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Tommy and Grizel

by J. M. Barrie · English · Gutenberg #11901 · 679,156 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Tommy and Grizel

Author: J. M. Barrie

Illustrator: Bernard Partridge


        
Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #11901]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOMMY AND GRIZEL ***

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 w

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