to Grizel yet the longing to be recognized as his by the
world. This love was so beautiful and precious to her that there was
an added joy in sharing the dear secret with him alone; it was a live
thing that might escape if she let anyone but him look between the
fingers that held it.

The crowning glory of loving and being loved is that the pair make no
real progress; however far they have advanced into the enchanted land
during the day, they must start again from the frontier next morning.
Last night they had dredged the lovers' lexicon for superlatives and
not even blushed; to-day is that the heavens cracking or merely
someone whispering "dear"? All this was very strange and wonderful to
Grizel. She had never been so young in the days when she was a little
girl.

"I can never be quite so happy again!" she had said, with a wistful
smile, on the night of nights; but early morn, the time of the day
that loves maidens best, retold her the delicious secret as it kissed
her on the eyes, and her first impulse was to hurry to Tommy. When joy
or sorrow came to her now, her first impulse was to hurry with it to
him.

Was he still the same, quite the same? She, whom love had made a child
of, asked it fearfully, as if to gaze upon him openly just at first
might be blinding; and he pretended not to understand. "The same as
what, Grizel?"

"Are you still--what I think you?"

"Ah, Grizel, not at all what you think me."

"But you do?"

"Coward! You are afraid to say the word. But I do!"

"You don't ask whether I do!"

"No."

"Why? Is it because you are so sure of me?"

He nodded, and she said it was cruel of him.

"You don't mean that, Grizel."

"Don't I?" She was delighted that he knew it.

"No; you mean that you like me to be sure of it."

"But I want to be sure of it myself."  "You are. That was why you
asked me if I loved you. Had you not been sure of it you would not
have asked."

"How clever you are!" she said gleefully, and caressed a button of his
velvet coat. "But you don't know what that means! It does not mean
that I love you--not merely that."

"No; it means that you are glad I know you so well. It is an ecstasy
to you, is it not, to feel that I know you so well?"

"It is sweet," she said. She asked curiously: "What did you do last
night, after you left me? I can't guess, though I daresay you can
guess what I did."

"You put the glove under your pillow, Grizel." (She had got the
precious glove.)

"However could you guess!"

"It has often lain under my own."

"Oh!" said Grizel, breathless.

"Could you not guess even that?"

"I wanted to be sure. Did it do anything strange when you had it
there?"

"I used to hear its heart beating."

"Yes, exactly! But this is still more remarkable. I put it away at
last in my sweetest drawer, and when I woke in the morning it was
under my pillow again. You could never have guessed that."

"Easily. It often did the same thing with me."  "Story-teller! But
what did you do when you went home?"

He could not have answered that exhaustively, even if he would, for
his actions had been as contradictory as his emotions. He had feared
even while he exulted, and exulted when plunged deep in fears. There
had been quite a procession of Tommies all through the night; one of
them had been a very miserable man, and the only thing he had been
sure of was that he must be true to Grizel. But in so far as he did
answer he told the truth.

"I went for a stroll among the stars," he said. "I don't know when I
got to bed. I have found a way of reaching the stars. I have to say
only, 'Grizel loves me,' and I am there."

"Without me!"

"I took you with me."

"What did we see? What did we do?"

"You spoiled everything by thinking the stars were badly managed. You
wanted to take the supreme control. They turned you out."

"And when we got back to earth?"

"Then I happened to catch sight of myself in a looking-glass, and I
was scared. I did not see how you could possibly love me. A terror
came over me that in the Den you must have mistaken me for someone
else. It was a darkish night, you know."  "You are wanting me to say
you are handsome."

"No, no; I am wanting you to say I am very, very handsome. Tell me you
love me, Grizel, because I am beautiful."

"Perhaps," she replied, "I love you because your book is beautiful."

"Then good-bye for ever," he said sternly.

"Would not that please you?"

"It would break my heart."

"But I thought all authors--"

"It is the commonest mistake in the world. We are simple creatures,
Grizel, and yearn to be loved for our face alone."

"But I do love the book," she said, when they became more serious,
"because it is part of you."

"Rather that," he told her, "than that you should love me because I am
part of it. But it is only a little part of me, Grizel; only the best
part. It is Tommy on tiptoes. The other part, the part that does not
deserve your love, is what needs it most."

"I am so glad!" she said eagerly. "I want to think you need me."

"How I need you!"

"Yes, I think you do--I am sure you do; and it makes me so happy."

"Ah," he said, "now I know why Grizel loves me." And perhaps he did
know now.  She loved to think that she was more to him than the new
book, but was not always sure of it; and sometimes this saddened her,
and again she decided that it was right and fitting. She would hasten
to him to say that this saddened her. She would go just as impulsively
to say that she thought it right.

Her discoveries about herself were many.

"What is it to-day?" he would say, smiling fondly at her. "I see it is
something dreadful by your face."

"It is something that struck me suddenly when I was thinking of you,
and I don't know whether to be glad or sorry."

"Then be glad, you child."

"It is this: I used to think a good deal of myself; the people here
thought me haughty; they said I had a proud walk."

"You have it still," he assured her; the vitality in her as she moved
was ever a delicious thing to him to look upon.

"Yes, I feel I have," she admitted, "but that is only because I am
yours; and it used to be because I was nobody's!"

"Do you expect my face to fall at that?"

"No, but I thought so much of myself once, and now I am nobody at all.
At first it distressed me, and then I was glad, for it makes you
everything and me nothing. Yes, I am glad, but I am just a little bit
sorry that I should be so glad!"  "Poor Grizel!" said he.

"Poor Grizel!" she echoed. "You are not angry with me, are you, for
being almost sorry for her? She used to be so different. 'Where is
your independence, Grizel?' I say to her, and she shakes her sorrowful
head. The little girl I used to be need not look for me any more; if
we were to meet in the Den she would not know me now."

Ah, if only Tommy could have loved in this way! He would have done it
if he could. If we could love by trying, no one would ever have been
more loved than Grizel. "Am I to be condemned because I cannot?" he
sometimes said to himself in terrible anguish; for though pretty
thoughts came to him to say to her when she was with him, he suffered
anguish for her when he was alone. He knew it was tragic that such
love as hers should be given to him, but what more could he do than he
was doing?




CHAPTER XIV

ELSPETH


Ever since the beginning of the book we have been neglecting Elspeth
so pointedly that were she not the most forgiving creature we should
be afraid to face her now. You are not angry with us, are you,
Elspeth? We have been sitting with you, talking with you, thinking of
you between the chapters, and the only reason why you have so seldom
got into them is that our pen insisted on running after your
fascinating brother.

(That is the way to get round her.)

Tommy, it need not be said, never neglected her. The mere fact of his
having an affair of his own at present is a sure sign that she is
comfortable, for, unless all were well with Elspeth, no venture could
have lured him from her side. "Now I am ready for you," he said to the
world when Elspeth had been, figuratively speaking, put to sleep; but
until she was nicely tucked up the world had to wait. He was still as
in his boyhood, when he had to see her with a good book in her hand
before he could set off on deeds of darkness. If this was but the
story of a brother and sister, there were matter for it that would
make the ladies want to kiss Tommy on the brow.

That Dr. Gemmell disliked or at least distrusted him, Tommy knew
before their acquaintance was an hour old; yet that same evening he
had said cordially to Elspeth:

"This young doctor has a strong face."

She was evidently glad that Tommy had noticed it. "Do you think him
handsome?" she inquired.

"Decidedly so," he replied, very handsomely, for it is an indiscreet
question to ask of a plain man.

There was nothing small about Tommy, was there? He spoke thus
magnanimously because he had seen that the doctor liked Elspeth, and
that she liked him for liking her. Elspeth never spoke to him of such
things, but he was aware that an extra pleasure in life came to her
when she was admired; it gave her a little of the self-confidence she
so wofully lacked; the woman in her was stirred. Take such presents as
these to Elspeth, and Tommy would let you cast stones at himself for
the rest of the day, and shake your hand warmly on parting.  In
London Elspeth had always known quickly, almost at the first clash of
eyes, whether Tommy's friends were attracted by her, but she had not
known sooner than he. Those acquaintanceships had seldom ripened; but
perhaps this was because, though he and she avoided talking of them,
he was all the time taking such terrifying care of her. She was always
little Elspeth to him, for whom he had done everything since the
beginning of her, a frail little female counterpart of himself that
would never have dared to grow up had he not always been there to show
her the way, like a stronger plant in the same pot. It was even
pathetic to him that Elspeth should have to become a woman while he
was a man, and he set to, undaunted, to help her in this matter also.
To be admired of men is a woman's right, and he knew it gratified
Elspeth; therefore he brought them in to admire her. But beyond
profound respect they could not presume to go, he was watching them so
vigilantly. He had done everything for her so far, and it was evident
that he was now ready to do the love-making also, or at least to sift
it before it reached her. Elspeth saw this, and perhaps it annoyed her
once or twice, though on the whole she was deeply touched; and the
young gentlemen saw it also: they saw that he would not leave them
alone with her for a moment, and that behind his cordial manner sat a
Tommy who had his eye on them.  Subjects suitable for conversation
before Elspeth seemed in presence of this strict brother to be
limited. You had just begun to tell her the plot of the new novel when
T. Sandys fixed you with his gleaming orb. You were in the middle of
the rumour about Mrs. Golightly when he let the poker fall. If the
newsboys were yelling the latest horror he quickly closed the window.
He made all visitors self-conscious. If she was not in the room few of
them dared to ask if she was quite well. They paled before expressing
the hope that she would feel stronger to-morrow. Yet when Tommy went
up to sit beside her, which was the moment the front door closed, he
took care to mention, incidentally, that they had been inquiring after
her. One of them ventured on her birthday to bring her flowers, but
could not present them, Tommy looked so alarming. A still more daring
spirit once went the length of addressing her by her Christian name.
She did not start up haughtily (the most timid of women are a surprise
at times), but the poker fell with a crash.

He knew Elspeth so well that he could tell exactly how these poor
young men should approach her. As an artist as well as a brother, he
frowned when they blundered. He would have liked to be the medium
through which they talked, so that he could give looks and words their
proper force. He had thought it all out so thoroughly for Elspeth's
benefit that in an hour he could have drawn out a complete guide for
her admirers.

"At the first meeting look at her wistfully when she does not see you.
She will see you." It might have been Rule One.

Rule Two: "Don't talk so glibly." How often that was what the poker
meant!

Being herself a timid creature, Elspeth showed best among the timid,
because her sympathetic heart immediately desired to put them at their
ease. The more glibly they could talk, the less, she knew, were they
impressed by her. Even a little boorishness was more complimentary
than chatter. Sometimes when she played on the piano which Tommy had
hired for her, the visitor was so shy that he could not even mutter
"Thank you" to his hat; yet she might play to him again, and not to
the gallant who remarked briskly: "How very charming! What is that
called?"

To talk disparagingly of other women is so common a way among men of
penetrating into the favour of one that, of course, some tried it with
Elspeth. Tommy could not excuse such blundering, for they were making
her despise them. He got them out of the house, and then he and she
had a long talk, not about them, but about men and women in general,
from which she gathered once again that there was nobody like Tommy.

When they bade each other good-night, she would say to him: "I think
you are the one perfect gentleman in the world."

Or he might say: "You expect so much of men, Elspeth."

To which her reply: "You have taught me to do it, and now I expect
others to be like you." Sometimes she would even say: "When I see you
so fond of me, and taking such care of me, I am ashamed. You think me
so much better than I am. You consider me so pure and good, while I
know that I am often mean, and even have wicked thoughts. It makes me
ashamed, but so proud of you, for I see that you are judging me by
yourself."

And then this Tommy would put the gas out softly and go to his own
room, and, let us hope, blush a little.

One stripling had proposed to Elspeth, and on her agitatedly declining
him, had flung out of the room in a pet. It spoiled all her
after-thoughts on the subject, and so roused her brother's indignation
with the fellow. If the great baby had only left all the arrangements
to Tommy, he could so easily have made that final scene one which
Elspeth would remember with gratification for the remainder of her
days; for, of course, pride in the offer could not be great unless she
retained her respect for the man who made it. From the tremulous
proposal and the manly acceptance of his fate to his dignified exit
("Don't grieve for me, Miss Sandys; you never gave me the least
encouragement, and to have loved you will always make me a better
man"), even to a touching way of closing the door with one long, last,
lingering look, Tommy could have fitted him like a tailor.

From all which it will be seen that our splendid brother thought
exclusively of what was best for Elspeth, and was willing that the
gentlemen, having served their purpose, should, if it pleased them, go
hang. Also, though he thought out every other possible move for the
suitor, it never struck him to compose a successful proposal, for the
simple reason that he was quite certain Elspeth would have none of
them. Their attentions pleased her; but exchange Tommy for one of
them--never! He knew it from her confessions at all stages of her
life; he had felt it from the days when he began to be father and
mother to her as well as brother. In his heart he believed there was
something of his own odd character in Elspeth which made her as
incapable of loving as himself, and some of his devotion to her was
due to this belief; for perhaps nothing touches us to the quick more
than the feeling that another suffers under our own curse; certainly
nothing draws two souls so close together in a lonely comradeship. But
though Tommy had reflected about these things, he did not trouble
Elspeth with his conclusions. He merely gave her to understand that he
loved her and she loved him so much that neither of them had any love
to give to another. It was very beautiful, Elspeth thought, and a
little tragic.

"You are quite sure that you mean that," she might ask timidly, "and
that you are not flinging away your life on me?"

"You are all I need," he answered cheerily, and he believed it. Or, if
he was in another mood, he might reflect that perhaps he was
abstaining from love for Elspeth's sake, and that made him cheery
also.

And now David Gemmell was the man, and Tommy genially forgave him all
else for liking Elspeth. He invited the doctor, who so obviously
distrusted him, to drop in of an evening for a game at the dambrod
(which they both abominated, but it was an easy excuse); he asked him
confidentially to come in and see Aaron, who had been coughing last
night; he put on all the airs of a hail-fellow-well-met, though they
never became him, and sat awkwardly on his face. David always seemed
eager to come, and tried to rise above his suspicions of Tommy, as
Tommy saw, and failed, as Tommy saw again. Elspeth dosed the doctor
with stories of her brother's lovely qualities, and Tommy, the
forgiving, honestly pitied the poor man for having to listen to them.
He knew that if all went well Gemmell would presently propose, and
find that Elspeth (tearful at having to strike a blow) could not
accept him; but he did not look forward maliciously to this as his
revenge on the doctor; he was thinking merely of what was good for
Elspeth.

There was no open talk about David between the brother and sister.
Some day, Tommy presumed, she would announce that the doctor had asked
her to marry him; and oh, how sorry she was; and oh, what a good man
he was; and oh, Tommy knew she had never encouraged him; and oh, she
could never leave Tommy! But until that day arrived they avoided
talking directly about what brought Gemmell there. That he came to see
Elspeth neither of them seemed to conceive as possible. Did Tommy
chuckle when he saw David's eyes following her? No; solemn as a cat
blinking at the fire; noticed nothing. The most worldly chaperon, the
most loving mother, could not have done more for Elspeth. Yet it was
not done to find her a husband, but quite the reverse, as we have
seen. On reflection Tommy must smile at what he has been doing, but
not while he is working the figures. The artist never smiles at
himself until afterwards.

And now he not only wondered at times how Elspeth and David were
getting on, but whether she noticed how he was getting on with Grizel;
for in matters relating to Tommy Elspeth was almost as sharp as he in
matters that related to her, and he knew it. When he proposed to
Elspeth that they should ask Gemmell to go fishing with them on the
morrow ("He has been overworked of late and it would do him good") he
wanted to add, in a careless voice, "We might invite Grizel also," but
could not; his lips suddenly went dry. And when Elspeth said the words
that were so difficult to him, he wondered, "Did she say that because
she knew I wished it?" But he decided that she did not, for she was
evidently looking forward to to-morrow, and he knew she would be
shuddering if she thought her Tommy was slipping.

"I am so glad it was she who asked me," Grizel said to him when he
told her. "Don't you see what it means? It means that she wants to get
you out of the way! You are not everything to her now as you used to
be. Are you glad, glad?"

"If I could believe it!" Tommy said.

"What else could make her want to be alone with him?"

Nothing else could have made Grizel want to be alone with him, and
she must always judge others by herself. But Tommy knew that Elspeth
was different, and that a girl with some of himself in her might want
to be alone with a man who admired her without wanting to marry him.




CHAPTER XV

BY PROSEN WATER

That day by the banks of Prosen Water was one of Grizel's beautiful
memories. All the days when she thought he loved her became beautiful
memories.

It was the time of reds and whites, for the glory of the broom had
passed, except at great heights, and the wild roses were trooping in.
When the broom is in flame there seems to be no colour but yellow; but
when the wild roses come we remember that the broom was flaunting. It
was not quite a lady, for it insisted on being looked at; while these
light-hearted things are too innocent to know that there is anyone to
look. Grizel was sitting by the side of the stream, adorning her hat
fantastically with roses red and white and some that were neither.
They were those that cannot decide whether they look best in white or
red, and so waver for the whole of their little lives between the two
colours; there are many of them, and it is the pathetic thing about
wild roses. She did not pay much heed to her handiwork. What she was
saying to herself was that in another minute he and she would be
alone. Nothing else in the world mattered very much. Every bit of her
was conscious of it as the supreme event. Her fingers pressed it upon
the flowers. It was in her eyes as much as in her heart. He went on
casting his line, moving from stone to stone, dropping down the bank,
ascending it, as if the hooking of a trout was something to him. Was
he feeling to his marrow that as soon as those other two figures
rounded the bend in the stream he and she would have the world to
themselves? Ah, of course he felt it, but was it quite as much to him
as it was to her?

"Not quite so much," she said bravely to herself. "I don't want it to
be quite so much--but nearly."

[Illustration: She did not look up, she waited.]

And now they were alone as no two can be except those who love; for
when the third person leaves them they have a universe to themselves,
and it is closed in by the heavens, and the air of it is the
consciousness of each other's presence. She sat motionless
now--trembling, exulting. She could no longer hear the talking of the
water, but she heard his step. He was coming slowly towards her. She
did not look up--she waited; and while she waited time was
annihilated.

He was coming to her to treat her as if she were a fond child; that
she, of all women, could permit it was still delicious to him, and a
marvel. She had let him do it yesterday, but perhaps she had regained
her independence in the night. As he hesitated he became another
person. In a flood of feeling he had a fierce desire to tell her the
truth about himself. But he did not know what it was. He put aside his
rod, and sat down very miserably beside her.

"Grizel, I suppose I am a knave." His lips parted to say it, but no
words came. She had given him an adorable look that stopped them as if
her dear hand had been placed upon his mouth.

Was he a knave? He wanted honestly to know. He had not tried to make
her love him. Had he known in time he would even have warned her
against it. He would never have said he loved her had she not first,
as she thought, found it out; to tell her the truth then would have
been brutal. He had made believe in order that she might remain happy.
Was it even make-belief? Assuredly he did love her in his own way, in
the only way he was capable of. She was far more to him than any
other person except Elspeth. He delighted in her, and would have
fought till he dropped rather than let any human being injure her. All
his feelings for her were pure. He was prepared to marry her; but if
she had not made that mistake, oh, what a delight it would have been
to him never to marry anyone! He felt keenly miserable.

"Grizel, I seem to be different from all other men. There seems to be
some curse upon me that makes me unable to love as they do. I want to
love you, dear one; you are the only woman I ever wanted to love; but
apparently I can't. I have decided to go on with this thing because it
seems best for you; but is it? I would tell you all and leave the
decision to you, were it not that I fear you would think I wanted you
to let me off."

It would have been an honest speech, and he might have said it had he
begun at once, for it was in a passion to be out, so desirous was he
that dear Grizel should not be deceived; but he tried its effect first
upon himself, and as he went on the tragedy he saw mastered him. He
forgot that she was there, except as a figure needed to complete the
picture of the man who could not love. He saw himself a splendidly
haggard creature with burning eyes standing aside while all the world
rolled by in pursuit of the one thing needful. It was a river, and he
must stand parched on the bank for ever and ever. Should he keep that
sorrowful figure a man or turn it into a woman? He tried a woman. She
was on the bank now, her arms outstretched to the flood. Ah! she would
be so glad to drink, though she must drown.

Grizel saw how mournful he had become as he gazed upon her. In his
face she had been seeing all the glories that can be given to mortals.
Thoughts had come to her that drew her nearer to her God. Her trust in
him stretched to eternity. All that was given to her at that moment
she thought was also given to him. She seemed to know why, with love
lighting up their souls to each other, he could yet grow mournful.

"Oh," she cried, with a movement that was a passionate caress, "do you
indeed love me so much as that? I never wanted you to love me quite so
much as that!"

It brought him back to himself, but without a start. Those sudden
returns to fact had ceased to bewilder him; they were grown so common
that he passed between dreams and reality as through tissue-paper.

"I did not mean," she said at last, in a tremor, "that I wanted you to
love me less, but I am almost sorry that you love me quite so much."

He dared say nothing, for he did not altogether understand.  "I have
those fears, too, sometimes," she went on; "I have had them when I was
with you, but more often when I was alone. They come to me suddenly,
and I have such eager longings to run to you and tell you of them, and
ask you to drive them away. But I never did it; I kept them to
myself."

"You could keep something back from me, Grizel?"

"Forgive me," she implored; "I thought they would distress you, and I
had such a desire to bring you nothing but happiness. To bear them by
myself seemed to be helping you, and I was glad, I was proud, to feel
myself of use to you even to that little extent. I did not know you
had the same fears; I thought that perhaps they came only to women;
have you had them before? Fears," she continued, so wistfully, "that
it is too beautiful to end happily? Oh, have you heard a voice crying,
'It is too beautiful; it can never be'?"

He saw clearly now; he saw so clearly that he was torn with emotion.
"It is more than I can bear!" he said hoarsely. Surely he loved her.

"Did you see me die?" she asked, in a whisper. "I have seen you die."

"Don't, Grizel!" he cried.

But she had to go on. "Tell me," she begged; "I have told you."

"No, no, never that," he answered her. "At the worst I have had only
the feeling that you could never be mine."

She smiled at that. "I am yours," she said softly; "nothing can take
away that--nothing, nothing. I say it to myself a hundred times a day,
it is so sweet. Nothing can separate us but death; I have thought of
all the other possible things, and none of them is strong enough. But
when I think of your dying, oh, when I think of my being left without
you!"

She rocked her arms in a frenzy, and called him dearest, darlingest.
All the sweet names that had been the child Grizel's and the old
doctor's were Tommy's now. He soothed her, ah, surely as only a lover
could soothe. She was his Grizel, she was his beloved. No mortal could
have been more impassioned than Tommy. He must have loved her. It
could not have been merely sympathy, or an exquisite delight in being
the man, or the desire to make her happy again in the quickest way, or
all three combined? Whatever it was, he did not know; all he knew was
that he felt every word he said, or seemed to feel it.

"It is a punishment to me," Grizel said, setting her teeth, "for
loving you too much. I know I love you too much. I think I love you
more than God."

She felt him shudder.

"But if I feel it," she said, shuddering also, yet unable to deceive
herself, "what difference do I make by saying it? He must know it is
so, whether I say it or not."

There was a tremendous difference to Tommy, but not of a kind he could
explain, and she went on; she must tell him everything now.

"I pray every night and morning; but that is nothing--everyone does
it. I know I thank God sincerely; I thank Him again and again and
again. Do you remember how, when I was a child, you used to be
horrified because I prayed standing? I often say little prayers
standing now; I am always thanking Him for giving me you. But all the
time it is a bargain with Him. So long as you are well I love Him, but
if you were to die I would never pray again. I have never said it in
words until to-day, but He must know it, for it is behind all my
prayers. If He does not know, there cannot be a God."

She was watching his face, half wofully, half stubbornly, as if,
whatever might be the issue of those words, she had to say them. She
saw how pained he was. To admit the possible non-existence of a God
when you can so easily leave the subject alone was horrible to Tommy.

"I don't doubt Him," she continued. "I have believed in Him ever since
the time when I was such a lonely child that I did not know His name.
I shall always believe in Him so long as He does not take you from me.
But if He does, then I shall not believe in Him any more. It may be
wrong, but that is what I feel.

"It makes you care less for me!" she cried in anguish.

"No, no, dear."

"I don't think it makes God care less for me," she said, very
seriously. "I think He is pleased that I don't try to cheat Him."

Somehow Tommy felt uncomfortable at that.

"There are people," he said vaguely, like one who thought it best to
mention no names, who would be afraid to challenge God in that way."

"He would not be worth believing in," she answered, "if He could be
revengeful. He is too strong, and too loving, and too pitiful for
that." But she took hold of Tommy as if to protect him. Had they been
in physical danger, her first impulse would have been to get in front
of him to protect him. The noblest women probably always love in this
way, and yet it is those who would hide behind them that men seem to
love the best.

"I always feel--oh, I never can help feeling," she said, "that nothing
could happen to you, that God Himself could not take you from me,
while I had hold of you."

"Grizel!"

"I mean only that He could not have the heart," she said hastily.
"No, I don't," she had to add. "I meant what you thought I meant. That
is why I feel it would be so sweet to be married, so that I could be
close to you every moment, and then no harm could come to you. I would
keep such a grip of you, I should be such a part of you, that you
could not die without my dying also.

"Oh, do you care less for me now?" she cried. "I can't see things as
clearly as you do, dearest, darlingest. I have not a beautiful nature
like yours. I am naturally rebellious. I have to struggle even to be
as good as I am. There are evil things in my blood. You remember how
we found out that. God knew it, too, and He is compassionate. I think
He makes many pitying allowances for me. It is not wicked, is it, to
think that?"

"You used to know me too well, Grizel, to speak of my beautiful
nature," he said humbly.

"I did think you vain," she replied. "How odd to remember that!"

"But I was, and am."

"I love to hear you proving you are not," said she, beaming upon him.
"Do you think," she asked, with a sudden change of manner to the
childish, like one trying to coax a compliment out of him, "that I
have improved at all during those last days? I think I am not quite
such a horrid girl as I used to be; and if I am not, I owe it to you.
I am so glad to owe it to you." She told him that she was trying to
make herself a tiny bit more like him by studying his book. "It is not
exactly the things you say of women that help me, for though they are
lovely I am not sure that they are quite true. I almost hope they are
not true; for if they are, then I am not even an average woman." She
buried her face in his coat. "You say women are naturally purer than
men, but I don't know. Perhaps we are more cunning only. Perhaps it is
not even a thing to wish; for if we were, it would mean that we are
good because there is less evil in us to fight against. Dear, forgive
me for saying that; it may be all wrong; but I think it is what nearly
all women feel in their hearts, though they keep it locked up till
they die. I don't even want you to believe me. You think otherwise of
us, and it is so sweet of you that we try to be better than we are--to
undeceive you would hurt so. It is not the book that makes me a better
woman--it is the man I see behind it."

He was too much moved to be able to reply--too much humbled. He vowed
to himself that, whether he could love or not, he would be a good
husband to this dear woman.

"Ah, Grizel," he declared, by and by, "what a delicious book you are,
and how I wish I had written you! With every word you say, something
within me is shouting, 'Am I not a wonder!' I warned you it would be
so as soon as I felt that I had done anything really big, and I have.
I have somehow made you love me. Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed,
addressing the river and the trees and the roses, "I have somehow made
her love me! Am I not a wonder?"

Grizel clapped her hands gaily; she was merry again. She could always
be what Tommy wanted her to be. "Ladies and gentlemen," she cried,
"how could I help it?"

David had been coming back for his fly-book, and though he did not
hear their words, he saw a light in Grizel's face that suddenly set
him thinking. For the rest of the day he paid little attention to
Elspeth; some of his answers showed her that he was not even listening
to her.




CHAPTER XVI

"HOW COULD YOU HURT YOUR GRIZEL SO!"


To concentrate on Elspeth so that he might find out what was in her
mind was, as we have seen, seldom necessary to Tommy; for he had
learned her by heart long ago. Yet a time was now come when he had to
concentrate, and even then he was doubtful of the result. So often he
had put that mind of hers to rights that it was an open box to him, or
had been until he conceived the odd notion that perhaps it contained a
secret drawer. This would have been resented by most brothers, but
Tommy's chagrin was nothing compared to the exhilaration with which he
perceived that he might be about to discover something new about
woman. He was like the digger whose hand is on the point of closing on
a diamond--a certain holiness added.

What puzzled him was the state of affairs now existing between Elspeth
and the doctor. A week had elapsed since the fishing excursion, and
David had not visited them. Too busy? Tommy knew that it is the busy
people who can find time. Could it be that David had proposed to her
at the waterside?

No, he could not read that in Elspeth's face. He knew that she would
be in distress lest her refusal should darken the doctor's life for
too long a time; but yet (shake your fist at him, ladies, for so
misunderstanding you!) he expected also to note in that sympathetic
face a look of subdued triumph, and as it was not there, David could
not have proposed.

The fact of her not having told him about it at once did not prove to
Tommy that there had been no proposal. His feeling was that she would
consider it too sacred a thing to tell even to him, but that it would
force its way out in a week or two.

On the other hand, she could not have resisted dropping shyly such
remarks as these: "I think Dr. Gemmell is a noble man," or, "How
wonderfully good Dr. Gemmell is to the poor!"

Also she would sometimes have given Tommy a glance that said, "I
wonder if you guess."  Had they quarrelled? Tommy smiled. If it was
but a quarrel he was not merely appeased--he was pleased. Had he had
the ordering of the affair, he would certainly have included a lovers'
quarrel in it, and had it not been that he wanted to give her the
pleasure of finding these things out for herself, he would have taken
her aside and addressed her thus: "No need to look tragic, Elspeth;
for to a woman this must be really one of the most charming moments in
the comedy. You feel that he would not have quarrelled had he had any
real caring for you, and yet in your heart you know it is a proof that
he has. To a woman, I who know assure you that nothing can be more
delicious. Your feeling for him, as you and I well know, is but a
sentiment of attraction because he loves you as you are unable to love
him, and as you are so pained by this quarrel, consider how much more
painful it must be to him. You think you have been slighted; that when
a man has seemed to like you so much you have a right to be told so by
him, that you may help him with your sympathy. Oh, Elspeth, you think
yourself unhappy just now when you are really in the middle of one of
the pleasantest bits of it! Love is a series of thrills, the one
leading to the other, and, as your careful guardian, I would not have
you miss one of them. You will come to the final bang quickly enough,
and find it the finest thrill of all, but it is soon over. When you
have had to tell him that you are not for him, there are left only the
pleasures of memory, and the more of them there were, the more there
will be to look back to. I beg you, Elspeth, not to hurry; loiter
rather, smelling the flowers and plucking them, for you may never be
this way again."

All these things he might have pointed out to Elspeth had he wanted
her to look at the matter rationally, but he had no such wish. He
wanted her to enjoy herself as the blessed do, without knowing why. No
pity for the man, you see, but no ill will to him. David was having
his thrills also, and though the last of them would seem a staggerer
to him at the time, it would gradually become a sunny memory. The only
tragedy is not to have known love. So long as you have the
experiences, it does not greatly matter whether your suit was a
failure or successful.

So Tommy decided, but he feared at the same time that there had been
no quarrel--that David had simply drawn back.

How he saw through Elspeth's brave attempts to show that she had never
for a moment thought of David's having any feeling for her save
ordinary friendship--yes, they were brave, but not brave enough for
Tommy. At times she would say something bitter about life (not about
the doctor, for he was never mentioned), and it was painful to her
brother to see gentle Elspeth grown cynical. He suffered even more
when her manner indicated that she knew she was too poor a creature to
be loved by any man. Tommy was in great woe about Elspeth at this
time. He was thinking much more about her than about Grizel; but do
not blame him unreservedly for that: the two women who were his dears
were pulling him different ways, and he could not accompany both. He
had made up his mind to be loyal to Grizel, and so all his pity could
go to Elspeth. On the day he had his talk with the doctor, therefore,
he had, as it were, put Grizel aside only because she was happy just
now, and so had not Elspeth's need of him.

The doctor and he had met on the hill, whence the few who look may see
one of the fairest views in Scotland. Tommy was strolling up and down,
and the few other persons on the hill were glancing with good-humoured
suspicion at him, as we all look at celebrated characters. Had he been
happy he would have known that they were watching him, and perhaps
have put his hands behind his back to give them more for their money,
as the saying is; but he was miserable. His one consolation was that
the blow he must strike Elspeth when he told her of his engagement
need not be struck just yet. David could not have chosen a worse
moment, therefore, for saying so bluntly what he said: "I hear you are
to be married. If so, I should like to congratulate you."

Tommy winced like one charged with open cruelty to his sister--charged
with it, too, by the real criminal.

"It is not true?" David asked quietly, and Tommy turned from him
glaring. "I am sorry I spoke of it, as it is not true," the doctor
said after a pause, the crow's-feet showing round his eyes as always
when he was in mental pain; and presently he went away, after giving
Tommy a contemptuous look. Did Tommy deserve that look? We must
remember that he had wanted to make the engagement public at once; if
he shrank from admitting it for the present, it was because of
Elspeth's plight. "Grizel, you might have given her a little time to
recover from this man's faithlessness," was what his heart cried. He
believed that Grizel had told David, and for the last time in his life
he was angry with her. He strode down the hill savagely towards Caddam
Wood, where he knew he should find her.

Soon he saw her. She was on one of the many tiny paths that lead the
stranger into the middle of the wood and then leave him there
maliciously or because they dare not venture any farther themselves.
They could play no tricks on Grizel, however, for she knew and was
fond of them all. Tommy had said that she loved them because they were
such little paths, that they appealed to her like babies; and perhaps
there was something in it.

She came up the path with the swing of one who was gleefully happy.
Some of the Thrums people, you remember, said that Grizel strutted
because she was so satisfied with herself, and if you like an ugly
word, we may say that she strutted to-day. It was her whole being
giving utterance to the joy within her that love had brought. As
Grizel came up the path on that bright afternoon, she could no more
have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She
was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell
you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day.
Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and
touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once
strutted, but it was still more strange and touching to Tommy.

She was like one overfilled with delight when she saw him. How could
she know that he was to strike her?

He did not speak. She was not displeased. When anything so tremendous
happened as the meeting of these two, how could they find words at
once?

She bent and pressed her lips to his sleeve; but he drew away with a
gesture that startled her.

"You are not angry?" she said, stopping.

"Yes," he replied doggedly.

"Not with me?" Her hand went to her heart. "With me!" A wounded animal
could not have uttered a cry more pathetic. "Not with me!" She
clutched his arm.

"Have I no cause to be angry?" he said.

She looked at him in bewilderment. Could this be he? Oh, could it be
she?

"Cause? How could I give you cause?"

It seemed unanswerable to her. How could Grizel do anything that would
give him the right to be angry with her? Oh, men, men! will you never
understand how absolutely all of her a woman's love can be? If she
gives you everything, how can she give you more? She is not another
person; she is part of you. Does one finger of your hand plot against
another?

He told her sullenly of his scene with the doctor.

"I am very sorry," she said; but her eyes were still searching for the
reason why Tommy could be angry with her.

"You made me promise to tell no one," he said, "and I have kept my
promise: but you----"

The anguish that was Grizel's then! "You can't think that I told him!"
she cried, and she held out her arms as if to remind him of who she
was. "You can believe that of your Grizel?"

"I daresay you have not done it wittingly; but this man has guessed,
and he could never have guessed it from look or word of mine."

"It must have been I!" she said slowly. "Tell me," she cried like a
suppliant, "how have I done it?"

"Your manner, your face," he answered; "it must have been that. I
don't blame you. Grizel, but--yes, it must have been that, and it is
hard on me."

He was in misery, and these words leaped out. They meant only that it
was hard on him if Elspeth had to be told of his engagement in the
hour of her dejection. He did not mean to hurt Grizel to the quick.
However terrible the loss of his freedom might be to the man who could
not love, he always intended to be true to her. But she gave the words
a deeper meaning.

She stood so still she seemed to be pondering, and at last she said
quietly, as if they had been discussing some problem outside
themselves: "Yes, I think it must have been that." She looked long at
him. "It is very hard on you," she said.

"I feel sure it was that," she went on; and now her figure was erect,
and again it broke, and sometimes there was a noble scorn in her
voice, but more often there was only pitiful humility. "I feel sure it
was that, for I have often wondered how everybody did not know. I have
broken my promise. I used always to be able to keep a promise. I had
every other fault,--I was hard and proud and intolerant,--but I was
true. I think I was vain of that, though I see now it was only
something I could not help; from the moment when I had a difficulty in
keeping a promise, I ceased to keep it. I love you so much that I
carry my love in my face for all to read. They cannot see me meet you
without knowing the truth; they cannot hear me say your name but I
betray myself; I show how I love you in every movement; I am full of
you. How can anyone look at me and not see you? I should have been
more careful--oh, I could have been so much more careful had I loved
you a little less! It is very hard on you."

The note of satire had died out of her voice; her every look and
gesture carried in it nothing but love for him; but all the unhappy
dog could say was something about self-respect.

Her mouth opened as if for bitterness; but no sound came. "How much
self-respect do you think is left for me after to-day?" she said
mournfully at last; and then she quickly took a step nearer her dear
one, as if to caress the spot where these words had struck him. But
she stopped, and for a moment she was the Grizel of old. "Have no
fear," she said, with a trembling, crooked smile; "there is only one
thing to be done now, and I shall do it. All the blame is mine. You
shall not be deprived of your self-respect."

He had not been asking for his freedom; but he heard it running to him
now, and he knew that if he answered nothing he would be whistling it
back for ever. A madness to be free at any cost swept over him. He let
go his hold on self-respect, and clapped his hand on freedom.

He answered nothing, and the one thing for her to do was to go; and
she did it. But it was only for a moment that she could be altogether
the Grizel of old. She turned to take a long, last look at him; but
the wofulness of herself was what she saw. She cried, with infinite
pathos, "Oh, how could you hurt your Grizel so!"

He controlled himself and let her go. His freedom was fawning on him,
licking his hands and face, and in that madness he actually let Grizel
go. It was not until she was out of sight that he gave utterance to a
harsh laugh. He knew what he was at that moment, as you and I shall
never be able to know him, eavesdrop how we may.

He flung himself down in a blaeberry-bed, and lay there doggedly, his
weak mouth tightly closed. A great silence reigned; no, not a great
silence, for he continued to hear the cry: "Oh, how could you hurt
your Grizel so!" She scarcely knew that she had said it; but to him
who knew what she had been, and what he had changed her into, and for
what alone she was to blame, there was an unconscious pathos in it
that was terrible. It was the epitome of all that was Grizel, all that
was adorable and all that was pitiful in her. It rang in his mind like
a bell of doom. He believed its echo would not be quite gone from his
ears when he died. If all the wise men in the world had met to
consider how Grizel could most effectively say farewell to Tommy, they
could not have thought out a better sentence. However completely he
had put himself emotionally in her place with this same object, he
would have been inspired by nothing quite so good.

But they were love's dying words. He knew he could never again, though
he tried, be to Grizel what he had been. The water was spilled on the
ground. She had thought him all that was glorious in man--that was
what her love had meant; and it was spilled. There was only one way in
which he could wound her more cruelly than she was already hurt, and
that was by daring to ask her to love him still. To imply that he
thought her pride so broken, her independence, her maidenly modesty,
all that make up the loveliness of a girl, so lost that by entreaties
he could persuade her to forgive him, would destroy her altogether. It
would reveal to her how low he thought her capable of falling.

I suppose we should all like to think that it would have been thus
with Grizel, but our wishes are of small account. It was not many
minutes since she left Tommy, to be his no more, his knife still in
her heart; but she had not reached the end of the wood when all in
front of her seemed a world of goblins, and a future without him not
to be faced. He might beat her or scorn her, but not for an hour could
she exist without him. She wrung her arms in woe; the horror of what
she was doing tore her in pieces; but not all this prevented her
turning back. It could not even make her go slowly. She did not walk
back; she stole back in little runs. She knew it was her destruction,
but her arms were outstretched to the spot where she had left him.

He was no longer there, and he saw her between the firs before she
could see him. As he realized what her coming back meant, his frame
shook with pity for her. All the dignity had gone from her. She looked
as shamed as a dog stealing back after it had been whipped. She knew
she was shamed. He saw she knew it: the despairing rocking of her arms
proved it; yet she was coming back to him in little runs.

Pity, chivalry, oh, surely love itself, lifted him to his feet, and
all else passed out of him save an imperious desire to save her as
much humiliation as he could--to give her back a few of those garments
of pride and self-respect that had fallen from her. At least she
should not think that she had to come all the way to him. With a
stifled sob, he rose and ran up the path towards her.

"Grizel! it is you! My beloved! how could you leave me! Oh, Grizel, my
love, how could you misunderstand me so!"

She gave a glad cry. She sought feebly to hold him at arm's length, to
look at him watchfully, to read him as in the old days; but the old
days were gone. He strained her to him. Oh, surely it was love at
last! He thanked God that he loved at last.




CHAPTER XVII

HOW TOMMY SAVED THE FLAG


He loved at last, but had no time to exult just now, for he could not
rejoice with Tommy while his dear one drooped in shame. Ah, so well he
understood that she believed she had done the unpardonable thing in
woman, and that while she thought so she must remain a broken column.
It was a great task he saw before him--nothing less than to make her
think that what she had done was not shameful, but exquisite; that she
had not tarnished the flag of love, but glorified it. Artfulness, you
will see, was needed; but, remember, he was now using all his arts in
behalf of the woman he loved.

"You were so long in coming back to me, Grizel. The agony of it!"
"Did it seem long?" She spoke in a trembling voice, hiding her face in
him. She listened like one anxious to seize his answer as it left his
heart.

"So long," he answered, "that it seemed to me we must be old when we
met again. I saw a future without you stretching before me to the
grave, and I turned and ran from it."

"That is how I felt," she whispered.

"You!" Tommy cried, in excellent amazement.

"What else could have made me come?"

"I thought it was pity that had brought you--pity for me, Grizel. I
thought you had perhaps come back to be angry with me--"

"How could I be!" she cried.

"How could you help it, rather?" said he. "I was cruel, Grizel; I
spoke like a fool as well as like a dastard. But it was only anxiety
for Elspeth that made me do it. Dear one, be angry with me as often as
you choose, and whether I deserve it or not; but don't go away from
me; never send me from you again. Anything but that."

It was how she had felt again, and her hold on him tightened with
sudden joy. So well he knew what that grip meant! He did not tell her
that he had not loved her fully until now. He would have liked to tell
her how true love had been born in him as he saw her stealing back to
him, but it was surely best for her not to know that any
transformation had been needed. "I don't say that I love you more now
than ever before," he said carefully, "but one thing I do know: that I
never admired you quite so much."

She looked up in surprise.

"I mean your character," he said determinedly. "I have always known
how strong and noble it was, but I never quite thought you could do
anything so beautiful as this."

"Beautiful!" She could only echo the word.

"Many women, even of the best," he told her, "would have resorted to
little feminine ways of humbling such a blunderer as I have been: they
would have spurned him for weeks; made him come to them on his knees;
perhaps have thought that his brutality of a moment outweighed all his
love. When I saw you coming to meet me half-way--oh, Grizel, tell me
that you were doing that?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" she answered eagerly, so that she might not detain
him a moment.

"When I saw you I realized that you were willing to forgive me; that
you were coming to say so; that no thought of lowering me first was in
your mind; that yours was a love above the littleness of ordinary
people: and the adorableness of it filled me with a glorious joy; I
saw in that moment what woman in her highest development is capable
of, and that the noblest is the most womanly."

She said "Womanly?" with a little cry. It had always been such a sweet
word to her, and she thought it could never be hers again!

"It is by watching you," he replied, "that I know the meaning of the
word. I thought I knew long ago, but every day you give it a nobler
meaning."

If she could have believed it! For a second or two she tried to
believe it, and then she shook her head.

"How dear of you to think that of me!" she answered. She looked up at
him with exquisite approval in her eyes. She had always felt that men
should have high ideas about women.

"But it was not to save you pain that I came back," she said bravely.
There was something pathetic in the way the truth had always to come
out of her. "I did not think you wanted me to come back. I never
expected you to be looking for me, and when I saw you doing it, my
heart nearly stopped for gladness. I thought you were wearied of me,
and would be annoyed when you saw me coming back. I said to myself,
'If I go back I shall be a disgrace to womanhood,' But I came; and now
do you know what my heart is saying, and always will be saying? It is
that pride and honour and self-respect are gone. And the terrible
thing is that I don't seem to care; I, who used to value them so
much, am willing to let them go if you don't send me away from you.
Oh, if you can't love me any longer, let me still love you! That is
what I came back to say."

"Grizel, Grizel!" he cried. It was she who was wielding the knife now.

"But it is true," she said.

"We could so easily pretend that it isn't." That was not what he said,
though it was at his heart. He sat down, saying:

"This is a terrible blow, but better you should tell it to me than
leave me to find it out." He was determined to save the flag for
Grizel, though he had to try all the Tommy ways, one by one.

"Have I hurt you?" she asked anxiously. She could not bear to hurt him
for a moment. "What did I say?"

"It amounts to this," he replied huskily: "you love me, but you wish
you did not; that is what it means."

He expected her to be appalled by this; but she stood still, thinking
it over. There was something pitiful in a Grizel grown undecided.

"Do I wish I did not?" she said helplessly. "I don't know. Perhaps
that is what I do wish. Ah, but what are wishes! I know now that they
don't matter at all."

"Yes, they matter," he assured her, in the voice of one looking upon
death. "If you no longer want to love me, you will cease to do it
soon enough." His manner changed to bitterness. "So don't be cast
down, Grizel, for the day of your deliverance is at hand."

But again she disappointed him, and as the flag must be saved at
whatever cost, he said.

"It has come already. I see you no longer love me as you did." Her
arms rose in anguish; but he went on ruthlessly: "You will never
persuade me that you do; I shall never believe it again."

I suppose it was a pitiable thing about Grizel--it was something he
had discovered weeks ago and marvelled over--that nothing distressed
her so much as the implication that she could love him less. She knew
she could not; but that he should think it possible was the strangest
woe to her. It seemed to her to be love's only tragedy. We have seen
how difficult it was for Grizel to cry. When she said "How could you
hurt your Grizel so!" she had not cried, nor when she knew that if she
went back to him her self-respect must remain behind. But a painful
tear came to her eyes when he said that she loved him less. It almost
unmanned him, but he proceeded, for her good:

"I daresay you still care for me a little, as the rank and file of
people love. What right had I, of all people, to expect a love so rare
and beautiful as yours to last? It had to burn out, like a great fire,
as such love always does. The experience of the world has proved it."

"Oh!" she cried, and her body was rocking. If he did not stop, she
would weep herself to death.

"Yes, it seems sad," Tommy continued; "but if ever man knew that it
served him right, I know it. And they maintain, the wiseacres who have
analyzed love, that there is much to be said in favour of a calm
affection. The glory has gone, but the material comforts are greater,
and in the end--"

She sank upon the ground. He was bleeding for her, was Tommy. He went
on his knees beside her, and it was terrible to him to feel that every
part of her was alive with anguish. He called her many sweet names,
and she listened for them between her sobs; but still she sobbed. He
could bear it no longer; he cried, and called upon God to smite him.
She did not look up, but her poor hands pulled him back. "You said I
do not love you the same!" she moaned.

"Grizel!" he answered, as if in sad reproof; "it was not I who said
that--it was you. I put into words only what you have been telling me
for the last ten minutes."

"No, no," she cried. "Oh, how could I!"

He flung up his arms in despair. "Is this only pity for me, Grizel,"
he implored, looking into her face as if to learn his fate, "or is it
love indeed?"

"You know it is love--you know!"

"But what kind of love?" he demanded fiercely. "Is it the same love
that it was? Quick, tell me. I can't have less. If it is but a little
less, you will kill me."

The first gleam of sunshine swept across her face (and oh, how he was
looking for it!). "Do you want it to be the same--do you really want
it? Oh, it is, it is!"

"And you would not cease to love me if you could?"

"No, no, no!" She would have come closer to him, but he held her back.

"One moment, Grizel," he said in a hard voice that filled her with
apprehension. "There must be no second mistake. In saying that love,
and love alone, brought you back, you are admitting, are you not, that
you were talking wildly about loss of pride and honour? You did the
loveliest thing you have ever done when you came back. If I were you,
my character would be ruined from this hour--I should feel so proud of
myself."

She smiled at that, and fondled his hand. "If you think so," she said,
"all is well."

But he would not leave it thus. "You must think so also," he insisted;
and when she still shook her head, "Then I am proud of your love no
longer," said he, doggedly. "How proud of it I have been! A man
cannot love a woman without reverencing her, without being touched to
the quick a score of times a day by the revelations she gives of
herself--revelations of such beauty and purity that he is abashed in
her presence. The unspoken prayers he offers up to God at those times
he gives to her to carry. And when such a one returns his love, he is
proud indeed. To me you are the embodiment of all that is fair in
woman, and it is love that has made you so, that has taken away your
little imperfections--love for me. Ah, Grizel, I was so proud to think
that somehow I had done it; but even now, in the moment when your love
has manifested itself most splendidly, you are ashamed of it, and what
I respect and reverence you for most are changes that have come about
against your will. If your love makes you sorrowful, how can I be
proud of it? Henceforth it will be my greatest curse."

She started up, wringing her hands. It was something to have got her
to her feet.

"Surely," he said, like one puzzled as well as pained by her
obtuseness, "you see clearly that it must be so. True love, as I
conceive it, must be something passing all knowledge, irresistible;
something not to be resented for its power, but worshipped for it;
something not to fight against, but to glory in. And such is your
love; but you give the proof of it with shame, because your ideal of
love is a humdrum sort of affection. That is all you would like to
feel, Grizel, and because you feel something deeper and nobler you say
you have lost your self-respect. I am the man who has taken it from
you. Can I ever be proud of your love again?"

He paused, overcome with emotion. "What it has been to me!" he cried.
"I walked among my fellows as if I were a colossus. It inspired me at
my work. I felt that there was nothing great I was not capable of, and
all because Grizel loved me."

She stood trembling with delight at what he said, and with
apprehension at what he seemed to threaten. His head being bent, he
could not see her, and amid his grief he wondered a little what she
was doing now.

"But you spoke"--she said it timidly, as if to refer to the matter at
all was cruel of her--"you spoke as if I was disgracing you because I
could not conceal my love. You said it was hard on you." She pressed
her hands together. "Yes, that is what you said."

This was awkward for Tommy. "She believes I meant that," he cried
hoarsely. "Grizel believes that of me! I have behaved since then as if
that was what I meant, have I? I meant only that it would be hard on
me if Elspeth learned of our love at the very moment when this man is
treating her basely. I look as if I had meant something worse, do I? I
know myself at last! Grizel has shown me what I am."

He covered his face with his hands. Strong man as he was, he could not
conceal his agony.

"Don't!" she cried. "If I was wrong--"

"If you were wrong!"

"I was wrong! I know I was wrong. Somehow it was a mistake. I don't
know how it arose. But you love me and you want me to love you still.
That is all I know. I thought you did not, but you do. If you wanted
me to come back----"

"If I wanted it!"

"I know you wanted it now, and I am no longer ashamed to have come. I
am glad I came, and if you can still be proud of my love and respect
me----"

"Oh, Grizel, if!"

"Then I have got back my pride and my self-respect again. I cannot
reason about it, but they have come back again."

It was she who was trying to comfort him by this time, caressing his
hair and his hands. But he would not be appeased at once; it was good
for her to have something to do.

"You are sure you are happy again, Grizel? You are not pretending in
order to please me?"

"So happy!"

"But your eyes are still wet."

"That is because I have hurt you so. Oh, how happy I should be if I
could see you smile again!"

"How I would smile if I saw you looking happy!"

"Then smile at once, sir," she could say presently, "for see how happy
I am looking." And as she beamed on him once more he smiled as well as
he was able to. Grizel loved him so much that she actually knew when
that face of his was smiling, and soon she was saying gaily to his
eyes: "Oh, silly eyes that won't sparkle, what is the use of you?" and
she pressed her own upon them; and to his mouth she said: "Mouth that
does not know how to laugh--poor, tragic mouth!" He let her do nearly
all the talking. She sat there crooning over him as if he were her
child.

And so the flag was saved. He begged her to let him tell their little
world of his love for her, and especially was he eager to go straight
with it to the doctor. But she would not have this. "David and Elspeth
shall know in good time," she said, very nobly. "I am sure they are
fond of each other, and they shall know of our happiness on the day
when they tell us of their own." And until that great day came she was
not to look upon herself as engaged to Tommy, and he must never kiss
her again until they were engaged. I think it was a pleasure to her to
insist on this. It was her punishment to herself for ever having
doubted Tommy.

       *       *       *       *       *


PART II


       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER XVIII

THE GIRL SHE HAD BEEN


As they sat amid the smell of rosin on that summer day, she told him,
with a glance that said, "Now you will laugh at me," what had brought
her into Caddam Wood.

"I came to rub something out."

He reflected. "A memory?"

"Yes."

"Of me?"

She nodded.

"An unhappy memory?"

"Not to me," she replied, leaning on him. "I have no memory of you I
would rub out, no, not the unhappiest one, for it was you, and that
makes it dear. All memories, however sad, of loved ones become sweet,
don't they, when we get far enough away from them?"

"But to whom, then, is this memory painful, Grizel?"

Again she cast that glance at him. "To her," she whispered.

"'That little girl'!"

"Yes; the child I used to be. You see, she never grew up, and so they
are not distant memories to her. I try to rub them out of her mind by
giving her prettier things to think of. I go to the places where she
was most unhappy, and tell her sweet things about you. I am not
morbid, am I, in thinking of her still as some one apart from myself?
You know how it began, in the lonely days when I used to look at her
in mamma's mirror, and pity her, and fancy that she was pitying me and
entreating me to be careful. Always when I think I see her now, she
seems to be looking anxiously at me and saying, 'Oh, do be careful!'
And the sweet things I tell her about you are meant to show her how
careful I have become. Are you laughing at me for this? I sometimes
laugh at it myself."

"No, it is delicious," he answered her, speaking more lightly than he
felt. "What a numskull you make, Grizel, of any man who presumes to
write about women! I am at school again, and you are Miss Ailie
teaching me the alphabet. But I thought you lost that serious little
girl on the doleful day when she heard you say that you loved me
best."

"She came back. She has no one but me."

"And she still warns you against me?"

Grizel laughed gleefully. "I am too clever for her," she said. "I do
all the talking. I allow her to listen only. And you must not blame
her for distrusting you; I have said such things against you to her!
Oh, the things I said! On the first day I saw you, for instance, after
you came back to Thrums. It was in church. Do you remember?"

"I should like to know what you said to her about me that day."

"Would you?" Grizel asked merrily. "Well, let me see. She was not at
church--she never went there, you remember; but of course she was
curious to hear about you, and I had no sooner got home than she came
to me and said, 'Was he there?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Is he much changed?'
she asked. 'He has a beard,' I said. 'You know that is not what I
really mean,' she said, and then I said, 'I don't think he is so much
changed that it is impossible to recognize him again.'"

Tommy interrupted her: "Now what did you mean by that?"

"I meant that I thought you were a little annoyed to find the
congregation looking at Gavinia's baby more than at you!"

"Grizel, you are a wretch, but perhaps you were right. Well, what more
did the little inquisitor want to know?"

"She asked me if I felt any of my old fear of you, and I said No, and
then she clapped her hands with joy. And she asked whether you looked
at me as if you were begging me to say I still thought you a wonder,
and I said I thought you did----"

"Grizel!"

"Oh, I told her ever so many dreadful things as soon as I found them
out. I told her the whole story of your ankle, sir, for instance."

"On my word, Grizel, you seem to have omitted nothing!"

"Ah, but I did," she cried. "I never told her how much I wanted you to
be admirable; I pretended that I despised you merely, and in reality I
was wringing my hands with woe every time you did not behave like a
god."

"They will be worn away, Grizel, if you go on doing that."

"I don't think so," she replied, "nor can she think so if she believes
half of what I have told her about you since. She knows how you saved
the boy's life. I told her that in the old Lair because she had some
harsh memories of you there; and it was at the Cuttle Well that I told
her about the glove."

"And where," asked Tommy, severely, "did you tell her that you had
been mistaken in thinking me jealous of a baby and anxious to be
considered a wonder?"

She hid her face for a moment, and then looked up roguishly into his.
"I have not told her that yet!" she replied. It was so audacious of
her that he took her by the ears.

"If I were vain," Tommy said reflectively, "I would certainly shake
you now. You show a painful want of tact, Grizel, in implying that I
am not perfect. Nothing annoys men so much. We can stand anything
except that."

His merriness gladdened her. "They are only little things," she said,
"and I have grown to love them. I know they are flaws; but I love them
because----"

"Say because they are mine. You owe me that."

"No; but because they are weaknesses I don't have. I have others, but
not those, and it is sweet to me to know that you are weak in some
matters in which I am strong. It makes me feel that I can be of use to
you."

"Are you insinuating that there are more of them?" Tommy demanded,
sitting up.

"You are not very practical," she responded, "and I am."

"Go on."

"And you are--just a little--inclined to be senti----"

"Hush! I don't allow that word; but you may say, if you choose, that I
am sometimes carried away by a too generous impulse."

"And that it will be my part," said she, "to seize you by the arm and
hold you back. Oh, you will give me a great deal to do! That is one of
the things I love you for. It was one of the things I loved my dear
Dr. McQueen for." She looked up suddenly. "I have told him also about
you."

"Lately, Grizel?"

"Yes, in my parlour. It was his parlour, you know, and I had kept
nothing from him while he was alive; that is to say, he always knew
what I was thinking of, and I like to fancy that he knows still. In
the evenings he used to sit in the arm-chair by the fire, and I sat
talking or knitting at his feet, and if I ceased to do anything except
sit still, looking straight before me, he knew I was thinking the
morbid thoughts that had troubled me in the old days at Double Dykes.
Without knowing it I sometimes shuddered at those times, and he was
distressed. It reminded him of my mamma."

"I understand," Tommy said hurriedly. He meant: "Let us avoid painful
subjects."

[Illustration: "I sit still by his arm-chair and tell him what is
happening to his Grizel."]

"It is years," she went on, "since those thoughts have troubled me,
and it was he who drove them away. He was so kind! He thought so much
of my future that I still sit by his arm-chair and tell him what is
happening to his Grizel. I don't speak aloud, of course; I scarcely
say the words to myself even; and yet we seem to have long talks
together. I told him I had given you his coat."

"Well, I don't think he was pleased at that, Grizel. I have had a
feeling for some time that the coat dislikes me. It scratched my hand
the first time I put it on. My hand caught in the hook of the collar,
you will say; but no, that is not what I think. In my opinion, the
deed was maliciously done. McQueen always distrusted me, you know, and
I expect his coat was saying, 'Hands off my Grizel.'"

She took it as quite a jest. "He does not distrust you now," she said,
smiling. "I have told him what I think of you, and though he was
surprised at first, in the end his opinion was the same as mine."

"Ah, you saw to that, Grizel!"

"I had nothing to do with it. I merely told him everything, and he had
to agree with me. How could he doubt when he saw that you had made me
so happy! Even mamma does not doubt."

"You have told her! All this is rather eerie, Grizel."

"You are not sorry, are you?" she asked, looking at him anxiously.
"Dr. McQueen wanted me to forget her. He thought that would be best
for me. It was the only matter on which we differed. I gave up
speaking of her to him. You are the only person I have mentioned her
to since I became a woman; but I often think of her. I am sure there
was a time, before I was old enough to understand, when she was very
fond of me. I was her baby, and women can't help being fond of their
babies, even though they should never have had them. I think she often
hugged me tight."

"Need we speak of this, Grizel?"

"For this once," she entreated. "You must remember that mamma often
looked at me with hatred, and said I was the cause of all her woe; but
sometimes in her last months she would give me such sad looks that I
trembled, and I felt that she was picturing me growing into the kind
of woman she wished so much she had not become herself, and that she
longed to save me. That is why I have told her that a good man loves
me. She is so glad, my poor dear mamma, that I tell her again and
again, and she loves to hear it as much as I to tell it. What she
loves to hear most is that you really do want to marry me. She is so
fond of hearing that because it is what my father would never say to
her."

Tommy was so much moved that he could not speak, but in his heart he
gave thanks that what Grizel said of him to her mamma was true at
last.

"It makes her so happy," Grizel said, "that when I seem to see her now
she looks as sweet and pure as she must have been in the days when she
was an innocent girl. I think she can enter into my feelings more than
any other person could ever do. Is that because she was my mother? She
understands how I feel just as I can understand how in the end she was
willing to be bad because he wanted it so much."

"No, no, Grizel," Tommy cried passionately, "you don't understand
that!"

She rocked her arms. "Yes, I do," she said; "I do. I could never have
cared for such a man; but I can understand how mamma yielded to him,
and I have no feeling for her except pity, and I have told her so, and
it is what she loves to hear her daughter tell her best of all."

They put the subject from them, and she told him what it was that she
had come to rub out in Caddam. If you have read of Tommy's boyhood you
may remember the day it ended with his departure for the farm, and
that he and Elspeth walked through Caddam to the cart that was to take
him from her, and how, to comfort her, he swore that he loved her with
his whole heart, and Grizel not at all, and that Grizel was in the
wood and heard. And how Elspeth had promised to wave to Tommy in the
cart as long as it was visible, but broke down and went home sobbing,
and how Grizel took her place and waved, pretending to be Elspeth, so
that he might think she was bearing up bravely. Tommy had not known
what Grizel did for him that day, and when he heard it now for the
first time from her own lips, he realized afresh what a glorious girl
she was and had always been.

"You may try to rub that memory out of little Grizel's head," he
declared, looking very proudly at her, "but you shall never rub it out
of mine."

It was by his wish that they went together to the spot where she had
heard him say that he loved Elspeth only--"if you can find it," Tommy
said, "after all these years"; and she smiled at his mannish
words--she had found it so often since! There was the very clump of
whin.

And here was the boy to match. Oh, who by striving could make himself
a boy again as Tommy could! I tell you he was always irresistible
then. What is genius? It is the power to be a boy again at will. When
I think of him flinging off the years and whistling childhood back,
not to himself only, but to all who heard, distributing it among them
gaily, imperiously calling on them to dance, dance, for they are boys
and girls again until they stop--when to recall him in those wild
moods is to myself to grasp for a moment at the dear dead days that
were so much the best, I cannot wonder that Grizel loved him. I am his
slave myself; I see that all that was wrong with Tommy was that he
could not always be a boy.

"Hide there again, Grizel," he cried to her, little Tommy cried to
her, Stroke the Jacobite, her captain, cried to the Lady Griselda; and
he disappeared, and presently marched down the path with an imaginary
Elspeth by his side. "I love you both, Elspeth," he was going to say,
"and my love for the one does not make me love the other less"; but he
glanced at Grizel, and she was leaning forward to catch his words as
if this were no play, but life or death, and he knew what she longed
to hear him say, and he said it: "I love you very much, Elspeth, but
however much I love you, it would be idle to pretend that I don't love
Grizel more."

A stifled cry of joy came from a clump of whin hard by, and they were
man and woman again.

"Did you not know it, Grizel?"

"No, no; you never told me."

"I never dreamed it was necessary to tell you."

"Oh, if you knew how I have longed that it might be so, yes, and
sometimes hated Elspeth because I feared it could not be! I have tried
so hard to be content with second place. I have thought it all out,
and said to myself it was natural that Elspeth should be first."

"My tragic love," he said, "I can see you arguing in that way, but I
don't see you convincing yourself. My passionate Grizel is not the
girl to accept second place from anyone. If I know anything of her, I
know that."

To his surprise, she answered softly: "You are wrong. I wonder at it
myself, but I had made up my mind to be content with second place, and
to be grateful for it."

"I could not have believed it!" he cried.

"I could not have believed it myself," said she.

"Are you the Grizel----" he began.

"No," she said, "I have changed a little," and she looked pathetically
at him.

"It stabs me," he said, "to see you so humble."

"I am humbler than I was," she answered huskily, but she was looking
at him with the fondest love.

"Don't look at me so, Grizel," he implored. "I am unworthy of it. I am
the man who has made you so humble."

"Yes," she answered, and still she looked at him with the fondest
love. A film came over his eyes, and she touched them softly with her
handkerchief.

"Those eyes that but a little while ago were looking so coldly at
you!" he said.

"Dear eyes!" said she.

"Though I were to strike you----" he cried, raising his hand.

She took the hand in hers and kissed it.

"Has it come to this!" he said, and as she could not speak, she
nodded. He fell upon his knees before her.

"I am glad you are a little sorry," she said; "I am a little sorry
myself."




CHAPTER XIX

OF THE CHANGE IN THOMAS


To find ways of making David propose to Elspeth, of making Elspeth
willing to exchange her brother for David--they were heavy tasks, but
Tommy yoked himself to them gallantly and tugged like an Arab steed in
the plough. It should be almost as pleasant to us as to him to think
that love was what made him do it, for he was sure he loved Grizel at
last, and that the one longing of his heart was to marry her; the one
marvel to him was that he had ever longed ardently for anything else.
Well, as you know, she longed for it also, but she was firm in her
resolve that until Elspeth was engaged Tommy should be a single man.
She even made him promise not to kiss her again so long as their love
had to be kept secret. "It will be so sweet to wait," she said
bravely. As we shall see presently, his efforts to put Elspeth into
the hands of David were apparently of no avail, but though this would
have embittered many men, it drew only to the surface some of Tommy's
noblest attributes; as he suffered in silence he became gentler, more
considerate, and acquired a new command over himself. To conquer self
for her sake (this is in the "Letters to a Young Man") is the highest
tribute a man can pay to a woman; it is the only real greatness, and
Tommy had done it now. I could give you a score of proofs. Let us take
his treatment of Aaron Latta.

One day about this time Tommy found himself alone in the house with
Aaron, and had he been the old Tommy he would have waited but a moment
to let Aaron decide which of them should go elsewhere. It was thus
that these two, ever so uncomfortable in each other's presence,
contrived to keep the peace. Now note the change.

"Aaron," said Tommy, in the hush that had fallen on that house since
quiet Elspeth left it, "I have never thanked you in words for all that
you have done for me and Elspeth."

"Dinna do it now, then," replied the warper, fidgeting.

"I must," Tommy said cheerily, "I must"; and he did, while Aaron
scowled.

"It was never done for you," Aaron informed him, "nor for the father
you are the marrows o'."

"It was done for my mother," said Tommy, reverently.

"I'm none so sure o't," Aaron rapped out. "I think I brocht you twa
here as bairns, that the reminder of my shame should ever stand before
me."

But Tommy shook his head, and sat down sympathetically beside the
warper. "You loved her, Aaron," he said simply. "It was an undying
love that made you adopt her orphan children." A charming thought came
to him. "When you brought us here," he said, with some elation,
"Elspeth used to cry at nights because our mother's spirit did not
come to us to comfort us, and I invented boyish explanations to
appease her. But I have learned since why we did not see that spirit;
for though it hovered round this house, its first thought was not for
us, but for him who succoured us."

He could have made it much better had he been able to revise it, but
surely it was touching, and Aaron need not have said "Damn," which was
what he did say.

One knows how most men would have received so harsh an answer to such
gentle words, and we can conceive how a very holy man, say a monk,
would have bowed to it. Even as the monk did Tommy submit, or say
rather with the meekness of a nun.

"I wish I could help you in any way, Aaron," he said, with a sigh.

"You can," replied Aaron, promptly, "by taking yourself off to London,
and leaving Elspeth here wi' me. I never made pretence that I wanted
you, except because she wouldna come without you. Laddie and man, as
weel you ken, you were aye a scunner to me."

"And yet," said Tommy, looking at him admiringly, "you fed and housed
and educated us. Ah, Aaron, do you not see that your dislike gives me
the more reason only to esteem you?" Carried away by desire to help
the old man, he put his hand kindly on his shoulder. "You have never
respected yourself," he said, "since the night you and my mother
parted at the Cuttle Well, and my heart bleeds to think of it. Many a
year ago, by your kindness to two forlorn children, you expiated that
sin, and it is blotted out from your account. Forget it, Aaron, as
every other person has forgotten it, and let the spirit of Jean Myles
see you tranquil once again."

He patted Aaron affectionately; he seemed to be the older of the two.

"Tak' your hand off my shuther," Aaron cried fiercely.

Tommy removed his hand, but he continued to look yearningly at the
warper. Another beautiful thought came to him.

"What are you looking so holy about?" asked Aaron, with misgivings.

"Aaron," cried Tommy, suddenly inspired, "you are not always the
gloomy man you pass for being. You have glorious moments still. You
wake in the morning, and for a second of time you are in the heyday of
your youth, and you and Jean Myles are to walk out to-night. As you
sit by this fire you think you hear her hand on the latch of the door;
as you pass down the street you seem to see her coming towards you. It
is for a moment only, and then you are a gray-haired man again, and
she has been in her grave for many a year; but you have that moment."

Aaron rose, amazed and wrathful. "The de'il tak' you," he cried, "how
did you find out that?"

Perhaps Tommy's nose turned up rapturously in reply, for the best of
us cannot command ourselves altogether at great moments, but when he
spoke he was modest again.

"It was sympathy that told me," he explained; "and, Aaron, if you will
only believe me, it tells me also that a little of the man you were
still clings to you. Come out of the moroseness in which you have
enveloped yourself so long. Think what a joy it would be to Elspeth."

"It's little she would care."

"If you want to hurt her, tell her so."

"I'm no denying but what she's fell fond o' me."

"Then for her sake," Tommy pleaded.

But the warper turned on him with baleful eyes. "She likes me," he
said in a grating voice, "and yet I'm as nothing to her; we are all as
nothing to her beside you. If there hadna been you I should hae become
the father to her I craved to be; but you had mesmerized her; she had
eyes for none but you. I sent you to the herding, meaning to break
your power over her, and all she could think o' was my cruelty in
sindering you. Syne you ran aff wi' her to London, stealing her frae
me. I was without her while she was growing frae lassie to woman, the
years when maybe she could hae made o' me what she willed. Magerful
Tam took the mother frae me, and he lived again in you to tak' the
dochter."

"You really think me masterful--me!" Tommy said, smiling.

"I suppose you never were!" Aaron replied ironically.

"Yes," Tommy admitted frankly, "I was masterful as a boy, ah, and even
quite lately. How we change!" he said musingly.

"How we dinna change!" retorted Aaron, bitterly. He had learned the
truer philosophy.

"Man," he continued, looking Tommy over, "there's times when I see
mair o' your mother than your father in you. She was a wonder at
making believe. The letters about her grandeur that she wrote to
Thrums when she was starving! Even you couldna hae wrote them better.
But she never managed to cheat hersel'. That's whaur you sail away
frae her."

"I used to make believe, Aaron, as you say," Tommy replied sadly. "If
you knew how I feel the folly of it now, perhaps even you would wish
that I felt it less.

"But we must each of us dree his own weird," he proceeded, with
wonderful sweetness, when Aaron did not answer. "And so far, at least,
as Elspeth is concerned, surely I have done my duty. I had the
bringing up of her from the days when she was learning to speak."

"She got into the way o' letting you do everything for her," the
warper responded sourly. "You thought for her, you acted for her, frae
the first; you toomed her, and then filled her up wi' yoursel'."

"She always needed some one to lean on."

"Ay, because you had maimed her. She grew up in the notion that you
were all the earth and the wonder o' the world."

"Could I help that?"

"Help it! Did you try? It was the one thing you were sure o' yoursel';
it was the one thing you thought worth anybody's learning. You stood
before her crowing the whole day. I said the now I wished you would go
and leave her wi' me: but I wouldna dare to keep her; she's helpless
without you; if you took your arm awa frae her now, she would tumble
to the ground."

"I fear it is true, Aaron," Tommy said, with bent head. "Whether she
is so by nature, or whether I have made her so, I cannot tell, but I
fear that what you say is true."

"It's true," said Aaron, "and yours is the wite. There's no life for
her now except what you mak'; she canna see beyond you. Go on thinking
yoursel' a wonder if you like, but mind this: if you were to cast her
off frae you now, she would die like an amputated hand."

To Tommy it was like listening to his doom. Ah, Aaron, even you could
not withhold your pity, did you know how this man is being punished
now for having made Elspeth so dependent on him! Some such thought
passed through Tommy's head, but he was too brave to appeal for pity.
"If that is so," he said firmly, "I take the responsibility for it.
But I began this talk, Aaron, not to intrude my troubles on you, but
hoping to lighten yours. If I could see you smile, Aaron----"

"Drop it!" cried the warper; and then, going closer to him: "You would
hae seen me smile, ay, and heard me laugh, gin you had been here when
Mrs. McLean came yont to read your book to me. She fair insistit on
reading the terrible noble bits to me, and she grat they were so
sublime; but the sublimer they were, the mair I laughed, for I ken
you, Tommy, my man, I ken you."

He spoke with much vehemence, and, after all, our hero was not
perfect. He withdrew stiffly to the other room. I think it was the use
of the word Tommy that enraged him.

But in a very few minutes he scorned himself, and was possessed by a
pensive wonder that one so tragically fated as he could resent an old
man's gibe. Aaron misunderstood him. Was that any reason why he should
not feel sorry for Aaron? He crossed the hallan to the kitchen door,
and stopped there, overcome with pity. The warper was still crouching
by the fire, but his head rested on his chest; he was a weary,
desolate figure, and at the other side of the hearth stood an empty
chair. The picture was the epitome of his life, or so it seemed to the
sympathetic soul at the door, who saw him passing from youth to old
age, staring at the chair that must always be empty. At the same
moment Tommy saw his own future, and in it, too, an empty chair. Yet,
hard as was his own case, at least he knew that he was loved; if her
chair must be empty, the fault was as little hers as his, while
Aaron----

A noble compassion drew him forward, and he put his hand determinedly
on the dear old man's shoulder.

"Aaron," he said, in a tremble of pity, "I know what is the real
sorrow of your life, and I rejoice because I can put an end to it. You
think that Jean Myles never cared for you; but you are strangely
wrong. I was with my mother to the last, Aaron, and I can tell you,
she asked me with her dying breath to say to you that she loved you
all the time."

Aaron tried to rise, but was pushed back into his chair. "Love cannot
die," cried Tommy, triumphantly, like the fairy in the pantomime;
"love is always young----"

He stopped in mid-career at sight of Aaron's disappointing face. "Are
you done?" the warper inquired. "When you and me are alane in this
house there's no room for the both o' us, and as I'll never hae it
said that I made Jean Myles's bairn munt, I'll go out mysel'."

And out he went, and sat on the dyke till Elspeth came home. It did
not turn Tommy sulky. He nodded kindly to Aaron from the window in
token of forgiveness, and next day he spent a valuable hour in making
a cushion for the old man's chair. "He must be left with the
impression that you made it," Tommy explained to Elspeth, "for he
would not take it from me."

"Oh, Tommy, how good you are!"

"I am far from it, Elspeth."

"There is a serenity about you nowadays," she said, "that I don't seem
to have noticed before," and indeed this was true; it was the serenity
that comes to those who, having a mortal wound, can no more be
troubled by the pinpricks.

"There has been nothing to cause it, has there?" Elspeth asked
timidly.

"Only the feeling that I have much to be grateful for," he replied. "I
have you, Elspeth."

"And I have you," she said, "and I want no more. I could never care
for anyone as I care for you, Tommy."

She was speaking unselfishly; she meant to imply delicately that the
doctor's defection need not make Tommy think her unhappy. "Are you
glad?" she asked.

He said Yes bravely. Elspeth, he was determined, should never have the
distress of knowing that for her sake he was giving up the one great
joy which life contains. He was a grander character than most. Men
have often in the world's history made a splendid sacrifice for women,
but if you turn up the annals you will find that the woman nearly
always knew of it.

He told Grizel what Aaron had said and what Elspeth had said. He could
keep nothing from her now; he was done with the world of make-believe
for ever. And it seemed wicked of him to hope, he declared, or to let
her hope. "I ought to give you up, Grizel," he said, with a groan.

"I won't let you," she replied adorably.

"Gemmell has not come near us for a week. I ask him in, but he avoids
the house."

"I don't understand it," Grizel had to admit; "but I think he is fond
of her, I do indeed."

"Even if that were so, I fear she would not accept him. I know Elspeth
so well that I feel I am deceiving you if I say there is any hope."

"Nevertheless you must say it," she answered brightly; "you must say
it and leave me to think it. And I do think it. I believe that
Elspeth, despite her timidity and her dependence on you, is like other
girls at heart, and not more difficult to win.

"And even if it all comes to nothing," she told him, a little faintly,
"I shall not be unhappy. You don't really know me if you think I
should love to be married so--so much as all that."

"It is you, Grizel," he replied, "who don't see that it is myself I am
pitying. It is I who want to be married as much as all that."

Her eyes shone with a soft light, for of course it was what she wanted
him to say. These two seemed to have changed places. That people could
love each other, and there the end, had been his fond philosophy and
her torment. Now, it was she who argued for it and Tommy who shook his
head.

"They can be very, very happy."

"No," he said.

"But one of them is."

"Not the other," he insisted; and of course it was again what she
wanted him to say.

And he was not always despairing. He tried hard to find a way of
bringing David to Elspeth's feet, and once, at least, the apparently
reluctant suitor almost succumbed. Tommy had met him near Aaron's
house, and invited him to come in and hear Elspeth singing. "I did not
know she sang," David said, hesitating.

"She is so shy about it," Tommy replied lightly, "that we can hear her
by stealth only. Aaron and I listen at the door. Come and listen at
the door."

And David had yielded and listened at the door, and afterwards gone in
and remained like one who could not tear himself away. What was more,
he and Elspeth had touched upon the subject of love in their
conversation, Tommy sitting at the window so engrossed in a letter to
Pym that he seemed to hear nothing, though he could repeat everything
afterwards to Grizel.

Elspeth had said, in her shrinking way, that if she were a man she
could love only a woman who was strong and courageous and
helpful--such a woman as Grizel, she had said.

"And yet," David replied, "women have been loved who had none of those
qualities."

"In spite of the want of them?" Elspeth asked.

"Perhaps because of it," said he.

"They are noble qualities," Elspeth maintained a little sadly, and he
assented. "And one of them, at least, is essential," she said. "A
woman has no right to be loved who is not helpful."

"She is helpful to the man who loves her," David replied.

"He would have to do for her," Elspeth said, "the very things she
should be doing for him."

"He may want very much to do them," said David.

"Then it is her weakness that appeals to him. Is not that loving her
for the wrong thing?"

"It may be the right thing," David insisted, "for him."

"And at that point," Tommy said, boyishly, to Grizel, "I ceased to
hear them, I was so elated; I felt that everything was coming right. I
could not give another thought to their future, I was so busy mapping
out my own. I heard a hammering. Do you know what it was? It was our
house going up--your house and mine; our home, Grizel! It was not
here, nor in London. It was near the Thames. I wanted it to be upon
the bank, but you said No, you were afraid of floods. I wanted to
superintend the building, but you conducted me contemptuously to my
desk. You intimated that I did not know how to build--that no one knew
except yourself. You instructed the architect, and bullied the
workmen, and cried for more store-closets. Grizel, I saw the house go
up; I saw you the adoration and terror of your servants; I heard you
singing from room to room."

He was touched by this; all beautiful thoughts touched him.

But as a rule, though Tommy tried to be brave for her sake, it was
usually she who was the comforter now, and he the comforted, and this
was the arrangement that suited Grizel best. Her one thought need no
longer be that she loved him too much, but how much he loved her. It
was not her self-respect that must be humoured back, but his. If hers
lagged, what did it matter? What are her own troubles to a woman when
there is something to do for the man she loves?

"You are too anxious about the future," she said to him, if he had
grown gloomy again. "Can we not be happy in the present, and leave the
future to take care of itself?" How strange to know that it was Grizel
who said this to Tommy, and not Tommy who said it to Grizel!

She delighted in playing the mother to him. "Now you must go back to
your desk," she would say masterfully. "You have three hours' work to
do to-night yet."

"It can wait. Let me stay a little longer with you, Grizel," he
answered humbly. Ha! it was Tommy who was humble now. Not so long ago
he would not have allowed his work to wait for anyone, and Grizel knew
it, and exulted.

"To work, sir," she ordered. "And you must put on your old coat before
you sit down to write, and pull up your cuffs so that they don't
scrape on the desk. Also, you must not think too much about me."

She tried to look businesslike, but she could scarce resist rocking
her arms with delight when she heard herself saying such things to
him. It was as if she had the old doctor once more in her hands.

"What more, Grizel? I like you to order me about."

"Only this. Good afternoon."

"But I am to walk home with you," he entreated.

"No," she said decisively; but she smiled: once upon a time it had
been she who asked for this.

"If you are good," she said, "you shall perhaps see me to-morrow."

"Perhaps only?" He was scared; but she smiled happily again: it had
once been she who had to beg that there should be no perhaps.

"If you are good," she replied,--"and you are not good when you have
such a long face. Smile, you silly boy; smile when I order you. If you
don't I shall not so much as look out at my window to-morrow."

He was the man who had caused her so much agony, and she was looking
at him with the eternally forgiving smile of the mother. "Ah, Grizel,"
Tommy cried passionately, "how brave and unselfish and noble you are,
and what a glorious wife God intended you to be!"

She broke from him with a little cry, but when she turned round again
it was to nod and smile to him.




CHAPTER XX

A LOVE-LETTER


Some beautiful days followed, so beautiful to Grizel that as they
passed away she kissed her hand to them. Do you see her standing on
tiptoe to see the last of them? They lit a fire in the chamber of her
soul which is the home of all pure maids, and the fagots that warmed
Grizel were every fond look that had been on her lover's face and
every sweet word he had let fall. She counted and fondled them, and
pretended that one was lost that she might hug it more than all the
others when it was found. To sit by that fire was almost better than
having the days that lit it; sometimes she could scarcely wait for the
day to go.

Tommy's fond looks and sweet words! There was also a letter in those
days, and, now that I remember, a little garnet ring; and there were a
few other fagots, but all so trifling it must seem incredible to you
that they could have made so great a blaze--nothing else in it, on my
honour, except a girl's heart added by herself that the fire might
burn a moment longer.

And now, what so chilly as the fire that has gone out! Gone out long
ago, dear Grizel, while you crouched over it. You may put your hand in
the ashes; they will not burn you now. Ah, Grizel, why do you sit
there in the cold?

The day of the letter! It began in dread, but ended so joyfully, do
you think Grizel grudged the dread? It became dear to her; she loved
to return to it and gaze at the joy it glorified, as one sees the
sunshine from a murky room. When she heard the postman's knock she was
not even curious; so few letters came to her, she thought this must be
Maggy Ann's monthly one from Aberdeen, and went on placidly dusting.
At last she lifted it from the floor, for it had been slipped beneath
the door, and then Grizel was standing in her little lobby, panting as
if at the end of a race. The letter lay in both her hands, and they
rose slowly until they were pressed against her breast.

She uttered some faint cries (it was the only moment in which I have
known Grizel to be hysterical), and then she ran to her room and
locked herself in--herself and it. Do you know why that look of
elation had come suddenly to her face? It was because he had not even
written the address in a disguised hand to deceive the postmistress.
So much of the old Grizel was gone that the pathos of her elation over
this was lost to her.

Several times she almost opened it. Why did she pause? why had that
frightened look come into her eyes? She put the letter on her table
and drew away from it. If she took a step nearer, her hands went
behind her back as if saying, "Grizel, don't ask us to open it; we are
afraid."

Perhaps it really did say the dear things that love writes. Perhaps it
was aghast at the way she was treating it. Dear letter! Her mouth
smiled to it, but her hands remained afraid. As she stood irresolute,
smiling, and afraid, she was a little like her mother. I have put off
as long as possible saying that Grizel was ever like her mother. The
Painted Lady had never got any letters while she was in Thrums, but
she looked wistfully at those of other people. "They are so pretty,"
she had said; "but don't open them: when you open them they break your
heart." Grizel remembered what her mother had said.

Had the old Grizel feared what might be inside, it would have made her
open the letter more quickly. Two minds to one person were unendurable
to her. But she seemed to be a coward now. It was pitiable.

Perhaps it was quite a common little letter, beginning "Dear Grizel,"
and saying nothing more delicious or more terrible than that he wanted
her to lend him one of the doctor's books. She thought of a score of
trivialities it might be about; but the letter was still unopened when
David Gemmell called to talk over some cases in which he required her
counsel. He found her sitting listlessly, something in her lap which
she at once concealed. She failed to follow his arguments, and he went
away puckering his brows, some of the old doctor's sayings about her
ringing loud in his ears.

One of them was: "Things will be far wrong with Grizel when she is
able to sit idle with her hands in her lap."

Another: "She is almost pitifully straightforward, man. Everything
that is in Grizel must out. She can hide nothing."

Yet how cunningly she had concealed what was in her hands. Cunning
applied to Grizel! David shuddered. He thought of Tommy, and shut his
mouth tight. He could do this easily. Tommy could not do it without
feeling breathless. They were types of two kinds of men.

David also remembered a promise he had given McQueen, and wondered, as
he had wondered a good deal of late, whether the time had come to keep
it.

But Grizel sat on with her unopened letter. She was to meet Tommy
presently on the croquet lawn of the Dovecot, when Ailie was to play
Mr. James (the champion), and she decided that she must wait till
then. She would know what sort of letter it was the moment she saw his
face. And then! She pressed her hands together.

Oh, how base of her to doubt him! She said it to herself then and
often afterwards. She looked mournfully in her mother's long mirror at
this disloyal Grizel, as if the capacity to doubt him was the saddest
of all the changes that had come to her. He had been so true
yesterday; oh, how could she tremble to-day? Beautiful yesterday! but
yesterday may seem so long ago. How little a time had passed between
the moment when she was greeting him joyously in Caddam Wood and that
cry of the heart, "How could you hurt your Grizel so!" No, she could
not open her letter. She could kiss it, but she could not open it.

Foolish fears! for before she had shaken hands with Tommy in Mrs.
McLean's garden she knew he loved her still, and that the letter
proved it. She was properly punished, yet surely in excess, for when
she might have been reading her first love-letter, she had to join in
discussions with various ladies about Berlin wool and the like, and to
applaud the prowess of Mr. James with the loathly croquet mallet. It
seemed quite a long time before Tommy could get a private word with
her. Then he began about the letter at once.

"You are not angry with me for writing it?" he asked anxiously. "I
should not have done it; I had no right: but such a desire to do it
came over me, I had to; it was such a glory to me to say in writing
what you are to me."

She smiled happily. Oh, exquisite day! "I have so long wanted to have
a letter from you," she said. "I have almost wished you would go away
for a little time, so that I might have a letter from you."

He had guessed this. He had written to give her delight.

"Did you like the first words of it, Grizel?" he asked eagerly.

The lover and the artist spoke together.

Could she admit that the letter was unopened, and why? Oh, the pain to
him! She nodded assent. It was not really an untruth, she told
herself. She did like them--oh, how she liked them, though she did not
know what they were!

"I nearly began 'My beloved,'" he said solemnly.

Somehow she had expected it to be this. "Why didn't you?" she asked, a
little disappointed.

"I like the other so much better," he replied. "To write it was so
delicious to me, I thought you would not mind."

"I don't mind," she said hastily. (What could it be?)

"But you would have preferred 'beloved'?"

"It is such a sweet name."

"Surely not so sweet as the other, Grizel?"

"No," she said, "no." (Oh, what could it be!)

"Have you destroyed it?" he asked, and the question was a shock to
her. Her hand rose instinctively to defend something that lay near her
heart.

"I could not," she whispered.

"Do you mean you wanted to?" he asked dolefully.

"I thought you wanted it," she murmured.

"I!" he cried, aghast, and she was joyous again.

"Can't you guess where it is?" she said.

He understood. "Grizel! You carry my letter there!"

She was full of glee; but she puzzled him presently.

"Do you think I could go now?" she inquired eagerly.

"And leave me?"

It was dreadful of her, but she nodded.

"I want to go home."

"Is it not home, Grizel, when you are with me?"

"I want to go away from home, then." She said it as if she loved to
tantalize him.

"But why?"

"I won't tell you." She was looking wistfully at the door. "I have
something to do."

"It can wait."

"It has waited too long." He might have heard an assenting rustle from
beneath her bodice.

"Do let me go," she said coaxingly, as if he held her.

"I can't understand----" he began, and broke off. She was facing him
demurely but exultantly, challenging him, he could see, to read her
now. "Just when I am flattering myself that I know everything about
you, Grizel," he said, with a long face, "I suddenly wonder whether I
know anything."

She would have liked to clap her hands. "You must remember that we
have changed places," she told him. "It is I who understand you now."

"And I am devoutly glad," he made answer, with humble thankfulness.
"And I must ask you, Grizel, why you want to run away from me."

"But you think you know," she retorted smartly. "You think I want to
read my letter again!"

Her cleverness staggered him. "But I am right, am I not, Grizel?"

"No," she said triumphantly, "you are quite wrong. Oh, if you knew how
wrong you are!" And having thus again unhorsed him, she made her
excuses to Ailie and slipped away. Dr. Gemmell, who was present and
had been watching her narrowly, misread the flush on her face and her
restless desire to be gone.

"Is there anything between those two, do you think?" Mrs. McLean had
said in a twitter to him while Tommy and Grizel were talking, and he
had answered No almost sharply.

"People are beginning to think there is," she said in self-defence.

"They are mistaken," he told her curtly, and it was about this time
that Grizel left. David followed her to her home soon afterwards, and
Maggy Ann, who answered his summons, did not accompany him upstairs.
He was in the house daily, and she left him to find Grizel for
himself. He opened the parlour door almost as he knocked, and she was
there, but had not heard him. He stopped short, like one who had
blundered unawares on what was not for him.

She was on her knees on the hearth-rug, with her head buried in what
had been Dr. McQueen's chair. Ragged had been the seat of it on the
day when she first went to live with him, but very early on the
following morning, or, to be precise, five minutes after daybreak, he
had risen to see if there were burglars in the parlour, and behold, it
was his grateful little maid repadding the old arm-chair. How a
situation repeats itself! Without disturbing her, the old doctor had
slipped away with a full heart. It was what the young doctor did now.

But the situation was not quite the same. She had been bubbling over
with glee then; she was sobbing now. David could not know that it was
a sob of joy; he knew only that he had never seen her crying before,
and that it was the letter in her hands that had brought tears at last
to those once tranquil and steadfast eyes.

In an odd conversation which had once taken place in that room between
the two doctors, Gemmell had said: "But the time may come without my
knowing it." And McQueen's reply was: "I don't think so, for she is so
open; but I'll tell you this, David, as a guide. I never saw her eyes
wet. It is one of the touching things about her that she has the eyes
of a man, to whom it is a shame to cry. If you ever see her greeting,
David, I'm sore doubting that the time will have come."

As David Gemmell let himself softly out of the house, to return to it
presently, he thought the time had come. What he conceived he had to
do was a hard thing, but he never thought of not doing it. He had kept
himself in readiness to do it for many days now, and he walked to it
as firmly as if he were on his professional rounds. He did not know
that the skin round his eyes had contracted, giving them the look of
pain which always came there when he was sorry or pitiful or
indignant. He was not well acquainted with his eyes, and, had he
glanced at them now in a glass, would have presumed that this was
their usual expression.

Grizel herself opened the door to him this time, and "Maggy Ann, he is
found!" she cried victoriously. Evidently she had heard of his
previous visit. "We have searched every room in the house for you,"
she said gaily, "and had you disappeared for much longer, Maggy Ann
would have had the carpets up."

He excused himself on the ground that he had forgotten something, and
she chided him merrily for being forgetful. As he sat with her David
could have groaned aloud. How vivacious she had become! but she was
sparkling in false colours. After what he knew had been her distress
of a few minutes ago, it was a painted face to him. She was trying to
deceive him. Perhaps she suspected that he had seen her crying, and
now, attired in all a woman's wiles, she was defying him to believe
his eyes.

Grizel garbed in wiles! Alack the day! She was shielding the man, and
Gemmell could have driven her away roughly to get at him. But she was
also standing over her own pride, lest anyone should see that it had
fallen; and do you think that David would have made her budge an inch?

Of course she saw that he had something on his mind. She knew those
puckered eyes so well, and had so often smoothed them for him.

"What is it, David?" she asked sympathetically. "I see you have come
as a patient to-night."

"As one of those patients," he rejoined, "who feel better at mere
sight of the doctor."

"Fear of the prescription?" said she.

"Not if you prescribe yourself, Grizel."

"David!" she cried. He had been paying compliments!

"I mean it."

"So I can see by your face. Oh, David, how stern you look!"

"Dr. McQueen and I," he retorted, "used to hold private meetings after
you had gone to bed, at which we agreed that you should no longer be
allowed to make fun of us. They came to nothing. Do you know why?"

"Because I continued to do it?"

"No; but because we missed it so much if you stopped."

"You are nice to-night, David," she said, dropping him a courtesy.

"We liked all your bullying ways," he went on. "We were children in
your masterful hands."

"I was a tyrant, David," she said, looking properly ashamed. "I wonder
you did not marry, just to get rid of me."

"Have you ever seriously wondered why I don't marry?" he asked
quickly.

"Oh, David," she exclaimed, "what else do you think your patients and
I talk of when I am trying to nurse them? It has agitated the town
ever since you first walked up the Marrywellbrae, and we can't get on
with our work for thinking of it."

"Seriously, Grizel?"

She became grave at once. "If you could find the right woman," she
said wistfully.

"I have found her," he answered; and then she pressed her hands
together, too excited to speak.

"If she would only care a little for me," he said.

Grizel rocked her arms. "I am sure she does," she cried. "David, I am
so glad!"

He saw what her mistake was, but pretended not to know that she had
made one. "Are you really glad that I love you, Grizel?" he asked.

It seemed to daze her for a moment. "Not me, David," she said softly,
as if correcting him. "You don't mean that it is me?" she said
coaxingly. "David," she cried, "say it is not me!"

He drooped his head, but not before he had seen all the brightness die
out of her face. "Is it so painful to you even to hear me say it?" he
asked gravely.

Her joy had been selfish as her sorrow was. For nigh a minute she had
been thinking of herself alone, it meant so much to her; but now she
jumped up and took his hand in hers.

"Poor David!" she said, making much of his hand as if she had hurt it.
But David Gemmell's was too simple a face to oppose to her pitying
eyes, and presently she let his hand slip from her and stood regarding
him curiously. He had to look another way, and then she even smiled, a
little forlornly.

"Do you mind talking it over with me, Grizel?" he asked. "I have
always been well aware that you did not care for me in that way, but
nevertheless I believe you might do worse."

"No woman could do better," she answered gravely. "I should like you
to talk it over, David, if you begin at the beginning"; and she sat
down with her hands crossed.

"I won't say what a good thing it would be for me," was his beginning;
"we may take that for granted."

"I don't think we can," she remarked; "but it scarcely matters at
present. That is not the beginning, David."

He was very anxious to make it the beginning.

"I am weary of living in lodgings," he said. "The practice suffers by
my not being married. Many patients dislike being attended by a single
man. I ought to be in McQueen's house; it has been so long known as
the doctor's house. And you should be a doctor's wife--you who could
almost be the doctor. It would be a shame, Grizel, if you who are so
much to patients were to marry out of the profession. Don't you follow
me?"

"I follow you," she replied; "but what does it matter? You have not
begun at the beginning." He looked at her inquiringly. "You must
begin," she informed him, "by saying why you ask me to marry you when
you don't love me." She added, in answer to another look from him:
"You know you don't." There was a little reproach in it. "Oh, David,
what made you think I could be so easily taken in!"

He looked so miserable that by and by she smiled, not so tremulously
as before.

"How bad at it you are, David!" she said.

And how good at it she was! he thought gloomily.

"Shall I help you out?" she asked gently, but speaking with dignity.
"You think I am unhappy; you believe I am in the position in which you
placed yourself, of caring for someone who does not care for me."

"Grizel, I mistrust him."

She flushed; she was not quite so gentle now. "And so you offer me
your hand to save me! It was a great self-sacrifice, David, but you
used not to be fond of doing showy things."

"I did not mean it to be showy," he answered.

She was well aware of that, but--"Oh, David," she cried, "that you
should believe I needed it! How little you must think of me!"

"Does it look as if I thought little of you?" he said.

"Little of my strength, David, little of my pride."

"I think so much of them that how could I stand by silently and watch
them go?"

"You think you have seen that!" She was agitated now.

He hesitated. "Yes," he said courageously.

Her eyes cried, "David, how could you be so cruel!" but they did not
daunt him.

"Have you not seen it yourself, Grizel?" he said.

She pressed her hands together. "I was so happy," she said, "until you
came!"

"Have you not seen it yourself?" he asked again.

"There may be better things," she retorted, "than those you rate so
highly."

"Not for you," he said.

"If they are gone," she told him, with a flush of resentment, "it is
not you who can bring them back."

"But let me try, Grizel," said he.

"David, can I not even make you angry with me?"

"No, Grizel, you can't. I am very sorry that I can make you angry with
me."

"I am not," she said dispiritedly. "It would be contemptible in me."
And then, eagerly: "But, David, you have made a great mistake, indeed
you have. You--you are a dreadful bungler, sir!" She was trying to
make his face relax, with a tremulous smile from herself to encourage
him; but the effort was not successful. "You see, I can't even bully
you now!" she said. "Did that capacity go with the others, David?"

"Try a little harder," he replied. "I think you will find that I
submit to it still"

"Very well." She forced some gaiety to her aid. After all, how could
she let his monstrous stupidity wound a heart protected by such a
letter?

"You have been a very foolish and presumptuous boy," she began. She
was standing up, smiling, wagging a reproachful but nervous finger at
him. "If it were not that I have a weakness for seeing medical men
making themselves ridiculous so that I may put them right, I should be
very indignant with you, sir."

"Put me right, Grizel," he said. He was sure she was trying to blind
him again.

"Know, then, David, that I am not the poor-spirited, humble creature
you seem to have come here in search of--"

"But you admitted--"

"How dare you interrupt me, sir! Yes, I admit that I am not quite as I
was, but I glory in it. I used to be ostentatiously independent; now I
am only independent enough. My pride made me walk on air; now I walk
on the earth, where there is less chance of falling. I have still
confidence in myself; but I begin to see that ways are not necessarily
right because they are my ways. In short, David, I am evidently on the
road to being a model character!"

They were gay words, but she ended somewhat faintly.

"I was satisfied with you as you were," was the doctor's comment.

"I wanted to excel!"

"You explain nothing, Grizel," he said reproachfully. "Why have you
changed so?"

"Because I am so happy. Do you remember how, in the old days, I
sometimes danced for joy? I could do it now."

"Are you engaged to be married, Grizel?"

She took a quiet breath. "You have no right to question me in this
way," she said. "I think I have been very good in bearing with you so
long."

But she laid aside her indignation at once; he was so old a friend,
the sincerity of him had been so often tried. "If you must know,
David," she said, with a girlish frankness that became her better, "I
am not engaged to be married. And I must tell you nothing more," she
added, shutting her mouth decisively. She must be faithful to her
promise.

"He forbids it?" Gemmell asked mercilessly.

She stamped her foot, not in rage, but in hopelessness. "How incapable
you are of doing him justice!" she cried. "If you only knew----"

"Tell me. I want to do him justice."

She sat down again, sighing. "My attempt to regain my old power over
you has not been very successful, has it, David? We must not quarrel,
though"--holding out her hand, which he grasped. "And you won't
question me any more?" She said it appealingly.

"Never again," he answered. "I never wanted to question you, Grizel. I
wanted only to marry you."

"And that can't be."

"I don't see it," he said, so stoutly that she was almost amused. But
he would not be pushed aside. He had something more to say.

"Dr. McQueen wished it," he said; "above all else in the world he
wished it. He often told me so."

"He never said that to me," Grizel replied quickly.

"Because he thought that to press you was no way to make you care for
me. He hoped that it would come about."

"It has not come about, David, with either of us," she said gently. "I
am sure that would have been sufficient answer to him."

"No, Grizel, it would not, not now."

He had risen, and his face was whiter than she had ever seen it.

"I am going to hurt you, Grizel," he said, and every word was a pang
to him. "I see no other way. It has got to be done. Dr. McQueen often
talked to me about the things that troubled you when you were a little
girl--the morbid fears you had then, and that had all been swept away
years before I knew you. But though they had been long gone, you were
so much to him that he tried to think of everything that might happen
to you in the future, and he foresaw that they might possibly come
back. 'If she were ever to care for some false loon!' he has said to
me, and then, Grizel, he could not go on."

Grizel beat her hands. "If he could not go on," she said, "it was not
because he feared what I should do."

"No, no," David answered eagerly, "he never feared for that, but for
your happiness. He told me of a boy who used to torment you, oh, all
so long ago, and of such little account that he had forgotten his
name. But that boy has come back, and you care for him, and he is a
false loon, Grizel."

She had risen too, and was flashing fire on David; but he went on.

"'If the time ever comes,' he said to me, 'when you see her in torture
from such a cause, speak to her openly about it. Tell her it is I who
am speaking through you. It will be a hard task to you, but wrestle
through with it, David, in memory of any little kindness I may have
done you, and the great love I bore my Grizel.'"

She was standing rigid now. "Is there any more, David?" she said in a
low voice.

"Only this. I admired you then as I admire you now. I may not love
you, Grizel, but of this I am very sure"--he was speaking steadily, he
was forgetting no one--"that you are the noblest and bravest woman I
have ever known, and I promised--he did not draw the promise from me,
I gave it to him--that if I was a free man and could help you in any
way without paining you by telling you these things, I would try that
way first."

"And this is the way?"

"I could think of no other. Is it of no avail?"

She shook her head. "You have made such a dreadful mistake," she cried
miserably, "and you won't see it. Oh, how you wrong him! I am the
happiest girl in the world, and it is he who makes me so happy. But I
can't explain. You need not ask me; I promised, and I won't."

"You used not to be so fond of mystery, Grizel."

"I am not fond of it now."

"Ah, it is he," David said bitterly, and he lifted his hat. "Is there
nothing you will let me do for you, Grizel?" he cried.

"I thought you were to do so much for me when you came into this
room," she admitted wistfully, "and said that you were in love. I
thought it was with another woman."

He remembered that her face had brightened. "How could that have
helped you?" he asked.

She saw that she had but to tell him, and for her sake he would do it
at once. But she could not be so selfish.

"We need not speak of that now," she said.

"We must speak of it," he answered. "Grizel, it is but fair to me. It
may be so important to me."

"You have shown that you don't care for her, David, and that ends it."

"Who is it?" He was much stirred.

"If you don't know----"

"Is it Elspeth?"

The question came out of him like a confession, and hope turned Grizel
giddy.

"Do you love her, David?" she cried.

But he hesitated. "Is what you have told me true, that it would help
you?" he asked, looking her full in the eyes.

"Do you love her?" she implored, but he was determined to have her
answer first.

"Is it, Grizel?"

"Yes, yes. Do you, David?"

And then he admitted that he did, and she rocked her arms in joy.

"But oh, David, to say such things to me when you were not a free man!
How badly you have treated Elspeth to-day!"

"She does not care for me," he said.

"Have you asked her?"--in alarm.

"No; but could she?"

"How could she help it?" She would not tell him what Tommy thought.
Oh, she must do everything to encourage David.

"And still," said he, puzzling, "I don't see how it can affect you."

"And I can't tell you," she moaned. "Oh, David, do, do find out. Why
are you so blind?" She could have shaken him. "Don't you see that once
Elspeth was willing to be taken care of by some other person----I must
not tell you!"

"Then he would marry you?"

She cried in anxiety: "Have I told you, or did you find out?"

"I found out," he said. "Is it possible he is so fond of her as that?"

"There never was such a brother," she answered. She could not help
adding, "But he is still fonder of me."

The doctor pulled his arm over his eyes and sat down again. Presently
he was saying with a long face: "I came here to denounce the cause of
your unhappiness, and I begin to see it is myself."

"Of course it is, you stupid David," she said gleefully. She was very
kind to the man who had been willing to do so much for her; but as the
door closed on him she forgot him. She even ceased to hear the warning
voice he had brought with him from the dead. She was re-reading the
letter that began by calling her wife.




CHAPTER XXI

THE ATTEMPT TO CARRY ELSPETH BY NUMBERS


That was one of Grizel's beautiful days, but there were others to
follow as sweet, if not so exciting; she could travel back through the
long length of them without coming once to a moment when she had held
her breath in sudden fear; and this was so delicious that she
sometimes thought these were the best days of all.

Of course she had little anxieties, but they were nearly all about
David. He was often at Aaron's house now, and what exercised her was
this--that she could not be certain that he was approaching Elspeth in
the right way. The masterful Grizel seemed to have come to life again,
for, evidently, she was convinced that she alone knew the right way.

"Oh, David, I would not have said that to her!" she told him, when he
reported progress; and now she would warn him, "You are too humble,"
and again, "You were over-bold." The doctor, to his bewilderment,
frequently discovered, on laying results before her, that what he had
looked upon as encouraging signs were really bad, and that, on the
other hand, he had often left the cottage disconsolately when he ought
to have been strutting. The issue was that he lost all faith in his
own judgment, and if Grizel said that he was getting on well, his face
became foolishly triumphant, but if she frowned, it cried, "All is
over!"

Of the proposal Tommy did not know; it seemed to her that she had no
right to tell even him of that; but the rest she did tell him: that
David, by his own confession, was in love with Elspeth; and so pleased
was Tommy that his delight made another day for her to cherish.

So now everything depended on Elspeth. "Oh, if she only would!" Grizel
cried, and for her sake Tommy tried to look bright, but his head shook
in spite of him.

"Do you mean that we should discourage David?" she asked dolefully;
but he said No to that.

"I was afraid," she confessed, "that as you are so hopeless, you might
think it your duty to discourage him so as to save him the pain of a
refusal."

"Not at all," Tommy said, with some hastiness.

"Then you do really have a tiny bit of hope?"

"While there is life there is hope," he answered.

She said: "I have been thinking it over, for it is so important to us,
and I see various ways in which you could help David, if you would."

"What would I not do, Grizel! You have to name them only."

"Well, for instance, you might show her that you have a very high
opinion of him."

"Agreed. But she knows that already."

"Then, David is an only child. Don't you think you could say that men
who have never had a sister are peculiarly gentle and considerate to
women?"

"Oh, Grizel! But I think I can say that."

"And--and that having been so long accustomed to doing everything for
themselves, they don't need managing wives as men brought up among
women need them."

"Yes. But how cunning you are, Grizel! Who would have believed it?"

"And then----" She hesitated.

"Go on. I see by your manner that this is to be a big one."

"It would be such a help," she said eagerly, "if you could be just a
little less attentive to her. I know you do ever so much of the
housework because she is not fond of it; and if she has a headache you
sit with her all day; and you beg her to play and sing to you, though
you really dislike music. Oh, there are scores of things you do for
her, and if you were to do them a little less willingly, in such a way
as to show her that they interrupt your work and are a slight trial to
you, I--I am sure that would help!"

"She would see through me, Grizel. Elspeth is sharper than you think
her."

"Not if you did it very skilfully."

"Then she would believe I had grown cold to her, and it would break
her heart."

"One of your failings," replied Grizel, giving him her hand for a
moment as recompense for what she was about to say, "is that you think
women's hearts break so easily. If, at the slightest sign that she
notices any change in you, you think her heart is breaking, and seize
her in your arms, crying, 'Elspeth, dear little Elspeth!'--and that is
what your first impulse would be----"

"How well you know me, Grizel!" groaned Sentimental Tommy.

"If that would be the result," she went on, "better not do it at all.
But if you were to restrain yourself, then she could not but reflect
that many of the things you did for her with a sigh David did for
pleasure, and she would compare him and you--"

"To my disadvantage?" Tommy exclaimed, with sad incredulity. "Do you
really think she could, Grizel?"

"Give her the chance," Grizel continued, "and if you find it hard, you
must remember that what you are doing is for her good."

"And for ours," Tommy cried fervently.

Every promise he made her at this time he fulfilled, and more; he was
hopeless, but all a man could do to make Elspeth love David he did.

The doctor was quite unaware of it. "Fortunately, her brother had a
headache yesterday and was lying down," he told Grizel, with calm
brutality, "so I saw her alone for a few minutes."

"The fibs I have to invent," said Tommy, to the same confidante, "to
get myself out of their way!"

"Luckily he does not care for music," David said, "so when she is at
the piano he sometimes remains in the kitchen talking to Aaron."

Tommy and Aaron left together! Tommy described those scenes with much
good humour. "I was amazed at first," he said to Grizel, "to find
Aaron determinedly enduring me, but now I understand. He wants what we
want. He says not a word about it, but he is watching those two
courting like a born match-maker. Aaron has several reasons for hoping
that Elspeth will get our friend (as he would express it): one, that
this would keep her in Thrums; another, that to be the wife of a
doctor is second only in worldly grandeur to marrying the manse; and
thirdly and lastly, because he is convinced that it would be such a
staggerer to me. For he thinks I have not a notion of what is going
on, and that, if I had, I would whisk her away to London."

He gave Grizel the most graphic, solemn pictures of those evenings in
the cottage. "Conceive the four of us gathered round the kitchen
fire--three men and a maid; the three men yearning to know what is in
the maid's mind, and each concealing his anxiety from the others.
Elspeth gives the doctor a look which may mean much or nothing, and he
glares at me as if I were in the way, and I glance at Aaron, and he is
on tenterhooks lest I have noticed anything. Next minute, perhaps,
David gives utterance to a plaintive sigh, and Aaron and I pounce upon
Elspeth (with our eyes) to observe its effect on her, and Elspeth
wonders why Aaron is staring, and he looks apprehensively at me, and I
am gazing absent-mindedly at the fender.

"You may smile, Grizel," Tommy would say, "and now that I think of it,
I can smile myself, but we are an eerie quartet at the time. When the
strain becomes unendurable, one of us rises and mends the fire with
his foot, and then I think the rest of us could say 'Thank you.' We
talk desperately for a little after that, but soon again the awful
pall creeps down."

"If I were there," cried Grizel, "I would not have the parlour
standing empty all this time."

"We are coming to the parlour," Tommy replies impressively. "The
parlour, Grizel, now begins to stir. Elspeth has disappeared from the
kitchen, we three men know not whither. We did not notice her go; we
don't even observe that she has gone--we are too busy looking at the
fire. By and by the tremulous tinkling of an aged piano reaches us
from an adjoining chamber, and Aaron looks at me through his fingers,
and I take a lightning glance at Mr. David, and he uncrosses his legs
and rises, and sits down again. Aaron, in the most unconcerned way,
proceeds to cut tobacco and rub it between his fingers, and I stretch
out my legs and contemplate them with passionate approval. While we
are thus occupied David has risen, and he is so thoroughly at his ease
that he has begun to hum. He strolls round the kitchen, looking with
sudden interest at the mantelpiece ornaments; he reads, for the
hundredth time, the sampler on the wall. Next the clock engages his
attention; it is ticking, and that seems to impress him as novel and
curious. By this time he has reached the door; it opens to his touch,
and in a fit of abstraction he leaves the room."

"You don't follow him into the parlour?" asks Grizel, anxiously.

"Follow whom?" Tommy replies severely. "I don't even know that he has
gone to the parlour; now that I think of it, I have not even noticed
that he has left the kitchen; nor has Aaron noticed it. Aaron and I
are not in a condition to notice such things; we are conscious only
that at last we have the opportunity for the quiet social chat we so
much enjoy in each other's company. That, at least, is Aaron's way of
looking at it, and he keeps me there with talk of the most varied and
absorbing character; one topic down, another up; when very hard put to
it, he even questions me about my next book, as if he would like to
read the proof-sheets, and when I seem to be listening, a little
restively, for sounds from the parlour (the piano has stopped), he has
the face of one who would bar the door rather than lose my society.
Aaron appreciates me at my true value at last, Grizel. I had begun to
despair almost of ever bringing him under my charm."

"I should be very angry with you," Grizel said warningly, "if I
thought you teased the poor old man."

"Tease him! The consideration I show that poor old man, Grizel, while
I know all the time that he is plotting to diddle me! You should see
me when it is he who is fidgeting to know why the piano has stopped.
He stretches his head to listen, and does something to his ear that
sends it another inch nearer the door; he chuckles and groans on the
sly; and I--I notice nothing. Oh, he is becoming quite fond of me; he
thinks me an idiot."

"Why not tell him that you want it as much as he?"

"He would not believe me. Aaron is firmly convinced that I am too
jealous of Elspeth's affection to give away a thimbleful of it. He
blames me for preventing her caring much even for him."

"At any rate," said Grizel, "he is on our side, and it is because he
sees it would be so much the best thing for her."

"And, at the same time, such a shock to me. That poor old man, Grizel!
I have seen him rubbing his hands together with glee and looking quite
leery as he thought of what was coming to me."

But Grizel could not laugh now. When Tommy saw so well through Aaron
and David, through everyone he came in contact with, indeed, what hope
could there be that he was deceived in Elspeth?

"And yet she knows what takes him there; she must know it!" she cried.

"A woman," Tommy said, "is never sure that a man is in love with her
until he proposes. She may fancy--but it is never safe to fancy, as so
many have discovered."

"She has no right," declared Grizel, "to wait until she is sure, if
she does not care for him. If she fears that he is falling in love
with her, she knows how to discourage him; there are surely a hundred
easy, kind ways of doing that."

"Fears he is falling in love with her!" Tommy repeated. "Is any woman
ever afraid of that?"

He really bewildered her. "No woman would like it," Grizel answered
promptly for them all, because she would not have liked it. "She must
see that it would result only in pain to him."

"Still----" said Tommy.

"Oh, but how dense you are!" she said, in surprise. "Don't you
understand that she would stop him, though it were for no better
reasons than selfish ones? Consider her shame if, in thinking it over
afterwards, she saw that she might have stopped him sooner! Why," she
cried, with a sudden smile, "it is in your book! You say: 'Every
maiden carries secretly in her heart an idea of love so pure and
sacred that, if by any act she is once false to that conception, her
punishment is that she never dares to look at it again.' And this is
one of the acts you mean."

"I had not thought of it, though," he said humbly. He was never
prouder of Grizel than at that moment. "If Elspeth's outlook," he went
on, "is different----"

"It can't be different."

"If it is, the fault is mine; yes, though I wrote the passage that you
interpret so nobly, Grizel. Shall I tell you," he said gently, "what I
believe is Elspeth's outlook exactly, just now? She knows that the
doctor is attracted by her, and it gives her little thrills of
exultation; but that it can be love--she puts that question in such a
low voice, as if to prevent herself hearing it. And yet she listens,
Grizel, like one who would like to know! Elspeth is pitifully
distrustful of anyone's really loving her, and she will never admit to
herself that he does until he tells her."

"And then?"

Tommy had to droop his head.

"I see you have still no hope!" she said.

"It would be so easy to pretend I have," he replied, with longing, "in
order to cheer you for the moment. Oh, it would even be easy to me to
deceive myself; but should I do it?"

"No, no," she said; "anything but that; I can bear anything but that,"
and she shuddered. "But we seem to be treating David cruelly."

"I don't think so," he assured her. "Men like to have these things to
look back to. But, if you want it, Grizel, I have to say only a word
to Elspeth to bring it to an end. She is as tender as she is innocent,
and--but it would be a hard task to me," he admitted, his heart
suddenly going out to Elspeth; he had never deprived her of any
gratification before. "Still, I am willing to do it."

"No!" Grizel cried, restraining him with her hand. "I am a coward, I
suppose, but I can't help wanting to hope for a little longer, and
David won't grudge it to me."

It was but a very little longer that they had to wait. Tommy,
returning home one day from a walk with his old school-friend, Gav
Dishart (now M.A.), found Aaron suspiciously near the parlour keyhole.

"There's a better fire in the other end," Aaron said, luring him into
the kitchen. So desirous was he of keeping Tommy there, fixed down on
a stool, that "I'll play you at the dambrod," he said briskly.

"Anyone with Elspeth?"

"Some women-folk you dinna like," replied Aaron.

Tommy rose. Aaron, with a subdued snarl, got between him and the door.

"I was wondering, merely," Tommy said, pointing pleasantly to
something on the dresser, "why one of them wore the doctor's hat."

"I forgot; he's there, too," Aaron said promptly; but he looked at
Tommy with misgivings. They sat down to their game.

"You begin," said Tommy; "you're black." And Aaron opened with the
Double Corner; but so preoccupied was he that it became a variation of
the Ayrshire lassie, without his knowing. His suspicions had to find
vent in words: "You dinna speir wha the women-folk are?"

"No."

"Do you think I'm just pretending they're there?" Aaron asked
apprehensively.

"Not at all," said Tommy, with much politeness, "but I thought you
might be mistaken." He could have "blown" Aaron immediately
thereafter, but, with great consideration, forbore. The old man was so
troubled that he could not lift a king without its falling in two. His
sleeve got in the way of his fingers. At last he sat back in his
chair. "Do you ken what is going on, man?" he demanded, "or do you no
ken? I can stand this doubt no longer."

A less soft-hearted person might have affected not to understand, but
that was not Tommy's way. "I know, Aaron," he admitted. "I have known
all the time." It was said in the kindliest manner, but its effect on
Aaron was not soothing.

"Curse you!" he cried, with extraordinary vehemence, "you have been
playing wi' me a' the time, ay, and wi' him and wi' her!"

What had Aaron been doing with Tommy? But Tommy did not ask that.

"I am sorry you think so badly of me," he said quietly. "I have known
all the time, Aaron, but have I interfered?"

"Because you ken she winna take him. I see it plain enough now. You
ken your power over her; the honest man that thinks he could take her
frae you is to you but a divert."

He took a step nearer Tommy. "Listen," he said. "When you came back he
was on the point o' speiring her; I saw it in his face as she was
playing the piano, and she saw it, too, for her hands began to trem'le
and the tune wouldna play. I daursay you think I was keeking, but if I
was I stoppit it when the piano stoppit; it was a hard thing to me to
do, and it would hae been an easy thing no to do, but I wouldna spy
upon Elspeth in her great hour."

"I like you for that, Aaron," Tommy said; but Aaron waved his likes
aside.

"The reason I stood at the door," he continued, "was to keep you out
o' that room. I offered to play you at the dambrod to keep you out.
Ay, you ken that without my telling you, but do you ken what makes me
tell you now? It's to see whether you'll go in and stop him; let's see
you do that, and I'll hae some hope yet." He waited eagerly.

"You do puzzle me now," Tommy said.

"Ay," replied the old man, bitterly, "you're dull in the uptak' when
you like! I dinna ken, I suppose, and you dinna ken, that if you had
the least dread o' her taking him you would be into that room full
bend to stop it; but you're so sure o' her, you're so michty sure,
that you can sit here and lauch instead."

"Am I laughing, Aaron? If you but knew, Elspeth's marriage would be a
far more joyful thing to me than it could ever be to you."

The old warper laughed unpleasantly at that. "And I'se uphaud," he
said, "you're none sure but what shell tak' him! You're no as sure
she'll refuse him as that there's a sun in the heavens, and I'm a
broken man."

For a moment sympathy nigh compelled Tommy to say a hopeful thing, but
he mastered himself. "It would be weakness," was what he did say, "to
pretend that there is any hope."

Aaron gave him an ugly look, and was about to leave the house; but
Tommy would not have it. "If one of us must go, Aaron," he said, with
much gentleness, "let it be me"; and he went out, passing the parlour
door softly, so that he might not disturb poor David. The warper sat
on by the fire, his head sunk miserably in his shoulders. The
vehemence had passed out of him; you would have hesitated to believe
that such a listless, shrunken man could have been vehement that same
year. It is a hardy proof of his faith in Tommy that he did not even
think it worth while to look up when, by and by, the parlour door
opened and the doctor came in for his hat. Elspeth was with him.

[Illustration: They told Aaron something.]

They told Aaron something.

It lifted him off his feet and bore him out at the door. When he made
up on himself he knew he was searching everywhere for Tommy. A terror
seized him, lest he should not be the first to convey the news.

Had he been left a fortune? neighbours asked, amazed at this unwonted
sight; and he replied, as he ran, "I have, and I want to share it wi'
him!"

It was his only joke. People came to their doors to see Aaron Latta
laughing.




CHAPTER XXII

GRIZEL'S GLORIOUS HOUR


Elspeth was to be his wife! David had carried the wondrous promise
straight to Grizel, and now he was gone and she was alone again.

Oh, foolish Grizel, are you crying, and I thought it was so hard to
you to cry!

"Me crying! Oh, no!"

Put your hand to your cheeks, Grizel. Are they not wet?

"They are wet, and I did not know it! It is hard to me to cry in
sorrow, but I can cry for joy. I am crying because it has all come
right, and I was so much afraid that it never would."

Ah, Grizel, I think you said you wanted nothing else so long as you
had his love!

"But God has let it all come right, just the same, and I am thanking
Him. That is why I did not know that I was crying."

She was by the fireplace, on the stool that had always been her
favourite seat, and of course she sat very straight. When Grizel
walked or stood her strong, round figure took a hundred beautiful
poses, but when she sat it had but one. The old doctor, in
experimenting moods, had sometimes compelled her to recline, and then
watched to see her body spring erect the moment he released his hold.
"What a dreadful patient I should make!" she said contritely. "I would
chloroform you, miss," said he.

She sat thus for a long time; she had so much for which to thank God,
though not with her lips, for how could they keep pace with her heart?
Her heart was very full; chiefly, I think, with the tears that rolled
down unknown to her.

She thanked God, in the name of the little hunted girl who had not
been taught how to pray, and so did it standing. "I do so want to be
good; oh, how sweet it would be to be good!" she had said in that long
ago. She had said it out loud when she was alone on the chance of His
hearing, but she had not addressed Him by name because she was not
sure that he was really called God. She had not even known that you
should end by saying "Amen," which Tommy afterwards told her is the
most solemn part of it.

How sweet it would be to be good, but how much sweeter it is to be
good! The woman that girl had grown into knew that she was good, and
she thanked God for that. She thanked Him for letting her help. If He
had said that she had not helped, she would have rocked her arms and
replied almost hotly: "You know I have." And He did know: He had seen
her many times in the grip of inherited passions, and watched her
fighting with them and subduing them; He had seen ugly thoughts
stealing upon her, as they crawl towards every child of man; ah, He
had seen them leap into the heart of the Painted Lady's daughter, as
if a nest already made for them must be there, and still she had
driven them away. Grizel had helped. The tears came more quickly now.

She thanked God that she had never worn the ring. But why had she
never worn it, when she wanted so much to do so, and it was hers? Why
had she watched herself more carefully than ever of late, and forced
happiness to her face when it was not in her heart, and denied
herself, at fierce moments, the luxuries of grief and despair, and
even of rebellion? For she had carried about with her the capacity to
rebel, but she had hidden it, and the reason was that she thought God
was testing her. If she fell He would not give her the thing she
coveted. Unworthy reason for being good, as she knew, but God
overlooked it, and she thanked Him for that.

Her hands pressed each other impulsively, as if at the shock of a
sudden beautiful thought, and then perhaps she was thanking God for
making her the one woman who could be the right wife for Tommy. She
was so certain that no other woman could help him as she could; none
knew his virtues as she knew them. Had it not been for her, his showy
parts only would have been loved; the dear, quiet ones would never
have heard how dear they were: the showy ones were open to all the
world, but the quiet ones were her private garden. His faults as well
as his virtues passed before her, and it is strange to know that it
was about this time that Grizel ceased to cry and began to smile
instead. I know why she smiled; it was because sentimentality was one
of the little monsters that came skipping into her view, and Tommy was
so confident that he had got rid at last of it! Grizel knew better!
But she could look at it and smile. Perhaps she was not sorry that it
was still there with the others, it had so long led the procession. I
daresay she saw herself taking the leering, distorted thing in hand
and making something gallant of it. She thought that she was too
practical, too much given to seeing but one side to a question, too
lacking in consideration for others, too impatient, too relentlessly
just, and she humbly thanked God for all these faults, because Tommy's
excesses were in the opposite direction, and she could thus restore
the balance. She was full of humility while she saw how useful she
could be to him, but her face did not show this; she had forgotten her
face, and elation had spread over it without her knowing. Perhaps God
accepted the elation as part of the thanks.

She thanked God for giving Tommy what he wanted so much--herself. Ah,
she had thanked Him for that before, but she did it again. And then
she went on her knees by her dear doctor's chair, and prayed that she
might be a good wife to Tommy.

When she rose the blood was not surging through her veins. Instead of
a passion of joy it was a beautiful calm that possessed her, and on
noticing this she regarded herself with sudden suspicion, as we put
our ear to a watch to see if it has stopped. She found that she was
still going, but no longer either fast or slow, and she saw what had
happened: her old serene self had come back to her. I think she
thanked God for that most of all.

And then she caught sight of her face--oh, oh! Her first practical act
as an engaged woman was to wash her face.

Engaged! But was she? Grizel laughed. It is not usually a laughing
matter, but she could not help that. Consider her predicament. She
could be engaged at once, if she liked, even before she wiped the
water from her face, or she might postpone it, to let Tommy share. The
careful reader will have noticed that this problem presented itself to
her at an awkward moment. She laughed, in short, while her face was
still in the basin, with the very proper result that she had to grope
for the towel with her eyes shut.

It was still a cold, damp face (Grizel was always in such a hurry)
when she opened her most precious drawer and took from it a certain
glove which was wrapped in silk paper, but was not perhaps quite so
conceited as it had been, for, alas and alack! it was now used as a
wrapper itself. The ring was inside it. If Grizel wanted to be
engaged, absolutely and at once, all she had to do was to slip that
ring upon her finger.

It had been hers for a week or more. Tommy had bought it in a certain
Scottish town whose merchant princes are so many, and have risen
splendidly from such small beginnings, that after you have been there
a short time you beg to be introduced to someone who has not got on.
When you look at them they slap their trouser pockets. When they look
at you they are wondering if you know how much they are worth. Tommy,
one day, roaming their streets (in which he was worth incredibly
little), and thinking sadly of what could never be, saw the modest
little garnet ring in a jeweller's window, and attached to it was a
pathetic story. No other person could have seen the story, but it was
as plain to him as though it had been beautifully written on the tag
of paper which really contained the price. With his hand on the door
he paused, overcome by that horror of entering shops without a lady to
do the talking, which all men of genius feel (it is the one sure
test), hurried away, came back, went to and fro shyly, until he saw
that he was yielding once more to the indecision he thought he had so
completely mastered, whereupon he entered bravely (though it was one
of those detestable doors that ring a bell as they open), and sternly
ordered the jeweller, who could have bought and sold our Tommy with
one slap on the trouser leg, to hand the ring over to him.

He had no intention of giving it to Grizel. That, indeed, was part of
its great tragedy, for this is the story Tommy read into the ring:
There was once a sorrowful man of twenty-three, and forty, and sixty.
Ah, how gray the beard has grown as we speak! How thin the locks! But
still we know him for the same by that garnet ring. Since it became
his no other eye has seen it, and yet it is her engagement ring. Never
can he give it to her, but must always carry it about with him as the
piteous memory of what had never been. How innocent it looked in his
hand, and with an innocence that never wore off, not even when he had
reached his threescore years. As it aged it took on another kind of
innocence only. It looked pitiable now, for there is but a dishonoured
age for a lonely little ring which can never see the finger it was
made to span.

A hair-shirt! Such it was to him, and he put it on willingly, knowing
it could be nothing else. Every smart it gave him pleased, even while
it pained. If ever his mind roamed again to the world of make-believe,
that ring would jerk him back to facts.

Grizel remembered well her finding of it. She had been in his pockets.
She loved to rifle them; to pull out his watch herself, instead of
asking him for the time; to exclaim "Oh!" at the many things she found
there, when they should have been neatly docketed or in the fire, and
from his waistcoat pocket she drew the ring. She seemed to understand
all about it at once. She was far ahead while he was explaining. It
seemed quite strange to her that there had ever been a time when she
did not know of her garnet ring.

How her arms rocked! It was delicious to her to remember now with what
agony her arms had rocked. She kissed it; she had not been the first
to kiss it.

It was "Oh, how I wish I could have saved you this pain!"

"But I love it," she cried, "and I love the pain."

It was "Am I not to see it on your finger once?"

"No, no; we must not."

"Let me, Grizel!"

"Is it right, oh, is it right?"

"Only this once!"

"Very well!"

"I dare not, Grizel, I can't! What are we to do with it now?"

"Give it to me. It is mine. I will keep it, beside my glove."

"Let me keep it, Grizel."

"No; it is mine."

"Shall I fling it away?"

"How can you be so cruel? It is mine."

"Let me bury it."

"It is mine."

And of course she had got her way. Could he resist her in anything?
They had never spoken of it since, it was such a sad little ring. Sad!
It was not in the least little bit sad. Grizel wondered as she looked
at it now how she could ever have thought it sad.

The object with which she put on her hat was to go to Aaron's cottage,
to congratulate Elspeth. So she said to herself. Oh, Grizel!

But first she opened two drawers. They were in a great press and full
of beautiful linen woven in Thrums, that had come to Dr. McQueen as a
"bad debt." "Your marriage portion, young lady," he had said to
Grizel, then but a slip of a girl, whereupon, without waiting to
lengthen her frock, she rushed rapturously at her work-basket. "Not at
all, miss," he cried ferociously; "you are here to look after this
house, not to be preparing for another, and until you are respectably
bespoken by some rash crittur of a man, into the drawers with your
linen and down with those murderous shears." And she had obeyed; no
scissors, the most relentless things in nature when in Grizel's hand,
had ever cleaved their way through that snowy expanse; never a stitch
had she put into her linen except with her eyes, which became horribly
like needles as she looked at it.

And now at last she could begin! Oh, but she was anxious to begin; it
is almost a fact that, as she looked at those drawers, she grudged the
time that must be given to-day to Tommy and his ring.

Do you see her now, ready to start? She was wearing her brown jacket
with the fur collar, over which she used to look so searchingly at
Tommy. To think there was a time when that serene face had to look
searchingly at him! It nearly made her sad again. She paused to bring
out the ring and take another exultant look at it. It was attached now
to a ribbon round her neck. Sweet ring! She put it to her eyes. That
was her way of letting her eyes kiss it Then she rubbed them and it,
in case the one had left a tear upon the other.

And then she went out, joy surging in her heart For this was Grizel's
glorious hour, the end of it.




CHAPTER XXIII

TOMMY LOSES GRIZEL


It was not Aaron's good fortune to find Tommy. He should have looked
for him in the Den.

In that haunt of happier lovers than he, Tommy walked slowly,
pondering. He scarce noticed that he had the Den to himself, or that,
since he was last here, autumn had slipped away, leaving all her
garments on the ground. By this time, undoubtedly, Elspeth had said
her gentle No; but he was not railing against Fate, not even for
striking the final blow at him through that innocent medium. He had
still too much to do for that--to help others. There were three of
them at present, and by some sort of sympathetic jugglery he had an
arm for each.

"Lean on me, Grizel--dear sister Elspeth, you little know the harm you
have done--David, old friend, your hand."

Thus loaded, he bravely returned at the fitting time to the cottage.
His head was not even bent.

Had you asked Tommy what Elspeth would probably do when she dismissed
David, he might have replied that she would go up to his room and lock
herself into it, so that no one should disturb her for a time. And
this he discovered, on returning home, was actually what had happened.
How well he knew her! How distinctly he heard every beat of her tender
heart, and how easy to him to tell why it was beating! He did not go
up; he waited for little Elspeth to come to him, all in her own good
time. And when she came, looking just as he knew she would look, he
had a brave, bright face for her.

She was shaking after her excitement, or perhaps she had ceased to
shake and begun again as she came down to him. He pretended not to
notice it; he would notice it the moment he was sure she wanted him
to, but perhaps that would not be until she was in bed and he had come
to say good-night and put out her light, for, as we know, she often
kept her great confidences till then, when she discovered that he
already knew them.

"The doctor has been in."

She began almost at once, and in a quaking voice and from a distance,
as if in hope that the bullet might be spent before it reached her
brother.

"I am sorry I missed him," he replied cautiously. "What a fine fellow
he is!"

"You always liked him," said Elspeth, clinging eagerly to that.

"No one could help liking him, Elspeth, he has such winning ways,"
said Tommy, perhaps a little in the voice with which at funerals we
refer to the departed. She loved his words, but she knew she had a
surprise for him this time, and she tried to blurt it out.

"He said something to me. He--oh, what a high opinion he has of you!"
(She really thought he had.)

"Was that the something?" Tommy asked, with a smile that helped her,
as it was meant to do.

"You understand, don't you?" she said, almost in a whisper.

"Of course I do, Elspeth," he answered reassuringly; but somehow she
still thought he didn't.

"No one could have been more manly and gentle and humble," she said
beseechingly.

"I am sure of it," said Tommy.

"He thinks nothing of himself," she said.

"We shall always think a great deal of him," replied Tommy.

"Yes, but----" Elspeth found the strangest difficulty in continuing,
for, though it would have surprised him to be told so, Tommy was not
helping her nearly as much as he imagined.

"I told him," she said, shaking, "that no one could be to me what you
were. I told him----" and then timid Elspeth altogether broke down.
Tommy drew her to him, as he had so often done since she was the
smallest child, and pressed her head against his breast, and waited.
So often he had waited thus upon Elspeth.

"There is nothing to cry about, dear," he said tenderly, when the time
to speak came. "You have, instead, the right to be proud that so good
a man loves you. I am very proud of it, Elspeth."

"If I could be sure of that!" she gasped.

"Don't you believe me, dear?"

"Yes, but--that is not what makes me cry. Tommy, don't you see?"

"Yes," he assured her, "I see. You are crying because you feel so
sorry for him. But I don't feel sorry for him, Elspeth. If I know
anything at all, it is this: that no man needs pity who sincerely
loves; whether that love be returned or not, he walks in a new and
more beautiful world for evermore."

She clutched his hand. "I don't understand how you know those things,"
she whispered.

Please God, was Tommy's reflection, she should never know. He saw most
vividly the pathos of his case, but he did not break down under it; it
helped him, rather, to proceed.

"It will be the test of Gemmell," he said, "how he bears this. No man,
I am very sure, was ever told that his dream could not come true more
kindly and tenderly than you told it to him." He was in the middle of
the next sentence (a fine one) before her distress stopped him.

"Tommy," she cried, "you don't understand. That is not what I told him
at all!"

It was one of the few occasions on which the expression on the face of
T. Sandys perceptibly changed.

"What did you tell him?" he asked, almost sharply.

"I accepted him," she said guiltily, backing away from this alarming
face.

"What!"

"If you only knew how manly and gentle and humble he was," she cried
quickly, as if something dire might happen if Tommy were not assured
of this at once.

"You--said you would marry him, Elspeth?"

"Yes!"

"And leave me?"

"Oh, oh!" She flung her arms around his neck.

"Yes, but that is what you are prepared to do!" said he, and he held
her away from him and stared at her, as if he had never seen Elspeth
before. "Were you not afraid?" he exclaimed, in amazement.

"I am not the least bit afraid," she answered. "Oh Tommy, if you knew
how manly----" And then she remembered that she had said that already.

"You did not even say that you would--consult me?"

"Oh, oh!"

"Why didn't you, Elspeth?"

"I--I forgot!" she moaned. "Tommy, you are angry!" She hugged him, and
he let her do it, but all the time he was looking over her head
fixedly, with his mouth open.

"And I was always so sure of you!" were the words that came to him at
last, with a hard little laugh at the end of them.

"Can you think it makes me love you less," she sobbed, "because I love
him, too? Oh, Tommy, I thought you would be so glad!"

He kissed her; he put his hand fondly upon her head.

"I am glad," he said, with emotion. "When that which you want has come
to you, Elspeth, how can I but be glad? But it takes me aback, and if
for a moment I felt forlorn, if, when I should have been rejoicing
only in your happiness, the selfish thought passed through my mind,
'What is to become of me?' I hope--I hope--" Then he sat down and
buried his face in the table.

And he might have been telling her about Grizel! Has the shock stunned
you, Tommy? Elspeth thinks it has been a shock of pain. May we lift
your head to show her your joyous face?

"I am so proud," she was saying, "that at last, after you have done so
much for me, I can do a little thing for you. For it is something to
free you, Tommy. You have always pretended, for my sake, that we could
not do without each other, but we both knew all the time that it was
only I who was unable to do without you. You can't deny it."

He might deny it, but it was true. Ah, Tommy, you bore with her with
infinite patience, but did it never strike you that she kept you to
the earth? If Elspeth could be happy without you! You were sure she
could not, but if she could!--had that thought never made you flap
your wings?

"I often had a pain at my heart," she told him, "which I kept from
you. It was a feeling that your solicitude for me, perhaps, prevented
your caring for any other woman. It seemed terrible and unnatural that
I should be a bar to that. I felt that I was starving you, and not you
only, but an unknown woman as well."

"So long as I had you, Elspeth," he said reproachfully, "was not that
enough?"

"It seemed to be enough," she answered gravely, "but even while I
comforted myself with that, I knew that it should not be enough, and
still I feared that if it was, the blame was mine. Now I am no longer
in the way, and I hope, so ardently, that you will fall in love, like
other people. If you never do, I shall always have the fear that I am
the cause, that you lost the capacity in the days when I let you
devote yourself too much to me."

Oh, blind Elspeth! Now is the time to tell her, Tommy, and fill her
cup of happiness to the brim.

But it is she who is speaking still, almost gaily now, yet with a full
heart. "What a time you have had with me, Tommy! I told David all
about it, and what he has to look forward to, but he says he is not
afraid. And when you find someone you can love," she continued
sweetly, though she had a sigh to stifle, "I hope she will be someone
quite unlike me, for oh, my dear, good brother, I know you need a
change."

Not a word said Tommy.

She said, timidly, that she had begun to hope of late that Grizel
might be the woman, and still he did not speak. He drew Elspeth closer
to him, that she might not see his face and the horror of himself that
surely sat on it. To the very marrow of him he was in such cold misery
that I wonder his arms did not chill her.

This poor devil of a Sentimental Tommy! He had wakened up in the world
of facts, where he thought he had been dwelling of late, to discover
that he had not been here for weeks, except at meal-times. During
those weeks he had most honestly thought that he was in a passion to
be married. What do you say to pitying instead of cursing him? It is a
sudden idea of mine, and we must be quick, for joyous Grizel is
drawing near, and this, you know, is the chapter in which her heart
breaks.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Elspeth who opened the door to Grizel. "Does she know?" said
Elspeth to herself, before either of them spoke.

"Does she know?" It was what Grizel was saying also.

"Oh, Elspeth, I am so glad! David has told me."

"She does know," Elspeth told herself, and she thought it was kind of
Grizel to come so quickly. She said so.

"She doesn't know!" thought Grizel, and then these two kissed for the
first time. It was a kiss of thanks from each.

"But why does she not know?" Grizel wondered a little as they entered
the parlour, where Tommy was; he had been standing with his teeth knit
since he heard the knock. As if in answer to the question, Elspeth
said: "I have just broken it to Tommy. He has been in a few minutes
only, and he is so surprised he can scarcely speak."

Grizel laughed happily, for that explained it. Tommy had not had time
to tell her yet. She laughed again at Elspeth, who had thought she had
so much to tell and did not know half the story.

Elspeth begged Tommy to listen to the beautiful things Grizel was
saying about David, but, truth to tell, Grizel scarcely heard them
herself. She had given Tommy a shy, rapturous glance. She was
wondering when he would begin. What a delicious opening when he shook
hands! Suppose he had kissed her instead! Or, suppose he casually
addressed her as darling! He might do it at any moment now! Just for
once she would not mind though he did it in public. Perhaps as soon as
this new remark of Elspeth's was finished, he meant to say: "You are
not the only engaged person in the room, Miss Elspeth; I think I see
another two!" Grizel laughed as if she had heard him say it. And then
she ceased laughing suddenly, for some little duty had called Elspeth
into the other room, and as she went out she stopped the movement of
the earth.

These two were alone with their great joy.

Elspeth had said that she would be back in two minutes. Was Grizel
wasting a moment when she looked only at him, her eyes filmy with
love, the crooked smile upon her face so happy that it could not stand
still? Her arms made a slight gesture towards him; her hands were
open; she was giving herself to him. She could not see. For a fraction
of time the space between them seemed to be annihilated. His arms were
closing round her. Then she knew that neither of them had moved.

"Grizel!"

He tried to be true to her by deceiving her. It was the only way. "At
last, Grizel," he cried, "at last!" and he put joyousness into his
voice. "It has all come right, dear one!" he cried like an ecstatic
lover. Never in his life had he tried so hard to deceive at the
sacrifice of himself. But he was fighting something as strong as the
instinct of self-preservation, and his usually expressionless face
gave the lie to his joyous words. Loud above his voice his ashen face
was speaking to her, and she cried in terror, "What is wrong?" Even
then he attempted to deceive her, but suddenly she knew the truth.

"You don't want to be married!"

I think the room swam round with her. When it was steady again, "You
did not say that, did you?" she asked. She was sure he had not said
it. She was smiling again tremulously to show him that he had not said
it.

"I want to be married above all else on earth," he said imploringly;
but his face betrayed him still, and she demanded the truth, and he
was forced to tell it.

A little shiver passed through her, that was all.

"Do you mean that you don't love me?" she said. "You must tell me what
you mean."

"That is how others would put it, I suppose," he replied. "I believe
they would be wrong. I think I love you in my own way; but I thought I
loved you in their way, and it is the only way that counts in this
world of theirs. It does not seem to be my world. I was given wings, I
think, but I am never to know that I have left the earth until I come
flop upon it with an arrow through them. I crawl and wriggle here, and
yet"--he laughed harshly--"I believe I am rather a fine fellow when I
am flying!"

She nodded. "You mean you want me to let you off?" she asked. "You
must tell me what you mean." And as he did not answer instantly,
"Because I think I have some little claim upon you," she said, with a
pleasant smile.

"I am as pitiful a puzzle to myself as I can be to you," he replied.
"All I know is that I don't want to marry anyone. And yet I am sure I
could die for you, Grizel."

It was quite true. A burning house and Grizel among the flames, and he
would have been the first on the ladder. But there is no such luck for
you, Tommy.

"You are free," was what she said. "Don't look so tragic," she added,
again with the pleasant smile. "It must be very distressing to you,
but--you will soon fly again." Her lips twitched tremulously. "I can't
fly," she said.

She took the ring from her neck. She took it off its ribbon.

"I brought it," she said, "to let you put it on my finger. I thought
you would want to do that," she said.

"Grizel," he cried, "can we not be as we have been?"

"No," she answered.

"It would all come right, Grizel. I am sure it would. I don't know why
I am as I am; but I shall try to change myself. You have borne with me
since we were children. Won't you bear with me for a little longer?"

She shook her head, but did not trust herself to speak.

"I have lost you," he said, and she nodded.

"Then I am lost indeed!" said he, and he knew it, too; but with a
gesture of the hand she begged him not to say that.

"Without your love to help me----" he began.

"You shall always have that," she told him with shining eyes, "always,
always." And what could he do but look at her with the wonder and the
awe that come to every man who, for one moment in his life, knows a
woman well?

"You can love me still, Grizel!" His voice was shaky.

"Just the same," she answered, and I suppose he looked uplifted. "But
you should be sorry," she said gravely, and it was then that Elspeth
came back. She had not much exceeded her two minutes.

It was always terrible to Tommy not to have the feelings of a hero. At
that moment he could not endure it. In a splendid burst of
self-sacrifice he suddenly startled both Grizel and himself by crying,
"Elspeth, I love Grizel, and I have just asked her to be my wife."

Yes, the nobility of it amazed himself, but bewitched him, too, and he
turned gloriously to Grizel, never doubting but that she would have
him still.

He need not have spoken so impulsively, nor looked so grand. She
swayed for an instant and then was erect again. "You must forgive me,
Elspeth," she said, "but I have refused him"; and that was the biggest
surprise Tommy ever got in his life.

"You don't care for him!" Elspeth blurted out.

"Not in the way he cares for me," Grizel replied quietly, and when
Elspeth would have said more she begged her to desist. "The only thing
for me to do now, Elspeth," she said, smiling, "is to run away, but I
want you first to accept a little wedding-gift from me. I wish you and
David so much happiness; you won't refuse it, will you?"

Elspeth, still astounded, took the gift. It was a little garnet ring.

"It will have to be cut," Grizel said. "It was meant, I think, for a
larger finger. I have had it some time, but I never wore it."

Elspeth said she would always treasure her ring, and that it was
beautiful.

"I used to think it--rather sweet," Grizel admitted, and then she said
good-bye to them both and went away.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE MONSTER


Tommy's new character was that of a monster. He always liked the big
parts.

Concealed, as usual, in the garments that clung so oddly to him,
modesty, generosity, indifference to applause and all the nobler
impulses, he could not strip himself of them, try as he would, and so
he found, to his scornful amusement, that he still escaped the public
fury. In the two months that preceded Elspeth's marriage there was
positively scarce a soul in Thrums who did not think rather well of
him. "If they knew what I really am," he cried with splendid
bitterness, "how they would run from me!"

Even David could no longer withhold the hand of fellowship, for Grizel
would tell him nothing, except that, after all, and for reasons
sufficient to herself, she had declined to become Mrs. Sandys. He
sought in vain to discover how Tommy could be to blame. "And now,"
Tommy said grimly to Grizel, "our doctor thinks you have used me
badly, and that I am a fine fellow to bear no resentment! Elspeth told
me that he admires the gentle and manly dignity with which I submit to
the blow, and I have no doubt that, as soon as I heard that, I made it
more gentle and manly than ever!

"I have forbidden Elspeth," he told her, "to upbraid you for not
accepting me, with the result that she thinks me too good to live! Ha,
ha! what do you think, Grizel?"

It became known in the town that she had refused him. Everybody was on
Tommy's side. They said she had treated him badly. Even Aaron was
staggered at the sight of Tommy accepting his double defeat in such
good part. "And all the time I am the greatest cur unhung," says
Tommy. "Why don't you laugh, Grizel?"

Never, they said, had there been such a generous brother. The town was
astir about this poor man's gifts to the lucky bride. There were
rumours that among the articles was a silver coal-scuttle, but it
proved to be a sugar-bowl in that pattern. Three bandboxes came for
her to select from; somebody discovered who was on the watch, but may
I be struck dead if more than one went back. Yesterday it was bonnets;
to-day she is at Tilliedrum again, trying on her going-away dress. And
she really was to go away in it, a noticeable thing, for in Thrums
society, though they usually get a going-away dress, they are too
canny to go away in it The local shops were not ignored, but the best
of the trousseau came from London. "That makes the second box this
week, as I'm a living sinner," cries the lady on the watch again. When
boxes arrived at the station Corp wheeled them up to Elspeth without
so much as looking at the label.

Ah, what a brother! They said it openly to their own brothers, and to
Tommy in the way they looked at him.

"There has been nothing like it," he assured Grizel, "since Red
Riding-hood and the wolf. Why can't I fling off my disguise and cry,
'The better to eat you with!'"

He always spoke to her now in this vein of magnificent bitterness, but
Grizel seldom rewarded him by crying, "Oh, oh!" She might, however,
give him a patient, reproachful glance instead, and it had the
irritating effect of making him feel that perhaps he was under
life-size, instead of over it.

"I daresay you are right," says Tommy, savagely.

"I said nothing."

"You don't need to say it. What a grand capacity you have for knocking
me off my horse, Grizel!"

"Are you angry with me for that?"

"No; it is delicious to pick one's self out of the mud, especially
when you find it is a baby you are picking up, instead of a brute. Am
I a baby only, Grizel?"

"I think it is childish of you," she replied, "to say you are a
brute."

"There is not to be even that satisfaction left to me! You are hard on
me, Grizel."

"I am trying to help you. How can you be angry with me?"

"The instinct of self-preservation, I suppose. I see myself dwindling
so rapidly under your treatment that soon there will be nothing of me
left."

It was said cruelly, for he knew that the one thing Grizel could not
bear now was the implication that she saw his faults only. She always
went down under that blow with pitiful surrender, showing the woman
suddenly, as if under a physical knouting.

He apologized contritely. "But, after all, it proves my case," he
said, "for I could not hurt you in this way, Grizel, if I were not a
pretty well-grown specimen of a monster."

"Don't," she said; but she did not seek to help him by drawing him
away to other subjects, which would have been his way. "What is there
monstrous," she asked, "in your being so good to Elspeth? It is very
kind of you to give her all these things."

"Especially when by rights they are yours, Grizel!"

"No, not when you did not want to give them to me."

He dared say nothing to that; there were some matters on which he must
not contradict Grizel now.

"It is nice of you," she said, "not to complain, though Elspeth is
deserting you. It must have been a blow."

"You and I only know why," he answered. "But for her, Grizel, I might
be whining sentiment to you at this moment."

"That," she said, "would be the monstrous thing."

"And it is not monstrous, I suppose, that I should let Gemmell press
my hand under the conviction that, after all, I am a trump."

"You don't pose as one."

"That makes them think the more highly of me! Nothing monstrous,
Grizel, in my standing quietly by while you are showing Elspeth how to
furnish her house--I, who know why you have the subject at your
finger-tips!"

For Grizel had given all her sweet ideas to Elspeth. Heigh-ho! how she
had guarded them once, confiding them half reluctantly even to Tommy;
half reluctantly, that is, at the start, because they were her very
own, but once she was embarked on the subject talking with such
rapture that every minute or two he had to beg her to be calm. She was
the first person in that part of the world to think that old furniture
need not be kept in the dark corners, and she knew where there was an
oak bedstead that was looked upon as a disgrace, and where to obtain
the dearest cupboards, one of them in use as the retiring-chamber of a
rabbit-hutch, and stately clocks made in the town a hundred years ago,
and quaint old-farrant lamps and cogeys and sand-glasses that
apologized if you looked at them, and yet were as willing to be loved
again as any old lady in a mutch. You will not buy them easily now,
the people will not chuckle at you when you bid for them now. We have
become so cute in Thrums that when the fender breaks we think it may
have increased in value, and we preserve any old board lest the worms
have made it artistic. Grizel, however, was in advance of her time.
She could lay her hands on all she wanted, and she did, but it was for
Elspeth's house.

"And the table-cloths and the towels and the sheets," said Tommy.
"Nothing monstrous in my letting you give Elspeth them?"

The linen, you see, was no longer in Grizel's press.

"I could not help making them," she answered, "they were so longing to
be made. I did not mean to give them to her. I think I meant to put
them back in the press, but when they were made it was natural that
they should want to have something to do. So I gave them to Elspeth."

"With how many tears on them?"

"Not many. But with some kisses."

"All which," says Tommy, "goes to prove that I have nothing with which
to reproach myself!"

"No, I never said that," she told him. "You have to reproach yourself
with wanting me to love you."

She paused a moment to let him say, if he dared, that he had not done
that, when she would have replied instantly, "You know you did." He
could have disabused her, but it would have been cruel, and so on this
subject, as ever, he remained silent.

"But that is not what I have been trying to prove," she continued.
"You know as well as I that the cause of this unhappiness has
been--what you call your wings."

He was about to thank her for her delicacy in avoiding its real name,
when she added, "I mean your sentiment," and he laughed instead.

"I flatter myself that I no longer fly, at all events," he said. "I
know what I am at last, Grizel"

"It is flattery only," she replied with her old directness. "This
thing you are regarding with a morbid satisfaction is not you at all."

He groaned. "Which of them all is me, Grizel?" he asked gloomily.

"We shall see," she said, "when we have got the wings off."

"They will have to come off a feather at a time."

"That," she declared, "is what I have been trying to prove."

"It will be a weary task, Grizel."

"I won't weary at it," she said, smiling.

Her cheerfulness was a continual surprise to him. "You bear up
wonderfully well yourself," he sometimes said to her, almost
reproachfully, and she never replied that, perhaps, that was one of
her ways of trying to help him.

She is not so heartbroken, after all, you may be saying, and I had
promised to break her heart. But, honestly, I don't know how to do it
more thoroughly, and you must remember that we have not seen her alone
yet.

She tried to be very little alone. She helped David in his work more
than ever; not a person, for instance, managed to escape the bath
because Grizel's heart was broken. You could never say that she was
alone when her needle was going, and the linen became sheets and the
like, in what was probably record time. Yet they could have been sewn
more quickly; for at times the needle stopped and she did not know it.
Once a bedridden old woman, with whom she had been sitting up, lay
watching her instead of sleeping, and finally said: "What makes you
sit staring at a cauld fire, and speaking to yourself?" And there was
a strange day when she had been too long in the Den. When she started
for home she went in the direction of Double Dykes, her old home,
instead.

She could bear everything except doubt. She had told him so, when he
wondered at her calmness; she often said it to herself. She could
tread any path, however drearily it stretched before her, so long as
she knew whither it led, but there could be no more doubt. Oh, he must
never again disturb her mind with hope! How clearly she showed him
that, and yet they had perhaps no more than parted when it seemed
impossible to bear for the next hour the desolation she was sentenced
to for life. She lay quivering and tossing on the hearth-rug of the
parlour, beating it with her fists, rocking her arms, and calling to
him to give her doubt again, that she might get through the days.

"Let me doubt again!" Here was Grizel starting to beg it of him. More
than once she got half-way to Aaron's house before she could turn; but
she always did turn, with the words unspoken; never did Tommy hear her
say them, but always that she was tranquil now. Was it pride that
supported her in the trying hour? Oh, no, it was not pride. That is an
old garment, which once became Grizel well, but she does not wear it
now; she takes it out of the closet, perhaps, at times to look at it.
What gave her strength when he was by was her promise to help him. It
was not by asking for leave to dream herself that she could make him
dream the less. All done for you, Tommy! It might have helped you to
loosen a few of the feathers.

Sometimes she thought it might not be Tommy, but herself, who was so
unlike other people; that it was not he who was unable to love, but
she who could not be loved. This idea did not agitate her as a
terrible thing; she could almost welcome it. But she did not go to him
with it. While it might be but a fancy, that was no way to help a man
who was overfull of them. It was the bare truth only that she wanted
him to see, and so she made elaborate inquiries into herself, to
discover whether she was quite unlovable. I suppose it would have been
quaint, had she not been quite so much in earnest. She examined
herself in the long mirror most conscientiously, and with a
determinedly open mind, to see whether she was too ugly for any man to
love. Our beautiful Grizel really did.

She had always thought that she was a nice girl, but was she? No one
had ever loved her, except the old doctor, and he began when she was
so young that perhaps he had been inveigled into it, like a father.
Even David had not loved her. Was it because he knew her so well? What
was it in women that made men love them? She asked it of David in such
a way that he never knew she was putting him to the question. He
merely thought that he and she were having a pleasant chat about
Elspeth, and, as a result, she decided that he loved Elspeth because
she was so helpless. His head sat with uncommon pride on his shoulders
while he talked of Elspeth's timidity. There was a ring of
boastfulness in his voice as he paraded the large number of useful
things that Elspeth could not do. And yet David was a sensible and
careful man.

Was it helplessness that man loved in woman, then? It seemed to be
Elspeth's helplessness that had made Tommy such a brother, and how it
had always appealed to Aaron! No woman could be less helpless than
herself, Grizel knew. She thought back and back, and she could not
come to a time when she was not managing somebody. Women, she
reflected, fall more or less deeply in love with every baby they see,
while men, even the best of them, can look calmly at other people's
babies. But when the helplessness of the child is in the woman, then
other women are unmoved; but the great heart of man is stirred--woman
is his baby. She remembered that the language of love is in two
sexes--for the woman superlatives, for the man diminutives. The more
she loves the bigger he grows, but in an ecstasy he could put her in
his pocket. Had not Tommy taught her this? His little one, his child!
Perhaps he really had loved her in the days when they both made
believe that she was infantile; but soon she had shown with fatal
clearness that she was not. Instead of needing to be taken care of,
she had obviously wanted to take care of him: their positions were
reversed. Perhaps, said Grizel to herself, I should have been a man.

If this was the true explanation, then, though Tommy, who had tried so
hard, could not love her, he might be able to love--what is the
phrase?--a more womanly woman, or, more popular phrase still, a very
woman. Some other woman might be the right wife for him. She did not
shrink from considering this theory, and she considered so long that
I, for one, cannot smile at her for deciding ultimately, as she did,
that there was nothing in it.

The strong like to be leaned upon and the weak to lean, and this
irrespective of sex. This was the solution she woke up with one
morning, and it seemed to explain not only David's and Elspeth's love,
but her own, so clearly that in her desire to help she put it before
Tommy. It implied that she cared for him because he was weak, and he
drew a very long face.

"You don't know how the feathers hurt as they come out," he explained.

"But so long as we do get them out!" she said.

"Every other person who knows me thinks that strength is my great
characteristic," he maintained, rather querulously.

"But when you know it is not," said Grizel. "You do know, don't you?"
she asked anxiously. "To know the truth about one's self, that is the
beginning of being strong."

"You seem determined," he retorted, "to prevent my loving you."

"Why?" she asked.

"You are to make me strong in spite of myself, I understand. But,
according to your theory, the strong love the weak only. Are you to
grow weak, Grizel, as I grow strong?"

She had not thought of that, and she would have liked to rock her
arms. But she was able to reply: "I am not trying to help you in order
to make you love me; you know, quite well, that all that is over and
done with. I am trying only to help you to be what a man should be."

She could say that to him, but to herself? Was she prepared to make a
man of him at the cost of his possible love? This faced her when she
was alone with her passionate nature, and she fought it, and with her
fists clenched she cried: "Yes, yes, yes!"

Do we know all that Grizel had to fight? There were times when Tommy's
mind wandered to excuses for himself; he knew what men were, and he
shuddered to think of the might have been, had a girl who could love
as Grizel did loved such a man as her father. He thanked his Maker,
did Tommy, that he, who was made as those other men, had avoided
raising passions in her. I wonder how he was so sure. Do we know all
that Grizel had to fight?

       *       *       *       *       *

They spoke much during those days of the coming parting, and she
always said that she could bear it if she saw him go away more of a
man than he had come.

"Then anything I have suffered or may suffer," she told him, "will
have been done to help you, and perhaps in time that will make me
proud of my poor little love-story. It would be rather pitiful, would
it not, if I have gone through so much for no end at all?"

She spoke, he said, almost reproachfully, as if she thought he might
go away on his wings, after all.

"We can't be sure," she murmured, she was so eager to make him
watchful.

"Yes," he said, humbly but firmly, "I may be a scoundrel, Grizel, I am
a scoundrel, but one thing you may be sure of, I am done with
sentiment." But even as he said it, even as he felt that he could tear
himself asunder for being untrue to Grizel, a bird was singing at his
heart because he was free again, free to go out into the world and
play as if it were but a larger den. Ah, if only Tommy could always
have remained a boy!

Elspeth's marriage day came round, and I should like to linger in it,
and show you Elspeth in her wedding-gown, and Tommy standing behind to
catch her if she fainted, and Ailie weeping, and Aaron Latta rubbing
his gleeful hands, and a smiling bridesmaid who had once thought she
might be a bride. But that was a day in Elspeth's story, not in
Tommy's and Grizel's. Only one incident in their story crept into that
happy day. There were speeches at the feast, and the Rev. Mr. Dishart
referred to Tommy in the kindliest way, called him "my young friend,"
quoted (inaccurately) from his book, and expressed an opinion, formed,
he might say, when Mr. Sandys was a lad at school (cheers), that he
had a career before him. Tommy bore it well, all except the quotation,
which he was burning to correct, but sighed to find that it had set
the dominies on his left talking about precocity. "To produce such a
graybeard of a book at two and twenty, Mr. Sandys," said Cathro, "is
amazing. It partakes, sir, of the nature of the miraculous; it's
onchancey, by which we mean a deviation from the normal." And so on.
To escape this kind of flattery (he had so often heard it said by
ladies, who could say it so much better), Tommy turned to his
neighbours on the right.

Oddly enough, they also were discussing deviations from the normal. On
the table was a plant in full flower, and Ailie, who had lent it, was
expressing surprise that it should bloom so late in the season.

"So early in its life, I should rather say," the doctor remarked after
examining it. "It is a young plant, and in the ordinary course would
not have come to flower before next year. But it is afraid that it
will never see next year. It is one of those poor little plants that
bloom prematurely because they are diseased."

Tommy was a little startled. He had often marvelled over his own
precocity, but never guessed that this might be the explanation why he
was in flower at twenty-two. "Is that a scientific fact?" he asked.

"It is a law of nature," the doctor replied gravely, and if anything
more was said on the subject our Tommy did not hear it. What did he
hear? He was a child again, in miserable lodgings, and it was sometime
in the long middle of the night, and what he heard from his bed was
his mother coughing away her life in hers. There was an angry knock,
knock, knock, from somewhere near, and he crept out of bed to tell his
mother that the people through the wall were complaining because she
would not die more quietly; but when he reached her bed it was not his
mother he saw lying there, but himself, aged twenty-four or
thereabouts. For Tommy had inherited his mother's cough; he had known
it every winter, but he remembered it as if for the first time now.

Did he hear anything else? I think he heard his wings slipping to the
floor.

He asked Ailie to give him the plant, and he kept it in his room very
lovingly, though he forgot to water it. He sat for long periods
looking at it, and his thoughts were very deep, but all he actually
said aloud was, "There are two of us." Aaron sometimes saw them
together, and thought they were an odd pair, and perhaps they were.

Tommy did not tell Grizel of the tragedy that was hanging over him. He
was determined to save her that pain. He knew that most men in his
position would have told her, and was glad to find that he could keep
it so gallantly to himself. She was brave; perhaps some day she would
discover that he had been brave also. When she talked of wings now,
what he seemed to see was a green grave. His eyes were moist, but he
held his head high. All this helped him.

Ah, well, but the world must jog along though you and I be damned.
Elspeth was happily married, and there came the day when Tommy and
Grizel must say good-bye. He was returning to London. His luggage was
already in Corp's barrow, all but the insignificant part of it, which
yet made a bulky package in its author's pocket, for it was his new
manuscript, for which he would have fought a regiment, yes, and beaten
them. Little cared Tommy what became of the rest of his luggage so
long as that palpitating package was safe.

"And little you care," Grizel said, in a moment of sudden bitterness,
"whom you leave behind, so long as you take it with you."

He forgave her with a sad smile. She did not know, you see, that this
manuscript might be his last.

And it was the only bitter thing she said. Even when he looked very
sorry for her, she took advantage of his emotion to help him only.
"Don't be too sorry for me," she said calmly; "remember, rather, that
there is one episode in a woman's life to which she must always cling
in memory, whether it was a pride to her or a shame, and that it rests
with you to make mine proud or shameful."

In other words, he was to get rid of his wings. How she harped on
that!

He wanted to kiss her on the brow, but she would not have it. He was
about to do it, not to gratify any selfish desire, but of a beautiful
impulse that if anything happened she would have this to remember as
the last of him. But she drew back almost angrily. Positively, she was
putting it down to sentiment, and he forgave her even that.

But she kissed the manuscript. "Wish it luck," he had begged of her;
"you were always so fond of babies, and this is my baby." So Grizel
kissed Tommy's baby, and then she turned away her face.




CHAPTER XXV

MR. T. SANDYS HAS RETURNED TO TOWN


It is disquieting to reflect that we have devoted so much paper (this
is the third shilling's worth) to telling what a real biographer would
almost certainly have summed up in a few pages. "Caring nothing for
glory, engrossed in his work alone, Mr. Sandys, soon after the
publication of the 'Letters,' sought the peace of his mother's native
village, and there, alike undisturbing and undisturbed, he gave his
life, as ever, to laborious days and quiet contemplation. The one
vital fact in these six months of lofty endeavour is that he was
making progress with the new book. Fishing and other distractions were
occasionally indulged in, but merely that he might rise fresher next
morning to a book which absorbed," etc.

One can see exactly how it should be done, it has been done so often
before. And there is a deal to be said for this method. His book was
what he had been at during nearly the whole of that time;
comparatively speaking, the fishing and "other distractions" (a neat
phrase) had got an occasional hour only. But while we admire, we can't
do it in that way. We seem fated to go on taking it for granted that
you know the "vital facts" about Tommy, and devoting our attention to
the things that the real biographer leaves out.

Tommy arrived in London with little more than ten pounds in his
pockets. All the rest he had spent on Elspeth.

He looked for furnished chambers in a fashionable quarter, and they
were much too expensive. But the young lady who showed them to him
asked if it was _the_ Mr. Sandys, and he at once took the rooms. Her
mother subsequently said that she understood he wrote books, and would
he deposit five pounds?

Such are the ups and downs of the literary calling.

The book, of course, was "Unrequited Love," and the true story of how
it was not given to the world by his first publishers has never been
told. They had the chance, but they weighed the manuscript in their
hands as if it were butter, and said it was very small.

"If you knew how much time I have spent in making it smaller," replied
Tommy, haughtily.

The madmen asked if he could not add a few chapters, whereupon, with a
shudder, he tucked baby under his wing and flew away. That is how
Goldie & Goldie got the book.

For one who had left London a glittering star, it was wonderful how
little he brightened it by returning. At the club they did not know
that he had been away. In society they seemed to have forgotten to
expect him back.

He had an eye for them--with a touch of red in it; but he bided his
time. It was one of the terrible things about Tommy that he could bide
his time. Pym was the only person he called upon. He took Pym out to
dinner and conducted him home again. His kindness to Pym, the delicacy
with which he pretended not to see that poor old Pym was degraded and
done for--they would have been pretty even in a woman, and we treat
Tommy unfairly in passing them by with a bow.

Pym had the manuscript to read, and you may be as sure he kept sober
that night as that Tommy lay awake. For when literature had to be
judged, who could be so grim a critic as this usually lenient toper?
He could forgive much, could Pym. You had run away without paying your
rent, was it? Well, well, come in and have a drink. Broken your wife's
heart, have you? Poor chap, but you will soon get over it. But if it
was a split infinitive, "Go to the devil, sir."

"Into a cocked hat," was the verdict of Pym, meaning thereby that thus
did Tommy's second work beat his first. Tommy broke down and wept.

Presently Pym waxed sentimental and confided to Tommy that he, too,
had once loved in vain. The sad case of those who love in vain, you
remember, is the subject of the book. The saddest of autobiographies,
it has been called.

An odd thing, this, I think. Tearing home (for the more he was
engrossed in mind the quicker he walked), Tommy was not revelling in
Pym's praise; he was neither blanching nor smiling at the thought that
he of all people had written as one who was unloved; he was not
wondering what Grizel would say to it; he had even forgotten to sigh
over his own coming dissolution (indeed, about this time the
flower-pot began to fade from his memory). What made him cut his way
so excitedly through the streets was this: Pym had questioned his use
of the word "untimely" in chapter eight. And Tommy had always been
uneasy about that word.

He glared at every person he passed, and ran into perambulators. He
rushed past his chambers like one who no longer had a home. He was in
the park now, and did not even notice that the Row was empty, that
mighty round a deserted circus; management, riders, clowns, all the
performers gone on their provincial tour, or nearly all, for a lady on
horseback sees him, remembers to some extent who he is, and gives
chase. It is our dear Mrs. Jerry.

"You wretch," she said, "to compel me to pursue you! Nothing could
have induced me to do anything so unwomanly except that you are the
only man in town."

She shook her whip so prettily at him that it was as seductive as a
smile. It was also a way of gaining time while she tried to remember
what it was he was famous for.

"I believe you don't know me!" she said, with a little shriek, for
Tommy had looked bewildered. "That would be too mortifying. Please
pretend you do!"

Her look of appeal, the way in which she put her plump little hands
together, as if about to say her prayers, brought it all back to
Tommy. The one thing he was not certain of was whether he had proposed
to her.

It was the one thing of which she was certain.

"You think I can forget so soon," he replied reproachfully, but
carefully.

"Then tell me my name," said she; she thought it might lead to his
mentioning his own.

"I don't know what it is now. It was Mrs. Jerry once."

"It is Mrs. Jerry still."

"Then you did not marry him, after all?"

No wild joy had surged to his face, but when she answered yes, he
nodded his head with gentle melancholy three times. He had not the
smallest desire to deceive the lady; he was simply an actor who had
got his cue and liked his part.

[Illustration: "But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry," she said
softly.]

"But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry," she said softly. "I suppose
it suits me somehow."

"You will always be Mrs. Jerry to me," he replied huskily. Ah, those
meetings with old loves!

"If you minded so much," Mrs. Jerry said, a little tremulously (she
had the softest heart, though her memory was a trifle defective), "you
might have discovered whether I had married him or not."

"Was there no reason why I should not seek to discover it?" Tommy
asked with tremendous irony, but not knowing in the least what he
meant.

It confused Mrs. Jerry. They always confused her when they were
fierce, and yet she liked them to be fierce when she re-met them, so
few of them were.

But she said the proper thing. "I am glad you have got over it."

Tommy maintained a masterly silence. No wonder he was a power with
women.

"I say I am glad you have got over it," murmured Mrs. Jerry again. Has
it ever been noticed that the proper remark does not always gain in
propriety with repetition?

It is splendid to know that right feeling still kept Tommy silent.

Yet she went on briskly as if he had told her something: "Am I
detaining you? You were walking so quickly that I thought you were in
pursuit of someone."

It brought Tommy back to earth, and he could accept her now as an old
friend he was glad to meet again. "You could not guess what I was in
pursuit of, Mrs. Jerry," he assured her, and with confidence, for
words are not usually chased down the Row.

But, though he made the sound of laughter, that terrible face which
Mrs. Jerry remembered so well, but could not give a name to, took no
part in the revelry; he was as puzzling to her as those irritating
authors who print their jokes without a note of exclamation at the end
of them. Poor Mrs. Jerry thought it must be a laugh of horrid
bitterness, and that he was referring to his dead self or something
dreadful of that sort, for which she was responsible.

"Please don't tell me," she said, in such obvious alarm that again he
laughed that awful laugh. He promised, with a profound sigh, to carry
his secret unspoken to the grave, also to come to her "At Home" if she
sent him a card.

He told her his address, but not his name, and she could not send the
card to "Occupier."

"Now tell me about yourself," said Mrs. Jerry, with charming cunning.
"Did you go away?"

"I came back a few days ago only."

"Had you any shooting?" (They nearly always threatened to make for a
distant land where there was big game.)

Tommy smiled. He had never "had any shooting" except once in his
boyhood, when he and Corp acted as beaters, and he had wept
passionately over the first bird killed, and harangued the murderer.

"No," he replied; "I was at work all the time."

This, at least, told her that his work was of a kind which could be
done out of London. An inventor?

"When are we to see the result?" asked artful Mrs. Jerry.

"Very soon. Everything comes out about this time. It is our season,
you know."

Mrs. Jerry pondered while she said: "How too entrancing!" What did
come out this month? Oh, plays! And whose season was it? The actor's,
of course! He could not be an actor with that beard, but--ah, she
remembered now!

"Are they really clever this time?" she asked roguishly--"for you must
admit that they are usually sticks."

Tommy blinked at this. "I really believe, Mrs. Jerry," he said slowly,
"it is you who don't know who I am!"

"You prepare the aristocracy for the stage, don't you?" she said
plaintively.

"I!" he thundered.

"He had a beard," she said, in self-defence.

"Who?"

"Oh, I don't know! Please forgive me! I do remember, of course, who
you are--I remember too well!" said Mrs. Jerry, generously.

"What is my name?" Tommy demanded.

She put her hands together again, beseechingly. "Please, please!" she
said. "I have such a dreadful memory for names, but--oh, please!"

"What am I?" he insisted.

"You are the--the man who invents those delightful thingumbobs," she
cried with an inspiration.

"I never invented anything, except two books," said Tommy, looking at
her reproachfully.

"I know them by heart," she cried.

"One of them is not published yet," he informed her.

"I am looking forward to it so excitedly," she said at once.

"And my name is Sandys," said he.

"Thomas Sandys," she said, correcting him triumphantly. "How is that
dear, darling little Agnes--Elspeth?"

"You have me at last," he admitted.

"'Sandys on Woman!'" exclaimed Mrs. Jerry, all rippling smiles once
more. "Can I ever forget it!"

"I shall never pretend to know anything about women again," Tommy
answered dolefully, but with a creditable absence of vindictiveness.

"Please, please!" said the little hands again.

"It is a nasty jar, Mrs. Jerry."

"Please!"

"Oh that I could forget so quickly!"

"Please!"

"I forgive you, if that is what you want."

She waved her whip. "And you will come and see me?"

"When I have got over this. It needs--a little time." He really said
this to please her.

"You shall talk to me of the new book," she said, confident that this
would fetch him, for he was not her first author. "By the way, what is
it about?"

"Can you ask, Mrs. Jerry?" replied Tommy, passionately. "Oh, woman,
woman, can you ask?"

This puzzled her at the time, but she understood what he had meant
when the book came out, dedicated to Pym. "Goodness gracious!" she
said to herself as she went from chapter to chapter, and she was very
self-conscious when she heard the book discussed in society, which was
not quite as soon as it came out, for at first the ladies seemed to
have forgotten their Tommy.

But the journals made ample amends. He had invented, they said,
something new in literature, a story that was yet not a story, told in
the form of essays which were no mere essays. There was no character
mentioned by name, there was not a line of dialogue, essays only, they
might say, were the net result, yet a human heart was laid bare, and
surely that was fiction in its highest form. Fiction founded on fact,
no doubt (for it would be ostrich-like to deny that such a work must
be the outcome of a painful personal experience), but in those wise
and penetrating pages Mr. Sandys called no one's attention to himself;
his subject was an experience common to humanity, to be borne this way
or that; and without vainglory he showed how it should be borne, so
that those looking into the deep waters of the book (made clear by his
pellucid style) might see, not the author, but themselves.

A few of the critics said that if the book added nothing to his
reputation, it detracted nothing from it, but probably their pen added
this mechanically when they were away. What annoyed him more was the
two or three who stated that, much as they liked "Unrequited Love,"
they liked the "Letters" still better. He could not endure hearing a
good word said for the "Letters" now.

The great public, I believe, always preferred the "Letters," but among
important sections of it the new book was a delight, and for various
reasons. For instance, it was no mere story. That got the thoughtful
public. Its style, again, got the public which knows it is the only
public that counts.

Society still held aloof (there was an African traveller on view that
year), but otherwise everything was going on well, when the bolt came,
as ever, from the quarter whence it was least expected. It came in a
letter from Grizel, so direct as to be almost as direct as this: "I
think it is a horrid book. The more beautifully it is written the more
horrid it seems. No one was ever loved more truly than you. You can
know nothing about unrequited love. Then why do you pretend to know? I
see why you always avoided telling me anything about the book, even
its title. It was because you knew what I should say. It is nothing
but sentiment. You were on your wings all the time you were writing
it. That is why you could treat me as you did. Even to the last moment
you deceived me. I suppose you deceived yourself also. Had I known
what was in the manuscript I would not have kissed it, I would have
asked you to burn it. Had you not had the strength, and you would not,
I should have burned it for you. It would have been a proof of my
love. I have ceased to care whether you are a famous man or not. I
want you to be a real man. But you will not let me help you. I have
cried all day. GRIZEL."

Fury. Dejection. The heroic. They came in that order.

"This is too much!" he cried at first, "I can stand a good deal,
Grizel, but there was once a worm that turned at last, you know. Take
care, madam, take care. Oh, but you are a charming lady; you can
decide everything for everybody, can't you! What delicious letters you
write, something unexpected in everyone of them! There are poor dogs
of men, Grizel, who open their letters from their loves knowing
exactly what will be inside--words of cheer, words of love, of
confidence, of admiration, which help them as they sit into the night
at their work, fighting for fame that they may lay it at their loved
one's feet. Discouragement, obloquy, scorn, they get in plenty from
others, but they are always sure of her,--do you hear, my original
Grizel?--those other dogs are always sure of her. Hurrah! Grizel, I
was happy, I was actually honoured, it was helping me to do better and
better, when you quickly put an end to all that. Hurrah, hurrah!"

I feel rather sorry for him. If he had not told her about his book it
was because she did not and never could understand what compels a man
to write one book instead of another. "I had no say in the matter; the
thing demanded of me that I should do it, and I had to do it. Some
must write from their own experience, they can make nothing of
anything else; but it is to me like a chariot that won't budge; I have
to assume a character, Grizel, and then away we go. I don't attempt to
explain how I write, I hate to discuss it; all I know is that those
who know how it should be done can never do it. London is overrun with
such, and everyone of them is as cock-sure as you. You have taken
everything else, Grizel; surely you might leave me my books."

Yes, everything else, or nearly so. He put upon the table all the
feathers he had extracted since his return to London, and they did
make some little show, if less than it seemed to him. That little
adventure in the park; well, if it started wrongly, it but helped to
show the change in him, for he had determinedly kept away from Mrs.
Jerry's house. He had met her once since the book came out, and she
had blushed exquisitely when referring to it, and said: "How you have
suffered! I blame myself dreadfully." Yes, and there was an unoccupied
sofa near by, and he had not sat down on it with her and continued the
conversation. Was not that a feather? And there were other ladies,
and, without going into particulars, they were several feathers
between them. How doggedly, to punish himself, he had stuck to the
company of men, a sex that never interested him!

"But all that is nothing. I am beyond the pale, I did so monstrous a
thing that I must die for it. What was this dreadful thing? When I saw
you with that glove I knew you loved me, and that you thought I loved
you, and I had not the heart to dash your joy. You don't know it, but
that was the crime for which I must be exterminated, fiend that I am!"

Gusts of fury came at intervals all the morning. He wrote her
appalling letters and destroyed them. He shook his fist and snapped
his fingers at her, and went out for drink (having none in the house),
and called a hansom to take him to Mrs. Jerry's, and tore round the
park again and glared at everybody. He rushed on and on. "But the one
thing you shall never do, Grizel, is to interfere with my work; I
swear it, do you hear? In all else I am yours to mangle at your will,
but touch it, and I am a beast at bay."

And still saying such things, he drew near the publishing offices of
Goldie & Goldie, and circled round them, less like a beast at bay than
a bird that is taking a long way to its nest. And about four of the
afternoon what does this odd beast or bird or fish do but stalk into
Goldie & Goldie's and order "Unrequited Love" to be withdrawn from
circulation.

"Madam, I have carried out your wishes, and the man is hanged."

Not thus, but in words to that effect, did Tommy announce his deed to
Grizel.

"I think you have done the right thing," she wrote back, "and I admire
you for it." But he thought she did not admire him sufficiently for
it, and he did not answer her letter, so it was the last that passed
between them.

Such is the true explanation (now first published) of an affair that
at the time created no small stir. "Why withdraw the book?" Goldie &
Goldie asked of Tommy, but he would give no reason. "Why?" the public
asked of Goldie & Goldie, and they had to invent several. The public
invented the others. The silliest were those you could know only by
belonging to a club.

I swear that Tommy had not foreseen the result. Quite unwittingly the
favoured of the gods had found a way again. The talk about his
incomprehensible action was the turning-point in the fortunes of the
book. There were already a few thousand copies in circulation, and now
many thousand people wanted them. Sandys, Sandys, Sandys! where had
the ladies heard that name before? Society woke up, Sandys was again
its hero; the traveller had to go lecturing in the provinces.

The ladies! Yes, and their friends, the men. There was a Tommy society
in Mayfair that winter, nearly all of the members eminent or
beautiful, and they held each other's hands. Both sexes were eligible,
married or single, and the one rule was something about sympathy. It
afterwards became the Souls, but those in the know still call them the
Tommies.

They blackballed Mrs. Jerry (she was rather plump), but her married
stepdaughter, Lady Pippinworth (who had been a Miss Ridge-Fulton), was
one of them. Indeed, the Ridge-Fultons are among the thinnest families
in the country.

T. Sandys was invited to join the society, but declined, and thus
never quite knew what they did, nor can any outsider know, there being
a regulation among the Tommies against telling. I believe, however,
that they were a brotherhood, with sisters. You had to pass an
examination in unrequited love, showing how you had suffered, and
after that either the men or the women (I forget which) dressed in
white to the throat, and then each got some other's old love's hand to
hold, and you all sat on the floor and thought hard. There may have
been even more in it than this, for one got to know Tommies at sight
by a sort of careworn halo round the brow, and it is said that the
House of Commons was several times nearly counted out because so many
of its middle-aged members were holding the floor in another place.

Of course there were also the Anti-Tommies, who called themselves
(rather vulgarly) the Tummies. Many of them were that shape. They held
that, though you had loved in vain, it was no such mighty matter to
boast of; but they were poor in argument, and their only really strong
card was that Mr. Sandys was stoutish himself.

Their organs in the press said that he was a man of true genius, and
slightly inclined to _embonpoint_.

This maddened him, but on the whole his return was a triumph, and
despite thoughts of Grizel he was very, very happy, for he was at play
again. He was a boy, and all the ladies were girls. Perhaps the lady
he saw most frequently was Mrs. Jerry's stepdaughter. Lady Pippinworth
was a friend of Lady Rintoul, and had several times visited her at the
Spittal, but that was not the sole reason why Tommy so frequently
drank tea with her. They had met first at a country house, where, one
night after the ladies had retired to rest, Lady Pippinworth came
stealing into the smoking-room with the tidings that there were
burglars in the house. As she approached her room she had heard
whispers, and then, her door being ajar, she had peeped upon the
miscreants. She had also seen a pile of her jewellery on the table,
and a pistol keeping guard on top of it. There were several men in the
house, but that pistol cowed all of them save Tommy. "If we could lock
them in!" someone suggested, but the key was on the wrong side of the
door. "I shall put it on the right side," Tommy said pluckily, "if you
others will prevent their escaping by the window"; and with
characteristic courage he set off for her Ladyship's room. His
intention was to insert his hand, whip out the key, and lock the door
on the outside, a sufficiently hazardous enterprise; but what does he
do instead? Locks the door on the inside, and goes for the burglars
with his fists! A happy recollection of Corp's famous one from the
shoulder disposed at once of the man who had seized the pistol; with
the other gentleman Tommy had a stand-up fight in which both of them
took and gave, but when support arrived, one burglar was senseless on
the floor and T. Sandys was sitting on the other. Courageous of Tommy,
was it not? But observe the end. He was left in the dining-room to
take charge of his captives until morning, and by and by he was
exhorting them in such noble language to mend their ways that they
took the measure of him, and so touching were their family histories
that Tommy wept and untied their cords and showed them out at the
front door and gave them ten shillings each, and the one who begged
for the honour of shaking hands with him also took his watch. Thus did
Tommy and Lady Pippinworth become friends, but it was not this that
sent him so often to her house to tea. She was a beautiful woman, with
a reputation for having broken many hearts without damaging her own.
He thought it an interesting case.




CHAPTER XXVI

GRIZEL ALL ALONE


It was Tommy who was the favoured of the gods, you remember, not
Grizel.

Elspeth wondered to see her, after the publication of that book,
looking much as usual. "You know how he loved you now," she said,
perhaps a little reproachfully.

"Yes," Grizel answered, "I know; I knew before the book came out."

"You must be sorry for him?"

Grizel nodded.

"But proud of him also," Elspeth said. "You have a right to be proud."

"I am as proud," Grizel replied, "as I have a right to be."

Something in her voice touched Elspeth, who was so happy that she
wanted everyone to be happy. "I want you to know, Grizel," she said
warmly, "that I don't blame you for not being able to love him; we
can't help those things. Nor need you blame yourself too much, for I
have often heard him say that artists must suffer in order to produce
beautiful things."

"But I cannot remember," Elspeth had to admit, with a sigh, to David,
"that she made any answer to that, except 'Thank you.'"

Grizel was nearly as reticent to David himself. Once only did she
break down for a moment in his presence. It was when he was telling
her that the issue of the book had been stopped.

"But I see you know already," he said. "Perhaps you even know
why--though he has not given any sufficient reason to Elspeth."

David had given his promise, she reminded him, not to ask her any
questions about Tommy.

"But I don't see why I should keep it," he said bluntly.

"Because you dislike him," she replied.

"Grizel," he declared, "I have tried hard to like him. I have thought
and thought about it, and I can't see that he has given me any just
cause to dislike him."

"And that," said Grizel, "makes you dislike him more than ever."

"I know that you cared for him once," David persisted, "and I know
that he wanted to marry you--"

But she would not let him go on. "David," she said, "I want to give up
my house, and I want you to take it. It is the real doctor's house of
Thrums, and people in need of you still keep ringing me up of nights.
The only door to your surgery is through my passage; it is I who
should be in lodgings now."

"Do you really think I would, Grizel!" he cried indignantly.

"Rather than see the dear house go into another's hands," she answered
steadily; "for I am determined to leave it. Dr. McQueen won't feel
strange when he looks down, David, if it is only you he sees moving
about the old rooms, instead of me."

"You are doing this for me, Grizel, and I won't have it."

"I give you my word," she told him, "that I am doing it for myself
alone. I am tired of keeping a house, and of all its worries. Men
don't know what they are."

She was smiling, but his brows wrinkled in pain. "Oh, Grizel!" he
said, and stopped. And then he cried, "Since when has Grizel ceased to
care for housekeeping?"

She did not say since when. I don't know whether she knew; but it was
since she and Tommy had ceased to correspond. David's words showed her
too suddenly how she had changed, and it was then that she broke down
before him--because she had ceased to care for housekeeping.

But she had her way, and early in the new year David and his wife were
established in their new home, with all Grizel's furniture, except
such as was needed for the two rooms rented by her from Gavinia. She
would have liked to take away the old doctor's chair, because it was
the bit of him left behind when he died, and then for that very reason
she did not. She no longer wanted him to see her always. "I am not so
nice as I used to be, and I want to keep it from you," she said to the
chair when she kissed it good-bye.

Was Grizel not as nice as she used to be? How can I answer, who love
her the more only? There is one at least, Grizel, who will never
desert you.

Ah, but was she?

I seem again to hear the warning voice of Grizel, and this time she is
crying: "You know I was not."

She knew it so well that she could say it to herself quite calmly. She
knew that, with whatever repugnance she drove those passions away,
they would come back--yes, and for a space be welcomed back. Why does
she leave Gavinia's blue hearth this evening, and seek the solitary
Den? She has gone to summon them, and she knows it. They come thick in
the Den, for they know the place. It was there that her mother was
wont to walk with them. Have they been waiting for you in the Den,
Grizel, all this time? Have you found your mother's legacy at last?

Don't think that she sought them often. It was never when she seemed
to have anything to live for. Tommy would not write to her, and so did
not want her to write to him; but if that bowed her head, it never
made her rebel. She still had her many duties. Whatever she suffered,
so long as she could say, "I am helping him," she was in heart and
soul the Grizel of old. In his fits of remorse, which were many, he
tried to produce work that would please her. Thus, in a heroic attempt
to be practical, he wrote a political article in one of the reviews,
quite in the ordinary style, but so much worse than the average of
such things that they would never have printed it without his name. He
also contributed to a magazine a short tale,--he who could never write
tales,--and he struck all the beautiful reflections out of it, and
never referred to himself once, and the result was so imbecile that
kindly people said there must be another writer of the same name.
"Show them to Grizel," Tommy wrote to Elspeth, inclosing also some of
the animadversions of the press, and he meant Grizel to see that he
could write in his own way only. But she read those two efforts with
delight, and said to Elspeth, "Tell him I am so proud of them."

Elspeth thought it very nice of Grizel to defend the despised in this
way (even Elspeth had fallen asleep over the political paper). She did
not understand that Grizel loved them because they showed Tommy trying
to do without his wings.

Then another trifle by him appeared, shorter even than the others; but
no man in England could have written it except T. Sandys. It has not
been reprinted, and I forget everything about it except that its
subject was love. "Will not the friends of the man who can produce
such a little masterpiece as this," the journals said, "save him from
wasting his time on lumber for the reviews, and drivelling tales?" And
Tommy suggested to Elspeth that she might show Grizel this exhortation
also.

Grizel saw she was not helping him at all. If he would not fight, why
should she? Oh, let her fall and fall, it would not take her farther
from him! These were the thoughts that sent her into solitude, to meet
with worse ones. She could not face the morrow. "What shall I do
to-morrow?" She never shrank from to-day--it had its duties; it could
be got through: but to-morrow was a never-ending road. Oh, how could
she get through to-morrow?

Her great friend at this time was Corp; because he still retained his
faith in Tommy. She could always talk of Tommy to Corp.

How loyal Corp was! He still referred to Tommy as "him." Gavinia, much
distressed, read aloud to Corp a newspaper attack on the political
article, and all he said was, "He'll find a wy."

"He's found it," he went upstairs to announce to Grizel, when the
praises of the "little masterpiece" arrived.

"Yes, I know, Corp," she answered quietly. She was sitting by the
window where the plant was. Tommy had asked her to take care of it,
without telling her why.

Something in her appearance troubled the hulking, blundering man. He
could not have told what it was. I think it was simply this--that
Grizel no longer sat erect in her chair.

"I'm nain easy in my mind about Grizel," he said that evening to
Gavinia. "There's something queery about her, though I canna bottom
't."

"Yea?" said Gavinia, with mild contempt.

He continued pulling at his pipe, grunting as if in pleasant pain,
which was the way Corp smoked.

"I could see she's no pleased, though he has found a wy," he said.

"What pleasure should she be able to sook out o' his keeping
ding-ding-danging on about that woman?" retorted Gavinia.

"What woman?"

"The London besom that gae him the go-by."

"Was there sic a woman!" Corp cried.

"Of course there was, and it's her that he's aye writing about."

"Havers, Gavinia! It's Grizel he's aye writing about, and it was
Grizel that gae him the go-by. It's town talk."

But whatever the town might say, Gavinia stuck to her opinion.
"Grizel's no near so neat in her dressing as she was," she informed
Corp, "and her hair is no aye tidy, and that bonnet she was in
yesterday didna set her."

"I've noticed it," cried Corp. "I've noticed it this while back,
though I didna ken I had noticed it, Gavinia. I wonder what can be the
reason?"

"It's because nobody cares," Gavinia replied sadly. Trust one woman to
know another!

"We a' care," said Corp, stoutly.

"We're a' as nothing, Corp, when he doesna care. She's fond o' him,
man."

"Of course she is, in a wy. Whaur's the woman that could help it?"

"There's many a woman that could help it," said Gavinia, tartly, for
the honour of her sex, "but she's no are o' them." To be candid,
Gavinia was not one of them herself. "I'm thinking she's terrible fond
o' him," she said, "and I'm nain sure that he has treated her weel."

"Woman, take care; say a word agin him and I'll mittle you!" Corp
thundered, and she desisted in fear.

But he made her re-read the little essay to him in instalments, and at
the end he said victoriously, "You blethering crittur, there's no sic
woman. It's just another o' his ploys!"

He marched upstairs to Grizel with the news, and she listened kindly.
"I am sure you are right," she said; "you understand him better than
any of them, Corp," and it was true.

He thought he had settled the whole matter. He was burning to be
downstairs to tell Gavinia that these things needed only a man. "And
so you'll be yoursel' again, Grizel," he said, with great relief.

She had not seen that he was aiming at her until now, and it touched
her. "Am I so different, Corp?"

Not at all, he assured her delicately, but she was maybe no quite so
neatly dressed as she used to be, and her hair wasna braided back so
smooth, and he didna think that bonnet quite set her.

"Gavinia has been saying that to you!"

"I noticed it mysel', Grizel; I'm a terrible noticher."

"Perhaps you are right," she said, reflecting, after looking at
herself for the first time for some days. "But to think of your
caring, Corp!"

"I care most michty," he replied, with terrific earnestness.

"I must try to satisfy you, then," she said, smiling. "But, Corp,
please don't discuss me with Gavinia."

This request embarrassed him, for soon again he did not know how to
act. There was Grizel's strange behaviour with the child, for
instance. "No, I won't come down to see him to-day, Corp," she had
said; "somehow children weary me."

Such words from Grizel! His mouth would not shut and he could say
nothing. "Forgive me, Corp!" she cried remorsefully, and ran
downstairs, and with many a passionate caress asked forgiveness of the
child.

Corp followed her, and for the moment he thought he must have been
dreaming upstairs. "I wish I saw you wi' bairns o' your ain, Grizel,"
he said, looking on entranced; but she gave him such a pitiful smile
that he could not get it out of his head. Deprived of Gavinia's
counsel, and afraid to hurt Elspeth, he sought out the doctor and said
bluntly to him, "How is it he never writes to Grizel? She misses him
terrible."

"So," David thought, "Grizel's dejection is becoming common talk."
"Damn him!" he said, in a gust of fury.

But this was too much for loyal Corp. "Damn you!" he roared.

But in his heart he knew that the doctor was a just man, and
henceforth, when he was meaning to comfort Grizel, he was often
seeking comfort for himself.

He did it all with elaborate cunning, to prevent her guessing that he
was disturbed about her: asked permission to sit with her, for
instance, because he was dull downstairs; mentioned as a ludicrous
thing that there were people who believed Tommy could treat a woman
badly, and waited anxiously for the reply. Oh, he was transparent, was
Corp, but you may be sure Grizel never let him know that she saw
through him. Tommy could not be blamed, she pointed out, though he did
not care for some woman who perhaps cared for him.

"Exac'ly," said Corp.

And if he seemed, Grizel went on, with momentary bitterness, to treat
her badly, it could be only because she had made herself cheap.

"That's it," said Corp, cheerfully. Then he added hurriedly, "No,
that's no it ava. She's the last to mak' hersel' cheap." Then he saw
that this might put Grizel on the scent. "Of course there's no sic
woman," he said artfully, "but if there was, he would mak' it a'
right. She mightna see how it was to be done, but kennin' what a
crittur he is, she maun be sure he would find a wy. She would never
lose hope, Grizel."

And then, if Grizel did not appease him instantly, he would say
appealingly, "I canna think less o' him, Grizel; no, it would mak' me
just terrible low. Grizel," he would cry sternly, "dinna tell me to
think less o' that laddie."

Then, when she had reassured him, he would recall the many instances
in which Tommy as a boy had found a way. "Did we ever ken he was
finding it, Grizel, till he did find it? Many a time I says to mysel',
says I, 'All is over,' and syne next minute that holy look comes ower
his face, and he stretches out his legs like as if he was riding on a
horse, and all that kens him says, 'He has found a wy.' If I was the
woman (no that there is sic a woman) I would say to mysel', 'He was
never beat,' I would say, 'when he was a laddie, and it's no likely
he'll be beat when he's a man'; and I wouldna sit looking at the fire
wi' my hands fauded, nor would I forget to keep my hair neat, and I
would wear the frock that set me best, and I would play in my auld
bonny wy wi' bairns, for says I to mysel', 'I'm sure to hae bairns o'
my ain some day, and--"'

But Grizel cried, "Don't, Corp, don't!"

"I winna," he answered miserably, "no, I winna. Forgive me, Grizel; I
think I'll be stepping"; and then when he got as far as the door he
would say, "I canna do 't, Grizel; I'm just terrible wae for the woman
(if sic a woman there be), but I canna think ill o' him; you mauna
speir it o' me."

He was much brightened by a reflection that came to him one day in
church. "Here have I been near blaming him for no finding a wy, and
very like he doesna ken we want him to find a wy!"

How to inform Tommy without letting Grizel know? She had tried twice
long ago to teach him to write, but he found it harder on the wrists
than the heaviest luggage. It was not safe for him even to think of
the extra twirl that turned an _n_ into an _m_, without first removing
any knick-knacks that might be about. Nevertheless, he now proposed a
third set-to, and Grizel acquiesced, though she thought it but another
of his inventions to keep her from brooding.

The number of words in the English tongue excited him, and he often
lost all by not confining the chase to one, like a dog after rabbits.
Fortunately, he knew which words he wanted to bag.

"Change at Tilliedrum!" "Tickets! show your tickets!" and the like, he
much enjoyed meeting in the flesh, so to speak.

"Let's see 'Find a wy,' Grizel," he would say. "Ay, ay, and is that
the crittur!" and soon the sly fellow could write it, or at least draw
it.

He affected an ambition to write a letter to his son on that
gentleman's first birthday, and so "Let's see what 'I send you these
few scrapes' is like, Grizel." She assured him that this is not
essential in correspondence, but all the letters he had ever heard
read aloud began thus, and he got his way.

Anon Master Shiach was surprised and gratified to receive the
following epistle: "My dear sir, I send you these few scrapes to tell
you as you have found a way to be a year of age the morn. All tickets
ready in which Gavinia joins so no more at present I am, sir, your
obed't father Corp Shiach."

The fame of this letter went abroad, but not a soul knew of the next.
It said: "My dear Sir, I send you these few scrapes to tell you as
Grizel needs cheering up. Kindly oblidge by finding a way so no more
at present. I am sir your obed't Serv't Corp Shiach."

To his bewilderment, this produced no effect, though only because
Tommy never got it, and he wrote again, more sternly, requesting his
hero to find a way immediately. He was waiting restlessly for the
answer at a time when Elspeth called on Grizel to tell her of
something beautiful that Tommy had done. He had been very ill for
nearly a fortnight, it appeared, but had kept it from her to save her
anxiety. "Just think, Grizel; all the time he was in bed with
bronchitis he was writing me cheerful letters every other day
pretending there was nothing the matter with him. He is better now. I
have heard about it from a Mrs. Jerry, a lady whom I knew in London,
and who has nursed him in the kindest way." (But this same Mrs. Jerry
had opened Corp's letters and destroyed them as of no importance.) "He
would never have mentioned it himself. How like him, Grizel! You
remember, I made him promise before he went back to London that if he
was ill he would let me know at once so that I could go to him, but he
is so considerate he would not give me pain. He wrote those letters,
Grizel, when he was gasping for breath."

"But she seemed quite unmoved," Elspeth said sadly to her husband
afterwards.

Unmoved! Yes; Grizel remained apparently unmoved until Elspeth had
gone, but then--the torture she endured! "Oh, cruel, cruel!" she
cried, and she could neither stand nor sit; she flung herself down
before the fire and rocked this way and that, in a paroxysm of woe.
"Oh, cruel, cruel!"

It was Tommy who was cruel. To be ill, near to dying, apparently, and
not to send her word! She could never, never have let him go had he
not made that promise to Elspeth; and he kept it thus. Oh, wicked,
wicked!

"You would have gone to him at once, Elspeth! You! Who are you, that
talks of going to him as your right? He is not yours, I tell you; he
is mine! He is mine alone; it is I who would go to him. Who is this
woman that dares take my place by his side when he is ill!"

She rose to go to him, to drive away all others. I am sure that was
what gave her strength to rise; but she sank to the floor again, and
her passion lasted for hours. And through the night she was crying to
God that she would be brave no more. In her despair she hoped he heard
her.

Her mood had not changed when David came to see her next morning, to
admit, too, that Tommy seemed to have done an unselfish thing in
concealing his illness from them. Grizel nodded, but he thought she
was looking strangely reckless. He had a message from Elspeth. Tommy
had asked her to let him know whether the plant was flourishing.

"So you and he don't correspond now?" David said, with his old,
puzzled look.

"No," was all her answer to that. The plant, she thought, was dead;
she had not, indeed, paid much attention to it of late; but she showed
it to David, and he said it would revive if more carefully tended. He
also told her its rather pathetic history, which was new to Grizel,
and of the talk at the wedding which had led to Tommy's taking pity on
it. "Fellow-feeling, I suppose," he said lightly; "you see, they both
blossomed prematurely."

The words were forgotten by him as soon as spoken; but Grizel sat on
with them, for they were like a friend--or was it an enemy?--who had
come to tell her strange things. Yes, the doctor was right. Now she
knew why Tommy had loved this plant. Of the way in which he would sit
looking wistfully at it, almost nursing it, she had been told by
Aaron; he had himself begged her to tend it lovingly. Fellow-feeling!
The doctor was shrewder than he thought.

Well, what did it matter to her? All that day she would do nothing for
the plant, but in the middle of the night she rose and ran to it and
hugged it, and for a time she was afraid to look at it by lamplight,
lest Tommy was dead. Whether she had never been asleep that night, or
had awakened from a dream, she never knew, but she ran to the plant,
thinking it and Tommy were as one, and that they must die together. No
such thought had ever crossed his mind, but it seemed to her that she
had been told it by him, and she lit her fire to give the plant
warmth, and often desisted, to press it to her bosom, the heat seemed
to come so reluctantly from the fire. This idea that his fate was
bound up with that of the plant took strange possession of the once
practical Grizel; it was as if some of Tommy's nature had passed into
her to help her break the terrible monotony of the days.

And from that time there was no ailing child more passionately tended
than the plant, and as spring advanced it began once more to put forth
new leaves.

And Grizel also seemed glorified again. She was her old self. Dark
shapes still lingered for her in the Den, but she avoided them, and if
they tried to enter into her, she struggled with them and cast them
out. As she saw herself able to fight and win once more, her pride
returned to her, and one day she could ask David, joyously, to give
her a present of the old doctor's chair. And she could kneel by its
side and say to it, "You can watch me always; I am just as I used to
be."

Seeing her once more the incarnation of vigor and content, singing
gaily to his child, and as eager to be at her duties betimes as a
morning in May, Corp grunted with delight, and was a hero for not
telling her that it was he who had passed Tommy the word. For, of
course, Tommy had done it all.

"Somebody has found a wy, Grizel!" he would say, chuckling, and she
smiled an agreement.

"And yet," says he, puzzled, "I've watched, and you hinna haen a
letter frae him. It defies the face o' clay to find out how he has
managed it. Oh, the crittur! Ay, I suppose you dinna want to tell me
what it is that has lichted you up again?"

She could not tell him, for it was a compact she had made with one who
did not sign it. "I shall cease to be bitter and despairing and
wicked, and try every moment of my life to be good and do good, so
long as my plant flourishes; but if it withers, then I shall go to
him--I don't care what happens; I shall go to him."

It was the middle of June when she first noticed that the plant was
beginning to droop.




CHAPTER XXVII

GRIZEL'S JOURNEY


Nothing could have been less expected. In the beginning of May its
leaves had lost something of their greenness. The plant seemed to be
hesitating, but she coaxed it over the hill, and since then it had
scarcely needed her hand; almost light-headedly it hurried into its
summer clothes, and new buds broke out on it, like smiles, at the
fascinating thought that there was to be a to-morrow. Grizel's plant
had never been so brave in its little life when suddenly it turned
back.

That was the day on which Elspeth and David were leaving for a
fortnight's holiday with his relatives by the sea; for Elspeth needed
and was getting special devotion just now, and Grizel knew why. She
was glad they were going; it was well that they should not be there to
ask questions if she also must set forth on a journey.

For more than a week she waited, and everything she could do for her
plant she did. She watched it so carefully that she might have
deceived herself into believing that it was standing still only, had
there been no night-time. She thought she had not perhaps been
sufficiently good, and she tried to be more ostentatiously satisfied
with her lot. Never had she forced herself to work quite so hard for
others as in those few days, and then when she came home it had
drooped a little more.

When she was quite sure that it was dying, she told Corp she was going
to London by that night's train. "He is ill, Corp, and I must go to
him."

Ill! But how had he let her know?

"He has found a way," she said, with a tremulous smile. He wanted her
to telegraph; but no, she would place no faith in telegrams.

At least she could telegraph to Elspeth and the doctor. One of them
would go.

"It is I who am going," she said quietly. "I can't wait any longer. It
was a promise, Corp. He loves me." They were the only words she said
which suggest that there was anything strange about Grizel at this
time.

Corp saw how determined she was when she revealed, incidentally, that
she had drawn a sum of money out of the bank a week ago, "to be
ready."

"What will folk say!" he cried.

"You can tell Gavinia the truth when I am gone," she told him. "She
will know better than you what to say to other people." And that was
some comfort to him, for it put the burden of invention upon his wife.
So it was Corp who saw Grizel off. He was in great distress himself
about Tommy, but he kept a courageous face for her, and his last words
flung in at the carriage window were, "Now dinna be down-hearted; I'm
nain down-hearted mysel', for we're very sure he'll find a wy." And
Grizel smiled and nodded, and the train turned the bend that shuts out
the little town of Thrums. The town vanishes quickly, but the quarry
we howked it out of stands grim and red, watching the train for many a
mile.

Of Grizel's journey to London there are no particulars to tell. She
was wearing her brown jacket and fur cap because Tommy had liked them,
and she sat straight and stiff all the way. She had never been in a
train since she was a baby, except two or three times to Tilliedrum,
and she thought this was the right way to sit. Always, when the train
stopped, which was at long intervals, she put her head out at the
window and asked if this was the train to London. Every station a
train stops at in the middle of the night is the infernal regions, and
she shuddered to hear lost souls clanking their chains, which is what
a milk-can becomes on its way to the van; but still she asked if this
was the train to London. When fellow-passengers addressed her, she was
very modest and cautious in her replies. Sometimes a look of
extraordinary happiness, of radiance, passed over her face, and may
have puzzled them. It was part of the thought that, however ill he
might be, she was to see him now.

She did not see him as soon as she expected, for at the door of
Tommy's lodgings they told her that he had departed suddenly for the
Continent about a week ago. He was to send an address by and by to
which letters could be forwarded. Was he quite well when he went away?
Grizel asked, shaking.

The landlady and her daughter thought he was rather peakish, but he
had not complained.

He went away for his health, Grizel informed them, and he was very ill
now. Oh, could they not tell her where he was? All she knew was that
he was very ill. "I am engaged to be married to him," she said with
dignity. Without this strange certainty that Tommy loved her at last,
she could not have trod the road which faced her now. Even when she
had left the house, where at their suggestion she was to call
to-morrow, she found herself wondering at once what he would like her
to do now, and she went straight to a hotel, and had her box sent to
it from the station, and she remained there all day because she
thought that this was what he would like her to do. She sat bolt
upright on a cane chair in her bedroom, praying to God with her eyes
open; she was begging Him to let Tommy tell her where he was, and
promising to return home at once if he did not need her.

Next morning they showed her, at his lodgings, two lines in a
newspaper, which said that he was ill with bronchitis at the Hotel
Krone, Bad-Platten, in Switzerland.

It may have been an answer to her prayer, as she thought, but we know
now how the paragraph got into print. On the previous evening the
landlady had met Mr. Pym on the ladder of an omnibus, and told him,
before they could be plucked apart, of the lady who knew that Mr.
Sandys was ill. It must be bronchitis again. Pym was much troubled; he
knew that the Krone at Bad-Platten had been Tommy's destination. He
talked that day, and one of the company was a reporter, which accounts
for the paragraph.

Grizel found out how she could get to Bad-Platten. She left her box
behind her at the cloakroom of the railway station, where I suppose it
was sold years afterwards. From Dover she sent a telegram to Tommy,
saying: "I am coming. GRIZEL."

On entering the train at Calais she had a railway journey of some
thirty hours, broken by two changes only. She could speak a little
French, but all the use she made of it was to ask repeatedly if she
was in the right train. An English lady who travelled with her for
many hours woke up now and again to notice that this quiet,
prim-looking girl was always sitting erect, with her hand on her
umbrella, as if ready to leave the train at any moment. The lady
pointed out some of the beauties of the scenery to her, and Grizel
tried to listen. "I am afraid you are unhappy," her companion said at
last.

"That is not why I am crying," Grizel said; "I think I am crying
because I am so hungry."

The stranger gave her sandwiches and claret as cold as the rivers that
raced the train; and Grizel told her, quite frankly, why she was going
to Bad-Platten. She did not tell his name, only that he was ill, and
that she was engaged to him, and he had sent for her. She believed it
all. The lady was very sympathetic, and gave her information about the
diligence by which the last part of Grizel's journey must be made, and
also said: "You must not neglect your meals, if only for his sake; for
how can you nurse him back to health if you arrive at Bad-Platten ill
yourself? Consider his distress if he were to be told that you were in
the inn, but not able to go to him."

"Oh!" Grizel cried, rocking her arms for the first time since she knew
her plant was drooping. She promised to be very practical henceforth,
so as to have strength to take her place by his side at once. It was
strange that she who was so good a nurse had forgotten these things,
so strange that it alarmed her, as if she feared that, without being
able to check herself, she was turning into some other person.

The station where she alighted was in a hubbub of life; everyone
seemed to leave the train here, and to resent the presence of all the
others. They were mostly English. The men hung back, as if, now that
there was business to be done in some foolish tongue, they had better
leave the ladies to do it. Many of them seemed prepared, if there was
dissension, to disown their womankind and run for it. They looked
haughty and nervous. Such of them as had tried to shave in the train
were boasting of it and holding handkerchiefs to their chins. The
ladies were moving about in a masterful way, carrying bunches of keys.
When they had done everything, the men went and stood by their sides
again.

Outside the station buses and carriages were innumerable, and
everybody was shouting; but Grizel saw that nearly all her
fellow-passengers were hurrying by foot or conveyance to one spot, all
desirous of being there first, and she thought it must be the place
where the diligence started from, and pressed on with them. It proved
to be a hotel where they all wanted the best bedroom, and many of them
had telegraphed for it, and they gathered round a man in uniform and
demanded that room of him; but he treated them as if they were little
dogs and he was not the platter, and soon they were begging for a room
on the fourth floor at the back, and swelling with triumph if they got
it. The scrimmage was still going on when Grizel slipped out of the
hotel, having learned that the diligence would not start until the
following morning. It was still early in the afternoon. How could she
wait until to-morrow?

Bad-Platten was forty miles away. The road was pointed out to her. It
began to climb at once. She was to discover that for more than thirty
miles it never ceased to climb. She sat down, hesitating, on a little
bridge that spanned a horrible rushing white stream. Poets have sung
the glories of that stream, but it sent a shiver through her. On all
sides she was caged in by a ring of splendid mountains, but she did
not give them one admiring glance (there is a special spot where the
guide-books advise you to stop for a moment to do it); her one
passionate desire was to fling out her arms and knock them over.

She had often walked twenty miles in a day, in a hill country too,
without feeling tired, and there seemed no reason why she should not
set off now. There were many inns on the way, she was told, where she
could pass the night. There she could get the diligence next day. This
would not bring her any sooner to him than if she waited here until
to-morrow; but how could she sit still till to-morrow? She must be
moving; she seemed to have been sitting still for an eternity. "I must
not do anything rash," she told herself, carefully. "I must arrive at
Bad-Platten able to sit down beside him the moment I have taken off my
jacket--oh, without waiting to take off my jacket." She went into the
hotel and ate some food, just to show herself how careful she had
become. About three o'clock she set off. She had a fierce desire to
get away from that heartless white stream and the crack of whips and
the doleful pine woods, and at first she walked very quickly; but she
never got away from them, for they marched with her. It was not that
day, but the next, that Grizel thought anything was marching with her.
That day her head was quite clear, and she kept her promise to
herself, and as soon as she felt tired she stopped for the night at a
village inn. But when she awoke very early next morning she seemed to
have forgotten that she was to travel the rest of the way by
diligence; for, after a slight meal, she started off again on foot,
and she was walking all day.

She passed through many villages so like each other that in time she
thought they might be the same. There was always a monster inn whence
one carriage was departing as another drove up, and there was a great
stone water-tank in which women drew their washing back and forward,
and there was always a big yellow dog that barked fiercely and then
giggled, and at the doors of painted houses children stood. You knew
they were children by their size only. The one person she spoke to
that day was a child who offered her a bunch of wild flowers. No one
was looking, and Grizel kissed her and then hurried on.

The carriage passed and repassed her. There must have been a hundred
of them, but in time they became one. No sooner had it disappeared in
dust in front of her than she heard the crack of its whip behind.

It was a glorious day of sweltering sun; but she was bewildered now,
and did not open the umbrella with which she had shielded her head
yesterday. In the foreground was always the same white road, on both
sides the same pine wood laughing with wild flowers, the same roaring
white stream. From somewhere near came the tinkle of cow-bells. Far
away on heights, if she looked up, were villages made of match-boxes.
She saw what were surely the same villages if she looked down; or the
one was the reflection of the other, in the sky above or in the valley
below. They stood out so vividly that they might have been within
arm's reach. They were so small that she felt she could extinguish
them with her umbrella. Near them was the detestably picturesque
castle perched upon a bracket. Everywhere was that loathly waterfall.
Here and there were squares of cultivated land that looked like
door-mats flung out upon the hillsides. The huge mountains raised
their jagged heads through the snow, and were so sharp-edged that they
might have been clipped out of cardboard. The sky was blue, without a
flaw; but lost clouds crawled like snakes between heaven and earth.
All day the sun scorched her, but the night was nipping cold.

From early morn till evening she climbed to get away from them, but
they all marched with her. They waited while she slept. She woke up in
an inn, and could have cried with delight because she saw nothing but
bare walls. But as soon as she reached the door, there they all were,
ready for her. An hour after she set off, she again reached that door;
and she stopped at it to ask if this was the inn where she had passed
the night. Everything had turned with her. Two squalls of sudden rain
drenched her that day, and she forced her way through the first, but
sought a covering from the second.

It was then afternoon, and she was passing through a village by a
lake. Since Grizel's time monster hotels have trampled the village to
death, and the shuddering lake reflects all day the most hideous of
caravansaries flung together as with a giant shovel in one of the
loveliest spots on earth. Even then some of the hotels had found it
out. Grizel drew near to two of them, and saw wet halls full of open
umbrellas which covered the floor and looked like great beetles. These
buildings were too formidable, and she dragged herself past them. She
came to a garden of hops and evergreens. Wet chairs were standing in
the deserted walks, and here and there was a little arbour. She went
into one of these arbours and sat down, and soon slid to the floor.

The place was St. Gian, some miles from Bad-Platten; but one of the
umbrellas she had seen was Tommy's. Others belonged to Mrs. Jerry and
Lady Pippinworth.




CHAPTER XXVIII

TWO OF THEM


When Tommy started impulsively on what proved to be his only
Continental trip he had expected to join Mrs. Jerry and her
stepdaughter at Bad-Platten. They had been there for a fortnight, and
"the place is a dream," Mrs. Jerry had said in the letter pressing him
to come; but it was at St. Gian that she met the diligence and told
him to descend. Bad-Platten, she explained, was a horror.

Her fuller explanation was that she was becoming known there as the
round lady.

"Now, am I as round as all that?" she said plaintively to Tommy.

"Mrs. Jerry," he replied, with emotion, "you must not ask me what I
think of you." He always treated her with extraordinary respect and
chivalry now, and it awed her.

She had looked too, too round because she was in the company of Lady
Pippinworth. Everyone seemed to be too round or too large by the side
of that gifted lady, who somehow never looked too thin. She knew her
power. When there were women in the room whom she disliked she merely
went and stood beside them. In the gyrations of the dance the onlooker
would momentarily lose sight of her; she came and went like a blinking
candle. Men could not dance with her without its being said that they
were getting stout. There is nothing they dislike so much, yet they
did dance with her. Tommy, having some slight reason, was particularly
sensitive about references to his figure, yet it was Lady Pippinworth
who had drawn him to Switzerland. What was her strange attraction?

Calmly considered, she was preposterously thin, but men, at least,
could not think merely of her thinness, unless, when walking with her,
they became fascinated by its shadow on the ground. She was tall, and
had a very clear, pale complexion and light-brown hair. Light brown,
too, were her heavy eyelashes, which were famous for being
black-tipped, as if a brush had touched them, though it had not. She
made play with her eyelashes as with a fan, and sometimes the upper
and lower seemed to entangle for a moment and be in difficulties, from
which you wanted to extricate them in the tenderest manner. And the
more you wanted to help her the more disdainfully she looked at you.
Yet though she looked disdainful she also looked helpless. Now we have
the secret of her charm.

This helpless disdain was the natural expression of her face, and I am
sure she fell asleep with a curl of the lip. Her scorn of men so
maddened them that they could not keep away from her. "Damn!" they
said under their breath, and rushed to her. If rumour is to be
believed, Sir Harry Pippinworth proposed to her in a fury brought on
by the sneer with which she had surveyed his family portraits. I know
nothing more of Sir Harry, except that she called him Pips, which
seems to settle him.

"They will be calling me the round gentleman," Tommy said ruefully to
her that evening, as he strolled with her towards the lake, and indeed
he was looking stout. Mrs. Jerry did not accompany them; she wanted to
be seen with her trying stepdaughter as little as possible, and
Tommy's had been the happy proposal that he should attend them
alternately--"fling away my own figure to save yours," he had said
gallantly to Mrs. Jerry.

"Do you mind?" Lady Pippinworth asked.

"I mind nothing," he replied, "so long as I am with you."

He had not meant to begin so near the point where they had last left
off; he had meant to begin much farther back: but an irresistible
desire came over him to make sure that she really did permit him to
say this sort of thing.

Her only reply was a flutter of the little fans and a most
contemptuous glance.

"Alice," said Tommy, in the old way.

"Well?"

"You don't understand what it is to me to say Alice again."

"Many people call me Alice."

"But they have a right to."

"I supposed you thought you had a right to also."

"No," said Tommy. "That is why I do it."

She strolled on, more scornful and helpless than ever. Apparently it
did not matter what one said to Lady Pippinworth; her pout kept it
within the proprieties.

There was a magnificent sunset that evening, which dyed a snow-topped
mountain pink. "That is what I came all the way from London to see,"
Tommy remarked, after they had gazed at it.

"I hope you feel repaid," she said, a little tartly.

"You mistake my meaning," he replied. "I had heard of these wonderful
sunsets, and an intense desire came over me to see you looking
disdainfully at them. Yes, I feel amply repaid. Did you notice, Alice,
or was it but a fancy of my own, that when he had seen the expression
on your face the sun quite slunk away?"

"I wonder you don't do so also," she retorted. She had no sense of
humour, and was rather stupid; so it is no wonder that the men ran
after her.

"I am more gallant than the sun," said he. "If I had been up there in
its place, Alice, and you had been looking at me, I could never have
set."

She pouted contemptuously, which meant, I think, that she was well
pleased. Yet, though he seemed to be complimenting her, she was not
sure of him. She had never been sure of Tommy, nor, indeed, he of her,
which was probably why they were so interested in each other still.

"Do you know," Tommy said, "what I have told you is really at least
half the truth? If I did not come here to see you disdaining the sun,
I think I did come to see you disdaining me. Odd, is it not, if true,
that a man should travel so far to see a lip curl up?"

"You don't seem to know what brought you," she said.

"It seems so monstrous," he replied, musing. "Oh, yes, I am quite
certain that the curl of the lip is responsible for my being here; it
kept sending me constant telegrams; but what I want to know is, do I
come for the pleasure of the thing or for the pain? Do I like your
disdain, Alice, or does it make me writhe? Am I here to beg you to do
it again, or to defy it?"

"Which are you doing now?" she inquired.

"I had hoped," he said with a sigh, "that you could tell me that."

On another occasion they reached the same point in this discussion,
and went a little beyond it. It was on a wet afternoon, too, when
Tommy had vowed to himself to mend his ways. "That disdainful look is
you," he told her, "and I admire it more than anything in nature; and
yet, Alice, and yet----"

"Well?" she answered coldly, but not moving, though he had come
suddenly too near her. They were on a private veranda of the hotel,
and she was lolling in a wicker chair.

"And yet," he said intensely, "I am not certain that I would not give
the world to have the power to drive that look from your face. That, I
begin to think, is what brought me here."

"But you are not sure," she said, with a shrug of the shoulder.

It stung him into venturing further than he had ever gone with her
before. Not too gently, he took her head in both his hands and forced
her to look up at him. She submitted without a protest. She was
disdainful, but helpless.

"Well?" she said again.

He withdrew his hands, and she smiled mockingly.

"If I thought----" he cried with sudden passion, and stopped.

"You think a great deal, don't you?" she said. She was going now.

"If I thought there was any blood in your veins, you icy woman----"

"Or in your own," said she. But she said it a little fiercely, and he
noticed that.

"Alice," he cried, "I know now. It is to drive that look from your
face that I am here."

She courtesied from the door. She was quite herself again.

But for that moment she had been moved. He was convinced of it, and
his first feeling was of exultation as in an achievement. I don't know
what you are doing just now, Lady Pippinworth, but my compliments to
you, and T. Sandys is swelling.

There followed on this exultation another feeling as sincere--devout
thankfulness that he had gone no further. He drew deep breaths of
relief over his escape, but knew that he had not himself to thank. His
friends, the little sprites, had done it, in return for the amusement
he seemed to give them. They had stayed him in the nick of time, but
not earlier; it was quite as if they wanted Tommy to have his fun
first. So often they had saved him from being spitted, how could he
guess that the great catastrophe was fixed for to-night, and that
henceforth they were to sit round him counting his wriggles, as if
this new treatment of him tickled them even more than the other?

But he was too clever not to know that they might be fattening him for
some very special feast, and his thanks took the form of a vow to need
their help no more. To-morrow he would begin to climb the mountains
around St. Gian; if he danced attendance on her dangerous Ladyship
again, Mrs. Jerry should be there also, and he would walk
circumspectly between them, like a man with gyves upon his wrists. He
was in the midst of all the details of these reforms, when suddenly he
looked at himself thus occupied, and laughed bitterly; he had so often
come upon Tommy making grand resolves!

He stopped operations and sat down beside them. No one could have
wished more heartily to be anybody else, or have had less hope. He had
not even the excuse of being passionately drawn to this woman; he
remembered that she had never interested him until he heard of her
effect upon other men. Her reputation as a duellist, whose defence
none of his sex could pass, had led to his wondering what they saw in
her, and he had dressed himself in their sentiments and so approached
her. There were times in her company when he forgot that he was
wearing borrowed garments, when he went on flame, but he always knew,
as now, upon reflection. Nothing seemed easier at this moment than to
fling them aside; with one jerk they were on the floor. Obviously it
was only vanity that had inspired him, and vanity was satisfied: the
easier, therefore, to stop. Would you like to make the woman unhappy,
Tommy? You know you would not; you have somewhere about you one of the
softest hearts in the world. Then desist; be satisfied that you did
thaw her once, and grateful that she so quickly froze again. "I am;
indeed I am," he responds. "No one could have himself better in hand
for the time being than I, and if a competition in morals were now
going on, I should certainly take the medal. But I cannot speak for
myself an hour in advance. I make a vow, as I have done so often
before, but it does not help me to know what I may be at before the
night is out."

When his disgust with himself was at its height he suddenly felt like
a little god. His new book had come into view. He flicked a finger at
his reflection in a mirror. "That for you!" he said defiantly; "at
least I can write; I can write at last!"

The manuscript lay almost finished at the bottom of his trunk. It
could not easily have been stolen for one hour without his knowing.
Just when he was about to start on a walk with one of the ladies, he
would run upstairs to make sure that it was still there; he made sure
by feeling, and would turn again at the door to make sure by looking.
Miser never listened to the crispness of bank-notes with more avidity;
woman never spent more time in shutting and opening her jewel-box.

"I can write at last!" He knew that, comparatively speaking, he had
never been able to write before. He remembered the fuss that had been
made about his former books. "Pooh!" he said, addressing them
contemptuously.

Once more he drew his beloved manuscript from its hiding-place. He did
not mean to read, only to fondle; but his eye chancing to fall on a
special passage--two hours afterwards he was interrupted by the
dinner-gong. He returned the pages to the box and wiped his eyes.
While dressing hurriedly he remembered with languid interest that Lady
Pippinworth was staying in the same hotel.

There were a hundred or more at dinner, and they were all saying the
same thing: "Where have you been to-day?" "Really! but the lower path
is shadier." "Is this your first visit?" "The glacier is very nice."
"Were you caught in the rain?" "The view from the top is very nice."
"After all, the rain lays the dust." "They give you two sweets at
Bad-Platten and an ice on Sunday." "The sunset is very nice." "The
poulet is very nice." The hotel is open during the summer months only,
but probably the chairs in the dining-room and the knives and forks in
their basket make these remarks to each other every evening throughout
the winter.

Being a newcomer, Tommy had not been placed beside either of his
friends, who sat apart "because," Mrs. Jerry said, "she calls me
mamma, and I am not going to stand that." For some time he gave
thought to neither of them; he was engrossed in what he had been
reading, and it turned him into a fine and magnanimous character. When
gradually her Ladyship began to flit among his reflections, it was not
to disturb them, but because she harmonized. He wanted to apologize to
her. The apology grew in grace as the dinner progressed; it was so
charmingly composed that he was profoundly stirred by it.

The opportunity came presently in the hall, where it is customary
after dinner to lounge or stroll if you are afraid of the night air.
Or if you do not care for music, you can go into the drawing-room and
listen to the piano.

"I am sure mamma is looking for you everywhere," Lady Pippinworth
said, when Tommy took a chair beside her. "It is her evening, you
know."

"Surely you would not drive me away," he replied with a languishing
air, and then smiled at himself, for he was done with this sort of
thing. "Lady Pippinworth," said he, firmly--it needs firmness when of
late you have been saying "Alice."

"Well?"

"I have been thinking----" Tommy began.

"I am sure you have," she said.

"I have been thinking," he went on determinedly, "that I played a poor
part this afternoon. I had no right to say what I said to you."

"As far as I can remember," she answered, "you did not say very much."

"It is like your generosity, Lady Pippinworth," he said, "to make
light of it; but let us be frank: I made love to you."

Anyone looking at his expressionless face and her lazy disdain (and
there were many in the hall) would have guessed that their talk was of
where were you to-day? and what should I do to-morrow?

"You don't really mean that?" her Ladyship said incredulously. "Think,
Mr. Sandys, before you tell me anything more. Are you sure you are not
confusing me with mamma?"

"I did it," said Tommy, remorsefully.

"In my absence?" she asked.

"When you were with me on the veranda."

Her eyes opened to their widest, so surprised that the lashes had no
time for their usual play.

"Was that what you call making love, Mr. Sandys?" she inquired.

"I call a spade a spade."

"And now you are apologizing to me, I understand?"

"If you can in the goodness of your heart forgive me, Lady
Pippinworth--"

"Oh, I do," she said heartily, "I do. But how stupid you must have
thought me not even to know! I feel that it is I who ought to
apologize. What a number of ways there seem to be of making love, and
yours is such an odd way!"

Now to apologize for playing a poor part is one thing, and to put up
with the charge of playing a part poorly is quite another.
Nevertheless, he kept his temper.

"You have discovered an excellent way of punishing me," he said
manfully, "and I submit. Indeed, I admire you the more. So I am paying
you a compliment when I whisper that I know you knew."

But she would not have it. "You are so strangely dense to-night," she
said. "Surely, if I had known, I would have stopped you. You forget
that I am a married woman," she added, remembering Pips rather late in
the day.

"There might be other reasons why you did not stop me," he replied
impulsively.

"Such as?"

"Well, you--you might have wanted me to go on."

He blurted it out.

"So," said she slowly, "you are apologizing to me for not going on?"

"I implore you, Lady Pippinworth," Tommy said, in much distress, "not
to think me capable of that. If I moved you for a moment, I am far
from boasting of it; it makes me only the more anxious to do what is
best for you."

This was not the way it had shaped during dinner, and Tommy would have
acted wisely had he now gone out to cool his head. "If you moved me?"
she repeated interrogatively; but, with the best intentions, he
continued to flounder.

"Believe me," he implored her, "had I known it could be done, I should
have checked myself. But they always insist that you are an iceberg,
and am I so much to blame if that look of hauteur deceived me with the
rest? Oh, dear Lady Disdain," he said warmly, in answer to one of her
most freezing glances, "it deceives me no longer. From that moment I
knew you had a heart, and I was shamed--as noble a heart as ever beat
in woman," he added. He always tended to add generous bits when he
found it coming out well.

"Does the man think I am in love with him?" was Lady Disdain's
inadequate reply.

"No, no, indeed!" he assured her earnestly. "I am not so vain as to
think that, nor so selfish as to wish it; but if for a moment you were
moved----"

"But I was not," said she, stamping her shoe.

His dander began to rise, as they say in the north; but he kept grip
of politeness.

"If you were moved for a moment, Lady Pippinworth," he went on, in a
slightly more determined voice,--"I am far from saying that it was so;
but if----"

"But as I was not----" she said.

It was no use putting things prettily to her when she snapped you up
in this way.

"You know you were," he said reproachfully.

"I assure you," said she, "I don't know what you are talking about,
but apparently it is something dreadful; so perhaps one of us ought to
go away."

As he did not take this hint, she opened a tattered Tauchnitz which
was lying at her elbow. They are always lying at your elbow in a Swiss
hotel, with the first pages missing.

Tommy watched her gloomily. "This is unworthy of you," he said.

"What is?"

He was not quite sure, but as he sat there misgivings entered his mind
and began to gnaw. Was it all a mistake of his? Undeniably he did
think too much. After all, had she not been moved? 'Sdeath!

His restlessness made her look up. "It must be a great load off your
mind," she said, with gentle laughter, "to know that your apology was
unnecessary."

"It is," Tommy said; "it is." ('Sdeath!)

She resumed her book.

So this was how one was rewarded for a generous impulse! He felt very
bitter. "So, so," he said inwardly; also, "Very well, ve-ry well."
Then he turned upon himself. "Serve you right," he said brutally.
"Better stick to your books, Thomas, for you know nothing about
women." To think for one moment that he had moved her! That streak of
marble moved! He fell to watching her again, as if she were some
troublesome sentence that needed licking into shape. As she bent
impertinently over her book, she was an insult to man. All Tommy's
interest in her revived. She infuriated him.

"Alice," he whispered.

"Do keep quiet till I finish this chapter," she begged lazily.

It brought him at once to the boiling-point.

"Alice!" he said fervently.

She had noticed the change in his voice. "People are looking," she
said, without moving a muscle.

There was some subtle flattery to him in the warning, but he could not
ask for more, for just then Mrs. Jerry came in. She was cloaked for
the garden, and he had to go with her, sulkily. At the door she
observed that the ground was still wet.

"Are you wearing your goloshes?" said he, brightening. "You must get
them, Mrs. Jerry; I insist."

She hesitated. (Her room was on the third floor.) "It is very good of
you to be so thoughtful of me," she said, "but----"

"But I have no right to try to take care of you," he interposed in a
melancholy voice. "It is true. Let us go."

"I sha'n't be two minutes," said Mrs. Jerry, in a flutter, and went
off hastily for her goloshes, while he looked fondly after her. At the
turn of the stair she glanced back, and his eyes were still begging
her to hurry. It was a gracious memory to her in the after years, for
she never saw him again.

As soon as she was gone he returned to the hall, and taking from a peg
a cloak with a Mother Goose hood, brought it to Lady Pippinworth, who
had watched her mamma trip upstairs.

"Did I say I was going out?" she asked.

"Yes," said Tommy, and she rose to let him put the elegant thing round
her. She was one of those dangerous women who look their best when you
are helping them to put on their cloaks.

"Now," he instructed her, "pull the hood over your head."

"Is it so cold as that?" she said, obeying.

"I want you to wear it," he answered. What he meant was that she never
looked quite so impudent as in her hood, and his vanity insisted that
she should be armed to the teeth before they resumed hostilities. The
red light was in his eyes as he drew her into the garden where Grizel
lay.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE RED LIGHT


It was an evening without stars, but fair, sufficient wind to make her
Ladyship cling haughtily to his arm as they turned corners. Many of
the visitors were in the garden, some grouped round a quartet of gaily
attired minstrels, but more sitting in little arbours or prowling in
search of an arbour to sit in; the night was so dark that when our two
passed beyond the light of the hotel windows they could scarce see the
shrubs they brushed against; cigars without faces behind them
sauntered past; several times they thought they had found an
unoccupied arbour at last, when they heard the clink of coffee-cups.

"I believe the castle dates from the fifteenth century," Tommy would
then say suddenly, though it was not of castles he had been talking.

With a certain satisfaction he noticed that she permitted him, without
comment, to bring in the castle thus and to drop it the moment the
emergency had passed. But he had little other encouragement. Even when
she pressed his arm it was only as an intimation that the castle was
needed.

"I can't even make her angry," he said wrathfully to himself.

"You answer not a word," he said in great dejection to her.

"I am afraid to speak," she admitted. "I don't know who may hear."

"Alice," he said eagerly, "what would you say if you were not afraid
to speak?"

They had stopped, and he thought she trembled a little on his arm, but
he could not be sure. He thought--but he was thinking too much again;
at least, Lady Pippinworth seemed to come to that conclusion, for with
a galling little laugh she moved on. He saw with amazing clearness
that he had thought sufficiently for one day.

On coming into the garden with her, and for some time afterwards, he
had been studying her so coolly, watching symptoms rather than words,
that there is nothing to compare the man to but a doctor who, while he
is chatting, has his finger on your pulse. But he was not so calm now.
Whether or not he had stirred the woman, he was rapidly firing
himself.

When next he saw her face by the light of a window, she at the same
instant turned her eyes on him; it was as if each wanted to know
correctly how the other had been looking in the darkness, and the
effect was a challenge.

Like one retreating a step, she lowered her eyes. "I am tired," she
said. "I shall go in."

"Let us stroll round once more."

"No, I am going in."

"If you are afraid----" he said, with a slight smile.

She took his arm again. "Though it is too bad of me to keep you out,"
she said, as they went on, "for you are shivering. Is it the night air
that makes you shiver?" she asked mockingly.

But she shivered a little herself, as if with a presentiment that she
might be less defiant if he were less thoughtful. For a month or more
she had burned to teach him a lesson, but there was a time before that
when, had she been sure he was in earnest, she would have preferred to
be the pupil.

Two ladies came out of an arbour where they had been drinking coffee,
and sauntered towards the hotel. It was a tiny building, half
concealed in hops and reached by three steps, and Tommy and his
companion took possession. He groped in the darkness for a chair for
her, and invited her tenderly to sit down. She said she preferred to
stand. She was by the open window, her fingers drumming on the sill.
Though he could not see her face, he knew exactly how she was looking.

"Sit down," he said, rather masterfully.

"I prefer to stand," she repeated languidly.

He had a passionate desire to take her by the shoulders, but put his
hand on hers instead, and she permitted it, like one disdainful but
helpless. She said something unimportant about the stillness.

"Is it so still?" he said in a low voice. "I seem to hear a great
noise. I think it must be the beating of my heart."

"I fancy that is what it is," she drawled.

"Do you hear it?"

"No."

"Did you ever hear your own heart beat, Alice?"

"No."

He had both her hands now. "Would you like to hear it?"

She pulled away her hands sharply. "Yes," she replied with defiance.

"But you pulled away your hands first," said he.

He heard her breathe heavily for a moment, but she said nothing.
"Yes," he said, as if she had spoken, "it is true."

"What is true?"

"What you are saying to yourself just now--that you hate me."

She beat the floor with her foot.

"How you hate me, Alice!"

"Oh, no."

"Yes, indeed you do."

"I wonder why," she said, and she trembled a little.

"I know why." He had come close to her again. "Shall I tell you why?"

She said "No," hurriedly.

"I am so glad you say No." He spoke passionately, and yet there was
banter in his voice, or so it seemed to her. "It is because you fear
to be told; it is because you had hoped that I did not know."

"Tell me why I hate you!" she cried.

"Tell me first that you do."

"Oh, I do, I do indeed!" She said the words in a white heat of hatred.

Before she could prevent him he had raised her hand to his lips.

"Dear Alice!" he said.

"Why is it?" she demanded.

"Listen!" he said. "Listen to your heart, Alice; it is beating now. It
is telling you why. Does it need an interpreter? It is saying you hate
me because you think I don't love you."

"Don't you?" she asked fiercely.

"No," Tommy said.

Her hands were tearing each other, and she could not trust herself to
speak. She sat down deadly pale in the chair he had offered her.

"No man ever loved you," he said, leaning over her with his hand on
the back of the chair. "You are smiling at that, I know; but it is
true, Lady Disdain. They may have vowed to blow their brains out, and
seldom did it; they may have let you walk over them, and they may have
become your fetch-and-carry, for you were always able to drive them
crazy; but love does not bring men so low. They tried hard to love
you, and it was not that they could not love; it was that you were
unlovable. That is a terrible thing to a woman. You think you let them
try to love you, that you might make them your slaves when they
succeeded; but you made them your slaves because they failed. It is a
power given to your cold and selfish nature in place of the capacity
for being able to be loved, with which women not a hundredth part as
beautiful as you are dowered, and you have a raging desire, Alice, to
exercise it over me as over the others; but you can't."

Had he seen her face then, it might have warned him to take care; but
he heard her words only, and they were not at all in keeping with her
face.

"I see I can't," was what she cried, almost in a whisper.

"It is all true, Alice, is it not?"

"I suppose so. I don't know; I don't care." She swung round in her
chair and caught his sleeve. Her hands clung to it. "Say you love me
now," she said. "I cannot live without your love after this. What
shall I do to make you love me? Tell me, and I will do it."

He could not stop himself, for he mistrusted her still.

"I will not be your slave," he said, through his teeth. "You shall be
mine."

"Yes, yes."

"You shall submit to me in everything. If I say 'come,' you shall come
to wheresoever it may be; and if I say 'stay,' and leave you for ever,
you shall stay."

"Very well," she said eagerly. She would have her revenge when he was
her slave.

"You can continue to be the haughty Lady Disdain to others, but you
shall be only obedient little Alice to me."

"Very well." She drew his arm towards her and pressed her lips upon
it. "And for that you will love me a little, won't you? You will love
me at last, won't you?" she entreated.

He was a masterful man up to a certain point only. Her humility now
tapped him in a new place, and before he knew what he was about he
began to run pity.

"To humiliate you so, Alice! I am a dastard. I am not such a dastard
as you think me. I wanted to know that you would be willing to do all
these things, but I would never have let you do them."

"I am willing to do them."

"No, no." It was he who had her hands now. "It was brutal, but I did
it for you, Alice--for you. Don't you see I was doing it only to make
a woman of you? You were always adorable, but in a coat of mail that
would let love neither in nor out. I have been hammering at it to
break it only and free my glorious Alice. We had to fight, and one of
us had to give in. You would have flung me away if I had yielded--I
had to win to save you."

"Now I am lost indeed," he was saying to himself, even as it came
rushing out of him, and what appalled him most was that worse had
probably still to come. He was astride two horses, and both were at
the gallop. He flung out his arms as if seeking for something to check
him.

As he did so she had started to her feet, listening. It seemed to her
that there was someone near them.

He flung out his arms for help, and they fell upon Lady Pippinworth
and went round her. He drew her to him. She could hear no breathing
now but his.

"Alice, I love you, for you are love itself; it is you I have been
chasing since first love rose like a bird at my feet; I never had a
passing fancy for any other woman; I always knew that somewhere in the
world there must be you, and sometime this starless night and you for
me. You were hidden behind walls of ice; no man had passed them; I
broke them down and love leaped to love, and you lie here, my
beautiful, love in the arms of its lover."

He was in a frenzy of passion now; he meant every word of it; and her
intention was to turn upon him presently and mock him, this man with
whom she had been playing. Oh, the jeering things she had to say! But
she could not say them yet; she would give her fool another moment--so
she thought, but she was giving it to herself; and as she delayed she
was in danger of melting in his arms.

"What does the world look like to you, my darling? You are in it for
the first time. You were born but a moment ago. It is dark, that you
may not be blinded before you have used your eyes. These are your
eyes, dear eyes that do not yet know their purpose; they are for
looking at me, little Alice, and mine are for looking into yours. I
cannot see you; I have never seen the face of my love--oh, my love,
come into the light that I may see your face."

They did not move. Her head had fallen on his shoulder. She was to
give it but a moment, and then----But the moment had passed and still
her hair pressed his cheek. Her eyes were closed. He seemed to have
found the way to woo her. Neither of them spoke. Suddenly they jumped
apart. Lady Pippinworth stole to the door. They held their breath and
listened.

It was not so loud now, but it was distinctly heard. It had been heavy
breathing, and now she was trying to check it and half succeeding--but
at the cost of little cries. They both knew it was a woman, and that
she was in the arbour, on the other side of the little table. She must
have been there when they came in.

"Who is that?"

There was no answer to him save the checked breathing and another
broken cry. She moved, and it helped him to see vaguely the outlines
of a girl who seemed to be drawing back from him in terror. He thought
she was crouching now in the farthest corner.

"Come away," he said. But Lady Pippinworth would not let him go. They
must know who this woman was. He remembered that a match-stand usually
lay on the tables of those arbours, and groped until he found one.

"Who are you?"

He struck a match. They were those French matches that play an
infernal interlude before beginning to burn. While he waited he knew
that she was begging him, with her hands and with cries that were too
little to be words, not to turn its light on her. But he did.

Then she ceased to cower. The girlish dignity that had been hers so
long came running back to her. As she faced him there was even a
crooked smile upon her face.

[Illustration: "I woke up," she said.]

"I woke up," she said, as if the words had no meaning to herself, but
might have some to him.

The match burned out before he spoke, but his face was terrible.
"Grizel!" he said, appalled; and then, as if the discovery was as
awful to her as to him, she uttered a cry of horror and sped out into
the night. He called her name again, and sprang after her; but the
hand of another woman detained him.

"Who is this girl?" Lady Pippinworth demanded fiercely; but he did not
answer. He recoiled from her with a shudder that she was not likely to
forget, and hurried on. All that night he searched for Grizel in vain.




CHAPTER XXX

THE LITTLE GODS DESERT HIM


And all next day he searched like a man whose eyes would never close
again. She had not passed the night in any inn or village house of St.
Gian; of that he made certain by inquiries from door to door. None of
the guides had seen her, though they are astir so late and so early,
patiently waiting at the hotel doors to be hired, that there seems to
be no night for them--darkness only, that blots them out for a time as
they stand waiting. At all hours there is in St. Gian the tinkle of
bells, the clatter of hoofs, the crack of a whip, dust in retreat; but
no coachman brought him news. The streets were thronged with other
coachmen on foot looking into every face in quest of some person who
wanted to return to the lowlands, but none had looked into her face.

Within five minutes of the hotel she might have been on any of half a
dozen roads. He wandered or rushed along them all for a space, and
came back. One of them was short and ended in the lake. All through
that long and beautiful day this miserable man found himself coming
back to the road that ended in the lake.

There were moments when he cried to himself that it was an apparition
he had seen and heard. He had avoided his friends all day; of the
English-speaking people in St. Gian one only knew why he was
distraught, and she was the last he wished to speak to; but more than
once he nearly sought her to say, "Partner in my shame, what did you
see? what did you hear?" In the afternoon he had a letter from Elspeth
telling him how she was enjoying her holiday by the sea, and
mentioning that David was at that moment writing to Grizel in Thrums.
But was it, then, all a dream? he cried, nearly convinced for the
first time, and he went into the arbour saying determinedly that it
was a dream; and in the arbour, standing primly in a corner, was
Grizel's umbrella. He knew that umbrella so well! He remembered once
being by while she replaced one of its ribs so deftly that he seemed
to be looking on at a surgical operation. The old doctor had given it
to her, and that was why she would not let it grow old before she was
old herself. Tommy opened it now with trembling hands and looked at
the little bits of Grizel on it: the beautiful stitching with which
she had coaxed the slits to close again; the one patch, so artful that
she had clapped her hands over it. And he fell on his knees and kissed
these little bits of Grizel, and called her "beloved," and cried to
his gods to give him one more chance.

"I woke up." It was all that she had said. It was Grizel's excuse for
inconveniencing him. She had said it apologetically and as if she did
not quite know how she came to be there herself. There was no look of
reproach on her face while the match burned; there had been a pitiful
smile, as if she was begging him not to be very angry with her; and
then when he said her name she gave that little cry as if she had
recognized herself, and stole away. He lived that moment over and over
again, and she never seemed to be horror-stricken until he cried
"Grizel!" when her recognition of herself made her scream. It was as
if she had wakened up, dazed by the terrible things that were being
said, and then, by the light of that one word "Grizel," suddenly knew
who had been listening to them.

Did he know anything more? He pressed his hands harshly on his temples
and thought. He knew that she was soaking wet, that she had probably
sought the arbour for protection from the rain, and that, if so, she
had been there for at least four hours. She had wakened up. She must
have fallen asleep, knocked down by fatigue. What fatigue it must have
been to make Grizel lie there for hours he could guess, and he beat
his brow in anguish. But why she had come he could not guess. "Oh,
miserable man, to seek for reasons," he cried passionately to himself,
"when it is Grizel--Grizel herself--you should be seeking for!"

He walked and ran the round of the lake, and it was not on the bank
that his staring eyes were fixed.

At last he came for a moment upon her track. The people of an inn six
miles from St. Gian remembered being asked yesterday by an English
miss, walking alone, how far she was from Bad-Platten. She was wearing
something brown, and her boots were white with dust, and these people
had never seen a lady look so tired before; when she stood still she
had to lean against the wall. They said she had red-hot eyes.

Tommy was in an einspänner now, the merry conveyance of the country
and more intoxicating than its wines, and he drove back through St.
Gian to Bad-Platten, where again he heard from Grizel, though he did
not find her. What he found was her telegram from London: "I am
coming. GRIZEL." Why had she come? why had she sent that telegram?
what had taken her to London? He was not losing time when he asked
himself distractedly these questions, for he was again in his gay
carriage and driving back to the wayside inn. He spent the night
there, afraid to go farther lest he should pass her in the darkness;
for he had decided that, if alive, she was on this road. That she had
walked all those forty miles uphill seemed certain, and apparently the
best he could hope was that she was walking back. She had probably no
money to enable her to take the diligence. Perhaps she had no money
with which to buy food. It might be that while he lay tossing in bed
she was somewhere near, dying for want of a franc.

He was off by morning light, and several times that day he heard of
her, twice from people who had seen her pass both going and coming,
and he knew it must be she when they said she rocked her arms as she
walked. Oh, he knew why she rocked her arms! Once he thought he had
found her. He heard of an English lady who was lying ill in the house
of a sawmiller, whose dog (we know the dogs of these regions, but not
the people) had found her prostrate in the wood, some distance from
the highroad. Leaving his einspänner in a village, Tommy climbed down
the mountain-side to this little house, which he was long in
discovering. It was by the side of a roaring river, and he arrived
only an hour too late. The lady had certainly been Grizel; but she was
gone. The sawyer's wife described to him how her husband had brought
her in, and how she seemed so tired and bewildered that she fell
asleep while they were questioning her. She held her hands over her
ears to shut out the noise of the river, which seemed to terrify her.
So far as they could understand, she told them that she was running
away from the river. She had been sleeping there for three hours, and
was still asleep when the good woman went off to meet her husband; but
when they returned she was gone.

He searched the wood for miles around, crying her name. The sawyer and
some of his fellow-workers left the trees they were stripping of bark
to help him, and for hours the wood rang with "Grizel, Grizel!" All
the mountains round took up the cry; but there never came an answer.
This long delay prevented his reaching the railway terminus until noon
of the following day, and there he was again too late. But she had
been here. He traced her to that hotel whence we saw her setting
forth, and the portier had got a ticket for her for London. He had
talked with her for some little time, and advised her, as she seemed
so tired, to remain there for the night. But she said she must go home
at once. She seemed to be passionately desirous to go home, and had
looked at him suspiciously, as if fearing he might try to hold her
back. He had been called away, and on returning had seen her
disappearing over the bridge. He had called to her, and then she ran
as if afraid he was pursuing her. But he had observed her afterwards
in the train.

So she was not without money, and she was on her way home! The relief
it brought him came to the surface in great breaths, and at first
every one of them was a prayer of thankfulness. Yet in time they were
triumphant breaths. Translated into words, they said that he had got
off cheaply for the hundredth time. His little gods had saved him
again, as they had saved him in the arbour by sending Grizel to him.
He could do as he liked, for they were always there to succour him;
they would never desert him--never. In a moment of fierce elation he
raised his hat to them, then seemed to see Grizel crying "I woke up,"
and in horror of himself clapped it on again. It was but a momentary
aberration, and is recorded only to show that, however remorseful he
felt afterwards, there was life in our Tommy still.

The train by which he was to follow her did not leave until evening,
and through those long hours he was picturing, with horrible vividness
and pain, the progress of Grizel up and down that terrible pass. Often
his shoulders shook in agony over what he saw, and he shuddered to the
teeth. He would have walked round the world on his knees to save her
this long anguish! And then again it was less something he saw than
something he was writing, and he altered it to make it more dramatic.
"I woke up." How awful that was! but in this new scene she uttered no
words. Lady Pippinworth was in his arms when they heard a little cry,
so faint that a violin string makes as much moan when it snaps. In a
dread silence he lit a match, and as it flared the figure of a girl
was seen upon the floor. She was dead; and even as he knew that she
was dead he recognized her. "Grizel!" he cried. The other woman who
had lured him from his true love uttered a piercing scream and ran
towards the hotel. When she returned with men and lanterns there was
no one in the arbour, but there were what had been a man and a girl.
They lay side by side. The startled onlookers unbared their heads. A
solemn voice said, "In death not divided."

He was not the only occupant of the hotel reading-room as he saw all
this, and when his head fell forward and he groaned, the others looked
up from their papers. A lady asked if he was unwell.

"I have had a great shock," he replied in a daze, pulling his hand
across his forehead.

"Something you have seen in your paper?" inquired a clergyman who had
been complaining that there was no news.

"People I knew," said Tommy, not yet certain which world he was in.

"Dead?" the lady asked sympathetically.

"I knew them well," he said, and staggered into the fresh air.

Poor dog of a Tommy! He had been a total abstainer from sentiment, as
one may say, for sixty hours, and this was his only glass. It was the
nobler Tommy, sternly facing facts, who by and by stepped into the
train. He even knew why he was going to Thrums. He was going to say
certain things to her; and he said them to himself again and again in
the train, and heard her answer. The words might vary, but they were
always to the same effect.

"Grizel, I have come back!"

He saw himself say these words, as he opened her door in Gavinia's
little house. And when he had said them he bowed his head.

At his sudden appearance she started up; then she stood pale and firm.

"Why have you come back?"

"Not to ask your forgiveness," he replied hoarsely; "not to attempt to
excuse myself; not with any hope that there remains one drop of the
love you once gave me so abundantly. I want only, Grizel, to put my
life into your hands. I have made a sorry mess of it myself. Will you
take charge of what may be left of it? You always said you were ready
to help me. I have come back, Grizel, for your help. What you were
once willing to do for love, will you do for pity now?"

She turned away her head, and he went nearer her. "There was always
something of the mother in your love, Grizel; but for that you would
never have borne with me so long. A mother, they say, can never quite
forget her boy--oh, Grizel, is it true? I am the prodigal come back.
Grizel, beloved, I have sinned and I am unworthy, but I am still your
boy, and I have come back. Am I to be sent away?"

At the word "beloved" her arms rocked impulsively. "You must not call
me that," she said.

"Then I am to go," he answered with a shudder, "for I must always call
you that; whether I am with you or away, you shall always be beloved
to me."

"You don't love me!" she cried. "Oh, do you love me at last!" And at
that he fell upon his knees.

"Grizel, my love, my love!"

"But you don't want to be married," she said.

"Beloved, I have come back to ask you on my knees to be my wife."

"That woman--"

"She was a married woman, Grizel."

"Oh, oh, oh!"

"And now you know the worst of me. It is the whole truth at last. I
don't know why you took that terrible journey, dear Grizel, but I do
know that you were sent there to save me. Oh, my love, you have done
so much, will you do no more?"

And so on, till there came a time when his head was on her lap and her
hand caressing it, and she was whispering to her boy to look up and
see her crooked smile again.

He passed on to the wedding. All the time between seemed to be spent
in his fond entreaties to hasten the longed-for day. How radiant she
looked in her bridal gown! "Oh, beautiful one, are you really mine?
Oh, world, pause for a moment and look at the woman who has given
herself to me!"

"My wife--this is my wife!" They were in London now; he was showing
her to London. How he swaggered! There was a perpetual apology on her
face; it begged people to excuse him for looking so proudly at her. It
was a crooked apology, and he hurried her into dark places and kissed
it.

Do you see that Tommy was doing all this for Grizel and pretending to
her that it was for himself? He was passionately desirous of making
amends, and he was to do it in the most generous way. Perhaps he
believed when he seemed to enter her room saying, "Grizel, I have come
back," that she loved him still; perhaps he knew that he did not love
in the way he said; perhaps he saw a remorseful man making splendid
atonement: but never should she know these things; tenderly as he had
begun he would go on to the end. Here at last is a Tommy worth looking
at, and he looked.

Yet as he drew near Thrums, after almost exactly two days of
continuous travel, many a shiver went down his back, for he could not
be sure that he should find Grizel here; he sometimes seemed to see
her lying ill at some wayside station in Switzerland, in France;
everything that could have happened to her he conceived, and he moved
restlessly in the carriage. His mouth went dry.

"Has she come back?"

The train had stopped for the taking of tickets, and his tremulous
question checked the joy of Corp at sight of him.

"She's back," Corp answered in an excited whisper; and oh, the relief
to Tommy! "She came back by the afternoon train; but I had scarce a
word wi' her, she was so awid to be hame. 'I am going home,' she
cried, and hurried away up the brae. Ay, and there's one queer thing."

"What?"

"Her luggage wasna in the van."

Tommy could smile at that. "But what sent her," he asked eagerly, "on
that journey?"

Corp told him the little he knew. "But nobody kens except me and
Gavinia," he said. We pretend she gaed to London to see her father. We
said he had wrote to her, wanting her to go to him. Gavinia said it
would never do to let folk ken she had gaen to see you, and even
Elspeth doesna ken."

"Is Elspeth back?"

"They came back yesterday."

Did David know the truth from Grizel? was what Tommy was asking
himself now as he strode up the brae. But again he was in luck, for
when he had explained away his abrupt return to Elspeth, and been
joyfully welcomed by her, she told him that her husband had been in
one of the glens all day. "He does not know that Grizel has come
back," she said. "Oh," she exclaimed, "but you don't even know that
she has been away! Grizel has been in London."

"Corp told me," said Tommy.

"And did he tell you why she had gone?"

"Yes."

"She came back an hour or two ago. Maggy Ann saw her go past. Fancy
her seeing her father at last! It must have been an ordeal for her. I
wonder what took place."

"I think I had better go and ask her," Tommy said. He was mightily
relieved for Grizel's sake. No one need ever know now what had called
her away except Corp and Gavinia, and even they thought she had merely
been to London. How well the little gods were managing the whole
affair! As he walked to Grizel's lodgings to say what he had been
saying in the train, the thought came to him for a moment that as no
one need ever know where she had been there was less reason why he
should do this generous thing. But he put it from him with lofty
disdain. Any effect it had was to make him walk more firmly to his
sacrifice, as if to show all ignoble impulses that they could find no
home in that swelling breast He was pleased with himself, was Tommy.

"Grizel, I have come back." He said it to the night, and bowed his
head. He said it with head accompaniment to Grizel's lighted window.
He said it to himself as he reached the door. He never said it again.

For Gavinia's first words were: "It's you, Mr. Sandys! Wherever is
she? For mercy's sake, dinna say you've come without her!" And when he
blinked at this, she took him roughly by the arm and cried,
"Wherever's Grizel?"

"She is here, Gavinia."

"She's no here."

"I saw her light."

"You saw my light."

"Gavinia, you are torturing me. She came back to-day."

"What makes you say that? You're dreaming. She hasna come back."

"Corp saw her come in by the afternoon train. He spoke to her."

Gavinia shook her head incredulously. "You're just imagining that,"
she said.

"He told me. Gavinia, I must see for myself," She stared after him as
he went up the stairs. "You are very cruel, Gavinia," he said, when he
came down. "Tell me where she is."

"May I be struck, Mr. Sandys, if I've seen or heard o' her since she
left this house eight days syne." He knew she was speaking the truth.
He had to lean against the door for support. "It canna be so bad as
you think," she cried in pity. "If you're sure Corp said he saw her,
she maun hae gone to the doctor's house."

"She is not there. But Elspeth knew she had come back. Others have
seen her besides Corp. My God, Gavinia! what can have happened?"

In little more than an hour he knew what had happened. Many besides
himself, David among them towards the end, were engaged in the search.
And strange stories began to fly about like night-birds; you will not
search for a missing woman without rousing them. Why had she gone off
to London without telling anyone? Had Corp concocted that story about
her father to blind them? Had she really been as far as London? Have
you seen Sandys?--he's back. It's said Corp telegraphed to him to
Switzerland that she had disappeared. It's weel kent Corp telegraphed.
Sandys came at once. He is in a terrible state. Look how white he is
aneath that lamp. What garred them telegraph for him? How is it he is
in sic a state? Fond o' her, was he? Yea, yea, even after she gave him
the go-by. Then it's a weary Sabbath for him, if half they say be
true. What do they say? They say she was queer when she came back.
Corp doesna say that. Maybe no; but Francie Crabb does. He says he met
her on the station brae and spoke to her, and she said never a word,
but put up her hands like as if she feared he was to strike her. The
Dundas lassies saw her frae their window, and her hands were at her
ears as if she was trying to drown the sound o' something. Do you mind
o' her mother? They say she was looking terrible like her mother.

It was only between the station and Gavinia's house that she had been
seen, but they searched far afield. Tommy, accompanied by Corp, even
sought for her in the Den. Do you remember the long, lonely path
between two ragged little dykes that led from the Den to the house of
the Painted Lady? It was there that Grizel had lived with her mamma.
The two men went down that path, which is oppressed with trees.
Elsewhere the night was not dark, but, as they had known so well when
they were boys, it is always dark after evenfall in the Double Dykes.
That is the legacy of the Painted Lady. Presently they saw the
house--scarcely the house, but a lighted window. Tommy remembered the
night when as a boy, Elspeth crouching beside him, he had peered in
fearfully at that corner window on Grizel and her mamma, and the
shuddersome things he had seen. He shuddered at them again.

"Who lives there now?" he asked.

"Nobody. It's toom."

"There is a light."

"Some going-about body. They often tak' bilbie in toom houses, and
that door is without a lock; it's keepit close wi' slipping a stick
aneath it. Do you mind how feared we used to be at that house?"

"She was never afraid of it."

"It was her hame."

He meant no more than he said, but suddenly they both stopped dead.

"It's no possible," Corp said, as if in answer to a question. "It's no
possible," he repeated beseechingly.

"Wait for me here, Corp."

"I would rather come wi' you."

"Wait here!" Tommy said almost fiercely, and he went on alone to that
little window. It had needed an effort to make him look in when he was
here before, and it needed a bigger effort now. But he looked.

What light there was came from the fire, and whether she had gathered
the logs or found them in the room no one ever knew. A vagrant stated
afterwards that he had been in the house some days before and left his
match-box in it.

By this fire Grizel was crouching. She was comparatively tidy and neat
again; the dust was gone from her boots, even. How she had managed to
do it no one knows, but you remember how she loved to be neat. Her
hands were extended to the blaze, and she was busy talking to herself.

His hand struck the window heavily, and she looked up and saw him. She
nodded, and put her finger to her lips as a sign that he must be
cautious. She had often, in the long ago, seen her mother signing thus
to an imaginary face at the window--the face of the man who never
came.

Tommy went into the house, and she was so pleased to see him that she
quite simpered. He put his arms round her, and she lay there with a
little giggle of contentment. She was in a plot of heat.

"Grizel! Oh, my God!" he said, "why do you look at me in that way?"

She passed her hand across her eyes, like one trying to think.

"I woke up," she said at last. Corp appeared at the window now, and
she pointed to him in terror. Thus had she seen her mother point, in
the long ago, at faces that came there to frighten her.

"Grizel," Tommy entreated her, "you know who I am, don't you?"

She said his name at once, but her eyes were on the window. "They want
to take me away," she whispered.

"But you must come away, Grizel. You must come home."

"This is home," she said. "It is sweet."

After much coaxing, he prevailed upon her to leave. With his arm round
her, and a terrible woe on his face, he took her to the doctor's
house. She had her hands over her ears all the way. She thought the
white river and the mountains and the villages and the crack of whips
were marching with her still.




CHAPTER XXXI

"THE MAN WITH THE GREETIN' EYES"


For many days she lay in a fever at the doctor's house, seeming
sometimes to know where she was, but more often not, and night after
night a man with a drawn face sat watching her. They entreated, they
forced him to let them take his place; but from his room he heard her
moan or speak, or he thought he heard her, or he heard a terrible
stillness, and he stole back to listen; they might send him away, but
when they opened the door he was there, with his drawn face. And often
they were glad to see him, for there were times when he alone could
interpret her wild demands and soothe those staring eyes.

Once a scream startled the house. Someone had struck a match in the
darkened chamber, and she thought she was in an arbour in St. Gian.
They had to hold her in her bed by force at times; she had such a long
way to walk before night, she said.

She would struggle into a sitting posture and put her hands over her
ears.

Her great desire was not to sleep. "I should wake up," she explained
fearfully.

She took a dislike to Elspeth, and called her "Alice."

These ravings, they said to each other, must have reference to what
happened to her when she was away, and as they thought he knew no more
of her wanderings than they, everyone marvelled at the intuition with
which he read her thoughts. It was he who guessed that the striking of
matches somehow terrified her; he who discovered that it was a horrid
roaring river she thought she heard, and he pretended he heard it too,
and persuaded her that if she lay very still it would run past.
Nothing she said or did puzzled him. He read the raving of her mind,
they declared admiringly, as if he held the cipher to it.

"And the cipher is his love," Mrs. McLean said, with wet eyes. In the
excitement of those days Elspeth talked much to her of Tommy's love
for Grizel, and how she had refused him, and it went round the town
with embellishments. It was generally believed now that she really had
gone to London to see her father, and that his heartless behaviour had
unhinged her mind.

By David's advice, Corp and Gavinia did not contradict this story. It
was as good as another, he told them, and better than the truth.

But what was the truth? they asked greedily.

"Oh, that he is a noble fellow," David replied grimly.

They knew that, but--

He would tell them no more, however, though he knew all. Tommy had
made full confession to the doctor, even made himself out worse than
he was, as had to be his way when he was not making himself out
better.

"And I am willing to proclaim it all from the market-place," he said
hoarsely, "if that is your wish."

"I daresay you would almost enjoy doing that," said David, rather
cruelly.

"I daresay I should," Tommy said, with a gulp, and went back to
Grizel's side. It was not, you may be sure, to screen him that David
kept the secret; it was because he knew what many would say of Grizel
if the nature of her journey were revealed. He dared not tell Elspeth,
even; for think of the woe to her if she learned that it was her
wonderful brother who had brought Grizel to this pass! The Elspeths of
this world always have some man to devote himself to them. If the
Tommies pass away, the Davids spring up. For my own part, I think
Elspeth would have found some excuse for Tommy. He said so himself to
the doctor, for he wanted her to be told.

"Or you would find the excuse for her in time," David responded.

"Very likely," Tommy said. He was humble enough now, you see. David
could say one thing only which would rouse him, namely, that Grizel
was not to die in this fever; and for long it seemed impossible to say
that.

"Would you have her live if her mind remains affected?" he asked; and
Tommy said firmly, "Yes."

"You think, I suppose, that then you would have less for which to
blame yourself!"

"I suppose that is it. But don't waste time on me, Gemmell, when you
have her life to save, if you can."

Well, her life was saved, and Tommy's nursing had more to do with it
than David's skill. David admitted it; the town talked of it. "I aye
kent he would find a wy," Corp said, though he had been among the most
anxious. He and Aaron Latta were the first admitted to see her, when
she was able once more to sit in a chair. They had been told to ask
her no questions. She chatted pleasantly to them, and they thought she
was quite her old self. They wondered to see Tommy still so sad-eyed.
To Ailie she spoke freely of her illness, though not of what had
occasioned it, and told her almost gleefully that David had promised
to let her sew a little next week. There was one thing only that
surprised Ailie. Grizel had said that as soon as she was a little
stronger she was going home.

"Does she mean to her father's house?" Ailie asked.

This was what started the report that, touched no doubt by her
illness, Grizel's unknown father had, after all, offered her a home.
They discovered, however, what Grizel meant by home when, one
afternoon, she escaped, unseen, from the doctor's house, and was found
again at Double Dykes, very indignant because someone had stolen the
furniture.

She seemed to know all her old friends except Elspeth, who was still
Alice to her. Seldom now did she put her hands over her ears, or see
horrible mountains marching with her. She no longer remembered, save
once or twice when she woke up, that she had ever been out of Thrums.
To those who saw her casually she was Grizel--gone thin and pale and
weak intellectually, but still the Grizel of old, except for the fixed
idea that Double Dykes was her home.

"You must not humour her in that delusion," David said sternly to
Tommy; "when we cease to fight it we have abandoned hope."

So the weapon he always had his hand on was taken from Tommy, for he
would not abandon hope. He fought gallantly. It was always he who
brought her back from Double Dykes. She would not leave it with any
other person, but she came away with him.

"It's because she's so fond o' him," Corp said.

But it was not. It was because she feared him, as all knew who saw
them together. They were seen together a great deal when she was able
to go out. Driving seemed to bring back the mountains to her eyes, so
she walked, and it was always with the help of Tommy's arm. "It's a
most pitiful sight," the people said. They pitied him even more than
her, for though she might be talking gaily to him and leaning heavily
on him, they could see that she mistrusted him. At the end of a sweet
smile she would give him an ugly, furtive look.

"She's like a cat you've forced into your lap," they said, "and it
lies quiet there, ready to jump the moment you let go your grip."

They wondered would he never weary. He never wearied. Day after day he
was saying the same things to her, and the end was always as the
beginning. They came back to her entreaty that she should be allowed
to go home as certainly as they came back to the doctor's house.

"It is a long time, you know, Grizel, since you lived at Double
Dykes--not since you were a child."

"Not since I was a child," she said as if she quite understood.

"Then you went to live with your dear, kind doctor, you remember. What
was his name?"

"Dr. McQueen. I love him."

"But he died, and he left you his house to live in. It is your home,
Grizel. He would be so grieved if he thought you did not make it your
home."

"It is my home," she said proudly; but when they returned to it she
was loath to go in. "I want to go home!" she begged.

One day he took her to her rooms in Corp's house, thinking her old
furniture would please her; and that was the day when she rocked her
arms joyously again. But it was not the furniture that made her so
happy; it was Corp's baby.

"Oh, oh!" she cried in rapture, and held out her arms; and he ran into
them, for there was still one person in Thrums who had no fear of
Grizel.

"It will be a damned shame," Corp said huskily, "if that woman never
has no bairns o' her ain."

They watched her crooning over the child, playing with him for a long
time. You could not have believed that she required to be watched. She
told him with hugs that she had come back to him at last; it was her
first admission that she knew she had been away and a wild hope came
to Tommy that along the road he could not take her she might be drawn
by this little child.

She discovered a rent in the child's pinafore and must mend it at
once. She ran upstairs, as a matter of course, to her work-box, and
brought down a needle and thread. It was quite as if she was at home
at last.

"But you don't live here now, Grizel," Tommy said, when she drew back
at his proposal that they should go away; "you live at the doctor's
house."

"Do I, Gavinia?" she said beseechingly.

"Is it here you want to bide?" Corp asked, and she nodded her head
several times.

"It would be so much more convenient," she said, looking at the child.

"Would you take her back, Gavinia," Tommy asked humbly, "if she
continues to want it?"

Gavinia did not answer.

"Woman!" cried Corp.

"I'm mortal wae for her," Gavinia said slowly, "but she needs to be
waited on hand and foot."

"I would come and do the waiting on her hand and foot, Gavinia," Tommy
said.

And so it came about that a week afterwards Grizel was reinstalled in
her old rooms. Every morning when Tommy came to see her she asked him,
icily how Alice was. She seemed to think that Alice, as she called
her, was his wife. He always replied, "You mean Elspeth," and she
assented, but only, it was obvious, because she feared to contradict
him. To Corp and Gavinia she would still say passionately, "I want to
go home!" and probably add fearfully, "Don't tell him."

Yet though this was not home to her, she seemed to be less unhappy
here than in the doctor's house, and she found a great deal to do. All
her old skill in needlework came back to her, and she sewed for the
child such exquisite garments that she clapped her hands over them.

One day Tommy came with a white face and asked Gavinia if she knew
whether a small brown parcel had been among the things brought by
Grizel from the doctor's house.

"It was in the box sent after me from Switzerland," he told her, "and
contained papers."

Gavinia had seen no such package.

"She may have hidden it," he said, and they searched, but fruitlessly.
He questioned Grizel gently, but questions alarmed her, and he
desisted.

"It does not matter, Gavinia," he said, with a ghastly smile; but on
the following Sunday, when Corp called at the doctor's house, the
thought "Have they found it?" leaped in front of all thought of
Grizel. This was only for the time it takes to ask a question with the
eyes, however, for Corp was looking very miserable.

"I'm sweer to say it," he announced to Tommy and David, "but it has to
be said. We canna keep her."

Evidently something had happened, and Tommy rose to go to Grizel
without even asking what it was. "Wait," David said, wrinkling his
eyebrows, "till Corp tells us what he means by that. I knew it might
come, Corp. Go on."

"If it hadna been for the bairn," said Corp, "we would hae tholed wi'
her, however queer she was; but wi' the bairn I tell you it's no mous.
You'll hae to tak' her awa'."

"Whatever she has been to others," Tommy said, "she is always an angel
with the child. His own mother could not be fonder of him."

"That's it," Corp replied emphatically. "She's no the mother o' him,
but there's whiles when she thinks she is. We kept it frae you as long
as we could."

"As long as she is so good to him----" David began.

"But at thae times she's not," said Corp. "She begins to shiver most
terrible, as if she saw fearsome things in her mind, and syne we see
her looking at him like as if she wanted to do him a mischief. She
says he's her brat; she thinks he's hers, and that he hasna been well
come by."

Tommy's hands rose in agony, and then he covered his face with them.

"Go on, Corp," David said hoarsely; "we must have it all."

"Sometimes," Corp went on painfully, "she canna help being fond o'
him, though she thinks she shouldna hae had him. I've heard her
saying, 'My brat!' and syne birsing him closer to her, as though her
shame just made him mair to her. Women are so queer about thae things.
I've seen her sitting by his cradle, moaning to hersel', 'I did so
want to be good! It would be sweet to be good! and never stopping
rocking the cradle, and a' the time the tears were rolling down."

Tommy cried, "If there is any more to tell, Corp, be quick."

"There's what I come here to tell you. It was no langer syne than
jimply an hour. We thocht the bairn was playing at the gavle-end, and
that Grizel was up the stair. But they werena, and I gaed straight to
Double Dykes. She wasna there, but the bairn was, lying greetin' on
the floor. We found her in the Den, sitting by the burn-side, and she
said we should never see him again, for she had drowned him. We're
sweer, but you'll need to tak' her awa'."

"We shall take her away," David said, and when he and Tommy were left
together he asked: "Do you see what it means?"

"It means that the horrors of her early days have come back to her,
and that she is confusing her mother with herself."

David's hands were clenched. "That is not what I am thinking of. We
have to take her away; they have done far more than we had any right
to ask of them. Sandys, where are we to take her to?"

"Do even you grow tired of her?" Tommy cried.

David said between his teeth: "We hope there will soon be a child in
this house, also. God forgive me, but I cannot bring her back here."

"She cannot be in a house where there is a child!" said Tommy, with a
bitter laugh. "Gemmell, it is Grizel we are speaking of! Do you
remember what she was?"

"I remember."

"Well, where are we to send her?"

David turned his pained eyes full on Tommy.

"No!" Tommy cried vehemently.

"Sandys," said David, firmly, "that is what it has come to. They will
take good care of her." He sat down with a groan. "Have done with
heroics," he said savagely, when Tommy would have spoken. "I have been
prepared for this; there is no other way."

"I have been prepared for it, too," Tommy said, controlling himself;
"but there is another way: I can marry her, and I am going to do it."

"I don't know that I can countenance that," David said, after a pause.
"It seems an infernal shame."

"Don't trouble about me," replied Tommy, hoarsely; "I shall do it
willingly."

And then it was the doctor's turn to laugh. "You!" he said with a
terrible scorn as he looked Tommy up and down. "I was not thinking of
you. All my thoughts were of her. I was thinking how cruel to her if
some day she came to her right mind and found herself tied for life to
the man who had brought her to this pass."

Tommy winced and walked up and down.

"Desire to marry her gone?" asked David, savagely.

"No," Tommy said. He sat down. "You have the key to me, Gemmell," he
went on quietly. "I gave it to you. You know I am a man of sentiment
only; but you are without a scrap of it yourself, and so you will
never quite know what it is. It has its good points. We are a kindly
people. I was perhaps pluming myself on having made an heroic
proposal, and though you have made me see it just now as you see it,
as you see it I shall probably soon be putting on the same grand airs
again. Lately I discovered that the children who see me with Grizel
call me 'the Man with the Greetin' Eyes.' If I have greetin' eyes it
was real grief that gave them to me; but when I heard what I was
called it made me self-conscious, and I have tried to look still more
lugubrious ever since. It seems monstrous to you, but that, I believe,
is the kind of thing I shall always be doing. But it does not mean
that I feel no real remorse. They were greetin' eyes before I knew it,
and though I may pose grotesquely as a fine fellow for finding Grizel
a home where there is no child and can never be a child, I shall not
cease, night nor day, from tending her. It will be a grim business,
Gemmell, as you know, and if I am Sentimental Tommy through it all,
why grudge me my comic little strut?"

David said, "You can't take her to London."

"I shall take her to wherever she wants to go."

"There is one place only she wants to go to, and that is Double
Dykes."

"I am prepared to take her there."

"And your work?"

"It must take second place now. I must write; it is the only thing I
can do. If I could make a living at anything else I would give up
writing altogether."

"Why?"

"She would be pleased if she could understand, and writing is the joy
of my life--two reasons."

But the doctor smiled.

"You are right," said Tommy. "I see I was really thinking what a fine
picture of self-sacrifice I should make sitting in Double Dykes at a
loom!"

They talked of ways and means, and he had to admit that he had little
money. But the new book would bring in a good deal, David supposed.

"The manuscript is lost," Tommy replied, crushing down his agitation.

"Lost! When? Where?"

"I don't know. It was in the bag I left behind at St. Gian, and I
supposed it was still in it when the bag was forwarded to me here. I
did not look for more than a month. I took credit to myself for
neglecting my manuscript, and when at last I looked it was not there.
I telegraphed and wrote to the innkeeper at St. Gian, and he replied
that my things had been packed at his request in presence of my
friends there, the two ladies you know of. I wrote to them, and they
replied that this was so, and said they thought they remembered seeing
in the bottom of the bag some such parcel in brown paper as I
described. But it is not there now, and I have given up all hope of
ever seeing it again. No, I have no other copy. Every page was written
half a dozen times, but I kept the final copy only."

"It is scarcely a thing anyone would steal."

"No; I suppose they took it out of the bag at St. Gian, and forgot to
pack it again. It was probably flung away as of no account."

"Could it have been taken out on the way here?"

"The key was tied to the handle so that the custom officials might be
able to open the bag. Perhaps they are fonder of English manuscripts
than one would expect, or more careless of them."

"You can think of no other way in which it might have disappeared?"

"None," Tommy said; and then the doctor faced him squarely.

"Are you trying to screen Grizel?" he asked. "Is it true, what people
are saying?"

"What are they saying?"

"That she destroyed it. I heard that yesterday, and told them your
manuscript was in my house, as I thought it was. Was it she?"

"No, no. Gavinia must have started that story. I did look for the
package among Grizel's things."

"What made you think of that?"

"I had seen her looking into my bag one day. And she used to say I
loved my manuscripts too much ever to love her. But I am sure she did
not do it."

"Be truthful, Sandys. You know how she always loved the truth."

"Well, then, I suppose it was she."

After a pause the doctor said: "It must be about as bad as having a
limb lopped off."

"If only I had been offered that alternative!" Tommy replied.

"And yet," David mused, better pleased with him, "you have not cried
out."

"Have I not! I have rolled about in agony, and invoked the gods, and
cursed and whimpered; only I take care that no one shall see me."

"And that no one should know poor Grizel had done this thing. I admire
you for that, Sandys."

"But it has leaked out, you see," Tommy said; "and they will all be
admiring me for it at the wedding, and no doubt I shall be cocking my
greetin' eyes at them to note how much they are admiring."

But when the wedding-day came he was not doing that. While he and
Grizel stood up before Mr. Dishart, in the doctor's parlour, he was
thinking of her only. His eyes never left her, not even when he had to
reply "I do." His hand pressed hers all the time. He kept giving her
reassuring little nods and smiles, and it was thus that he helped
Grizel through.

Had Mr. Dishart understood what was in her mind he would not have
married them. To her it was no real marriage; she thought they were
tricking the minister, so that she should be able to go home. They had
rehearsed the ceremony together many times, and oh, she was eager to
make no mistake.

"If they were to find out!" she would say apprehensively, and then
perhaps giggle at the slyness of it all. Tommy had to make merry with
her, as if it was one of his boyish plays. If he was overcome with the
pain of it, she sobbed at once and wrung her hands.

She was married in gray silk. She had made the dress herself, as
beautifully as all her things were made. Tommy remembered how once,
long ago, she had told him, as a most exquisite secret, that she had
decided on gray silk.

Corp and Gavinia and Ailie and Aaron Latta were the only persons asked
to the wedding, and when it was over, they said they never saw anyone
stand up by a woman's side looking so anxious to be her man; and I am
sure that in this they did Tommy no more than justice.

It was a sad day to Elspeth. Could she be expected to smile while her
noble brother did this great deed of sacrifice? But she bore up
bravely, partly for his sake, partly for the sake of one unborn.

The ring was no plain hoop of gold; it was garnets all the way round.
She had seen it on Elspeth's finger, and craved it so greedily that it
became her wedding-ring. And from the moment she had it she ceased to
dislike Elspeth, and pitied her very much, as if she thought happiness
went with the ring. "Poor Alice!" she said when she saw Elspeth crying
at the wedding, and having started to go away with Tommy, she came
back to say again, "Poor, poor Alice!"

Corp flung an old shoe after them.




CHAPTER XXXII

TOMMY'S BEST WORK


And thus was begun a year and a half of as great devotion as
remorseful man ever gave to woman. When she was asleep and he could
not write, his mind would sometimes roam after abandoned things; it
sought them in the night as a savage beast steals forth for water to
slake the thirst of many days. But if she stirred in her sleep they
were all dispelled; there was not a moment in that eighteen months
when he was twenty yards from Grizel's side.

He would not let himself lose hope. All the others lost it. "The only
thing you can do is to humour her," even David was reduced in time to
saying; but Tommy replied cheerily, "Not a bit of it." Every morning
he had to begin at the same place as on the previous morning, and he
was always as ready to do it, and as patient, as if this were the
first time.

"I think she is a little more herself to-day," he would say
determinedly, till David wondered to hear him.

"She makes no progress, Sandys."

"I can at least keep her from slipping back."

And he did, and there is no doubt that this was what saved Grizel in
the end. How he strove to prevent her slipping back! The morning was
the time when she was least troubled, and had he humoured her then
they would often have been easy hours for him. But it was the time
when he tried most doggedly, with a gentleness she could not ruffle,
to teach her the alphabet of who she was. She coaxed him to let her
off those mental struggles; she turned petulant and sulky; she was
willing to be good and sweet if he would permit her to sew or to sing
to herself instead, or to sit staring at the fire: but he would not
yield; he promised those things as the reward, and in the end she
stood before him like a child at lessons.

"What is your name?" The catechism always began thus.

"Grizel," she said obediently, if it was a day when she wanted to
please him.

"And my name?"

"Tommy." Once, to his great delight, she said, "Sentimental Tommy." He
quite bragged about this to David.

"Where is your home?"

"Here." She was never in doubt about this, and it was always a
pleasure to her to say it.

"Did you live here long ago?"

She nodded.

"And then did you live for a long time somewhere else?"

"Yes."

"Where was it?"

"Here."

"No, it was with the old doctor. You were his little housekeeper;
don't you remember? Try to remember, Grizel; he loved you so much."

She tried to think. Her face was very painful when she tried to think.
"It hurts," she said.

"Do you remember him, Grizel?"

"Please let me sing," she begged, "such a sweet song!"

"Do you remember the old doctor who called you his little housekeeper?
He used to sit in that chair."

The old chair was among Grizel's many possessions that had been
brought to Double Dykes, and her face lit up with recollection. She
ran to the chair and kissed it.

"What was his name, Grizel?"

"I should love to know his name," she said wistfully.

He told her the name many times, and she repeated it docilely.

Or perhaps she remembered her dear doctor quite well to-day, and
thought Tommy was some one in need of his services.

"He has gone into the country," she said, as she had so often said to
anxious people at the door; "but he won't be long, and I shall give
him your message the moment he comes in."

But Tommy would not pass that. He explained to her again and again
that the doctor was dead, and perhaps she would remember, or perhaps,
without remembering, she said she was glad he was dead.

"Why are you glad, Grizel?"

She whispered, as if frightened she might be overheard: "I don't want
him to see me like this." It was one of the pathetic things about her
that she seemed at times to have some vague understanding of her
condition, and then she would sob. Her tears were anguish to him, but
it was at those times that she clung to him as if she knew he was
trying to do something for her, and that encouraged him to go on. He
went over, step by step, the time when she lived alone in the doctor's
house, the time of his own coming back, her love for him and his
treatment of her, the story of the garnet ring, her coming to
Switzerland, her terrible walk, her return; he would miss out nothing,
for he was fighting for her. Day after day, month by month, it went
on, and to-morrow, perhaps, she would insist that the old doctor and
this man who asked her so many questions were one. And Tommy argued
with her until he had driven that notion out, to make way for another,
and then he fought it, and so on and on all round the circle of her
delusions, day by day and month by month.

She knew that he sometimes wrote while she was asleep, for she might
start up from her bed or from the sofa, and there he was, laying down
his pen to come to her. Her eyes were never open for any large
fraction of a minute without his knowing, and immediately he went to
her, nodding and smiling lest she had wakened with some fear upon her.
Perhaps she refused to sleep again unless he promised to put away
those horrid papers for the night, and however intoxicating a point he
had reached in his labours, he always promised, and kept his word. He
was most scrupulous in keeping any promise he made her, and one great
result was that she trusted him implicitly. Whatever others promised,
she doubted them.

There were times when she seemed to be casting about in her mind for
something to do that would please him, and then she would bring pieces
of paper to him, and pen and ink, and tell him to write. She thought
this very clever of her, and expected to be praised for it.

But she might also bring him writing materials at times when she hated
him very much. Then there would be sly smiles, even pretended
affection, on her face, unless she thought he was not looking, when
she cast him ugly glances. Her intention was to trick him into
forgetting her so that she might talk to herself or slip out of the
room to the Den, just as her mother had done in the days when it was
Grizel who had to be tricked. He would not let her talk to herself
until he had tried endless ways of exorcising that demon by
interesting her in some sort of work, by going out with her, by
talking of one thing and another till at last a subject was lit upon
that made her forget to brood.

But sometimes it seemed best to let her go to the Den, she was in such
a quiver of desire to go. She hurried to it, so that he had to stride
to keep up with her; and he said little until they got there, for she
was too excited to listen. She was very like her mother again; but it
was not the man who never came that she went in search of--it was a
lost child. I have not the heart to tell of the pitiful scenes in the
Den while Grizel searched for her child. They always ended in those
two walking silently home, and for a day or two Grizel would be ill,
and Tommy tended her, so that she was soon able to hasten to the Den
again, holding out her arms as she ran.

"She makes no progress," David said.

"I can keep her from slipping back," Tommy still replied. The doctor
marvelled, but even he did not know the half of all her husband did
for Grizel. None could know half who was not there by night. Here, at
least, was one day ending placidly, they might say when she was in a
tractable mood,--so tractable that she seemed to be one of
themselves,--and Tommy assented brightly, though he knew, and he
alone, that you could never be sure the long day had ended till the
next began.

Often the happiest beginning had the most painful ending. The greatest
pleasure he could give her was to take her to see Elspeth's baby girl,
or that sturdy rogue, young Shiach, who could now count with ease up
to seven, but swayed at eight, and toppled over on his way to ten; or
their mothers brought them to her, and Grizel understood quite well
who her visitors were, sometimes even called Elspeth by her right
name, and did the honours of her house irreproachably, and presided at
the tea-table, and was rapture personified when she held the baby Jean
(called after Tommy's mother), and sat gaily on the floor, ready to
catch little Corp when he would not stop at seven. But Tommy, whom
nothing escaped, knew with what depression she might pay for her joy
when they had gone. Despite all his efforts, she might sit talking to
herself, at first of pleasant things and then of things less pleasant.
Or she stared at her reflection in the long mirror and said: "Isn't
she sweet!" or "She is not really sweet, and she did so want to be
good!" Or instead of that she would suddenly go upon her knees and
say, with clasped hands, the childish prayer, "Save me from masterful
men," which Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach Elspeth. No one could
have looked less masterful at those times than Tommy, but Grizel did
not seem to think so. And probably they had that night once more to
search the Den.

"The children do her harm; she must not see them again," he decided.

"They give her pleasure at the time," David said. "It lightens your
task now and then."

"It is the future I am thinking of, Gemmell. If she cannot progress,
she shall not fall back. As for me, never mind me."

"Elspeth is in a sad state about you, though! And you can get through
so little work."

"Enough for all our wants." (He was writing magazine papers only.)

"The public will forget you."

"They have forgotten me."

David was openly sorry for him now. "If only your manuscript had been
saved!"

"Yes; I never thought the little gods would treat me so scurvily as
that."

"Who?"

"Did I never tell you of my little gods? I so often emerged triumphant
from my troubles, and so undeservedly, that I thought I was especially
looked after by certain tricky spirits in return for the entertainment
I gave them. My little gods, I called them, and we had quite a bowing
acquaintance. But you see at the critical moment they flew away
laughing."

He always knew that the lost manuscript was his great work. "My
seventh wave," he called it; "and though all the conditions were
favourable," he said, "I know that I could run to nothing more than
little waves at present. As for rewriting that book, I can't; I have
tried."

Yet he was not asking for commiseration. "Tell Elspeth not to worry
about me. If I have no big ideas just now, I have some very passable
little ones, and one in particular that--" He drew a great breath. "If
only Grizel were better," that breath said, "I think Tommy Sandys
could find a way of making the public remember him again."

So David interpreted it, and though he had been about to say, "How
changed you are!" he did not say it.

And Tommy, who had been keeping an eye on her all this time, returned
to Grizel. As she had been through that long year, so she was during
the first half of the next; and day by day and night by night he
tended her, and still the same scenes were enacted in infinite
variety, and still he would not give in. Everything seemed to change
with the seasons, except Grizel, and Tommy's devotion to her.

Yet you know that she recovered, ever afterwards to be herself again;
and though it seemed to come in the end as suddenly as the sight may
be restored by the removal of a bandage, I suppose it had been going
on all the time, and that her reason was given back to her on the day
she had strength to make use of it. Tommy was the instrument of her
recovery. He had fought against her slipping backward so that she
could not do it; it was as if he had built a wall behind her, and in
time her mind accepted that wall as impregnable and took a forward
movement. And with every step she took he pushed the wall after her,
so that still if she moved it must be forward. Thus Grizel progressed
imperceptibly as along a dark corridor towards the door that shut out
the light, and on a day in early spring the door fell.

Many of them had cried for a shock as her only chance. But it came
most quietly. She had lain down on the sofa that afternoon to rest,
and when she woke she was Grizel again. At first she was not surprised
to find herself in that room, nor to see that man nodding and smiling
reassuringly; they had come out of the long dream with her, to make
the awakening less abrupt.

He did not know what had happened. When he knew, a terror that this
could not last seized him. He was concealing it while he answered her
puzzled questions. All the time he was telling her how they came to be
there, he was watching in agony for the change.

She remembered everything up to her return to Thrums; then she walked
into a mist.

"The truth," she begged of him, when he would have led her off by
pretending that she had been ill only. Surely it was the real Grizel
who begged for the truth. She took his hand and held it when he told
her of their marriage. She cried softly, because she feared that she
might again become as she had been; but he said that was impossible,
and smiled confidently, and all the time he was watching in agony for
the change.

"Do you forgive me, Grizel? I have always had a dread that when you
recovered you would cease to care for me." He knew that this would
please her if she was the real Grizel, and he was so anxious to make
her happy for evermore.

She put his hand to her lips and smiled at him through her tears. Hers
was a love that could never change. Suddenly she sat up. "Whose baby
was it?" she asked.

"I don't know what you mean, Grizel," he said uneasily.

"I remember vaguely," she told him, "a baby in white whom I seemed to
chase, but I could never catch her. Was it a dream only?"

"You are thinking of Elspeth's little girl, perhaps. She was often
brought to see you."

"Has Elspeth a baby?" She rose to go exultantly to Elspeth.

"But too small a baby, Grizel, to run from you, even if she wanted
to."

"What is she like?"

"She is always laughing."

"The sweet!" Grizel rocked her arms in rapture and smiled her crooked
smile at the thought of a child who was always laughing. "But I don't
remember her," she said. "It was a sad little baby I seemed to see."




CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LITTLE GODS RETURN WITH A LADY


Grizel's clear, searching eyes, that were always asking for the truth,
came back to her, and I seem to see them on me now, watching lest I
shirk the end.

Thus I can make no pretence (to please you) that it was a new Tommy at
last. We have seen how he gave his life to her during those eighteen
months, but he could not make himself anew. They say we can do it, so
I suppose he did not try hard enough; but God knows how hard he tried.

He went on trying. In those first days she sometimes asked him, "Did
you do it out of love, or was it pity only?" And he always said it was
love. He said it adoringly. He told her all that love meant to him,
and it meant everything that he thought Grizel would like it to mean.
When she ceased to ask this question he thought it was because he had
convinced her.

They had a honeymoon by the sea. He insisted upon it with boyish
eagerness, and as they walked on the links or sat in their room he
would exclaim ecstatically: "How happy I am! I wonder if there were
ever two people quite so happy as you and I!"

And if he waited for an answer, as he usually did, she might smile
lightly and say: "Few people have gone through so much."

"Is there any woman in the world, Grizel, with whom you would change
places?"

"No, none," she said at once; and when he was sure of it, but never
until he was sure, he would give his mind a little holiday; and then,
perhaps, those candid eyes would rest searchingly upon him, but always
with a brave smile ready should he chance to look up.

And it was just the same when they returned to Double Dykes, which
they added to and turned into a comfortable home--Tommy trying to
become a lover by taking thought, and Grizel not letting on that it
could not be done in that way. She thought it was very sweet of him to
try so hard--sweeter of him than if he really had loved her, though
not, of course, quite so sweet to her. He was a boy only. She knew
that, despite all he had gone through, he was still a boy. And boys
cannot love. Oh, who would be so cruel as to ask a boy to love?

That Grizel's honeymoon should never end was his grand ambition, and
he took elaborate precautions against becoming a matter-of-fact
husband. Every morning he ordered himself to gaze at her with rapture,
as if he had wakened to the glorious thought that she was his wife.

"I can't help it, Grizel; it comes to me every morning with the same
shock of delight, and I begin the day with a song of joy. You make the
world as fresh and interesting to me as if I had just broken like a
chicken through the egg shell." He rose at the earliest hours. "So
that I can have the longer day with you," he said gaily.

If when sitting at his work he forgot her for an hour or two he
reproached himself for it afterwards, and next day he was more
careful. "Grizel," he would cry, suddenly flinging down his pen, "you
are my wife! Do you hear me, madam? You hear, and yet you can sit
there calmly darning socks! Excuse me," he would say to his work,
"while I do a dance."

He rose impulsively and brought his papers nearer her. With a table
between them she was several feet away from him, which was more, he
said, than he could endure.

"Sit down for a moment, Grizel, and let me look at you. I want to
write something most splendiferous to-day, and I am sure to find it in
your face. I have ceased to be an original writer; all the purple
patches are cribbed from you."

He made a point of taking her head in his hands and looking long at
her with thoughts too deep for utterance; then he would fall on his
knees and kiss the hem of her dress, and so back to his book again.

And in time it was all sweet to Grizel. She could not be deceived, but
she loved to see him playing so kind a part, and after some sadness to
which she could not help giving way, she put all vain longings aside.
She folded them up and put them away like the beautiful linen, so that
she might see more clearly what was left to her and how best to turn
it to account.

He did not love her. "Not as I love him," she said to herself,--"not
as married people ought to love; but in the other way he loves me
dearly." By the "other way" she meant that he loved her as he loved
Elspeth, and loved them both just as he had loved them when all three
played in the Den.

"He would love me if he could." She was certain of that. She decided
that love does not come to all people, as is the common notion; that
there are some who cannot fall in love, and that he was one of them.
He was complete in himself, she decided.

"Is it a pity for him that he married me? It would be a pity if he
could love some other woman, but I am sure he could never do that. If
he could love anyone it would be me, we both want it so much. He does
not need a wife, but he needs someone to take care of him--all men
need that; and I can do it much better than any other person. Had he
not married me he never would have married; but he may fall ill, and
then how useful I shall be to him! He will grow old, and perhaps it
won't be quite so lonely to him when I am there. It would have been a
pity for him to marry me if I had been a foolish woman who asked for
more love than he can give; but I shall never do that, so I think it
is not a pity.

"Is it a pity for me? Oh, no, no, no!

"Is he sorry he did it? At times, is he just a weeny bit sorry?" She
watched him, and decided rightly that he was not sorry the weeniest
bit. It was a sweet consolation to her. "Is he really happy? Yes, of
course he is happy when he is writing; but is he quite contented at
other times? I do honestly think he is. And if he is happy now, how
much happier I shall be able to make him when I have put away all my
selfish thoughts and think only of him."

"The most exquisite thing in human life is to be married to one who
loves you as you love him." There could be no doubt of that. But she
saw also that the next best thing was the kind of love this boy gave
to her, and she would always be grateful for the second best. In her
prayers she thanked God for giving it to her, and promised Him to try
to merit it; and all day and every day she kept her promise. There
could not have been a brighter or more energetic wife than Grizel. The
amount of work she found to do in that small house which his devotion
had made so dear to her that she could not leave it! Her gaiety! Her
masterful airs when he wanted something that was not good for him! The
artfulness with which she sought to help him in various matters
without his knowing! Her satisfaction when he caught her at it, as
clever Tommy was constantly doing! "What a success it has turned out!"
David would say delightedly to himself; and Grizel was almost as
jubilant because it was so far from being a failure. It was only
sometimes in the night that she lay very still, with little wells of
water on her eyes, and through them saw one--the dream of woman--whom
she feared could never be hers. That boy Tommy never knew why she did
not want to have a child. He thought that for the present she was
afraid; but the reason was that she believed it would be wicked when
he did not love her as she loved him. She could not be sure--she had
to think it all out for herself. With little wells of sadness on her
eyes, she prayed in the still night to God to tell her; but she could
never hear His answer.

She no longer sought to teach Tommy how he should write. That quaint
desire was abandoned from the day when she learned that she had
destroyed his greatest work. She had not destroyed it, as we shall
see; but she presumed she had, as Tommy thought so. He had tried to
conceal this from her to save her pain, but she had found it out, and
it seemed to Grizel, grown distrustful of herself, that the man who
could bear such a loss as he had borne it was best left to write as he
chose.

"It was not that I did not love your books," she said, "but that I
loved you more, and I thought they did you harm."

"In the days when I had wings," he answered, and she smiled. "Any
feathers left, do you think, Grizel?" he asked jocularly, and turned
his shoulders to her for examination.

"A great many, sir," she said, "and I am glad. I used to want to pull
them all out, but now I like to know that they are still there, for it
means that you remain among the facts not because you can't fly, but
because you won't."

"I still have my little fights with myself," he blurted out boyishly,
though it was a thing he had never meant to tell her, and Grizel
pressed his hand for telling her what she already knew so well.

The new book, of course, was "The Wandering Child." I wonder whether
any of you read it now? Your fathers and mothers thought a great deal
of that slim volume, but it would make little stir in an age in which
all the authors are trying who can say "damn" loudest. It is but a
reverie about a child who is lost, and his parents' search for him in
terror of what may have befallen. But they find him in a wood singing
joyfully to himself because he is free; and he fears to be caged
again, so runs farther from them into the wood, and is running still,
singing to himself because he is free, free, free. That is really all,
but T. Sandys knew how to tell it. The moment he conceived the idea
(we have seen him speaking of it to the doctor), he knew that it was
the idea for him. He forgot at once that he did not really care for
children. He said reverently to himself, "I can pull it off," and, as
was always the way with him, the better he pulled it off the more he
seemed to love them.

"It is myself who is writing at last, Grizel," he said, as he read it
to her.

She thought (and you can guess whether she was right) that it was the
book he loved rather than the children. She thought (and you can guess
again) that it was not his ideas about children that had got into the
book, but hers. But she did not say so; she said it was the sweetest
of his books to her.

I have heard of another reading he gave. This was after the
publication of the book. He had gone into Corp's house one Sunday, and
Gavinia was there reading the work to her lord and master, while
little Corp disported on the floor. She read as if all the words meant
the same thing, and it was more than Tommy could endure. He read for
her, and his eyes grew moist as he read, for it was the most exquisite
of his chapters about the lost child. You would have said that no one
loved children quite so much as T. Sandys. But little Corp would not
keep quiet, and suddenly Tommy jumped up and boxed his ears. He then
proceeded with the reading, while Gavinia glowered and Corp senior
scratched his head.

On the way home he saw what had happened, and laughed at the humour of
it, then grew depressed, then laughed recklessly. "Is it Sentimental
Tommy still?" he said to himself, with a groan. Seldom a week passed
without his being reminded in some such sudden way that it was
Sentimental Tommy still. "But she shall never know!" he vowed, and he
continued to be half a hero.

His name was once more in many mouths. "Come back and be made of more
than ever!" cried that society which he had once enlivened. "Come and
hear the pretty things we are saying about you. Come and make the
prettier replies that are already on the tip of your tongue; for oh,
Tommy, you know they are! Bring her with you if you must; but don't
you think that the nice, quiet country with the thingumbobs all in
bloom would suit her best? It is essential that you should run up to
see your publisher, is it not? The men have dinners for you if you
want them, but we know you don't. Your yearning eyes are on the
ladies, Tommy; we are making up theatre-parties of the old entrancing
kind; you should see our new gowns; please come back and help us to
put on our cloaks, Tommy; there is a dance on Monday--come and sit it
out with us. Do you remember the garden-party where you said--Well,
the laurel walk is still there; the beauties of two years ago are
still here, and there are new beauties, and their noses are slightly
tilted, but no man can move them; ha, do you pull yourself together at
that? We were always the reward for your labours, Tommy; your books
are move one in the game of making love to us; don't be afraid that we
shall forget it is a game; we know it is, and that is why we suit you.
Come and play in London as you used to play in the Den. It is all you
need of women; come and have your fill, and we shall send you back
refreshed. We are not asking you to be disloyal to her, only to leave
her happy and contented and take a holiday."

[Illustration: He heard their seductive voices, they danced around him
in numbers.]

He heard their seductive voices. They danced around him in numbers,
for they knew that the more there were of them the better he would be
pleased; they whispered in his ear and then ran away looking over
their shoulders. But he would not budge.

There was one more dangerous than the rest. Her he saw before the
others came and after they had gone. She was a tall, incredibly slight
woman, with eyelashes that needed help, and a most disdainful mouth
and nose, and she seemed to look scornfully at Tommy and then stand
waiting. He was in two minds about what she was waiting for, and often
he had a fierce desire to go to London to find out. But he never went.
He played the lover to Grizel as before--not to intoxicate himself,
but always to make life sunnier to her; if she stayed longer with
Elspeth than the promised time, he became anxious and went in search
of her. "I have not been away an hour!" she said, laughing at him,
holding little Jean up to laugh at him. "But I cannot do without you
for an hour," he answered ardently. He still laid down his pen to gaze
with rapture at her and cry, "My wife!"

She wanted him to go to London for a change, and without her, and his
heart leaped into his mouth to prevent his saying No; yet he said it,
though in the Tommy way.

"Without you!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Grizel, do you think I could find
happiness apart from you for a day? And could you let me go?" And he
looked with agonized reproach at her, and sat down, clutching his
head.

"It would be very hard to me," she said softly; "but if the change did
you good----"

"A change from you! Oh, Grizel, Grizel!"

"Or I could go with you?"

"When you don't want to go!" he cried huskily. "You think I could ask
it of you!"

He quite broke down, and she had to comfort him. She was smiling
divinely at him all the time, as if sympathy had brought her to love
even the Tommy way of saying things. "I thought it would be sweet to
you to see how great my faith in you is now," she said.

This was the true reason why generous Grizel had proposed to him to
go. She knew he was more afraid than she of Sentimental Tommy, and she
thought her faith would be a helping hand to him, as it was.

He had no regard for Lady Pippinworth. Of all the women he had dallied
with, she was the one he liked the least, for he never liked where he
could not esteem. Perhaps she had some good in her, but the good in
her had never appealed to him, and he knew it, and refused to harbour
her in his thoughts now; he cast her out determinedly when she seemed
to enter them unbidden. But still he was vain. She came disdainfully
and stood waiting. We have seen him wondering what she waited for; but
though he could not be sure, and so was drawn to her, he took it as
acknowledgment of his prowess and so was helped to run away.

To walk away would be the more exact term, for his favourite method of
exorcising this lady was to rise from his chair and take a long walk
with Grizel. Occasionally if she was occupied (and a number of duties
our busy Grizel found to hand!) he walked alone, and he would not let
himself brood. Someone had once walked from Thrums to the top of the
Law and back in three hours, and Tommy made several gamesome attempts
to beat the record, setting out to escape that willowy woman, soon
walking her down and returning in a glow of animal spirits. It was on
one of these occasions, when there was nothing in his head but
ambition to do the fifth mile within the eleven minutes, that he
suddenly met her Ladyship face to face.

We have now come to the last fortnight of Tommy's life.




CHAPTER XXXIV

A WAY IS FOUND FOR TOMMY


The moment for which he had tried to prepare himself was come, and
Tommy gulped down his courage, which had risen suddenly to his mouth,
leaving his chest in a panic. Outwardly he seemed unmoved, but within
he was beating to arms. "This is the test of us!" all that was good in
him cried as it answered his summons.

They began by shaking hands, as is always the custom in the ring.
Then, without any preliminary sparring, Lady Pippinworth immediately
knocked him down; that is to say, she remarked, with a little laugh:
"How very stout you are getting!"

I swear by all the gods that it was untrue. He had not got very stout,
though undeniably he had got stouter. "How well you are looking!"
would have been a very ladylike way of saying it, but his girth was
best not referred to at all. Those who liked him had learned this long
ago, and Grizel always shifted the buttons without comment.

Her malicious Ladyship had found his one weak spot at once. He had a
reply ready for every other opening in the English tongue, but now he
could writhe only.

Who would have expected to meet her here? he said at last feebly. She
explained, and he had guessed it already, that she was again staying
with the Rintouls; the castle, indeed, was not half a mile from where
they stood.

"But I think I really came to see you," she informed him, with
engaging frankness.

It was very good of her, he intimated stiffly; but the stiffness was
chiefly because she was still looking in an irritating way at his
waist.

Suddenly she looked up. To Tommy it was as if she had raised the
siege. "Why aren't you nice to me?" she asked prettily.

"I want to be," he replied.

She showed him a way. "When I saw you steaming towards the castle so
swiftly," she said, dropping badinage, "the hope entered my head that
you had heard of my arrival."

She had come a step nearer, and it was like an invitation to return to
the arbour. "This is the test of us!" all that was good in Tommy cried
once more to him.

"No, I had not heard," he replied, bravely if baldly. "I was taking a
smart walk only."

"Why so smart as that?"

He hesitated, and her eyes left his face and travelled downward.

"Were you trying to walk it off?" she asked sympathetically.

He was stung, and replied in words that were regretted as soon as
spoken: "I was trying to walk you off."

A smile of satisfaction crossed her impudent face.

"I succeeded," he added sharply.

"How cruel of you to say so, when you had made me so very happy! Do
you often take smart walks, Mr. Sandys?"

"Often."

"And always with me?"

"I leave you behind."

"With Mrs. Sandys?"

Had she seemed to be in the least affected by their meeting it would
have been easy to him to be a contrite man at once; any sign of shame
on her part would have filled him with desire to take all the blame
upon himself. Had she cut him dead, he would have begun to respect
her. But she smiled disdainfully only, and stood waking. She was
still, as ever, a cold passion, inviting his warm ones to leap at it.
He shuddered a little, but controlled himself and did not answer her.

"I suppose she is the lady of the arbour?" Lady Pippinworth inquired,
with mild interest.

"She is the lady of my heart," Tommy replied valiantly.

"Alas!" said Lady Pippinworth, putting her hand over her own.

But he felt himself more secure now, and could even smile at the woman
for thinking she was able to provoke him.

"Look upon me," she requested, "as a deputation sent north to discover
why you have gone into hiding."

"I suppose a country life does seem exile to you," he replied calmly,
and suddenly his bosom rose with pride in what was coming. Tommy
always heard his finest things coming a moment before they came. "If I
have retired," he went on windily, "from the insincerities and glitter
of life in town,"--but it was not his face she was looking at, it was
his waist,--"the reason is obvious," he rapped out.

She nodded assent without raising her eyes.

Yet he still controlled himself. His waist, like some fair tortured
lady of romance, was calling to his knighthood for defence, but with
the truer courage he affected not to hear. "I am in hiding, as you
call it," he said doggedly, "because my life here is such a round of
happiness as I never hoped to find on earth, and I owe it all to my
wife. If you don't believe me, ask Lord or Lady Rintoul, or any other
person in this countryside who knows her."

But her Ladyship had already asked, and been annoyed by the answer.

She assured Tommy that she believed he was happy. "I have often
heard," she said musingly, "that the stout people are the happiest."

"I am not so stout," he barked.

"Now I call that brave of you," said she, admiringly. "That is so much
the wisest way to take it. And I am sure you are right not to return
to town after what you were; it would be a pity. Somehow it"--and
again her eyes were on the wrong place--"it does not seem to go with
the books. And yet," she said philosophically, "I daresay you feel
just the same?"

"I feel very much the same," he replied warningly.

"That is the tragedy of it," said she.

She told him that the new book had brought the Tommy Society to life
again. "And it could not hold its meetings with the old enthusiasm,
could it," she asked sweetly, "if you came back? Oh, I think you act
most judiciously. Fancy how melancholy if they had to announce that
the society had been wound up, owing to the stoutness of the Master."

Tommy's mouth opened twice before any words could come out. "Take
care!" he cried.

"Of what?" said she, curling her lip.

He begged her pardon. "You don't like me, Lady Pippinworth," he said,
watching himself, "and I don't wonder at it; and you have discovered a
way of hurting me of which you make rather unmerciful use. Well, I
don't wonder at that, either. If I am--stoutish, I have at least the
satisfaction of knowing that it gives you entertainment, and I owe you
that amend and more." He was really in a fury, and burning to go
on--"For I did have the whip-hand of you once, madam," etc., etc.; but
by a fine effort he held his rage a prisoner, and the admiration of
himself that this engendered lifted him into the sublime.

"For I so far forgot myself," said Tommy, in a glow, "as to try to
make you love me. You were beautiful and cold; no man had ever stirred
you; my one excuse is that to be loved by such as you was no small
ambition; my fitting punishment is that I failed." He knew he had not
failed, and so could be magnanimous. "I failed utterly," he said, with
grandeur. "You were laughing at me all the time; if proof of it were
needed, you have given it now by coming here to mock me. I thought I
was stronger than you, but I was ludicrously mistaken, and you taught
me a lesson I richly deserved; you did me good, and I thank you for
it. Believe me, Lady Pippinworth, when I say that I admit my
discomfiture, and remain your very humble and humbled servant."

Now was not that good of Tommy? You would think it still better were I
to tell you what part of his person she was looking at while he said
it.

He held out his hand generously (there was no noble act he could not
have performed for her just now), but, whatever her Ladyship wanted,
it was not to say good-bye. "Do you mean that you never cared for me?"
she asked, with the tremor that always made Tommy kind.

"Never cared for you!" he exclaimed fervently. "What were you not to
me in those golden days!" It was really a magnanimous cry, meant to
help her self-respect, nothing more; but it alarmed the good in him,
and he said sternly: "But of course that is all over now. It is only a
sweet memory," he added, to make these two remarks mix.

The sentiment of this was so agreeable to him that he was half
thinking of raising her hand chivalrously to his lips when Lady
Pippinworth said:

"But if it is all over now, why have you still to walk me off?"

"Have you never had to walk me off?" said Tommy, forgetting himself,
and, to his surprise, she answered, "Yes."

"But this meeting has cured me," she said, with dangerous
graciousness.

"Dear Lady Pippinworth," replied Tommy, ardently, thinking that his
generosity had touched her, "if anything I have said----"

"It is not so much what you have said," she answered, and again she
looked at the wrong part of him.

He gave way in the waist, and then drew himself up. "If so little a
thing as that helps you----" he began haughtily.

"Little!" she cried reproachfully.

He tried to go away. He turned. "There was a time," he thundered.

"It is over," said she.

"When you were at my feet," said Tommy.

"It is over," she said.

"It could come again!"

She laughed a contemptuous No.

"Yes!" Tommy cried.

"Too stout," said she, with a drawl.

He went closer to her. She stood waiting disdainfully, and his arms
fell.

"Too stout," she repeated.

"Let us put it in that way, since it pleases you," said Tommy,
heavily. "I am too stout." He could not help adding, "And be thankful,
Lady Pippinworth, let us both be thankful, that there is some reason
to prevent my trying."

She bowed mockingly as he raised his hat. "I wish you well," he said,
"and these are my last words to you"; and he retired, not without
distinction. He retired, shall we say, as conscious of his waist as if
it were some poor soldier he was supporting from a stricken field. He
said many things to himself on the way home, and he was many Tommies,
but all with the same waist. It intruded on his noblest reflections,
and kept ringing up the worst in him like some devil at the telephone.

No one could have been more thankful that on the whole he had kept his
passions in check. It made a strong man of him. It turned him into a
joyous boy, and he tingled with hurrahs. Then suddenly he would hear
that jeering bell clanging, "Too stout, too stout." "Take care!" he
roared. Oh, the vanity of Tommy!

He did not tell Grizel that he had met her Ladyship. All she knew was
that he came back to her more tender and kind, if that were possible,
than he had gone away. His eyes followed her about the room until she
made merry over it, and still they dwelt upon her. "How much more
beautiful you are than any other woman I ever saw, Grizel!" he said.
And it was not only true, but he knew it was true. What was Lady
Pippinworth beside this glorious woman? what was her damnable coldness
compared to the love of Grizel? Was he unforgivable, or was it some
flaw in the making of him for which he was not responsible? With
clenched hands he asked himself these questions. This love that all
his books were about--what was it? Was it a compromise between
affection and passion countenanced by God for the continuance of the
race, made beautiful by Him where the ingredients are in right
proportion, a flower springing from a soil that is not all divine? Oh,
so exquisite a flower! he cried, for he knew his Grizel. But he could
not love her. He gave her all his affection, but his passion, like an
outlaw, had ever to hunt alone.

Was it that? And if it was, did there remain in him enough of humanity
to give him the right to ask a little sympathy of those who can love?
So Tommy in his despairing moods, and the question ought to find some
place in his epitaph, which, by the way, it is almost time to write.

On the day following his meeting with Lady Pippinworth came a note
from Lady Rintoul inviting Grizel and him to lunch. They had been to
Rintoul once or twice before, but this time Tommy said decisively, "We
sha'n't go." He guessed who had prompted the invitation, though her
name was not mentioned in it.

"Why not?" Grizel asked. She was always afraid that she kept Tommy too
much to herself.

"Because I object to being disturbed during the honeymoon," he replied
lightly. Their honeymoon, you know, was never to end. "They would
separate us for hours, Grizel. Think of it! But, pooh! the thing is
not to be thought of. Tell her Ladyship courteously that she must be
mad."

But though he could speak thus to Grizel, there came to him
tempestuous desires to be by the side of the woman who could mock him
and then stand waiting.

Had she shown any fear of him all would have been well with Tommy; he
could have kept away from her complacently. But she had flung down the
glove, and laughed to see him edge away from it. He knew exactly what
was in her mind. He was too clever not to know that her one desire was
to make him a miserable man; to remember how he had subdued and left
her would be gall to Lady Pippinworth until she achieved the same
triumph over him. How confident she was that he could never prove the
stronger of the two again! What were all her mockings but a beckoning
to him to come on? "Take care!" said Tommy between his teeth.

And then again horror of himself would come to his rescue. The man he
had been a moment ago was vile to him, and all his thoughts were now
heroic. You may remember that he had once taken Grizel to a seaside
place; they went there again. It was Tommy's proposal, but he did not
go to flee from temptation; however his worse nature had been stirred
and his vanity pricked, he was too determinedly Grizel's to fear that
in any fierce hour he might rush into danger. He wanted Grizel to come
away from the place where she always found so much to do for him, so
that there might be the more for him to do for her. And that week was
as the time they had spent there before. All that devotion which had
to be planned could do for woman he did. Grizel saw him planning it
and never admitted that she saw. In the after years it was sweet to
her to recall that week and the hundred laboriously lover-like things
Tommy had done in it. She knew by this time that Tommy had never tried
to make her love him, and that it was only when her love for him
revealed itself in the Den that desire to save her pride made him
pretend to be in love with her. This knowledge would have been a great
pain to her once, but now it had more of pleasure in it, for it showed
that even in those days he had struggled a little for her.

We must hasten to the end. Those of you who took in the newspapers a
quarter of a century ago know what it was, but none of you know why he
climbed the wall.

They returned to Thrums in a week. They had meant to stay longer, but
suddenly Tommy wanted to go back. Yes, it was Lady Pippinworth who
recalled him, but don't think too meanly of Tommy. It was not that he
yielded to one of those fierce desires to lift the gauntlet; he had
got rid of them in fair fight when her letter reached him, forwarded
from Thrums. "Did you really think your manuscript was lost?" it said.
That was what took Tommy back. Grizel did not know the reason; he gave
her another. He thought very little about her that day. He thought
still less about Lady Pippinworth. How could he think of anything but
it? She had it, evidently she had it; she must have stolen it from his
bag. He could not even spare time to denounce her. It was alive--his
manuscript was alive, and every moment brought him nearer to it. He
was a miser, and soon his hands would be deep among the gold. He was a
mother whose son, mourned for dead, is knocking at the door. He was a
swain, and his beloved's arms were outstretched to him. Who said that
Tommy could not love?

The ecstasies that came over him and would not let him sit still made
Grizel wonder. "Is it a book?" she asked; and he said it was a
book--such a book, Grizel! When he started for the castle next
morning, she thought he wanted to be alone to think of the book. "Of
it and you," he said; and having started, he came back to kiss her
again; he never forgot to have an impulse to do that. But all the way
to the Spittal it was of his book he thought, it was his book he was
kissing. His heart sang within him, and the songs were sonnets to his
beloved. To be worthy of his beautiful manuscript--he prayed for that
as lovers do; that his love should be his, his alone, was as wondrous
to him as to any of them.

But we are not noticing what proved to be the chief thing. Though
there was some sun, the air was shrewd, and he was wearing the old
doctor's coat. Should you have taken it with you, Tommy? It loved
Grizel, for it was a bit of him; and what, think you, would the old
doctor have cared for your manuscript had he known that you were gone
out to meet that woman? It was cruel, no, not cruel, but thoughtless,
to wear the old doctor's coat.

He found no one at the Spittal. The men were out shooting, and the
ladies had followed to lunch with them on the moors. He came upon
them, a gay party, in the hollow of a hill where was a spring suddenly
converted into a wine-cellar; and soon the men, if not the ladies,
were surprised to find that Tommy could be the gayest of them all. He
was in hilarious spirits, and had a gallantly forgiving glance for the
only one of them who knew why his spirits were hilarious. But he would
not consent to remain to dinner. "The wretch is so hopelessly in love
with his wife," Lady Rintoul said, flinging a twig of heather at him.
It was one of the many trivial things said on that occasion and long
remembered; the only person who afterwards professed her inability to
remember what Tommy said to her that day, and she to him, was Lady
Pippinworth. "And yet you walked back to the castle with him," they
reminded her.

"If I had known that anything was to happen," she replied indolently,
"I should have taken more note of what was said. But as it was, I
think we talked of our chance of finding white heather. We were
looking for it, and that is why we fell behind you."

That was not why Tommy and her Ladyship fell behind the others, and it
was not of white heather that they talked. "You know why I am here,
Alice," he said, as soon as there was no one but her to hear him.

She was in as great tension at that moment as he, but more anxious not
to show it. "Why do you call me that?" she replied, with a little
laugh.

"Because I want you to know at once," he said, and it was the truth,
"that I have no vindictive feelings. You have kept my manuscript from
me all this time, but, severe though the punishment has been, I
deserved it, yes, every day of it."

Lady Pippinworth smiled.

"You took it from my bag, did you not?" said Tommy.

"Yes."

"Where is it, Alice? Have you got it here?"

"No."

"But you know where it is?"

"Oh, yes," she said graciously, and then it seemed that nothing could
ever disturb him again. She enjoyed his boyish glee; she walked by his
side listening airily to it.

"Had there been a fire in the room that day I should have burned the
thing," she said without emotion.

"It would have been no more than my deserts," Tommy replied
cheerfully.

"I did burn it three months afterwards," said she, calmly.

He stopped, but she walked on. He sprang after her. "You don't mean
that, Alice!"

"I do mean it."

With a gesture fierce and yet imploring, he compelled her to stop.
"Before God, is this true?" he cried.

"Yes," she said, "it is true"; and, indeed, it was the truth about his
manuscript at last.

"But you had a copy of it made first. Say you had!"

"I had not."

She seemed to have no fear of him, though his face was rather
terrible. "I meant to destroy it from the first," she said coldly,
"but I was afraid to. I took it back with me to London. One day I read
in a paper that your wife was supposed to have burned it while she was
insane. She was insane, was she not? Ah, well, that is not my affair;
but I burned it for her that afternoon."

They were moving on again. He stopped her once more.

"Why have you told me this?" he cried. "Was it not enough for you that
I should think she did it?"

"No," Lady Pippinworth answered, "that was not enough for me. I always
wanted you to know that I had done it."

"And you wrote that letter, you filled me with joy, so that you should
gloat over my disappointment?"

"Horrid of me, was it not!" said she.

"Why did you not tell me when we met the other day?"

"I bided my time, as the tragedians say."

"You would not have told me," Tommy said, staring into her face, "if
you had thought I cared for you. Had you thought I cared for you a
little jot--"

"I should have waited," she confessed, "until you cared for me a great
deal, and then I should have told you. That, I admit, was my
intention."

She had returned his gaze smilingly, and as she strolled on she gave
him another smile over her shoulder; it became a protesting pout
almost when she saw that he was not accompanying her. Tommy stood
still for some minutes, his hands, his teeth, every bit of him that
could close, tight clenched. When he made up on her, the devil was in
him. She had been gathering a nosegay of wild flowers. "Pretty, are
they not?" she said to him. He took hold of her harshly by both
wrists. She let him do it, and stood waiting disdainfully; but she was
less unprepared for a blow than for what came.

"How you love me, Alice!" he said in a voice shaking with passion.

"How I have proved it!" she replied promptly.

"Love or hate," he went on in a torrent of words, "they are the same
thing with you. I don't care what you call it; it has made you come
back to me. You tried hard to stay away. How you fought, Alice! but
you had to come. I knew you would come. All this time you have been
longing for me to go to you. You have stamped your pretty feet because
I did not go. You have cried, 'He shall come!' You have vowed you
would not go one step of the way to meet me. I saw you, I heard you,
and I wanted you as much as you wanted me; but I was always the
stronger, and I could resist. It is I who have not gone a step towards
you, and it is my proud little Alice who has come all the way. Proud
little Alice!--but she is to be my obedient little Alice now."

His passion hurled him along, and it had its effect on her. She might
curl her mouth as she chose, but her bosom rose and fell.

"Obedient?" she cried, with a laugh.

"Obedient!" said Tommy, quivering with his intensity. "Obedient, not
because I want it, for I prefer you as you are, but because you are
longing for it, my lady--because it is what you came here for. You
have been a virago only because you feared you were not to get it. Why
have you grown so quiet, Alice? Where are the words you want to
torment me with? Say them! I love to hear them from your lips. I love
the demon in you--the demon that burned my book. I love you the more
for that. It was your love that made you do it. Why don't you scratch
and struggle for the last time? I am half sorry that little Alice is
to scratch and struggle no more."

"Go on," said little Alice; "you talk beautifully." But though her
tongue could mock him, all the rest of her was enchained.

"Whether I shall love you when you are tamed," he went on with
vehemence, "I don't know. You must take the risk of that. But I love
you now. We were made for one another, you and I, and I love you,
Alice--I love you and you love me. You love me, my peerless Alice,
don't you? Say you love me. Your melting eyes are saying it. How you
tremble, sweet Alice! Is that your way of saying it? I want to hear
you say it. You have been longing to say it for two years. Come, love,
say it now!"

It was not within this woman's power to resist him. She tried to draw
away from him, but could not. She was breathing quickly. The mocking
light quivered on her face only because it had been there so long. If
it went out she would be helpless. He put his hands on her shoulders,
and she was helpless. It brought her mouth nearer his. She was
offering him her mouth.

"No," said Tommy, masterfully. "I won't kiss you until you say it."

If there had not been a look of triumph in his eyes, she would have
said it. As it was, she broke from him, panting. She laughed next
minute, and with that laugh his power fell among the heather.

"Really," said Lady Pippinworth, "you are much too stout for this kind
of thing." She looked him up and down with a comic sigh. "You talk as
well as ever," she said condolingly, "but heigh-ho, you don't look the
same. I have done the best I could for you for the sake of old times,
but I forgot to shut my eyes. Shall we go on?"

And they went on silently, one of them very white. "I believe you are
blaming me," her Ladyship said, making a face, just before they
overtook the others, "when you know it was your own fault for"--she
suddenly rippled--"for not waiting until it was too dark for me to see
you!"

They strolled with some others of the party to the flower-garden,
which was some distance from the house, and surrounded by a high wall
studded with iron spikes and glass. Lady Rintoul cut him some flowers
for Grizel, but he left them on a garden-seat--accidentally, everyone
thought afterwards in the drawing-room when they were missed; but he
had laid them down, because how could those degraded hands of his
carry flowers again to Grizel? There was great remorse in him, but
there was a shrieking vanity also, and though the one told him to be
gone, the other kept him lagging on. They had torn him a dozen times
from each other's arms before he was man enough to go.

It was gloaming when he set off, waving his hat to those who had come
to the door with him. Lady Pippinworth was not among them; he had not
seen her to bid her good-bye, nor wanted to, for the better side of
him had prevailed--so he thought. It was a man shame-stricken and
determined to kill the devil in him that went down that long
avenue--so he thought.

A tall, thin woman was standing some twenty yards off, among some
holly-trees. She kissed her hand mockingly to him, and beckoned and
laughed when he stood irresolute. He thought he heard her cry, "Too
stout!" He took some fierce steps towards her. She ran on, looking
over her shoulder, and he forgot all else and followed her. She darted
into the flower-garden, pulling the gate to after her. It was a gate
that locked when it closed, and the key was gone. Lady Pippinworth
clapped her hands because he could not reach her. When she saw that he
was climbing the wall she ran farther into the garden.

He climbed the wall, but, as he was descending, one of the iron spikes
on the top of it pierced his coat, which was buttoned to the throat,
and he hung there by the neck. He struggled as he choked, but he could
not help himself. He was unable to cry out. The collar of the old
doctor's coat held him fast.

They say that in such a moment a man reviews all his past life. I
don't know whether Tommy did that; but his last reflection before he
passed into unconsciousness was "Serves me right!" Perhaps it was only
a little bit of sentiment for the end.

Lady Disdain came back to the gate, by and by, to see why he had not
followed her. She screamed and then hid in the recesses of the garden.
He had been dead for some time when they found him. They left the gate
creaking in the evening wind. After a long time a terrified woman
stole out by it.




CHAPTER XXXV

THE PERFECT LOVER


Tommy has not lasted. More than once since it became known that I was
writing his life I have been asked whether there ever really was such
a person, and I am afraid to inquire for his books at the library lest
they are no longer there. A recent project to bring out a new edition,
with introductions by some other Tommy, received so little support
that it fell to the ground. It must be admitted that, so far as the
great public is concerned, Thomas Sandys is done for.

They have even forgotten the manner of his death, though probably no
young writer with an eye on posterity ever had a better send-off. We
really thought at the time that Tommy had found a way.

The surmise at Rintoul, immediately accepted by the world as a fact,
was that he had been climbing the wall to obtain for Grizel the
flowers accidentally left in the garden, and it at once tipped the
tragedy with gold. The newspapers, which were in the middle of the
dull season, thanked their gods for Tommy, and enthusiastically set to
work on him. Great minds wrote criticisms of what they called his
life-work. The many persons who had been the first to discover him
said so again. His friends were in demand for the most trivial
reminiscences. Unhappy Pym cleared £ll 10s.

Shall we quote? It is nearly always done at this stage of the
biography, so now for the testimonials to prove that our hero was
without a flaw. A few specimens will suffice if we select some that
are very like many of the others. It keeps Grizel waiting, but Tommy,
as you have seen, was always the great one; she existed only that he
might show how great he was. "Busy among us of late," says one, "has
been the grim visitor who knocks with equal confidence at the doors of
the gifted and the ungifted, the pauper and the prince, and twice in
one short month has he taken from us men of an eminence greater
perhaps than that of Mr. Sandys; but of them it could be said their
work was finished, while his sun sinks tragically when it is yet day.
Not by what his riper years might have achieved can this pure, spirit
now be judged, and to us, we confess, there is something infinitely
pathetic in that thought. We would fain shut our eyes, and open them
again at twenty years hence, with Mr. Sandys in the fulness of his
powers. It is not to be. What he might have become is hidden from us;
what he was we know. He was little more than a stripling when he
'burst upon the town' to be its marvel--and to die; a 'marvellous boy'
indeed; yet how unlike in character and in the nobility of his short
life, as in the mournful yet lovely circumstances of his death, to
that other Might-Have-Been who 'perished in his pride.' Our young men
of letters have travelled far since the days of Chatterton. Time was
when a riotous life was considered part of their calling--when they
shunned the domestic ties and actually held that the consummate artist
is able to love nothing but the creations of his fancy. It is such men
as Thomas Sandys who have exploded that pernicious fallacy....

"Whether his name will march down the ages is not for us, his
contemporaries, to determine. He had the most modest opinion of his
own work, and was humbled rather than elated when he heard it praised.
No one ever loved praise less; to be pointed at as a man of
distinction was abhorrent to his shrinking nature; he seldom, indeed,
knew that he was being pointed at, for his eyes were ever on the
ground. He set no great store by the remarkable popularity of his
works. 'Nothing,' he has been heard to say to one of those gushing
ladies who were his aversion, 'nothing will so certainly perish as the
talk of the town.' It may be so, but if so, the greater the pity that
he has gone from among us before he had time to put the coping-stone
upon his work. There is a beautiful passage in one of his own books in
which he sees the spirits of gallant youth who died too young for
immortality haunting the portals of the Elysian Fields, and the great
shades come to the portal and talk with them. We venture to say that
he is at least one of these."

What was the individuality behind the work? They discussed it in
leading articles and in the correspondence columns, and the man proved
to be greater than his books. His distaste for admiration is again and
again insisted on and illustrated by many characteristic anecdotes. He
owed much to his parents, though he had the misfortune to lose them
when he was but a child. "Little is known of his father, but we
understand that he was a retired military officer in easy
circumstances. The mother was a canny Scotchwoman of lowly birth,
conspicuous for her devoutness even in a land where it is everyone's
birthright, and on their marriage, which was a singularly happy one,
they settled in London, going little into society, the world
forgetting, by the world forgot, and devoting themselves to each other
and to their two children. Of these Thomas was the elder, and as the
twig was early bent so did the tree incline. From his earliest years
he was noted for the modesty which those who remember his boyhood in
Scotland (whither the children went to an uncle on the death of their
parents) still speak of with glistening eyes. In another column will
be found some interesting recollections of Mr. Sandys by his old
schoolmaster, Mr. David Cathro, M.A., who testifies with natural pride
to the industry and amiability of his famous pupil. 'To know him,'
says Mr. Cathro, 'was to love him.'"

According to another authority, T. Sandys got his early modesty from
his father, who was of a very sweet disposition, and some instances of
this modesty are given. They are all things that Elspeth did, but
Tommy is now represented as the person who had done them. "On the
other hand, his strong will, singleness of purpose, and enviable
capacity for knowing what he wanted to be at were a heritage from his
practical and sagacious mother." "I think he was a little proud of his
strength of will," writes the R.A. who painted his portrait (now in
America), "for I remember his anxiety that it should be suggested in
the picture." But another acquaintance (a lady) replies: "He was not
proud of his strong will, but he liked to hear it spoken of, and he
once told me the reason. This strength of will was not, as is
generally supposed, inherited by him; he was born without it, and
acquired it by a tremendous effort. I believe I am the only person to
whom he confided this, for he shrank from talk about himself, looking
upon it as a form of that sentimentality which his soul abhorred."

He seems often to have warned ladies against this essentially womanish
tendency to the sentimental. "It is an odious onion, dear lady," he
would say, holding both her hands in his. If men in his presence
talked sentimentally to ladies he was so irritated that he soon found
a pretext for leaving the room. "Yet let it not be thought," says One
Who Knew Him Well, "that because he was so sternly practical himself
he was intolerant of the outpourings of the sentimental. The man, in
short, reflected the views on this subject which are so admirably
phrased in his books, works that seem to me to found one of their
chief claims to distinction on this, that at last we have a writer who
can treat intimately of human love without leaving one smear of the
onion upon his pages."

On the whole, it may be noticed, comparatively few ladies contribute
to the obituary reflections, "for the simple reason," says a simple
man, "that he went but little into female society. He who could write
so eloquently about women never seemed to know what to say to them.
Ordinary tittle-tattle from them disappointed him. I should say that
to him there was so much of the divine in women that he was depressed
when they hid their wings." This view is supported by Clubman, who
notes that Tommy would never join in the somewhat free talk about the
other sex in which many men indulge. "I remember," he says, "a man's
dinner at which two of those present, both persons of eminence,
started a theory that every man who is blessed or cursed with the
artistic instinct has at some period of his life wanted to marry a
barmaid. Mr. Sandys gave them such a look that they at once
apologized. Trivial, perhaps, but significant. On another occasion I
was in a club smoking-room when the talk was of a similar kind. Mr.
Sandys was not present. A member said, with a laugh, 'I wonder for how
long men can be together without talking gamesomely of women?' Before
any answer could be given Mr. Sandys strolled in, and immediately the
atmosphere cleared, as if someone had opened the windows. When he had
gone the member addressed turned to him who had propounded the problem
and said, 'There is your answer--as long as Sandys is in the room.'"

"A fitting epitaph, this, for Thomas Sandys," says the paper that
quotes it, "if we could not find a better. Mr. Sandys was from first
to last a man of character, but why when others falter was he always
so sure-footed? It is in the answer to this question that we find the
key to the books, and to the man who was greater than the books. He
was the Perfect Lover. As he died seeking flowers for her who had the
high honour to be his wife, so he had always lived. He gave his
affection to her, as our correspondent Miss (or Mrs.) Ailie McLean
shows, in his earliest boyhood, and from this, his one romance, he
never swerved. To the moment of his death all his beautiful thoughts
were flowers plucked for her; his books were bunches of them gathered
to place at her feet. No harm now in reading between the lines of his
books and culling what is the common knowledge of his friends in the
north, that he had to serve a long apprenticeship before he won her.
For long his attachment was unreciprocated, though she was ever his
loyal friend, and the volume called 'Unrequited Love' belongs to the
period when he thought his life must be lived alone. The circumstances
of their marriage are at once too beautiful and too painful to be
dwelt on here. Enough to say that, should the particulars ever be
given to the world, with the simple story of his life, a finer
memorial will have been raised to him than anything in stone, such as
we see a committee is already being formed to erect. We venture to
propose as a title for his biography, 'The Story of the Perfect
Lover.'"

Yes, that memorial committee was formed; but so soon do people forget
the hero of yesterday's paper that only the secretary attended the
first meeting, and he never called another. But here, five and twenty
years later, is the biography, with the title changed. You may wonder
that I had the heart to write it. I do it, I have sometimes pretended
to myself, that we may all laugh at the stripling of a rogue, but that
was never my reason. Have I been too cunning, or have you seen through
me all the time? Have you discovered that I was really pitying the boy
who was so fond of boyhood that he could not with years become a man,
telling nothing about him that was not true, but doing it with
unnecessary scorn in the hope that I might goad you into crying:
"Come, come, you are too hard on him!"

Perhaps the manner in which he went to his death deprives him of these
words. Had the castle gone on fire that day while he was at tea, and
he perished in the flames in a splendid attempt to save the life of
his enemy (a very probable thing), then you might have felt a little
liking for him. Yet he would have been precisely the same person. I
don't blame you, but you are a Tommy.

Grizel knew how he died. She found Lady Pippinworth's letter to him,
and understood who the woman was; but it was only in hopes of
obtaining the lost manuscript that she went to see her. Then Lady
Pippinworth told her all. Are you sorry that Grizel knew? I am not
sorry--I am glad. As a child, as a girl, and as a wife, the truth had
been all she wanted, and she wanted it just the same when she was a
widow. We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything
else from God, but the right to ask that.

And to her latest breath she went on loving Tommy just the same. She
thought everything out calmly for herself; she saw that there is no
great man on this earth except the man who conquers self, and that in
some the accursed thing which is in all of us may be so strong that to
battle with it and be beaten is not altogether to fail. It is foolish
to demand complete success of those we want to love. We should rejoice
when they rise for a moment above themselves, and sympathize with them
when they fall. In their heyday young lovers think each other perfect;
but a nobler love comes when they see the failings also, and this
higher love is so much more worth attaining to that they need not cry
out though it has to be beaten into them with rods. So they learn
humanity's limitations, and that the accursed thing to me is not the
accursed thing to you; but all have it, and from this comes pity for
those who have sinned, and the desire to help each other springs, for
knowledge is sympathy, and sympathy is love, and to learn it the Son
of God became a man.

And Grizel also thought anxiously about herself, and how from the time
when she was the smallest girl she had longed to be a good woman and
feared that perhaps she never should. And as she looked back at the
road she had travelled, there came along it the little girl to judge
her. She came trembling, but determined to know the truth, and she
looked at Grizel until she saw into her soul, and then she smiled,
well pleased.

Grizel lived on at Double Dykes, helping David in the old way. She was
too strong and fine a nature to succumb. Even her brightness came back
to her. They sometimes wondered at the serenity of her face. Some
still thought her a little stand-offish, for, though the pride had
gone from her walk, a distinction of manner grew upon her and made her
seem a finer lady than before. There was no other noticeable change,
except that with the years she lost her beautiful contours and became
a little angular--the old maid's figure, I believe it is sometimes
called.

No one would have dared to smile at Grizel become an old maid before
some of the young men of Thrums. They were people who would have
suffered much for her, and all because she had the courage to talk to
them of some things before their marriage-day came round. And for
their young wives who had tidings to whisper to her about the unborn
she had the pretty idea that they should live with beautiful thoughts,
so that these might become part of the child.

When Gavinia told this to Corp, he gulped and said, "I wonder God
could hae haen the heart."

"Life's a queerer thing," Gavinia replied, sadly enough, "than we used
to think it when we was bairns in the Den."

He spoke of it to Grizel. She let Corp speak of anything to her
because he was so loyal to Tommy.

"You've given away a' your bonny things, Grizel," he said, "one by
one, and this notion is the bonniest o' them a'. I'm thinking that
when it cam' into your head you meant it for yoursel'."

Grizel smiled at him.

"I mind," Corp went on, "how when you was little you couldna see a
bairn without rocking your arms in a waeful kind o' a way, and we
could never thole the meaning o't. It just comes over me this minute
as it meant that when you was a woman you would like terrible to hae
bairns o' your ain, and you doubted you never should."

She raised her hand to stop him. "You see, I was not meant to have
them, Corp," she said. "I think that when women are too fond of other
people's babies they never have any of their own."

But Corp shook his head. "I dinna understand it," he told her, "but
I'm sure you was meant to hae them. Something's gane wrang."

She was still smiling at him, but her eyes were wet now, and she drew
him on to talk of the days when Tommy was a boy. It was sweet to
Grizel to listen while Elspeth and David told her of the thousand
things Tommy had done for her when she was ill, but she loved best to
talk with Corp of the time when they were all children in the Den. The
days of childhood are the best.

She lived so long after Tommy that she was almost a middle-aged woman
when she died.

And so the Painted Lady's daughter has found a way of making Tommy's
life the story of a perfect lover, after all. The little girl she had
been comes stealing back into the book and rocks her arms joyfully,
and we see Grizel's crooked smile for the last time.







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