PART II

TOMMY AND GRIZEL

BY

J. M. BARRIE

ILLUSTRATED BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE

1900, 1912

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER

I HOW TOMMY FOUND A WAY

II THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE

III SANDYS ON WOMAN

IV GRIZEL OF THE CROOKED SMILE

V THE TOMMY MYTH

VI GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN

VII THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL

VIII WHAT GRIZEL'S EYES SAID

IX GALLANT BEHAVIOUR OF T. SANDYS

X GAVINIA ON THE TRACK

XI THE TEA-PARTY

XII IN WHICH A COMEDIAN CHALLENGES TRAGEDY TO BOWLS

XIII LITTLE WELLS OF GLADNESS

XIV ELSPETH

XV BY PROSEN WATER

XVI "HOW COULD YOU HURT YOUR GRIZEL SO!"

XVII HOW TOMMY SAVED THE FLAG

PART II

CHAPTER

XVIII THE GIRL SHE HAD BEEN

XIX OF THE CHANGE IN THOMAS

XX A LOVE-LETTER

XXI THE ATTEMPT TO CARRY ELSPETH BY NUMBERS

XXII GRIZEL'S GLORIOUS HOUR

XXIII TOMMY LOSES GRIZEL

XXIV THE MONSTER

XXV MR. T. SANDYS HAS RETURNED TO TOWN

XXVI GRIZEL ALL ALONE

XXVII GRIZEL'S JOURNEY

XXVIII TWO OF THEM

XXIX THE RED LIGHT

XXX THE LITTLE GODS DESERT HIM

XXXI "THE MAN WITH THE GREETIN' EYES"

XXXII TOMMY'S BEST WORK

XXXIII THE LITTLE GODS RETURN WITH A LADY

XXXIV A WAY IS FOUND FOR TOMMY

XXXV THE PERFECT LOVER

ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I

And clung to it, his teeth set.

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

She did not look up, she waited.

PART II

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

Grizel."

They told Aaron something.

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

"I woke up," she said He heard their seductive voices, they danced

around him in numbers.

TOMMY AND GRIZEL

PART I

CHAPTER I

HOW TOMMY FOUND A WAY

O.P. Pym, the colossal Pym, that vast and rolling figure, who never

knew what he was to write about until he dipped grandly, an author in

such demand that on the foggy evening which starts our story his

publishers have had his boots removed lest he slip thoughtlessly round

the corner before his work is done, as was the great man's way--shall

we begin with him, or with Tommy, who has just arrived in London,

carrying his little box and leading a lady by the hand? It was Pym, as

we are about to see, who in the beginning held Tommy up to the public

gaze, Pym who first noticed his remarkable indifference to female

society, Pym who gave him----But alack! does no one remember Pym for

himself? Is the king of the _Penny Number_ already no more than a

button that once upon a time kept Tommy's person together? And we are

at the night when they first met! Let us hasten into Marylebone before

little Tommy arrives and Pym is swallowed like an oyster.

This is the house, 22 Little Owlet Street, Marylebone, but which were

his rooms it is less easy to determine, for he was a lodger who

flitted placidly from floor to floor according to the state of his

finances, carrying his apparel and other belongings in one great

armful, and spilling by the way. On this particular evening he was on

the second floor front, which had a fireplace in the corner, furniture

all his landlady's and mostly horsehair, little to suggest his calling

save a noble saucerful of ink, and nothing to draw attention from Pym,

who lolled, gross and massive, on a sofa, one leg over the back of it,

the other drooping, his arms extended, and his pipe, which he could

find nowhere, thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, an

agreeable pipe-rack. He wore a yellow dressing-gown, or could scarcely

be said to wear it, for such of it as was not round his neck he had

converted into a cushion for his head, which is perhaps the part of

him we should have turned to first It was a big round head, the

plentiful gray hair in tangles, possibly because in Pym's last

flitting the comb had dropped over the banisters; the features were

ugly and beyond life-size, yet the forehead had altered little except

in colour since the day when he was near being made a fellow of his

college; there was sensitiveness left in the thick nose, humour in the

eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at

last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had

resisted the body for a space before the whole man rolled contentedly

downhill.

He had no beard. "Young man, let your beard grow." Those who have

forgotten all else about Pym may recall him in these words. They were

his one counsel to literary aspirants, who, according as they took it,

are now bearded and prosperous or shaven and on the rates. To shave

costs threepence, another threepence for loss of time--nearly ten

pounds a year, three hundred pounds since Pym's chin first bristled.

With his beard he could have bought an annuity or a cottage in the

country, he could have had a wife and children, and driven his

dog-cart, and been made a church-warden. All gone, all shaved, and for

what? When he asked this question he would move his hand across his

chin with a sigh, and so, bravely to the barber's.

Pym was at present suffering from an ailment that had spread him out

on that sofa again and again--acute disinclination to work.

Meanwhile all the world was waiting for his new tale; so the

publishers, two little round men, have told him. They have blustered,

they have fawned, they have asked each other out to talk it over

behind the door.

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

He has no idea.

Then at least, Pym--excellent Pym--sit down and dip, and let us see

what will happen.

He declined to do even that. While all the world waited, this was

Pym's ultimatum:

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

Outside, the fog kept changing at intervals from black to white, as

lazily from white to black (the monster blinking); there was not a

sound from the street save of pedestrians tapping with their sticks on

the pavement as they moved forward warily, afraid of an embrace with

the unknown; it might have been a city of blind beggars, one of them a

boy.

At eight o'clock Pym rose with a groan and sat down in his

stocking-soles to write his delicious tale. He was now alone. But

though his legs were wound round his waste-paper basket, and he dipped

often and loudly in the saucer, like one ringing at the door of Fancy,

he could not get the idea that would set him going. He was still

dipping for inspiration when T. Sandys, who had been told to find the

second floor for himself, knocked at the door, and entered, quaking.

"I remember it vividly," Pym used to say when questioned in the after

years about this his first sight of Tommy, "and I hesitate to decide

which impressed me more, the richness of his voice, so remarkable in a

boy of sixteen, or his serene countenance, with its noble forehead,

behind which nothing base could lurk."

Pym, Pym! it is such as you that makes the writing of biography

difficult. The richness of Tommy's voice could not have struck you,

for at that time it was a somewhat squeaky voice; and as for the noble

forehead behind which nothing base could lurk, how could you say that,

Pym, you who had a noble forehead yourself?

No; all that Pym saw was a pasty-faced boy sixteen years old, and of

an appearance mysteriously plain; hair light brown, and waving

defiance to the brush; nothing startling about him but the expression

of his face, which was almost fearsomely solemn and apparently

unchangeable. He wore his Sunday blacks, of which the trousers might

with advantage have borrowed from the sleeves; and he was so nervous

that he had to wet his lips before he could speak. He had left the

door ajar for a private reason; but Pym, misunderstanding, thought he

did it to fly the more readily if anything was flung at him, and so

concluded that he must be a printer's devil. Pym had a voice that

shook his mantelpiece ornaments; he was all on the same scale as his

ink-pot. "Your Christian name, boy?" he roared hopefully, for it was

thus he sometimes got the idea that started him.

"Thomas," replied the boy.

Pym gave him a look of disgust "You may go," he said. But when he

looked up presently, Thomas was still there. He was not only there,

but whistling--a short, encouraging whistle that seemed to be directed

at the door. He stopped quickly when Pym looked up, but during the

remainder of the interview he emitted this whistle at intervals,

always with that anxious glance at his friend the door; and its

strained joviality was in odd contrast with his solemn face, like a

cheery tune played on the church organ.

"Begone!" cried Pym.

"My full name," explained Tommy, who was speaking the English

correctly, but with a Scots accent, "is Thomas Sandys. And fine you

know who that is," he added, exasperated by Pym's indifference. "I'm

the T. Sandys that answered your advertisement."

Pym knew who he was now. "You young ruffian," he gasped, "I never

dreamt that you would come!"

"I have your letter engaging me in my pocket," said Tommy, boldly, and

he laid it on the table. Pym surveyed it and him in comic dismay,

then with a sudden thought produced nearly a dozen letters from a

drawer, and dumped them down beside the other. It was now his turn to

look triumphant and Tommy aghast.

Pym's letters were all addressed from the Dubb of Prosen Farm, near

Thrums, N.B., to different advertisers, care of a London agency, and

were Tommy's answers to the "wants" in a London newspaper which had

found its way to the far North. "X Y Z" was in need of a chemist's

assistant, and from his earliest years, said one of the letters,

chemistry had been the study of studies for T. Sandys. He was glad to

read, was T. Sandys, that one who did not object to long hours would

be preferred, for it seemed to him that those who objected to long

hours did not really love their work, their heart was not in it, and

only where the heart is can the treasure be found.

"123" had a vacancy for a page-boy, "Glasgow Man" for a photographer;

page-boy must not be over fourteen, photographer must not be under

twenty. "I am a little over fourteen, but I look less," wrote T.

Sandys to "123"; "I am a little under twenty," he wrote to "Glasgow

Man," "but I look more." His heart was in the work.

To be a political organizer! If "H and H," who advertised for one,

only knew how eagerly the undersigned desired to devote his life to

political organizing!

In answer to "Scholastic's" advertisement for janitor in a boys'

school, T. Sandys begged to submit his name for consideration.

Undoubtedly the noblest letter was the one applying for the

secretaryship of a charitable society, salary to begin at once, but

the candidate selected must deposit one hundred pounds. The

application was noble in its offer to make the work a labour of love,

and almost nobler in its argument that the hundred pounds was

unnecessary.

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

unique study of drapery.

Lastly, "Anon" wanted an amanuensis. "Salary," said "Anon," who seemed

to be a humourist, "salary large but uncertain." He added with equal

candour: "Drudgery great, but to an intelligent man the pickings may

be considerable." Pickings! Is there a finer word in the language? T.

Sandys had felt that he was particularly good at pickings. But

amanuensis? The thing was unknown to him; no one on the farm could

tell him what it was. But never mind; his heart was in it.

All this correspondence had produced one reply, the letter on which

Tommy's hand still rested. It was a brief note, signed "O.P. Pym," and

engaging Mr. Sandys on his own recommendation, "if he really felt

quite certain that his heart (treasure included) was in the work." So

far good, Tommy had thought when he received this answer, but there

was nothing in it to indicate the nature of the work, nothing to show

whether O.P. Pym was "Scholastic," or "123," or "Rex," or any other

advertiser in particular. Stop, there was a postscript: "I need not go

into details about your duties, as you assure me you are so well

acquainted with them, but before you join me please send (in writing)

a full statement of what you think they are."

There were delicate reasons why Mr. Sandys could not do that, but oh,

he was anxious to be done with farm labour, so he decided to pack and

risk it. The letter said plainly that he was engaged; what for he must

find out slyly when he came to London. So he had put his letter firmly

on Pym's table; but it was a staggerer to find that gentleman in

possession of the others.

One of these was Pym's by right; the remainder were a humourous gift

from the agent who was accustomed to sift the correspondence of his

clients. Pym had chuckled over them, and written a reply that he

flattered himself would stump the boy; then he had unexpectedly come

into funds (he found a forgotten check while searching his old pockets

for tobacco-crumbs), and in that glory T. Sandys escaped his memory.

Result, that they were now face to face.

A tiny red spot, not noticeable before, now appeared in Tommy's eyes.

It was never there except when he was determined to have his way. Pym,

my friend, yes, and everyone of you who is destined to challenge

Tommy, 'ware that red light!

"Well, which am I?" demanded Pym, almost amused, Tommy was so

obviously in a struggle with the problem.

The saucer and the blank pages told nothing. "Whichever you are," the

boy answered heavily, "it's not herding nor foddering cattle, and so

long as it's not that, I'll put my heart in it, and where the heart

is, there the treasure--"

He suddenly remembered that his host must be acquainted with the

sentiment.

Easy-going Pym laughed, then said irritably, "Of what use could a mere

boy be to me?"

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

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

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

Pym followed this reasoning, and said touchily, "Many a schoolmaster

has a red face."

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

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

"You forget you wrote to me as one person," replied Tommy. "So I

did. That was because I am the chemist; and I must ask you, Thomas,

for your certificate."

Tommy believed him this time, and Pym triumphantly poured himself a

glass of whisky, spilling some of it on his dressing-gown.

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

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

"If you had been the draper you would have wiped the drink off your

gown," continued Tommy, thoughtfully, "and if you had been 'Glasgow

Man' you would have sucked it off, and if you had been the charitable

society you wouldn't swear in company." He flung out his hand. "I'll

tell you who you are," he said sternly, "you're 'Anon.'"

Under this broadside Pym succumbed. He sat down feebly. "Right," he

said, with a humourous groan, "and I shall tell you who you are. I am

afraid you are my amanuensis!"

Tommy immediately whistled, a louder and more glorious note than

before.

"Don't be so cocky," cried Pym, in sudden rebellion. "You are only my

amanuensis if you can tell me what that is. If you can't--out you go!"

He had him at last! Not he!

"An amanuensis," said Tommy, calmly, "is one who writes to dictation.

Am I to bring in my box? It's at the door."

This made Pym sit down again. "You didn't know what an amanuensis was

when you answered my advertisement," he said.

"As soon as I got to London," Tommy answered, "I went into a

bookseller's shop, pretending I wanted to buy a dictionary, and I

looked the word up."

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

But it was now Tommy's turn to hesitate. "Have you noticed," he asked

awkwardly, "that I sometimes whistle?"

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

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

Pym had resumed his seat at the table and was once more toying with

his pen. "Open the door," he commanded, "and let me see what you have

brought with you."

Tommy obeyed gingerly, and then Pym gaped, for what the open door

revealed to him was a tiny roped box with a girl of twelve sitting on

it. She was dressed in some dull-coloured wincey, and looked cold and

patient and lonely, and as she saw the big man staring at her she

struggled in alarm to her feet, and could scarce stand on them. Tommy

was looking apprehensively from her to Pym.

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

"No," cried Tommy, in agony, "she's my sister, and we're orphans, and

did you think I could have the heart to leave Elspeth behind?" He took

her stoutly by the hand.

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

you, Tommy?"

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

But Pym would not have it. "Married!" he shouted. "Magnificent!" And

he dipped exultantly, for he had got his idea at last. Forgetting even

that he had an amanuensis, he wrote on and on and on.

"He smells o' drink," Elspeth whispered.

"All the better," replied Tommy, cheerily. "Make yourself at home,

Elspeth; he's the kind I can manage. Was there ever a kind I couldna

manage?" he whispered, top-heavy with conceit.

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

Tommy frowned.

CHAPTER II

THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE

Six years afterwards Tommy was a famous man, as I hope you do not need

to be told; but you may be wondering how it came about. The whole

question, in Pym's words, resolves itself into how the solemn little

devil got to know so much about women. It made the world marvel when

they learned his age, but no one was quite so staggered as Pym, who

had seen him daily for all those years, and been damning him for his

indifference to the sex during the greater part of them.

It began while he was still no more than an amanuensis, sitting with

his feet in the waste-paper basket, Pym dictating from the sofa, and

swearing when the words would not come unless he was perpendicular.

Among the duties of this amanuensis was to remember the name of the

heroine, her appearance, and other personal details; for Pym

constantly forgot them in the night, and he had to go searching back

through his pages for them, cursing her so horribly that Tommy signed

to Elspeth to retire to her tiny bedroom at the top of the house. He

was always most careful of Elspeth, and with the first pound he earned

he insured his life, leaving all to her, but told her nothing about

it, lest she should think it meant his early death. As she grew older

he also got good dull books for her from a library, and gave her a

piano on the hire system, and taught her many things about life, very

carefully selected from his own discoveries.

Elspeth out of the way, he could give Pym all the information wanted.

"Her name is Felicity," he would say at the right moment; "she has

curly brown hair in which the sun strays, and a blushing neck, and her

eyes are like blue lakes."

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

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

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

"You tell Percy's height in his stocking-soles, and when she reached

to his mouth and kissed him she had to stand on her tiptoes so to do."

Tommy said this in a most businesslike tone, but could not help

smacking his lips. He smacked them again when he had to write: "Have

no fear, little woman; I am by your side." Or, "What a sweet child you

are!"

Pym had probably fallen into the way of making the Percys revel in

such epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but this

delicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies,

went to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had some

narrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissed

her on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in,

little woman?" He came to himself with a start.

"I forgot," he said hurriedly, and got out of the room without telling

her what he had forgotten.

Pym's publishers knew their man, and their arrangement with him was

that he was paid on completion of the tale. But always before he

reached the middle he struck for what they called his honorarium; and

this troubled them, for the tale was appearing week by week as it was

written. If they were obdurate, he suddenly concluded his story in

such words as these:

"Several years have passed since these events took place, and the

scene changes to a lovely garden by the bank of old Father Thames. A

young man sits by the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as the scene

itself; for the storm has passed away, and Percy (for it is no other)

has found an anchorage. As he sits musing over the past, Felicity

steals out by the French window and puts her soft arms around his

neck. 'My little wife!' he murmurs. _The End--unless you pay up by

messenger._"

This last line, which was not meant for the world (but little would

Pym have cared though it had been printed), usually brought his

employers to their knees; and then, as Tommy advanced in experience,

came the pickings--for Pym, with money in his pockets, had important

engagements round the corner, and risked intrusting his amanuensis

with the writing of the next instalment, "all except the bang at the

end."

Smaller people, in Tommy's state of mind, would have hurried straight

to the love-passages; but he saw the danger, and forced his Pegasus

away from them. "Do your day's toil first," he may be conceived saying

to that animal, "and at evenfall I shall let you out to browse." So,

with this reward in front, he devoted many pages to the dreary

adventures of pretentious males, and even found a certain pleasure in

keeping the lady waiting. But as soon as he reached her he lost his

head again.

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

transport.

As the artist in him was stirred, great problems presented themselves;

for instance, in certain circumstances was "darling" or "little one"

the better phrase? "Darling" in solitary grandeur is more pregnant of

meaning than "little one," but "little" has a flavour of the

patronizing which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets over

such questions; but they were in his pocket when Pym or Elspeth opened

the door. It is wonderful how much you can conceal between the touch

on the handle and the opening of the door, if your heart is in it.

Despite this fine practice, however, he was the shyest of mankind in

the presence of women, and this shyness grew upon him with the years.

Was it because he never tried to uncork himself? Oh, no! It was about

this time that he, one day, put his arm round Clara, the servant--not

passionately, but with deliberation, as if he were making an

experiment with machinery. He then listened, as if to hear Clara

ticking. He wrote an admirable love-letter--warm, dignified,

sincere--to nobody in particular, and carried it about in his pocket

in readiness. But in love-making, as in the other arts, those do it

best who cannot tell how it is done; and he was always stricken with a

palsy when about to present that letter. It seemed that he was only

able to speak to ladies when they were not there. Well, if he could

not speak, he thought the more; he thought so profoundly that in time

the heroines of Pym ceased to thrill him.

This was because he had found out that they were not flesh and blood.

But he did not delight in his discovery: it horrified him; for what he

wanted was the old thrill. To make them human so that they could be

his little friends again--nothing less was called for. This meant

slaughter here and there of the great Pym's brain-work, and Tommy

tried to keep his hands off; but his heart was in it. In Pym's pages

the ladies were the most virtuous and proper of their sex (though

dreadfully persecuted), but he merely told you so at the beginning,

and now and again afterwards to fill up, and then allowed them to act

with what may be called rashness, so that the story did not really

suffer. Before Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. Out went this

because she would not have done it, and that because she could not

have done it. Fathers might now have taken a lesson from T. Sandys in

the upbringing of their daughters. He even sternly struck out the

diminutives. With a pen in his hand and woman in his head, he had such

noble thoughts that his tears of exaltation damped the pages as he

wrote, and the ladies must have been astounded as well as proud to see

what they were turning into.

That was Tommy with a pen in his hand and a handkerchief hard by; but

it was another Tommy who, when the finest bursts were over, sat back

in his chair and mused. The lady was consistent now, and he would

think about her, and think and think, until concentration, which is a

pair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her out of the pages to his side,

and then he and she sported in a way forbidden in the tale. While he

sat there with eyes riveted, he had her to dinner at a restaurant, and

took her up the river, and called her "little woman"; and when she

held up her mouth he said tantalizingly that she must wait until he

had finished his cigar. This queer delight enjoyed, back he popped her

into the story, where she was again the vehicle for such glorious

sentiments that Elspeth, to whom he read the best of them, feared he

was becoming too good to live.

In the meantime the great penny public were slowly growing restive,

and at last the two little round men called on Pym to complain that he

was falling off; and Pym turned them out of doors, and then sat down

heroically to do what he had not done for two decades--to read his

latest work.

"Elspeth, go upstairs to your room," whispered Tommy, and then he

folded his arms proudly. He should have been in a tremble, but

latterly he had often felt that he must burst if he did not soon read

some of his bits to Pym, more especially the passages about the

hereafter; also the opening of Chapter Seventeen.

At first Pym's only comment was, "It is the same old drivel as before;

what more can they want?"

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

he demanded.

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

"Is mine the first half? Where does yours begin?" "That is not

exactly what I mean," explained Tommy, in a glow, but backing a

little; "you wrote that chapter first, and then I--I--"

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

speechless with fury.

"I tried to keep my hand off," Tommy said, with dignity, "but the

thing had to be done, and they are human now."

"Human! who wants them to be human? The fiends seize you, boy! you

have even been tinkering with my heroine's personal appearance; what

is this you have been doing to her nose?"

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

"I like them down," roared Pym.

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

"Where," cried Pym, turning over the leaves in a panic, "where is the

scene in the burning house?"

"It's out," Tommy explained, "but there is a chapter in its place

about--it's mostly about the beauty of the soul being everything, and

mere physical beauty nothing. Oh, Mr. Pym, sit down and let me read it

to you."

But Pym read it, and a great deal more, for himself. No wonder he

stormed, for the impossible had been made not only consistent, but

unreadable. The plot was lost for chapters. The characters no longer

did anything, and then went and did something else: you were told

instead how they did it. You were not allowed to make up your own mind

about them: you had to listen to the mind of T. Sandys; he described

and he analyzed; the road he had tried to clear through the thicket

was impassable for chips.

"A few more weeks of this," said Pym, "and we should all three be

turned out into the streets."

Tommy went to bed in an agony of mortification, but presently to his

side came Pym.

"Where did you copy this from?" he asked. "'It is when we are thinking

of those we love that our noblest thoughts come to us, and the more

worthy they are of our love the nobler the thought; hence it is that

no one has done the greatest work who did not love God.'"

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

"Well, it has nothing to do with the story, and so is only a blot on

it, and I have no doubt the thing has been said much better before.

Still, I suppose it is true."

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

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

"And yet," Tommy said, puzzled, "I've known noble thoughts come to me

when I was listening to a brass band."

Pym chuckled. "Funny things, noble thoughts," he agreed. He read

another passage: "'It was the last half-hour of day when I was

admitted, with several others, to look upon my friend's dead face. A

handkerchief had been laid over it. I raised the handkerchief. I know

not what the others were thinking, but the last time we met he had

told me something, it was not much--only that no woman had ever kissed

him. It seemed to me that, as I gazed, the wistfulness came back to

his face. I whispered to a woman who was present, and stooping over

him, she was about to--but her eyes were dry, and I stopped her. The

handkerchief was replaced, and all left the room save myself. Again I

raised the handkerchief. I cannot tell you how innocent he looked.'"

"Who was he?" asked Pym.

"Nobody," said Tommy, with some awe; "it just came to me. Do you

notice how simple the wording is? It took me some time to make it so

simple."

"You are just nineteen, I think?"

"Yes."

Pym looked at him wonderingly.

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

He also said: "And it is possible you may find the treasure you are

always talking about. Don't jump to the ceiling, my friend, because I

say that. I was once after the treasure, myself; and you can see

whether I found it."

From about that time, on the chances that this mysterious treasure

might spring up in the form of a new kind of flower, Pym zealously

cultivated the ground, and Tommy had an industrious time of it. He was

taken off his stories, which at once regained their elasticity, and

put on to exercises.

"If you have nothing to say on the subject, say nothing," was one of

the new rules, which few would have expected from Pym. Another was:

"As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person

has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man."

"Without concentration, Thomas, you are lost; concentrate, though your

coat-tails be on fire.

"Try your hand at description, and when you have done chortling over

the result, reduce the whole by half without missing anything out.

"Analyze your characters and their motives at the prodigious length in

which you revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analysis out. It is for

your own guidance, not the reader's.

"'I have often noticed,' you are always saying. The story has nothing

to do with you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will be your stiffest

job.

"Stop preaching. It seems to me the pulpit is where you should look

for the treasure. Nineteen, and you are already as didactic as

seventy."

And so on. Over his exercises Tommy was now engrossed for so long a

period that, as he sits there, you may observe his legs slowly

lengthening and the coming of his beard. No, his legs lengthened as he

sat with his feet in the basket; but I feel sure that his beard burst

through prematurely some night when he was thinking too hard about the

ladies.

There were no ladies in the exercises, for, despite their altercation

about noses, Pym knew that on this subject Tommy's mind was a blank.

But he recognized the sex's importance, and becoming possessed once

more of a black coat, marched his pupil into the somewhat shoddy

drawing-rooms that were still open to him, and there ordered Tommy to

be fascinated for his future good. But it was as it had always been.

Tommy sat white and speechless and apparently bored; could not even

say, "You sing with so much expression!" when the lady at the

pianoforte had finished.

"Shyness I could pardon," the exasperated Pym would roar; "but want of

interest is almost immoral. At your age the blood would have been

coursing through my veins. Love! You are incapable of it. There is not

a drop of sentiment in your frozen carcass."

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

about women.

"If you can't," said Pym, "all is over with you. An artist without

sentiment is a painter without colours. Young man, I fear you are

doomed."

And Tommy believed him, and quaked. He had the most gallant struggles

with himself. He even set his teeth and joined a dancing-class; though

neither Pym nor Elspeth knew of it, and it never showed afterwards in

his legs. In appearance he was now beginning to be the Sandys of the

photographs: a little over the middle height and rather heavily built;

nothing to make you uncomfortable until you saw his face. That solemn

countenance never responded when he laughed, and stood coldly by when

he was on fire; he might have winked for an eternity, and still the

onlooker must have thought himself mistaken. In his boyhood the mask

had descended scarce below his mouth, for there was a dimple in the

chin to put you at ease; but now the short brown beard had come, and

he was for ever hidden from the world.

He had the dandy's tastes for superb neckties, velvet jackets, and he

got the ties instead of dining; he panted for the jacket, knew all the

shop-windows it was in, but for years denied himself, with a moan, so

that he might buy pretty things for Elspeth. When eventually he got

it, Pym's friends ridiculed him. When he saw how ill his face matched

it he ridiculed himself. Often when Tommy was feeling that now at last

the ladies must come to heel, he saw his face suddenly in a mirror,

and all the spirit went out of him. But still he clung to his velvet

jacket.

I see him in it, stalking through the terrible dances, a heroic figure

at last. He shuddered every time he found himself on one leg; he got

sternly into everybody's way; he was the butt of the little noodle of

an instructor. All the social tortures he endured grimly, in the hope

that at last the cork would come out. Then, though there were all

kinds of girls in the class, merry, sentimental, practical,

coquettish, prudes, there was no kind, he felt, whose heart he could

not touch. In love-making, as in the favourite Thrums game of the

dambrod, there are sixty-one openings, and he knew them all. Yet at

the last dance, as at the first, the universal opinion of his partners

(shop-girls, mostly, from the large millinery establishments, who had

to fly like Cinderellas when the clock struck a certain hour) was that

he kept himself to himself, and they were too much the lady to make up

to a gentleman who so obviously did not want them.

Pym encouraged his friends to jeer at Tommy's want of interest in the

sex, thinking it a way of goading him to action. One evening, the

bottles circulating, they mentioned one Dolly, goddess at some bar, as

a fit instructress for him. Coarse pleasantries passed, but for a time

he writhed in silence, then burst upon them indignantly for their

unmanly smirching of a woman's character, and swept out, leaving them

a little ashamed. That was very like Tommy.

But presently a desire came over him to see this girl, and it came

because they had hinted such dark things about her. That was like him

also.

There was probably no harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right to

question it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, and

stretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change with

disdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of the

minor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the only

one who could have given an artistic justification for it.

This one was a bearded stranger who, when he knew that Pym and his

friends were elsewhere, would enter the bar with a cigar in his mouth,

and ask for a whisky-and-water, which was heroism again, for smoking

was ever detestable to him, and whisky more offensive than quinine.

But these things are expected of you, and by asking for the whisky you

get into talk with Dolly; that is to say, you tell her several times

what you want, and when she has served every other body you get it.

The commercial must be served first; in the barroom he blocks the way

like royalty in the street. There is a crown for us all somewhere.

Dolly seldom heard the bearded one's "good-evening"; she could not

possibly have heard the "dear," for though it was there, it remained

behind his teeth. She knew him only as the stiff man who got separated

from his glass without complaining, and at first she put this down to

forgetfulness, and did nothing, so that he could go away without

drinking; but by and by, wherever he left his tumbler, cunningly

concealed behind a water-bottle, or temptingly in front of a

commercial, she restored it to him, and there was a twinkle in her

eye.

"You little rogue, so you see through me!" Surely it was an easy thing

to say; but what he did say was "Thank you." Then to himself he said,

"Ass, ass, ass!"

Sitting on the padded seat that ran the length of the room, and

surreptitiously breaking his cigar against the cushions to help it on

its way to an end, he brought his intellect to bear on Dolly at a

distance, and soon had a better knowledge of her than could be claimed

by those who had Dollied her for years. He also wove romances about

her, some of them of too lively a character, and others so noble and

sad and beautiful that the tears came to his eyes, and Dolly thought

he had been drinking. He could not have said whether he would prefer

her to be good or bad.

These were but his leisure moments, for during the long working hours

he was still at the exercises, toiling fondly, and right willing to

tear himself asunder to get at the trick of writing. So he passed

from exercises to the grand experiment.

It was to be a tale, for there, they had taken for granted, lay the

treasure. Pym was most considerate at this time, and mentioned woman

with an apology.

"I have kept away from them in the exercises," he said in effect,

"because it would have been useless (as well as cruel) to force you to

labour on a subject so uncongenial to you; and for the same reason I

have decided that it is to be a tale of adventure, in which the

heroine need be little more than a beautiful sack of coals which your

cavalier carries about with him on his left shoulder. I am afraid we

must have her to that extent, Thomas, but I am not asking much of you;

dump her down as often as you like."

And Thomas did his dogged best, the red light in his eye; though he

had not, and never could have had, the smallest instinct for

story-writing, he knew to the finger-tips how it is done; but for ever

he would have gone on breaking all the rules of the game. How he

wrestled with himself! Sublime thoughts came to him (nearly all about

that girl), and he drove them away, for he knew they beat only against

the march of his story, and, whatever befall, the story must march.

Relentlessly he followed in the track of his men, pushing the dreary

dogs on to deeds of valour. He tried making the lady human, and then

she would not march; she sat still, and he talked about her; he

dumped her down, and soon he was yawning. This weariness was what

alarmed him most, for well he understood that there could be no

treasure where the work was not engrossing play, and he doubted no

more than Pym that for him the treasure was in the tale or nowhere.

Had he not been sharpening his tools in this belief for years? Strange

to reflect now that all the time he was hacking and sweating at that

novel (the last he ever attempted) it was only marching towards the

waste-paper basket!

He had a fine capacity, as has been hinted, for self-deception, and in

time, of course, he found a way of dodging the disquieting truth.

This, equally of course, was by yielding to his impulses. He allowed

himself an hour a day, when Pym was absent, in which he wrote the

story as it seemed to want to write itself, and then he cut this piece

out, which could be done quite easily, as it consisted only of

moralizings. Thus was his day brightened, and with this relaxation to

look forward to be plodded on at his proper work, delving so hard that

he could avoid asking himself why he was still delving. What shall we

say? He was digging for the treasure in an orchard, and every now and

again he came out of his hole to pluck an apple; but though the apple

was so sweet to the mouth, it never struck him that the treasure

might be growing overhead. At first he destroyed the fruit of his

stolen hour, and even after he took to carrying it about fondly in his

pocket, and to rewriting it in a splendid new form that had come to

him just as he was stepping into bed, he continued to conceal it from

his overseer's eyes. And still he thought all was over with him when

Pym said the story did not march.

"It is a dead thing," Pym would roar, flinging down the

manuscript,--"a dead thing because the stakes your man is playing for,

a woman's love, is less than a wooden counter to you. You are a fine

piece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, but you are a watch that

won't go because you are not wound up. Nobody can wind the artist up

except a chit of a girl; and how you are ever to get one to take pity

on you, only the gods who look after men with a want can tell.

"It becomes more impenetrable every day," he said. "No use your

sitting there tearing yourself to bits. Out into the street with you!

I suspend these sittings until you can tell me you have kissed a

girl."

He was still saying this sort of thing when the famous "Letters" were

published--T. Sandys, author. "Letters to a Young Man About to be

Married" was the full title, and another almost as applicable would

have been "Bits Cut Out of a Story because They Prevented its

Marching." If you have any memory you do not need to be told how that

splendid study, so ennobling, so penetrating, of woman at her best,

took the town. Tommy woke a famous man, and, except Elspeth, no one

was more pleased than big-hearted, hopeless, bleary Pym.

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

"A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have her

be," says the "Letters"; and "Oh," said woman everywhere, "if all men

had the same idea of us as Mr. Sandys!"

"To meet Mr. T. Sandys." Leaders of society wrote it on their

invitation cards. Their daughters, athirst for a new sensation,

thrilled at the thought, "Will he talk to us as nobly as he writes?"

And oh, how willing he was to do it, especially if their noses were

slightly tilted!

CHAPTER III

SANDYS ON WOMAN

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

It is the commonest question asked at the circulating library by

dainty ladies just out of the carriage; and the librarian, after

looking them over, can usually tell. In the days we have now to speak

of, however, he answered, without looking them over:

"Sandys's 'Letters,'"

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

"I regret to find that it is out."

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

pouted.

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

A small and very timid girl of eighteen, with a neat figure that

shrank from observation, although it was already aware that it looked

best in gray, was there to drink in this music, and carried it home in

her heart. She was Elspeth, and that dear heart was almost too full

at this time. I hesitate whether to tell or to conceal how it even

created a disturbance in no less a place than the House of Commons.

She was there with Mrs. Jerry, and the thing was recorded in the

papers of the period in these blasting words: "The Home Secretary was

understood to be quoting a passage from 'Letters to a Young Man,' but

we failed to catch its drift, owing to an unseemly interruption from

the ladies' gallery."

"But what was it you cried out?" Tommy asked Elspeth, when she thought

she had told him everything. (Like all true women, she always began in

the middle.)

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

Thus, owing to Elspeth's behaviour, it can never be known which was

the passage quoted in the House; but we may be sure of one thing--that

it did the House good. That book did everybody good. Even Pym could

only throw off its beneficent effects by a tremendous effort, and

young men about to be married used to ask at the bookshops, not for

the "Letters," but simply for "Sandys on Woman," acknowledging Tommy

as the authority on the subject, like Mill on Jurisprudence, or

Thomson and Tait on the Differential Calculus. Controversies raged

about it. Some thought he asked too much of man, some thought he saw

too much in women; there was a fear that young people, knowing at last

how far short they fell of what they ought to be, might shrink from

the matrimony that must expose them to each other, now that they had

Sandys to guide them, and the persons who had simply married and

risked it (and it was astounding what a number of them there proved to

be) wrote to the papers suggesting that he might yield a little in the

next edition. But Sandys remained firm.

At first they took for granted that he was a very aged gentleman; he

had, indeed, hinted at this in the text; and when the truth came out

("And just fancy, he is not even married!") the enthusiasm was

doubled. "Not engaged!" they cried. "Don't tell that to me. No

unmarried man could have written such a eulogy of marriage without

being on the brink of it." Perhaps she was dead? It ran through the

town that she was dead. Some knew which cemetery.

The very first lady Mr. Sandys ever took in to dinner mentioned this

rumour to him, not with vulgar curiosity, but delicately, with a hint

of sympathy in waiting, and it must be remembered, in fairness to

Tommy, that all artists love sympathy. This sympathy uncorked him, and

our Tommy could flow comparatively freely at last. Observe the

delicious change.

"Has that story got abroad?" he said simply. "The matter is one which,

I need not say, I have never mentioned to a soul."

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

If Tommy had been an expert he might have turned the conversation to

brighter topics, but he was not; there had already been long pauses,

and in dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling on any faggot

rather than let the fire go out. "It is odd that I should be talking

of it now," he said musingly.

"I suppose," she said gently, to bring him out of the reverie into

which he had sunk, "I suppose it happened some time ago?"

"Long, long ago," he answered. (Having written as an aged person, he

often found difficulty in remembering suddenly that he was two and

twenty.)

"But you are still a very young man."

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

"Was she beautiful?"

"She was beautiful to my eyes."

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

"Ah me!" said Tommy.

His confidante was burning to know more, and hoping they were being

observed across the table; but she was a kind, sentimental creature,

though stout, or because of it, and she said, "I am so afraid that my

questions pain you."

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

"Was it very sudden?"

"Fever."

"Ah! but I meant your attachment."

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

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

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

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

name?"

"Felicity," he said, with emotion. Presently he looked up. "It is very

strange to me," he said wonderingly, "to find myself saying these

things to you who an hour ago were a complete stranger to me. But you

are not like other women."

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

"That," he said, "must be why I tell you what I have never told to

another human being. How mysterious are the workings of the heart!"

"Mr. Sandys," said the lady, quite carried away, "no words of mine can

convey to you the pride with which I hear you say that. Be assured

that I shall respect your confidences." She missed his next remark

because she was wondering whether she dare ask him to come to dinner

on the twenty-fifth, and then the ladies had to retire, and by the

time he rejoined her he was as tongue-tied as at the beginning. The

cork had not been extracted; it had been knocked into the bottle,

where it still often barred the way, and there was always, as we shall

see, a flavour of it in the wine.

"You will get over it yet; the summer and the flowers will come to you

again," she managed to whisper to him kind-heartedly, as she was

going.

"Thank you," he said, with that inscrutable face. It was far from his

design to play a part. He had, indeed, had no design at all, but an

opportunity for sentiment having presented itself, his mouth had

opened as at a cherry. He did not laugh afterwards, even when he

reflected how unexpectedly Felicity had come into his life; he thought

of her rather with affectionate regard, and pictured her as a tall,

slim girl in white. When he took a tall, slim girl in white in to

dinner, he could not help saying huskily:

"You remind me of one who was a very dear friend of mine. I was much

startled when you came into the room."

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

"Fever," he said.

"You think I am like her in appearance?"

"In every way," he said dreamily; "the same sweet--pardon me, but it

is very remarkable. Even the tones of the voice are the same. I

suppose I ought not to ask your age?"

"I shall be twenty-one in August." "She would have been twenty-one

in August had she lived," Tommy said with fervour. "My dear young

lady--"

This was the aged gentleman again, but she did not wince; he soon

found out that they expect authors to say the oddest things, and this

proved to be a great help to him.

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

"That," she said, "is only because I resemble your friend outwardly.

The real me (she was a bit of philosopher also) you cannot know at

all."

He smiled sadly. "Has it ever struck you," he asked, "that you are

very unlike other women?"

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

Almost before he knew how it came about, he was on terms of very

pleasant sentiment with this girl, for they now shared between them a

secret that he had confided to no other. His face, which had been so

much against him hitherto, was at last in his favour; it showed so

plainly that when he looked at her more softly or held her hand longer

than is customary, he was really thinking of that other of whom she

was the image. Or if it did not precisely show that, it suggested

something or other of that nature which did just as well. There was a

sweet something between them which brought them together and also

kept them apart; it allowed them to go a certain length, while it was

also a reason why they could never, never exceed that distance; and

this was an ideal state for Tommy, who could be most loyal and tender

so long as it was understood that he meant nothing in particular. She

was the right kind of girl, too, and admired him the more (and perhaps

went a step further) because he remained so true to Felicity's memory.

You must not think him calculating and cold-blooded, for nothing could

be less true to the fact. When not engaged, indeed, on his new work,

he might waste some time planning scenes with exquisite ladies, in

which he sparkled or had a hidden sorrow (he cared not which); but

these scenes seldom came to life. He preferred very pretty girls to be

rather stupid (oh, the artistic instinct of the man!), but instead of

keeping them stupid, as he wanted to do, he found himself trying to

improve their minds. They screwed up their noses in the effort.

Meaning to thrill the celebrated beauty who had been specially invited

to meet him, he devoted himself to a plain woman for whose plainness a

sudden pity had mastered him (for, like all true worshippers of beauty

in women, he always showed best in the presence of plain ones). With

the intention of being a gallant knight to Lady I-Won't-Tell-the-Name,

a whim of the moment made him so stiff to her that she ultimately

asked the reason; and such a charmingly sad reason presented itself to

him that she immediately invited him to her riverside party on

Thursday week. He had the conversations and incidents for that party

ready long before the day arrived; he altered them and polished them

as other young gentlemen in the same circumstances overhaul their

boating costumes; but when he joined the party there was among them

the children's governess, and seeing her slighted, his blood boiled,

and he was her attendant for the afternoon.

Elspeth was not at this pleasant jink in high life. She had been

invited, but her ladyship had once let Tommy kiss her hand for the

first and last time, so he decided sternly that this was no place for

Elspeth. When temptation was nigh, he first locked Elspeth up, and

then walked into it.

With two in every three women he was still as shy as ever, but the

third he escorted triumphantly to the conservatory. She did no harm to

his work--rather sent him back to it refreshed. It was as if he were

shooting the sentiment which other young men get rid of more gradually

by beginning earlier, and there were such accumulations of it that I

don't know whether he ever made up on them. Punishment sought him in

the night, when he dreamed constantly that he was married--to whom

scarcely mattered; he saw himself coming out of a church a married

man, and the fright woke him up. But with the daylight came again his

talent for dodging thoughts that were lying in wait, and he yielded as

recklessly as before to every sentimental impulse. As illustration,

take his humourous passage with Mrs. Jerry. Geraldine Something was

her name, but her friends called her Mrs. Jerry.

She was a wealthy widow, buxom, not a day over thirty when she was

merry, which might be at inappropriate moments, as immediately after

she had expressed a desire to lead the higher life. "But I have a

theory, my dear," she said solemnly to Elspeth, "that no woman is able

to do it who cannot see her own nose without the help of a mirror."

She had taken a great fancy to Elspeth, and made many engagements with

her, and kept some of them, and the understanding was that she

apprenticed herself to Tommy through Elspeth, he being too terrible to

face by himself, or, as Mrs. Jerry expressed it, "all nose." So Tommy

had seen very little of her, and thought less, until one day he called

by passionate request to sign her birthday-book, and heard himself

proposing to her instead!

For one thing, it was twilight, and she had forgotten to ring for the

lamps. That might have been enough, but there was more: she read to

him part of a letter in which her hand was solicited in marriage.

"And, for the life of me," said Mrs. Jerry, almost in tears, "I cannot

decide whether to say yes or no."

This put Tommy in a most awkward position. There are probably men who

could have got out of it without proposing; but to him there seemed at

the moment no other way open. The letter complicated matters also by

beginning "Dear Jerry," and saying "little Jerry" further

on--expressions which stirred him strangely.

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

little.

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

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

to himself.)

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

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

I not?"

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

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

"You do not even understand!" he cried, and he was also looking

longingly at his hat.

"Understand what?"

"Jerry," he said, and tried to stop himself, with the result that he

added, "dear little Jerry!" ("What am I doing!" he groaned.)

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

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

am lost!")

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Jerry; and then, on reflection, she became

indignant. "I would not have believed it of you," she said scornfully.

"Is it my money, or what? I am not at all clever, so you must tell

me."

With Tommy, of course, it was not her money. Except when he had

Elspeth to consider, he was as much a Quixote about money as Pym

himself; and at no moment of his life was he a snob.

"I am sorry you should think so meanly of me," he said with dignity,

lifting his hat; and he would have got away then (which, when you come

to think of it, was what he wanted) had he been able to resist an

impulse to heave a broken-hearted sigh at the door.

"Don't go yet, Mr. Sandys," she begged. "I may have been hasty. And

yet--why, we are merely acquaintances!"

He had meant to be very careful now, but that word sent him off again.

"Acquaintances!" he cried. "No, we were never that."

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

"You noticed it!" he said eagerly. "At least, you do me that justice.

Oh, how I tried to avoid you!"

"It was because--"

"Alas!"

She was touched, of course, but still puzzled. "We know so little of

each other," she said.

"I see," he replied, "that you know me very little, Mrs. Jerry; but

you--oh, Jerry, Jerry! I know you as no other man has ever known you!"

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

Proof! She should not have asked Tommy for proof. "I know," he cried,

"how unlike all other women you are. To the world you are like the

rest, but in your heart you know that you are different; you know it,

and I know it, and no other person knows it."

Yes, Mrs. Jerry knew it, and had often marvelled over it in the

seclusion of her boudoir; but that another should have found it out

was strange and almost terrifying.

"I know you love me now," she said softly. "Only love could have shown

you that. But--oh, let me go away for a minute to think!" And she ran

out of the room.

Other suitors have been left for a space in Tommy's state of doubt,

but never, it may be hoped, with the same emotions. Oh, heavens! if

she should accept him! He saw Elspeth sickening and dying of the news.

His guardian angel, however, was very good to Tommy at this time; or

perhaps, like cannibals with their prisoner, the god of sentiment (who

has a tail) was fattening him for a future feast; and Mrs. Jerry's

answer was that it could never be.

Tommy bowed his head.

But she hoped he would let her be his very dear friend. It would be

the proudest recollection of her life that Mr. Sandys had entertained

such feelings for her.

Nothing could have been better, and he should have found difficulty in

concealing his delight; but this strange Tommy was really feeling his

part again. It was an unforced tear that came to his eye. Quite

naturally he looked long and wistfully at her.

"Jerry, Jerry!" he articulated huskily, and whatever the words mean in

these circumstances he really meant; then he put his lips to her hand

for the first and last time, and so was gone, broken but brave. He was

in splendid fettle for writing that evening. Wild animals sleep after

gorging, but it sent this monster, refreshed, to his work.

Nevertheless, the incident gave him some uneasy reflections. Was he,

indeed, a monster? was one that he could dodge, as yet; but suppose

Mrs. Jerry told his dear Elspeth of what had happened? She had said

that she would not, but a secret in Mrs. Jerry's breast was like her

pug in her arms, always kicking to get free. "Elspeth," said Tommy,

"what do you say to going north and having a sight of Thrums again?"

He knew what she would say. They had been talking for years of going

back; it was the great day that all her correspondence with old

friends in Thrums looked forward to.

"They made little of you, Tommy," she said, "when we left; but I'm

thinking they will all be at their windows when you go back."

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

by the hand again."

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

that moment.

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

"And Ailie."

And then came an awkward pause, for they were both thinking of that

independent girl called Grizel. She was seldom discussed. Tommy was

oddly shy about mentioning her name; he would have preferred Elspeth

to mention it: and Elspeth had misgivings that this was so, with the

result that neither could say "Grizel" without wondering what was in

the other's mind. Tommy had written twice to Grizel, the first time

unknown to Elspeth, but that was in the days when the ladies of the

penny numbers were disturbing him, and, against his better judgment

(for well he knew she would never stand it), he had begun his letter

with these mad words: "Dear Little Woman." She did not answer this,

but soon afterwards she wrote to Elspeth, and he was not mentioned in

the letter proper, but it carried a sting in its tail. "P.S.," it said

"How is Sentimental Tommy?"

None but a fiend in human shape could have written thus, and Elspeth

put her protecting arms round her brother. "Now we know what Grizel

is," she said. "I am done with her now."

But when Tommy had got back his wind he said nobly: "I'll call her no

names. If this is how she likes to repay me for--for all my

kindnesses, let her. But, Elspeth, if I have the chance, I shall go on

being good to her just the same."

Elspeth adored him for it, but Grizel would have stamped had she

known. He had that comfort.

The second letter he never posted. It was written a few months before

he became a celebrity, and had very fine things indeed in it, for old

Dr. McQueen, Grizel's dear friend, had just died at his post, and it

was a letter of condolence. While Tommy wrote it he was in a quiver of

genuine emotion, as he was very pleased to feel, and it had a

specially satisfying bit about death, and the world never being the

same again. He knew it was good, but he did not send it to her, for no

reason I can discover save that postscripts jarred on him.

CHAPTER IV

GRIZEL OF THE CROOKED SMILE

To expose Tommy for what he was, to appear to be scrupulously fair to

him so that I might really damage him the more, that is what I set out

to do in this book, and always when he seemed to be finding a way of

getting round me (as I had a secret dread he might do) I was to

remember Grizel and be obdurate. But if I have so far got past some of

his virtues without even mentioning them (and I have), I know how many

opportunities for discrediting him have been missed, and that would

not greatly matter, there are so many more to come, if Grizel were on

my side. But she is not; throughout those first chapters a voice has

been crying to me, "Take care; if you hurt him you will hurt me"; and

I know it to be the voice of Grizel, and I seem to see her, rocking

her arms as she used to rock them when excited in the days of her

innocent childhood. "Don't, don't, don't!" she cried at every cruel

word I gave him, and she, to whom it was ever such agony to weep,

dropped a tear upon each word, so that they were obliterated; and

"Surely I knew him best," she said, "and I always loved him"; and she

stood there defending him, with her hand on her heart to conceal the

gaping wound that Tommy had made.

Well, if Grizel had always loved him there was surely something fine

and rare about Tommy. But what was it, Grizel? Why did you always love

him, you who saw into him so well and demanded so much of men? When I

ask that question the spirit that hovers round my desk to protect

Tommy from me rocks her arms mournfully, as if she did not know the

answer; it is only when I seem to see her as she so often was in life,

before she got that wound and after, bending over some little child

and looking up radiant, that I think I suddenly know why she always

loved Tommy. It was because he had such need of her.

I don't know whether you remember, but there were once some children

who played at Jacobites in the Thrums Den under Tommy's leadership.

Elspeth, of course, was one of them, and there were Corp Shiach, and

Gavinia, and lastly, there was Grizel. Had Tommy's parents been alive

she would not have been allowed to join, for she was a painted lady's

child; but Tommy insisted on having her, and Grizel thought it was

just sweet of him. He also chatted with her in public places, as if

she were a respectable character; and oh, how she longed to be

respectable! but, on the other hand, he was the first to point out how

superbly he was behaving, and his ways were masterful, so the

independent girl would not be captain's wife; if he said she was

captain's wife he had to apologize, and if he merely looked it he had

to apologize just the same.

One night the Painted Lady died in the Den, and then it would have

gone hard with the lonely girl had not Dr. McQueen made her his little

housekeeper, not out of pity, he vowed (she was so anxious to be told

that), but because he was an old bachelor sorely in need of someone to

take care of him. And how she took care of him! But though she was so

happy now, she knew that she must be very careful, for there was

something in her blood that might waken and prevent her being a good

woman. She thought it would be sweet to be good.

She told all this to Tommy, and he was profoundly interested, and

consulted a wise man, whose advice was that when she grew up she

should be wary of any man whom she liked and mistrusted in one breath.

Meaning to do her a service, Tommy communicated this to her; and then,

what do you think? Grizel would have no more dealings with him! By and

by the gods, in a sportive mood, sent him to labour on a farm,

whence, as we have seen, he found a way to London, and while he was

growing into a man Grizel became a woman. At the time of the doctor's

death she was nineteen, tall and graceful, and very dark and pale.

When the winds of the day flushed her cheek she was beautiful; but it

was a beauty that hid the mystery of her face. The sun made her merry,

but she looked more noble when it had set; then her pallor shone with

a soft, radiant light, as though the mystery and sadness and serenity

of the moon were in it. The full beauty of Grizel came out only at

night, like the stars.

I had made up my mind that when the time came to describe Grizel's

mere outward appearance I should refuse her that word "beautiful"

because of her tilted nose; but now that the time has come, I wonder

at myself. Probably when I am chapters ahead I shall return to this

one and strike out the word "beautiful," and then, as likely as not, I

shall come back afterwards and put it in again. Whether it will be

there at the end, God knows. Her eyes, at least, were beautiful. They

were unusually far apart, and let you look straight into them, and

never quivered; they were such clear, gray, searching eyes, they

seemed always to be asking for the truth. And she had an adorable

mouth. In repose it was, perhaps, hard, because it shut so decisively;

but often it screwed up provokingly at one side, as when she smiled,

or was sorry, or for no particular reason; for she seemed unable to

control this vagary, which was perhaps a little bit of babyhood that

had forgotten to grow up with the rest of her. At those moments the

essence of all that was characteristic and delicious about her seemed

to have run to her mouth; so that to kiss Grizel on her crooked smile

would have been to kiss the whole of her at once. She had a quaint way

of nodding her head at you when she was talking. It made you forget

what she was saying, though it was really meant to have precisely the

opposite effect. Her voice was rich, with many inflections. When she

had much to say it gurgled like a stream in a hurry; but its cooing

note was best worth remembering at the end of the day. There were

times when she looked like a boy. Her almost gallant bearing, the

poise of her head, her noble frankness--they all had something in them

of a princely boy who had never known fear.

I have no wish to hide her defects; I would rather linger over them,

because they were part of Grizel, and I am sorry to see them go one by

one. Thrums had not taken her to its heart. She was a proud-purse,

they said, meaning that she had a haughty walk. Her sense of justice

was too great. She scorned frailties that she should have pitied. (How

strange to think that there was a time when pity was not the feeling

that leaped to Grizel's bosom first!) She did not care for study. She

learned French and the pianoforte to please the doctor; but she

preferred to be sewing or dusting. When she might have been reading,

she was perhaps making for herself one of those costumes that annoyed

every lady of Thrums who employed a dressmaker; or, more probably, it

was a delicious garment for a baby; for as soon as Grizel heard that

there was a new baby anywhere, all her intellect deserted her, and she

became a slave. Books often irritated her because she disagreed with

the author; and it was a torment to her to find other people holding

to their views when she was so certain that hers were right. In church

she sometimes rocked her arms; and the old doctor by her side knew

that it was because she could not get up and contradict the minister.

She was, I presume, the only young lady who ever dared to say that she

hated Sunday because there was so much sitting still in it.

Sitting still did not suit Grizel. At all other times she was happy;

but then her mind wandered back to the thoughts that had lived too

closely with her in the old days, and she was troubled. What woke her

from these reveries was probably the doctor's hand placed very

tenderly on her shoulder, and then she would start, and wonder how

long he had been watching her, and what were the grave thoughts

behind his cheerful face; for the doctor never looked more cheerful

than when he was drawing Grizel away from the ugly past, and he talked

to her as if he had noticed nothing; but after he went upstairs he

would pace his bedroom for a long time; and Grizel listened, and knew

that he was thinking about her. Then, perhaps, she would run up to

him, and put her arms around his neck. These scenes brought the doctor

and Grizel very close together; but they became rarer as she grew up,

and then for once that she was troubled she was a hundred times

irresponsible with glee, and "Oh, you dearest, darlingest," she would

cry to him, "I must dance,--I must, I must!--though it is a fast-day;

and you must dance with your mother this instant--I am so happy, so

happy!" "Mother" was his nickname for her, and she delighted in the

word. She lorded it over him as if he were her troublesome boy.

How could she be other than glorious when there was so much to do? The

work inside the house she made for herself, and outside the doctor

made it for her. At last he had found for nurse a woman who could

follow his instructions literally, who understood that if he said five

o'clock for the medicine the chap of six would not do as well, who did

not in her heart despise the thermometer, and who resolutely prevented

the patient from skipping out of bed to change her pillow-slips

because the minister was expected. Such tyranny enraged every sufferer

who had been ill before and got better; but what they chiefly

complained of to the doctor (and he agreed with a humourous sigh) was

her masterfulness about fresh air and cold water. Windows were opened

that had never been opened before (they yielded to her pressure with a

groan); and as for cold water, it might have been said that a bath

followed her wherever she went--not, mark me, for putting your hands

and face in, not even for your feet; but in you must go, the whole of

you, "as if," they said indignantly, "there was something the matter

with our skin."

She could not gossip, not even with the doctor, who liked it of an

evening when he had got into his carpet shoes. There was no use

telling her a secret, for she kept it to herself for evermore. She had

ideas about how men should serve a woman, even the humblest, that made

the men gaze with wonder, and the women (curiously enough) with

irritation. Her greatest scorn was for girls who made themselves cheap

with men; and she could not hide it. It was a physical pain to Grizel

to hide her feelings; they popped out in her face, if not in words,

and were always in advance of her self-control. To the doctor this

impulsiveness was pathetic; he loved her for it, but it sometimes

made him uneasy.

He died in the scarlet-fever year. "I'm smitten," he suddenly said at

a bedside; and a week afterwards he was gone.

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

dying.

She pressed his hand. She knew to what he was referring. "Yes," she

said, "I should love you to speak of it now."

"You and I have always fought shy of it," he said, "making a pretence

that it had altogether passed away. I thought that was best for you."

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

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

me."

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

"Grizel, has it passed away altogether now?"

Her grip upon his hand did not tighten in the least. "Yes," she could

say honestly, "it has altogether passed away."

"And you have no more fear?"

"No, none."

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

"I know what you are thinking of," she said, when he did not speak.

"You are thinking of the haunted little girl you rescued seven years

ago."

"No," he answered; "I was thanking God for the brave, wholesome woman

she has grown into; and for something else, Grizel--for letting me

live to see it."

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

She was a strange girl, and she had to speak her mind. "I don't think

God has done it all," she said. "I don't even think that He told you

to do it. I think He just said to you, 'There is a painted lady's

child at your door. You can save her if you like.'

"No," she went on, when he would have interposed; "I am sure He did

not want to do it all. He even left a little bit of it to me to do

myself. I love to think that I have done a tiny bit of it myself. I

think it is the sweetest thing about God that He lets us do some of it

ourselves. Do I hurt you, darling?"

No, she did not hurt him, for he understood her. "But you are

naturally so impulsive," he said, "it has often been a sharp pain to

me to see you so careful."

"It was not a pain to me to be careful; it was a joy. Oh, the thousand

dear, delightful joys I have had with you!"

"It has made you strong, Grizel, and I rejoice in that; but sometimes

I fear that it has made you too difficult to win."

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

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

"No," she said at once. She whispered to him impulsively: "It is the

only thing I am at all afraid of now."

"What?"

"Love."

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

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

"You need not," he answered. "The man on whom those clear eyes rest

lovingly will be worthy of it all. If he were not, they would be the

first to find him out."

"But need that make any difference?" she asked. "Perhaps though I

found him out I should love him just the same."

"Not unless you loved him first, Grizel."

"No," she said at once again. "I am not really afraid of love," she

whispered to him. "You have made me so happy that I am afraid of

nothing."

Yet she wondered a little that he was not afraid to die, but when she

told him this he smiled and said: "Everybody fears death except those

who are dying." And when she asked if he had anything on his mind, he

said: "I leave the world without a care. Not that I have seen all I

would fain have seen. Many a time, especially this last year, when I

have seen the mother in you crooning to some neighbour's child, I have

thought to myself, 'I don't know my Grizel yet; I have seen her in the

bud only,' and I would fain--" He broke off. "But I have no fears," he

said. "As I lie here, with you sitting by my side, looking so serene,

I can say, for the first time for half a century, that I have nothing

on my mind.

"But, Grizel, I should have married," he told her. "The chief lesson

my life has taught me is that they are poor critturs--the men who

don't marry."

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

help me."

"It is you who have helped me," he replied. "God sent the child; He is

most reluctant to give any of us up. Ay, Grizel, that's what my life

has taught me, and it's all I can leave to you." The last he saw of

her, she was holding his hand, and her eyes were dry, her teeth were

clenched; but there was a brave smile upon her face, for he had told

her that it was thus he would like to see her at the end. After his

death, she continued to live at the old house; he had left it to her

("I want it to remain in the family," he said), with all his savings,

which were quite sufficient for the needs of such a manager. He had

also left her plenty to do, and that was a still sweeter legacy.

And the other Jacobites, what of them? Hi, where are you, Corp? Here

he comes, grinning, in his spleet new uniform, to demand our tickets

of us. He is now the railway porter. Since Tommy left Thrums "steam"

had arrived in it, and Corp had by nature such a gift for giving

luggage the twist which breaks everything inside as you dump it down

that he was inevitably appointed porter. There was no travelling to

Thrums without a ticket. At Tilliedrum, which was the junction for

Thrums, you showed your ticket and were then locked in. A hundred

yards from Thrums. Corp leaped upon the train and fiercely demanded

your ticket. At the station he asked you threateningly whether you had

given up your ticket. Even his wife was afraid of him at such times,

and had her ticket ready in her hand.

His wife was one Gavinia, and she had no fear of him except when she

was travelling. To his face she referred to him as a doited sumph, but

to Grizel pleading for him she admitted that despite his warts and

quarrelsome legs he was a great big muckle sonsy, stout, buirdly well

set up, wise-like, havering man. When first Corp had proposed to her,

she gave him a clout on the head; and so little did he know of the sex

that this discouraged him. He continued, however, to propose and she

to clout him until he heard, accidentally (he woke up in church), of a

man in the Bible who had wooed a woman for seven years, and this

example he determined to emulate; but when Gavinia heard of it she

was so furious that she took him at once. Dazed by his good fortune,

he rushed off with it to his aunt, whom he wearied with his repetition

of the great news.

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

"Bed!" cried Corp, indignantly. "And so, auntie, says Gavinia, 'Yes,'

says she, 'I'll hae you.' Those were her never-to-be-forgotten words."

"You pitiful object," answered his aunt. "Men hae been married afore

now without making sic a stramash."

"I daursay," retorted Corp; "but they hinna married Gavinia." And this

is the best known answer to the sneer of the cynic.

He was a public nuisance that night, and knocked various people up

after they had gone to bed, to tell them that Gavinia was to have him.

He was eventually led home by kindly though indignant neighbours; but

early morning found him in the country, carrying the news from farm to

farm.

"No, I winna sit down," he said; "I just cried in to tell you Gavinia

is to hae me." Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a

hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old

lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them

again. "Auld wifie," said Corp, "I dinna ken you, but I've just

stepped up to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me."

It made him the butt of the sportive. If he or Gavinia were nigh, they

gathered their fowls round them and then said: "Hens, I didna bring

you here to feed you, but just to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me."

This flustered Gavinia; but Grizel, who enjoyed her own jokes too

heartily to have more than a polite interest in those of other people,

said to her: "How can you be angry! I think it was just sweet of him."

"But was it no vulgar?"

"Vulgar!" said Grizel. "Why, Gavinia, that is how every lady would

like a man to love her."

And then Gavinia beamed. "I'm glad you say that," she said; "for,

though I wouldna tell Corp for worlds, I fell likit it."

But Grizel told Corp that Gavinia liked it.

"It was the proof," she said, smiling, "that you have the right to

marry her. You have shown your ticket. Never give it up, Corp."

About a year afterwards Corp, armed in his Sunday stand, rushed to

Grizel's house, occasionally stopping to slap his shiny knees.

"Grizel," he cried, "there's somebody come to Thrums without a

ticket!" Then he remembered Gavinia's instructions. "Mrs. Shiach's

compliments," he said ponderously, "and it's a boy."

"Oh, Corp!" exclaimed Grizel, and immediately began to put on her hat

and jacket. Corp watched her uneasily. "Mrs. Shiach's compliments,"

he said firmly, "and he's ower young to be bathed yet; but she's awid

to show him off to you," he hastened to add. "'Tell Grizel,' was her

first words."

"Tell Grizel"! They were among the first words of many mothers. None,

they were aware, would receive the news with quite such glee as she.

They might think her cold and reserved with themselves, but to see the

look on her face as she bent over a baby, and to know that the baby

was yours! What a way she had with them! She always welcomed them as

if in coming they had performed a great feat. That is what babies are

agape for from the beginning. Had they been able to speak they would

have said "Tell Grizel" themselves.

"And Mrs. Shiach's compliments," Corp remembered, "and she would be

windy if you would carry the bairn at the christening."

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

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

"Oh, how sweet of you!"

"After the finest lassie we ever kent," continued Corp, stoutly. "But

I was sure it would be a laddie."

"Why?" "Because if it was a laddie it was to be called after Him,"

he said, with emphasis on the last word; "and thinks I to mysel',

'He'll find a way.' What a crittur he was for finding a way, Grizel!

And he lookit so holy a' the time. Do you mind that swear word o'

his--'stroke'? It just meant 'damn'; but he could make even 'damn'

look holy."

"You are to call the baby Tommy?"

"He'll be christened Thomas Sandys Shiach," said Corp. "I hankered

after putting something out o' the Jacobites intil his name; and I

says to Gavinia, 'Let's call him Thomas Sandys Stroke Shiach,' says I,

'and the minister'll be nane the wiser'; but Gavinia was scandalized."

Grizel reflected. "Corp," she said, "I am sure Gavinia's sister will

expect to be asked to carry the baby. I don't think I want to do it."

"After you promised!" cried Corp, much hurt. "I never kent you to

break a promise afore."

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

She did not know then that Tommy would be in church to witness the

ceremony, but she knew before she walked down the aisle with T.S.

Shiach in her arms. It was the first time that Tommy and she had seen

each other for seven years. That day he almost rivalled his namesake

in the interests of the congregation, who, however, took prodigious

care that he should not see it--all except Grizel; she smiled a

welcome to him, and he knew that her serene gray eyes were watching

him.

CHAPTER V

THE TOMMY MYTH

On the evening before the christening, Aaron Latta, his head sunk

farther into his shoulders, his beard gone grayer, no other

perceptible difference in a dreary man since we last saw him in the

book of Tommy's boyhood, had met the brother and sister at the

station, a barrow with him for their luggage. It was a great hour for

him as he wheeled the barrow homeward, Elspeth once more by his side;

but he could say nothing heartsome in Tommy's presence, and Tommy was

as uncomfortable in his. The old strained relations between these two

seemed to begin again at once. They were as self-conscious as two

mastiffs meeting in the street; and both breathed a sigh of relief

when Tommy fell behind.

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

see you again."

"And him too, Aaron?" Elspeth pleaded.

"He took you away frae me."

"He has brought me back." "Ay, and he has but to whistle to you and

away you go wi' him again. He's ower grand to bide lang here now."

"You don't know him, Aaron. We are to stay a long time. Do you know

Mrs. McLean invited us to stay with her? I suppose she thought your

house was so small. But Tommy said, 'The house of the man who

befriended us when we were children shall never be too small for us.'"

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

said."

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

one else."

"God bless you for that, Elspeth."

"And Tommy," she went on, "must have his old garret room again, to

write as well as sleep in, and the little room you partitioned off the

kitchen will do nicely for me."

"There's no a window in it," replied Aaron; "but it will do fine for

you, Elspeth." He was almost chuckling, for he had a surprise in

waiting for her. "This way," he said excitedly, when she would have

gone into the kitchen, and he flung open the door of what had been his

warping-room. The warping-mill was gone--everything that had been

there was gone. What met the delighted eyes of Elspeth and Tommy was a

cozy parlour, which became a bedroom when you opened that other door.

"You are a leddy now, Elspeth," Aaron said, husky with pride, "and

you have a leddy's room. Do you see the piano?"

He had given up the warping, having at last "twa three hunder'" in the

bank, and all the work he did now was at a loom which he had put into

the kitchen to keep him out of languor. "I have sorted up the garret,

too, for you," he said to Tommy, "but this is Elspeth's room."

"As if Tommy would take it from me!" said Elspeth, running into the

kitchen to hug this dear Aaron.

"You may laugh," Aaron replied vindictively, "but he is taking it frae

you already"; and later, when Tommy was out of the way, he explained

his meaning. "I did it all for you, Elspeth; 'Elspeth's room,' I

called it. When I bought the mahogany arm-chair, 'That's Elspeth's

chair,' I said to mysel'; and when I bought the bed, 'It's hers,' I

said. Ay; but I was soon disannulled o' that thait, for, in spite of

me, they were all got for him. Not a rissom in that room is yours or

mine, Elspeth; every muhlen belongs to him."

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

"I dinna ken them. They are leddies that come here in their carriages

to see the house where Thomas Sandys was born."

"But, Aaron, he was born in London!" "They think he was born in this

house," Aaron replied doggedly, "and it's no for me to cheapen him."

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

"I was never very fond o' him," Aaron admitted, "but I winna cheapen

Jean Myles's bairn, and when they chap at my door and say they would

like to see the room Thomas Sandys was born in, I let them see the

best room I have. So that's how he has laid hands on your parlor,

Elspeth. Afore I can get rid o' them they gie a squeak and cry, 'Was

that Thomas Sandys's bed?' and I says it was. That's him taking the

very bed frae you, Elspeth."

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

"It's a shilpit bit thing," he answered, "and I winna cheapen him.

They're curious, too, to see his favourite seat."

"It was the fender," she declared.

"It was," he assented, "but it's no for me to cheapen him, so I let

them see your new mahogany chair. 'Thomas Sandys's chair,' they call

it, and they sit down in it reverently. They winna even leave you the

piano. 'Was this Thomas Sandys's piano?' they speir. 'It was,' says I,

and syne they gowp at it." His under lip shot out, a sure sign that he

was angry. "I dinna blame him," he said, "but he had the same

masterful way of scooping everything into his lap when he was a

laddie, and I like him none the mair for it"; and from this position

Aaron would not budge.

"Quite right, too," Tommy said, when he heard of it. "But you can tell

him, Elspeth, that we shall allow no more of those prying women to

come in." And he really meant this, for he was a modest man that day,

was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, perhaps, a little annoyed to find, as

the days went on, that no more ladies came to be turned away.

He heard that they had also been unable to resist the desire to shake

hands with Thomas Sandys's schoolmaster. "It must have been a pleasure

to teach him," they said to Cathro.

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

pleasure to Cathro to thrash him!

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

"We were like father and son," he assured them. With natural pride he

showed them the ink-pot into which Thomas Sandys had dipped as a boy.

They were very grateful for his interesting reminiscence that when the

pot was too full Thomas inked his fingers. He presented several of

them with the ink-pot.

Two ladies, who came together, bothered him by asking what the Hugh

Blackadder competition was. They had been advised to inquire of him

about Thomas Sandys's connection therewith by another schoolmaster, a

Mr. Ogilvy, whom they had met in one of the glens.

Mr. Cathro winced, and then explained with emphasis that the Hugh

Blackadder was a competition in which the local ministers were the

sole judges; he therefore referred the ladies to them. The ladies did

go to a local minister for enlightenment, to Mr. Dishart; but, after

reflecting, Mr. Dishart said that it was too long a story, and this

answer seemed to amuse Mr. Ogilvy, who happened to be present.

It was Mr. McLean who retailed this news to Tommy. He and Ailie had

walked home from church with the newcomers on the day after their

arrival, the day of the christening. They had not gone into Aaron's

house, for you are looked askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on

Sundays, but they had stood for a long time gossiping at the door,

which is permitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a twitter, as of

old, and not able even yet to speak of her husband without an

apologetic look to the ladies who had none. And oh, how proud she was

of Tommy's fame! Her eyes were an offering to him.

"Don't take her as a sample of the place, though," Mr. McLean warned

him, "for Thrums does not catch fire so readily as London." It was

quite true. "I was at the school wi' him," they said up there, and

implied that this damned his book.

But there were two faithful souls, or, more strictly, one, for Corp

could never have carried it through without Gavinia's help. Tommy

called on them promptly at their house in the Bellies Brae (four

rooms, but a lodger), and said, almost before he had time to look,

that the baby had Corp's chin and Gavinia's eyes. He had made this up

on the way. He also wanted to say, so desirous was he of pleasing his

old friends, that he should like to hold the baby in his arms; but it

was such a thundering lie that even an author could not say it.

Tommy sat down in that house with a very warm heart for its inmates;

but they chilled him--Gavinia with her stiff words, and Corp by

looking miserable instead of joyous.

"I expected you to come to me first, Corp," said Tommy, reproachfully.

"I had scarcely a word with you at the station."

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

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

"Fudge!" Tommy said. "You were my greatest friend, and I like you as

much as ever, Corp." Corp's face shone, but Gavinia said at once,

"You werena sic great friends as that; were you, man?"

"No," Corp replied gloomily.

"Whatever has come over you both?" asked Tommy, in surprise. "You will

be saying next, Gavinia, that we never played at Jacobites in the

Den!"

"I dinna deny that Corp and me played," Gavinia answered determinedly,

"but you didna. You said to us, 'Think shame,' you said, 'to be

playing vulgar games when you could be reading superior books.' They

were his very words, were they no, man?" she demanded of her unhappy

husband, with a threatening look.

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

"I must get to the bottom of this," said Tommy, rising, "and as you

are too great a coward, Corp, to tell the truth with that shameless

woman glowering at you, out you go, Gavinia, and take your disgraced

bairn with you. Do as you are told, you besom, for I am Captain Stroke

again."

Corp was choking with delight as Gavinia withdrew haughtily. "I was

sure you would sort her," he said, rubbing his hands, "I was sure you

wasna the kind to be ashamed o' auld friends."

"But what does it mean?"

"She has a notion," Corp explained, growing grave again, "that it

wouldna do for you to own the like o' us. 'We mauna cheapen him,' she

said. She wanted you to see that we hinna been cheapening you." He

said, in a sepulchral voice, "There has been leddies here, and they

want to ken what Thomas Sandys was like as a boy. It's me they speir

for, but Gavinia she just shoves me out o' sight, and says she, 'Leave

them to me.'"

Corp told Tommy some of the things Gavinia said about Thomas Sandys as

a boy: how he sat rapt in church, and, instead of going bird-nesting,

lay on the ground listening to the beautiful little warblers overhead,

and gave all his pennies to poorer children, and could repeat the

Shorter Catechism, beginning at either end, and was very respectful to

the aged and infirm, and of a yielding disposition, and said, from his

earliest years, "I don't want to be great; I just want to be good."

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

Gavinia.

Corp, with his eye on the door, produced from beneath the bed a little

book with coloured pictures. It was entitled "Great Boyhoods," by

"Aunt Martha." "She doesna make them up," he whispered; "she gets them

out o' this."

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

"It was like a t' knife intil me," replied loyal Corp; "every time I

forswore you it was like a t' knife, but I did it, ay, and I'll go on

doing it if you think my friendship cheapens you."

Tommy was much moved, and gripped his old lieutenant by the hand. He

also called Gavinia ben, and, before she could ward him off, the

masterful rogue had saluted her on the cheek. "That," said Tommy, "is

to show you that I am as fond of the old times and my old friends as

ever, and the moment you deny it I shall take you to mean, Gavinia,

that you want another kiss."

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

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

time they ruminated.

"Gavinia," said Corp, suddenly, "I wouldna wonder but what he's a gey

lad wi' the women!"

"What makes you think that?" she replied coldly, and he had the

prudence not to say. He should have followed his hero home to be

disabused of this monstrous notion, for even while it was being

propounded Tommy was sitting in such an agony of silence in a woman's

presence that she could not resist smiling a crooked smile at him. His

want of words did not displease Grizel; she was of opinion that young

men should always be a little awed by young ladies.

He had found her with Elspeth on his return home. Would Grizel call

and be friendly? he had asked himself many times since he saw her in

church yesterday, and Elspeth was as curious. Each wanted to know

what the other thought of her, but neither had the courage to inquire,

they both wanted to know so much. Her name had been mentioned but

casually, not a word to indicate that she had grown up since they saw

her last. The longer Tommy remained silent, the more, he knew, did

Elspeth suspect him. He would have liked to say, in a careless voice,

"Rather pretty, isn't she?" but he felt that this little Elspeth would

see through him at once.

For at the first glance he had seen what Grizel was, and a thrill of

joy passed through him as he drank her in; it was but the joy of the

eyes for the first moment, but it ran to his heart to say, "This is

the little hunted girl that was!" and Tommy was moved with a manly

gladness that the girl who once was so fearful of the future had grown

into this. The same unselfish delight in her for her own sake came

over him again when he shook hands with her in Aaron's parlor. This

glorious creature with the serene eyes and the noble shoulders had

been the hunted child of the Double Dykes! He would have liked to race

back into the past and bring little Grizel here to look. How many

boyish memories he recalled! and she was in every one of them. His

heart held nothing but honest joy in this meeting after so many years;

he longed to tell her how sincerely he was still her friend. Well, why

don't you tell her, Tommy? It is a thing you are good at, and you

have been polishing up the phrases ever since she passed down the

aisle with Master Shiach in her arms; you have even planned out a way

of putting Grizel at her ease, and behold, she is the only one of the

three who is at ease. What has come over you? Does the reader think it

was love? No, it was only that pall of shyness; he tried to fling it

off, but could not. Behold Tommy being buried alive!

Elspeth showed less contemptibly than her brother, but it was Grizel

who did most of the talking. She nodded her head and smiled crookedly

at Tommy, but she was watching him all the time. She wore a dress in

which brown and yellow mingled as in woods on an autumn day, and the

jacket had a high collar of fur, over which she watched him. Let us

say that she was watching to see whether any of the old Tommy was left

in him. Yet, with this problem confronting her, she also had time to

study the outer man, Tommy the dandy--his velvet jacket (a new one),

his brazen waistcoat, his poetic neckerchief, his spotless linen. His

velvet jacket was to become the derision of Thrums, but Tommy took his

bonneting haughtily, like one who was glad to suffer for a Cause.

There were to be meetings here and there where people told with awe

how many shirts he sent weekly to the wash. Grizel disdained his dandy

tastes; why did not Elspeth strip him of them? And oh, if he must

wear that absurd waistcoat, could she not see that it would look

another thing if the second button was put half an inch farther back?

How sinful of him to spoil the shape of his silly velvet jacket by

carrying so many letters in the pockets! She learned afterwards that

he carried all those letters because there was a check in one of them,

he did not know which, and her sense of orderliness was outraged.

Elspeth did not notice these things. She helped Tommy by her

helplessness. There is reason to believe that once in London, when she

had need of a new hat, but money there was none, Tommy, looking very

defiant, studied ladies' hats in the shop-windows, brought all his

intellect to bear on them, with the result that he did concoct out of

Elspeth's old hat a new one which was the admired of O.P. Pym and

friends, who never knew the name of the artist. But obviously he could

not take proper care of himself, and there is a kind of woman, of whom

Grizel was one, to whose breasts this helplessness makes an unfair

appeal. Oh, to dress him properly! She could not help liking to be a

mother to men; she wanted them to be the most noble characters, but

completely dependent on her.

Tommy walked home with her, and it seemed at first as if Elspeth's

absence was to be no help to him. He could not even plagiarize from

"Sandys on Woman." No one knew so well the kind of thing he should be

saying, and no one could have been more anxious to say it, but a

weight of shyness sat on the lid of Tommy. Having for half an hour

raged internally at his misfortune, he now sullenly embraced it. "If I

am this sort of an ass, let me be it in the superlative degree," he

may be conceived saying bitterly to himself. He addressed Grizel

coldly as "Miss McQueen," a name she had taken by the doctor's wish

soon after she went to live with him.

"There is no reason why you should call me that," she said. "Call me

Grizel, as you used to do."

"May I?" replied Tommy, idiotically. He knew it was idiotic, but that

mood now had grip of him.

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

He was really glad to hear it, for to be called Tommy by anyone was

now detestable to him (which is why I always call him Tommy in these

pages). So it was like him to say, with a sigh, "I had hoped to hear

you use the old name."

That sigh made her look at him sharply. He knew that he must be

careful with Grizel, and that she was irritated, but he had to go on.

"It is strange to me," said Sentimental Tommy, "to be back here after

all those years, walking this familiar road once more with you. I

thought it would make me feel myself a boy again, but, heigh-ho, it

has just the opposite effect: I never felt so old as I do to-day."

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

"But you never were as old as you are to-day, were you?" she inquired

politely. It whisked Tommy out of dangerous waters and laid him at her

feet. He laughed, not perceptibly or audibly, of course, but somewhere

inside him the bell rang. No one could laugh more heartily at himself

than Tommy, and none bore less malice to those who brought him to

land.

"That, at any rate, makes me feel younger," he said candidly; and now

the shyness was in full flight.

"Why?" asked Grizel, still watchful.

"It is so like the kind of thing you used to say to me when we were

boy and girl. I used to enrage you very much, I fear," he said, half

gleefully.

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

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

She remembered it all so well! This rocking of the arms, as they

called it, was a trick of hers that signified sudden joy or pain. They

hung rigid by her side, and then shook violently with emotion.

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

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

went away."

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

"You see they take no notice of you."

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

Grizel shook her head confidently, and in this she was pitting herself

against Tommy, always a bold thing to do.

"I have been to see Corp's baby," he said suddenly; and this was so

important that she stopped in the middle of the road.

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

"I thought," replied Tommy, gravely, and making use of one of Grizel's

pet phrases, "I thought he was just sweet."

"Isn't he!" she cried; and then she knew that he was making fun of

her. Her arms rocked.

"Hurray!" cried Tommy, "they recognize me now! Don't be angry,

Grizel," he begged her. "You taught me, long ago, what was the right

thing to say about babies, and how could I be sure it was you until I

saw your arms rocking?"

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

it."

"It was so unlike you," he replied craftily, "to let me succeed. And,

after all, Grizel, if I was horrid in the old days I always

apologized."

"Never!" she insisted.

"Well, then," said Tommy, handsomely, "I do so now"; and then they

both laughed gaily, and I think Grizel was not sorry that there was a

little of the boy who had been horrid left in Tommy--just enough to

know him by.

"He'll be vain," her aged maid, Maggy Ann, said curiously to her that

evening. They were all curious about Tommy.

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

"If he's no vain," Maggy Ann retorted, "he's the first son of Adam it

could be said o'. I jalouse it's his bit book."

"He scarcely mentioned it."

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

Grizel was sure it was not that.

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

"Who knows!" said Grizel of the watchful eyes; but she smiled to

herself. She thought not incorrectly that she knew one woman of whom

Mr. Sandys was a little afraid.

About the same time Tommy and Elspeth were discussing her. Elspeth was

in bed, and Tommy had come into the room to kiss her good-night--he

had never once omitted doing it since they went to London, and he was

always to do it, for neither of them was ever to marry.

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

for confidences.

"Of whom?" Tommy inquired lightly.

"Grizel."

He must be careful.

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

She was looking at him keenly, but he managed to deceive her. She was

much relieved, and could say what was in her heart. "Tommy," she said,

"I think she is the most noble-looking girl I ever saw, and if she

were not so masterful in her manner she would be beautiful." It was

nice of Elspeth to say it, for she and Grizel were never very great

friends.

Tommy brought down his eyes. "Did you think as much of her as that?"

he said. "It struck me that her features were not quite classic. Her

nose is a little tilted, is it not?"

"Some people like that kind of nose," replied Elspeth. "It is not

classic," Tommy said sternly.

CHAPTER VI

GHOSTS THAT HAUNT THE DEN

Looking through the Tommy papers of this period, like a conscientious

biographer, I find among them manuscripts that remind me how

diligently he set to work at his new book the moment he went North,

and also letters which, if printed, would show you what a wise and

good man Tommy was. But while I was fingering those, there floated

from them to the floor a loose page, and when I saw that it was a

chemist's bill for oil and liniment I remembered something I had nigh

forgotten. "Eureka!" I cried. "I shall tell the story of the chemist's

bill, and some other biographer may print the letters."

Well, well! but to think that this scrap of paper should flutter into

view to damn him after all those years!

The date is Saturday, May 28, by which time Tommy had been a week in

Thrums without doing anything very reprehensible, so far as Grizel

knew. She watched for telltales as for a mouse to show at its hole,

and at the worst, I think, she saw only its little head. That was when

Tommy was talking beautifully to her about her dear doctor. He would

have done wisely to avoid this subject; but he was so notoriously good

at condolences that he had to say it. He had thought it out, you may

remember, a year ago, but hesitated to post it; and since then it had

lain heavily within him, as if it knew it was a good thing and pined

to be up and strutting.

He said it with emotion; evidently Dr. McQueen had been very dear to

him, and any other girl would have been touched; but Grizel stiffened,

and when he had finished, this is what she said, quite snappily:

"He never liked you."

Tommy was taken aback, but replied, with gentle dignity, "Do you

think, Grizel, I would let that make any difference in my estimate of

him?"

"But you never liked him," said she; and now that he thought of it,

this was true also. It was useless to say anything about the artistic

instinct to her; she did not know what it was, and would have had

plain words for it as soon as he told her. Please to picture Tommy

picking up his beautiful speech and ramming it back into his pocket as

if it were a rejected manuscript.

"I am sorry you should think so meanly of me, Grizel," he said with

manly forbearance, and when she thought it all out carefully that

night she decided that she had been hasty. She could not help watching

Tommy for backslidings, but oh, it was sweet to her to decide that she

had not found any.

"It was I who was horrid," she announced to him frankly, and Tommy

forgave her at once. She offered him a present: "When the doctor died

I gave some of his things to his friends; it is the Scotch custom, you

know. He had a new overcoat; it had been worn but two or three times.

I should be so glad if you would let me give it to you for saying such

sweet things about him. I think it will need very little alteration."

Thus very simply came into Tommy's possession the coat that was to

play so odd a part in his history. "But oh, Grizel," said he, with

mock reproach, "you need not think that I don't see through you! Your

deep design is to cover me up. You despise my velvet jacket!"

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

"It is not in keeping with my doleful countenance," said Tommy,

candidly; "that was what you were to say. Let me tell you a secret,

Grizel: I wear it to spite my face. Sha'n't give up my velvet jacket

for anybody, Grizel; not even for you." He was in gay spirits, because

he knew she liked him again; and she saw that was the reason, and it

warmed her. She was least able to resist Tommy when he was most a

boy, and it was actually watchful Grizel who proposed that he and she

and Elspeth should revisit the Den together. How often since the days

of their childhood had Grizel wandered it alone, thinking of those

dear times, making up her mind that if ever Tommy asked her to go into

the Den again with him she would not go, the place was so much sweeter

to her than it could be to him. And yet it was Grizel herself who was

saying now, "Let us go back to the Den."

Tommy caught fire. "We sha'n't go back," he cried defiantly, "as men

and women. Let us be boy and girl again, Grizel. Let us have that

Saturday we missed long ago. I missed a Saturday on purpose, Grizel,

so that we should have it now."

She shook her head wistfully, but she was glad that Tommy would fain

have had one of the Saturdays back. Had he waxed sentimental she would

not have gone a step of the way with him into the past, but when he

was so full of glee she could take his hand and run back into it.

"But we must wait until evening," Tommy said, "until Corp is

unharnessed; we must not hurt the feelings of Corp by going back to

the Den without him."

"How mean of me not to think of Corp!" Grizel cried; but the next

moment she was glad she had not thought of him, it was so delicious to

have proof that Tommy was more loyal. "But we can't turn back the

clock, can we, Corp?" she said to the fourth of the conspirators, to

which Corp replied, with his old sublime confidence, "He'll find a

way."

And at first it really seemed as if Tommy had found a way. They did

not go to the Den four in a line or two abreast--nothing so common as

that. In the wild spirits that mastered him he seemed to be the boy

incarnate, and it was always said of Tommy by those who knew him best

that if he leaped back into boyhood they had to jump with him. Those

who knew him best were with him now. He took command of them in the

old way. He whispered, as if Black Cathro were still on the prowl for

him. Corp of Corp had to steal upon the Den by way of the Silent Pool,

Grizel by the Queen's Bower, Elspeth up the burn-side, Captain Stroke

down the Reekie Brothpot. Grizel's arms rocked with delight in the

dark, and she was on her way to the Cuttle Well, the trysting-place,

before she came to and saw with consternation that Tommy had been

ordering her about.

She was quite a sedate young lady by the time she joined them at the

well, and Tommy was the first to feel the change. "Don't you think

this is all rather silly?" she said, when he addressed her as the Lady

Griselda, and it broke the spell. Two girls shot up into women, a

beard grew on Tommy's chin, and Corp became a father. Grizel had

blown Tommy's pretty project to dust just when he was most gleeful

over it; yet, instead of bearing resentment, he pretended not even to

know that she was the culprit.

"Corp," he said ruefully, "the game is up!" And "Listen," he said,

when they had sat down, crushed, by the old Cuttle Well, "do you hear

anything?"

It was a very still evening. "I hear nocht," said Corp, "but the

trickle o' the burn. What did you hear?"

"I thought I heard a baby cry," replied Tommy, with a groan. "I think

it was your baby, Corp. Did you hear it, Grizel?"

She understood, and nodded.

"And you, Elspeth?"

"Yes."

"My bairn!" cried the astounded Corp.

"Yours," said Tommy, reproachfully; "and he has done for us. Ladies

and gentlemen, the game is up."

Yes, the game was up, and she was glad, Grizel said to herself, as

they made their melancholy pilgrimage of what had once been an

enchanted land. But she felt that Tommy had been very forbearing to

her, and that she did not deserve it. Undoubtedly he had ordered her

about, but in so doing had he not been making half-pathetic sport of

his old self--and was it with him that she was annoyed for ordering,

or with herself for obeying? And why should she not obey, when it was

all a jest? It was as if she still had some lingering fear of Tommy.

Oh, she was ashamed of herself. She must say something nice to him at

once. About what? About his book, of course. How base of her not to

have done so already! but how good of him to have overlooked her

silence on that great topic!

It was not ignorance of its contents that had kept her silent. To

confess the horrid truth, Grizel had read the book suspiciously,

looking as through a microscope for something wrong--hoping not to

find it, but peering minutely. The book, she knew, was beautiful; but

it was the writer of the book she was peering for--the Tommy she had

known so well, what had he grown into? In her heart she had exulted

from the first in his success, and she should have been still more

glad (should she not?) to learn that his subject was woman; but no,

that had irritated her. What was perhaps even worse, she had been

still more irritated on hearing that the work was rich in sublime

thoughts. As a boy, he had maddened her most in his grandest moments.

I can think of no other excuse for her.

She would not accept it as an excuse for herself now. What she saw

with scorn was that she was always suspecting the worst of Tommy.

Very probably there was not a thought in the book that had been put

in with his old complacent waggle of the head. "Oh, am I not a

wonder!" he used to cry, when he did anything big; but that was no

reason why she should suspect him of being conceited still. Very

probably he really and truly felt what he wrote--felt it not only at

the time, but also next morning. In his boyhood Mr. Cathro had

christened him Sentimental Tommy; but he was a man now, and surely the

sentimentalities in which he had dressed himself were flung aside for

ever, like old suits of clothes. So Grizel decided eagerly, and she

was on the point of telling him how proud she was of his book, when

Tommy, who had thus far behaved so well, of a sudden went to pieces.

He and Grizel were together. Elspeth was a little in front of them,

walking with a gentleman who still wondered what they meant by saying

that they had heard his baby cry. "For he's no here," Corp had said

earnestly to them all; "though I'm awid for the time to come when I'll

be able to bring him to the Den and let him see the Jacobites' Lair."

There was nothing startling in this remark, so far as Grizel could

discover; but she saw that it had an immediate and incomprehensible

effect on Tommy. First, he blundered in his talk as if he was thinking

deeply of something else; then his face shone as it had been wont to

light up in his boyhood when he was suddenly enraptured with himself;

and lastly, down his cheek and into his beard there stole a tear of

agony. Obviously, Tommy was in deep woe for somebody or something.

It was a chance for a true lady to show that womanly sympathy of which

such exquisite things are said in the first work of T. Sandys: but it

merely infuriated Grizel, who knew that Tommy did not feel nearly so

deeply as she this return to the Den, and, therefore, what was he in

such distress about? It was silly sentiment of some sort, she was sure

of that. In the old days she would have asked him imperiously to tell

her what was the matter with him; but she must not do that now--she

dare not even rock her indignant arms; she could only walk silently by

his side, longing fervently to shake him.

He had quite forgotten her presence; indeed, she was not really there,

for a number of years had passed, and he was Corp Shiach, walking the

Den alone. To-morrow he was to bring his boy to show him the old Lair

and other fondly remembered spots; to-night he must revisit them

alone. So he set out blithely, but, to his bewilderment, he could not

find the Lair. It had not been a tiny hollow where muddy water

gathered; he remembered an impregnable fortress full of men whose

armour rattled as they came and went; so this could not be the Lair.

He had taken the wrong way to it, for the way was across a lagoon, up

a deep-flowing river, then by horse till the rocky ledge terrified all

four-footed things; no, up a grassy slope had never been the way. He

came night after night, trying different ways; but he could not find

the golden ladder, though all the time he knew that the Lair lay

somewhere over there. When he stood still and listened he could hear

the friends of his youth at play, and they seemed to be calling: "Are

you coming, Corp? Why does not Corp come back?" but he could never see

them, and when he pressed forward their voices died away. Then at last

he said sadly to his boy: "I shall never be able to show you the Lair,

for I cannot find the way to it." And the boy was touched, and he

said: "Take my hand, father, and I will lead you to the Lair; I found

the way long ago for myself."

It took Tommy about two seconds to see all this, and perhaps another

half-minute was spent in sad but satisfactory contemplation of it.

Then he felt that, for the best effect, Corp's home life was too

comfortable; so Gavinia ran away with a soldier. He was now so sorry

for Corp that the tear rolled down. But at the same moment he saw how

the effect could be still further heightened by doing away with his

friend's rude state of health, and he immediately jammed him between

the buffers of two railway carriages, and gave him a wooden leg. It

was at this point that a lady who had kept her arms still too long

rocked them frantically, then said, with cutting satire: "Are you not

feeling well, or have you hurt yourself? You seem to be very lame."

And Tommy woke with a start, to see that he was hobbling as if one of

his legs were timber to the knee.

"It is nothing," he said modestly. "Something Corp said set me

thinking; that is all."

He had told the truth, and if what he imagined was twenty times more

real to him than what was really there, how could Tommy help it?

Indignant Grizel, however, who kept such a grip of facts, would make

no such excuse for him.

"Elspeth!" she called.

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

"Come here, Elspeth," she cried vindictively. "Something Corp said a

moment ago has made your brother lame."

Tommy was lame; that was all Elspeth and Corp heard or could think of

as they ran back to him. When did it happen? Was he in great pain? Had

he fallen? Oh, why had he not told Elspeth at once?

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

"He says so," Grizel explained, "not to alarm us. But he is suffering

horribly. Just before I called to you his face was all drawn up in

pain."

This made the sufferer wince. "That was another twinge," she said

promptly. "What is to be done, Elspeth?"

"I think I could carry him," suggested Corp, with a forward movement

that made Tommy stamp his foot--the wooden one.

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

Grizel.

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

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

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

It was very naughty of her. Had she given him a chance he would have

explained that it was all a mistake of Grizel's. That had been his

intention; but now a devil entered into Tommy and spoke for him.

"I must have slipped and sprained my ankle," he said. "It is slightly

painful; but I shall be able to walk home all right, Corp, if you let

me use you as a staff."

I think he was a little surprised to hear himself saying this; but, as

soon as it was said, he liked it. He was Captain Stroke playing in the

Den again, after all, and playing as well as ever. Nothing being so

real to Tommy as pretence, I daresay he even began to feel his ankle

hurting him. "Gently," he begged of Corp, with a gallant smile, and

clenching his teeth so that the pain should not make him cry out

before the ladies. Thus, with his lieutenant's help, did Stroke manage

to reach Aaron's house, making light of his mishap, assuring them

cheerily that he should be all right to-morrow, and carefully avoiding

Grizel's eye, though he wanted very much to know what she thought of

him (and of herself) now.

There were moments when she did not know what to think, and that

always distressed Grizel, though it was a state of mind with which

Tommy could keep on very friendly terms. The truth seemed too

monstrous for belief. Was it possible she had misjudged him? Perhaps

he really had sprained his ankle. But he had made no pretence of that

at first, and besides,--yes, she could not be mistaken,--it was the

other leg.

She soon let him see what she was thinking. "I am afraid it is too

serious a case for me," she said, in answer to a suggestion from Corp,

who had a profound faith in her medical skill, "but, if you

like,"--she was addressing Tommy now,--"I shall call at Dr. Gemmell's,

on my way home, and ask him to come to you."

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

hastily.

"Well, you know best," she said, and there was a look on her face

which Thomas Sandys could endure from no woman. "On second

thoughts," he said, "I think it would be advisable to have a doctor.

Thank you very much, Grizel. Corp, can you help me to lift my foot on

to that chair? Softly--ah!--ugh!"

His eyes did not fall before hers. "And would you mind asking him to

come at once, Grizel?" he said sweetly. She went straight to the

doctor.

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF THE DUEL

It was among old Dr. McQueen's sayings that when he met a man who was

certified to be in no way remarkable he wanted to give three cheers.

There are few of them, even in a little place like Thrums; but David

Gemmell was one.

So McQueen had always said, but Grizel was not so sure. "He is very

good-looking, and he does not know it," she would point out. "Oh, what

a remarkable man!"

She had known him intimately for nearly six years now, ever since he

became the old doctor's assistant on the day when, in the tail of some

others, he came to Thrums, aged twenty-one, to apply for the post.

Grizel had even helped to choose him; she had a quaint recollection of

his being submitted to her by McQueen, who told her to look him over

and say whether he would do--an odd position in which to place a

fourteen-year-old girl, but Grizel had taken it most seriously, and,

indeed, of the two men only Gemmell dared to laugh.

"You should not laugh when it is so important," she said gravely; and

he stood abashed, although I believe he chuckled again when he retired

to his room for the night. She was in that room next morning as soon

as he had left it, to smell the curtains (he smoked), and see whether

he folded his things up neatly and used both the brush and the comb,

but did not use pomade, and slept with his window open, and really

took a bath instead of merely pouring the water into it and laying the

sponge on top (oh, she knew them!)--and her decision, after some days,

was that, though far from perfect, he would do, if he loved her dear

darling doctor sufficiently. By this time David was openly afraid of

her, which Grizel noticed, and took to be, in the circumstances, a

satisfactory sign.

She watched him narrowly for the next year, and after that she ceased

to watch him at all. She was like a congregation become so sure of its

minister's soundness that it can risk going to sleep. To begin with,

he was quite incapable of pretending to be anything he was not. Oh,

how unlike a boy she had once known! His manner, like his voice, was

quiet. Being himself the son of a doctor, he did not dodder through

life amazed at the splendid eminence he had climbed to, which is the

weakness of Scottish students when they graduate, and often for fifty

years afterwards. How sweet he was to Dr. McQueen, never forgetting

the respect due to gray hairs, never hinting that the new school of

medicine knew many things that were hidden from the old, and always

having the sense to support McQueen when she was scolding him for his

numerous naughty ways. When the old doctor came home now on cold

nights it was not with his cravat in his pocket, and Grizel knew very

well who had put it round his neck. McQueen never had the humiliation,

so distressing to an old doctor, of being asked by patients to send

his assistant instead of coming himself. He thought they preferred

him, and twitted David about it; but Grizel knew that David had

sometimes to order them to prefer the old man. She knew that when he

said good-night and was supposed to have gone to his lodgings, he was

probably off to some poor house where, if not he, a tired woman must

sit the long night through by a sufferer's bedside, and she realized

with joy that his chief reason for not speaking of such things was

that he took them as part of his natural work and never even knew that

he was kind. He was not specially skilful, he had taken no honours

either at school or college, and he considered himself to be a very

ordinary young man. If you had said that on this point you disagreed

with him, his manner probably would have implied that he thought you

a bit of an ass.

When a new man arrives in Thrums, the women come to their doors to see

whether he is good-looking. They said No of Tommy when he came back,

but it had been an emphatic Yes for Dr. Gemmell. He was tall and very

slight, and at twenty-seven, as at twenty-one, despite the growth of a

heavy moustache, there was a boyishness about his appearance, which

is, I think, what women love in a man more than anything else. They

are drawn to him by it, and they love him out of pity when it goes. I

suppose it brings back to them some early, beautiful stage in the

world's history when men and women played together without fear.

Perhaps it lay in his smile, which was so winning that wrinkled old

dames spoke of it, who had never met the word before, smiles being

little known in Thrums, where in a workaday world we find it

sufficient either to laugh or to look thrawn. His dark curly hair was

what Grizel was most suspicious of; he must be vain of that, she

thought, until she discovered that he was quite sensitive to its being

mentioned, having ever detested his curls as an eyesore, and in his

boyhood clipped them savagely to the roots. He had such a firm chin,

if there had been another such chin going a-begging, I should have

liked to clap it on to Tommy Sandys.

Tommy Sandys! All this time we have been neglecting that brave

sufferer, and while we talk his ankle is swelling and swelling. Well,

Grizel was not so inconsiderate, for she walked very fast and with an

exceedingly determined mouth to Dr. Gemmell's lodgings. He was still

in lodgings, having refused to turn Grizel out of her house, though

she had offered to let it to him. She left word, the doctor not being

in, that he was wanted at once by Mr. Sandys, who had sprained his

ankle.

Now, then, Tommy!

For an hour, perhaps until she went to bed, she remained merciless.

She saw the quiet doctor with the penetrating eyes examining that

ankle, asking a few questions, and looking curiously at his patient;

then she saw him lift his hat and walk out of the house.

It gave her pleasure; no, it did not. While she thought of this Tommy

she despised, there came in front of him a boy who had played with her

long ago when no other child would play with her, and now he said,

"You have grown cold to me, Grizel," and she nodded assent, and little

wells of water rose to her eyes and lay there because she had nodded

assent.

She had never liked Dr. Gemmell so little as when she saw him

approaching her house next morning. The surgery was still attached to

it, and very often he came from there, his visiting-book in his hand,

to tell her of his patients, even to consult her; indeed, to talk to

Grizel about his work without consulting her would have been

difficult, for it was natural to her to decide what was best for

everybody. These consultations were very unprofessional, but from her

first coming to the old doctor's house she had taken it as a matter of

course that in his practice, as in affairs relating to his boots and

buttons, she should tell him what to do and he should do it. McQueen

had introduced his assistant to this partnership half-shamefacedly and

with a cautious wink over the little girl's head; and Gemmell fell

into line at once, showing her his new stethoscope as gravely as if he

must abandon it at once should not she approve, which fine behaviour,

however, was quite thrown away on Grizel, who, had he conducted

himself otherwise, would merely have wondered what was the matter with

the man; and as she was eighteen or more before she saw that she had

exceeded her duties, it was then, of course, too late to cease doing

it.

She knew now how good, how forbearing, he had been to the little girl,

and that it was partly because he was acquainted with her touching

history. The grave courtesy with which he had always treated her--and

which had sometimes given her as a girl a secret thrill of delight, it

was so sweet to Grizel to be respected--she knew now to be less his

natural manner to women than something that came to him in her

presence because he who knew her so well thought her worthy of

deference; and it helped her more, far more, than if she had seen it

turn to love. Yet as she received him in her parlor now--her too

spotless parlor, for not even the ashes in the grate were visible,

which is a mistake--she was not very friendly. He had discovered what

Tommy was, and as she had been the medium she could not blame him for

that, but how could he look as calm as ever when such a deplorable

thing had happened?

"What you say is true; I knew it before I asked you to go to him, and

I knew you would find it out; but please to remember that he is a man

of genius, whom it is not for such as you to judge."

That was the sort of haughty remark she held ready for him while they

talked of other cases; but it was never uttered, for by and by he

said:

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

afraid."

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

him yet?" she asked.

He thought she had misunderstood him. He had been to see Mr. Sandys

twice, both last night and this morning.

And he was sure it was a sprain?

Unfortunately it was something worse--dislocation; further mischief

might show itself presently.

"Haemorrhage into the neighbouring joint on inflammation?" she asked

scientifically and with scorn.

"Yes."

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

Well, possibly not, if Mr. Sandys was careful and kept his foot from

the ground for the next week. The doctor did not know that she was

despising him, and he proceeded to pay Tommy a compliment. "I had to

reduce the dislocation, of course," he told her, "and he bore the

wrench splendidly, though there is almost no pain more acute."

"Did he ask you to tell me that?" Grizel was thirsting to inquire, but

she forbore. Unwittingly, however, the doctor answered the question.

"I could see," he said, "that Mr. Sandys made light of his sufferings

to save his sister pain. I cannot recall ever having seen a brother

and sister so attached."

That was quite true, Grizel admitted to herself. In all her

recollections of Tommy she could not remember one critical moment in

which Elspeth had not been foremost in his thoughts. It passed through

her head, "Even now he must make sure that Elspeth is in peace of mind

before he can care to triumph over me," and she would perhaps have

felt less bitter had he put his triumph first.

His triumph! Oh, she would show him whether it was a triumph. He had

destroyed for ever her faith in David Gemmell. The quiet, observant

doctor, who had such an eye for the false, had been deceived as easily

as all the others, and it made her feel very lonely. But never mind;

Tommy should find out, and that within the hour, that there was one

whom he could not cheat. Her first impulse, always her first impulse,

was to go straight to his side and tell him what she thought of him.

Her second, which was neater, was to send by messenger her compliments

to Mr. and Miss Sandys, and would they, if not otherwise engaged, come

and have tea with her that afternoon? Not a word in the note about the

ankle, but a careful sentence to the effect that she had seen Dr.

Gemmell to-day, and proposed asking him to meet them.

Maggy Ann, who had conveyed the message, came back with the reply.

Elspeth regretted that they could not accept Grizel's invitation,

owing to the accident to her brother being _very much more_ serious

than Grizel seemed to think. "I can't understand," Elspeth added, "why

Dr. Gemmell did not tell you this when he saw you."

"Is it a polite letter?" asked inquisitive Maggy Ann, and Grizel

assured her that it was most polite. "I hardly expected it," said the

plain-spoken dame, "for I'm thinking by their manner it's more than

can be said of yours."

"I merely invited them to come to tea."

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

"I did not know it was so bad as that, Maggy Ann. So my letter seemed

to annoy him, did it?" said Grizel, eagerly, and, I fear, well

pleased.

"It angered her most terrible," said Maggy Ann, "but no him. He gave a

sort of a laugh when he read it."

"A laugh!"

"Ay, and syne she says, 'It is most heartless of Grizel; she does not

even ask how you are to-day; one would think she did not know of the

accident'; and she says, 'I have a good mind to write her a very stiff

letter.' And says he in a noble, melancholic voice, 'We must not hurt

Grizel's feelings,' he says. And she says, 'Grizel thinks it was

nothing because you bore it so cheerfully; oh, how little she knows

you!' she says; and 'You are too forgiving,' she says. And says he,

'If I have anything to forgive Grizel for, I forgive her willingly.'

And syne she quieted down and wrote the letter."

Forgive her! Oh, how it enraged Grizel! How like the Tommy of old to

put it in that way. There never had been a boy so good at forgiving

people for his own crimes, and he always looked so modest when he did

it. He was reclining on his chairs at this moment, she was sure he

was, forgiving her in every sentence. She could have endured it more

easily had she felt sure that he was seeing himself as he was; but she

remembered him too well to have any hope of that.

She put on her bonnet, and took it off again; a terrible thing,

remember, for Grizel to be in a state of indecision. For the remainder

of that day she was not wholly inactive. Meeting Dr. Gemmell in the

street, she impressed upon him the advisability of not allowing Mr.

Sandys to move for at least a week.

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

sister."

"He would be sure to use his foot," Grizel maintained, "if you once

let him rise from his chair; you know they all do." And Gemmell agreed

that she was right. So she managed to give Tommy as irksome a time as

possible.

But next day she called. To go through another day without letting him

see how despicable she thought him was beyond her endurance. Elspeth

was a little stiff at first, but Tommy received her heartily and with

nothing in his manner to show that she had hurt his finer feelings.

His leg (the wrong leg, as Grizel remembered at once) was extended on

a chair in front of him; but instead of nursing it ostentatiously as

so many would have done, he made humourous remarks at its expense.

"The fact is," he said cheerily, "that so long as I don't move I never

felt better in my life. And I daresay I could walk almost as well as

either of you, only my tyrant of a doctor won't let me try." "He

told me you had behaved splendidly," said Grizel, "while he was

reducing the dislocation. How brave you are! You could not have

endured more stoically though there had been nothing the matter with

it."

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

more than I."

Elspeth told the story of his heroism. "I could not stay in the room,"

she said; "it was too terrible." And Grizel despised too

tender-hearted Elspeth for that; she was so courageous at facing pain

herself. But Tommy had guessed that Elspeth was trembling behind the

door, and he had called out, "Don't cry, Elspeth; I am all right; it

is nothing at all."

"How noble!" was Grizel's comment, when she heard of this; and then

Elspeth was her friend again, insisted on her staying to tea, and went

into the kitchen to prepare it. Aaron was out.

The two were alone now, and in the circumstances some men would have

given the lady the opportunity to apologize, if such was her desire.

But Tommy's was a more generous nature; his manner was that of one

less sorry to be misjudged than anxious that Grizel should not suffer

too much from remorse. If she had asked his pardon then and there, I

am sure he would have replied, "Right willingly, Grizel," and begged

her not to give another thought to the matter. What is of more

importance, Grizel was sure of this also, and it was the magnanimity

of him that especially annoyed her. There seemed to be no disturbing

it. Even when she said, "Which foot is it?" he answered, "The one on

the chair," quite graciously, as if she had asked a natural question.

Grizel pointed out that the other foot must be tired of being a foot

in waiting. It had got a little exercise, Tommy replied lightly, last

night and again this morning, when it had helped to convey him to and

from his bed.

Had he hopped? she asked brutally.

No, he said; he had shuffled along. Half rising, he attempted to show

her humourously how he walked nowadays--tried not to wince, but had

to. Ugh, that was a twinge! Grizel sarcastically offered her

assistance, and he took her shoulder gratefully. They crossed the

room--a tedious journey. "Now let me see if you can manage alone," she

says, and suddenly deserts him.

He looked rather helplessly across the room. Few sights are so

pathetic as the strong man of yesterday feeling that the chair by the

fire is a distant object to-day. Tommy knew how pathetic it was, but

Grizel did not seem to know.

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

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

He got as far as the table, and clung to it, his teeth set. Grizel

clapped her hands. "Excellently done!" she said, with fell meaning,

and recommended him to move up and down the room for a little; he

would feel ever so much the better for it afterwards.

The pain--was--considerable, he said. Oh, she saw that, but he had

already proved himself so good at bearing pain, and the new school of

surgeons held that it was wise to exercise an injured limb.

Even then it was not a reproachful glance that Tommy gave her, though

there was some sadness in it. He moved across the room several times,

a groan occasionally escaping him. "Admirable!" said his critic.

"Bravo! Would you like to stop now?"

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

"It must be dreadfully painful," she replied coldly, "but I should

like you to go on." And he went on until suddenly he seemed to have

lost the power to lift his feet. His body swayed; there was an

appealing look on his face. "Don't be afraid; you won't fall," said

Grizel. But she had scarcely said it when he fainted dead away, and

went down at her feet.

"Oh, how dare you!" she cried in sudden flame, and she drew back from

him. But after a moment she knew that he was shamming no longer--or

she knew it and yet could not quite believe it; for, hurrying out of

the room for water, she had no sooner passed the door than she swiftly

put back her head as if to catch him unawares; but he lay motionless.

The sight of her dear brother on the floor paralyzed Elspeth, who

could only weep for him, and call to him to look at her and speak to

her. But in such an emergency Grizel was as useful as any doctor, and

by the time Gemmell arrived in haste the invalid was being brought to.

The doctor was a practical man who did not ask questions while there

was something better to do. Had he asked any as he came in, Grizel

would certainly have said: "He wanted to faint to make me believe he

really has a bad ankle, and somehow he managed to do it." And if the

doctor had replied that people can't faint by wishing, she would have

said that he did not know Mr. Sandys.

But, with few words, Gemmell got his patient back to the chairs, and

proceeded to undo the bandages that were round his ankle. Grizel stood

by, assisting silently. She had often assisted the doctors, but never

before with that scornful curl of her lip. So the bandages were

removed and the ankle laid bare. It was very much swollen and

discoloured, and when Grizel saw this she gave a little cry, and the

ointment she was holding slipped from her hand. For the first time

since he came to Thrums, she had failed Gemmell at a patient's side.

"I had not expected it to be--like this," she said in a quivering

voice, when he looked at her in surprise.

"It will look much worse to-morrow," he assured them, grimly. "I can't

understand, Miss Sandys, how this came about."

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

and I--"

Tommy's face was begging her to stop. He was still faint and in pain,

but all thought of himself left him in his desire to screen her. "I

owe you an apology, doctor," he said quickly, "for disregarding your

instructions. It was entirely my own fault; I would try to walk."

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

shuddered.

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

"Agony," insisted the doctor, as if, for once, he enjoyed the word.

"It was a mad thing to do, as surely you could guess, Grizel. Why did

you not prevent him?"

"She certainly did her best to stop me," Tommy said hastily; "but I

suppose I had some insane fit on me, for do it I would. I am very

sorry, doctor."

His face was wincing with pain, and he spoke jerkily; but the doctor

was still angry. He felt that there was something between these two

which he did not understand, and it was strange to him, and

unpleasant, to find Grizel unable to speak for herself. I think he

doubted Tommy from that hour. All he said in reply, however, was: "It

is unnecessary to apologize to me; you yourself are the only

sufferer."

But was Tommy the only sufferer? Gemmell left, and Elspeth followed

him to listen to those precious words which doctors drop, as from a

vial, on the other side of a patient's door; and then Grizel, who had

been standing at the window with head averted, turned slowly round and

looked at the man she had wronged. Her arms, which had been hanging

rigid, the fists closed, went out to him to implore forgiveness. I

don't know how she held herself up and remained dry-eyed, her whole

being wanted so much to sink by the side of his poor, tortured foot,

and bathe it in her tears.

So, you see, he had won; nothing to do now but forgive her

beautifully. Go on, Tommy; you are good at it.

But the unexpected only came out of Tommy. Never was there a softer

heart. In London the old lady who sold matches at the street corner

had got all his pence; had he heard her, or any other, mourning a son

sentenced to the gallows, he would immediately have wondered whether

he might take the condemned one's place. (What a speech Tommy could

have delivered from the scaffold!) There was nothing he would not jump

at doing for a woman in distress, except, perhaps, destroy his

note-book. And Grizel was in anguish. She was his suppliant, his

brave, lonely little playmate of the past, the noble girl of to-day,

Grizel whom he liked so much. As through a magnifying-glass he saw her

top-heavy with remorse for life, unable to sleep of nights, crushed

and----

He was not made of the stuff that could endure it. The truth must out.

"Grizel," he said impulsively, "you have nothing to be sorry for. You

were quite right. I did not hurt my foot that night in the Den, but

afterwards, when I was alone, before the doctor came. I wricked it

here intentionally in the door. It sounds incredible; but I set my

teeth and did it, Grizel, because you had challenged me to a duel, and

I would not give in."

As soon as it was out he was proud of himself for having the

generosity to confess it. He looked at Grizel expectantly.

Yes, it sounded incredible, and yet she saw that it was true. As

Elspeth returned at that moment, Grizel could say nothing. She stood

looking at him only over her high collar of fur. Tommy actually

thought that she was admiring him.

CHAPTER VIII

WHAT GRIZEL'S EYES SAID

To be the admired of women--how Tommy had fought for it since first he

drank of them in Pym's sparkling pages! To some it seems to be easy,

but to him it was a labour of Sisyphus. Everything had been against

him. But he concentrated. No labour was too Herculean; he was

prepared, if necessary, to walk round the world to get to the other

side of the wall across which some men can step. And he did take a

roundabout way. It is my opinion, for instance, that he wrote his book

in order to make a beginning with the ladies.

That as it may be, at all events he is on the right side of the wall

now, and here is even Grizel looking wistfully at him. Had she admired

him for something he was not (and a good many of them did that) he

would have been ill satisfied. He wanted her to think him splendid

because he was splendid, and the more he reflected the more clearly

he saw that he had done a big thing. How many men would have had the

courage to wrick their foot as he had done? (He shivered when he

thought of it.) And even of these Spartans how many would have let the

reward slip through their fingers rather than wound the feelings of a

girl? These had not been his thoughts when he made confession; he had

spoken on an impulse; but now that he could step out and have a look

at himself, he saw that this made it a still bigger thing. He was

modestly pleased that he had not only got Grizel's admiration, but

earned it, and he was very kind to her when next she came to see him.

No one could be more kind to them than he when they admired him. He

had the most grateful heart, had our Tommy.

When next she came to see him! That was while his ankle still nailed

him to the chair, a fortnight or so during which Tommy was at his

best, sending gracious messages by Elspeth to the many who called to

inquire, and writing hard at his new work, pad on knee, so like a

brave soul whom no unmerited misfortune could subdue that it would

have done you good merely to peep at him through the window. Grizel

came several times, and the three talked very ordinary things, mostly

reminiscences; she was as much a plain-spoken princess as ever, but

often he found her eyes fixed on him wistfully, and he knew what they

were saying; they spoke so eloquently that he was a little nervous

lest Elspeth should notice. It was delicious to Tommy to feel that

there was this little unspoken something between him and Grizel; he

half regretted that the time could not be far distant when she must

put it into words--as soon, say, as Elspeth left the room; an

exquisite moment, no doubt, but it would be the plucking of the

flower.

Don't think that Tommy conceived Grizel to be in love with him. On my

sacred honour, that would have horrified him.

Curiously enough, she did not take the first opportunity Elspeth gave

her of telling him in words how much she admired his brave confession.

She was so honest that he expected her to begin the moment the door

closed, and now that the artistic time had come for it, he wanted it;

but no. He was not hurt, but he wondered at her shyness, and cast

about for the reason. He cast far back into the past, and caught a

little girl who had worn this same wistful face when she admired him

most. He compared those two faces of the anxious girl and the serene

woman, and in the wistfulness that sometimes lay on them both they

looked alike. Was it possible that the fear of him which the years had

driven out of the girl still lived a ghost's life to haunt the woman?

At once he overflowed with pity. As a boy he had exulted in Grizel's

fear of him; as a man he could feel only the pain of it. There was no

one, he thought, less to be dreaded of a woman than he; oh, so sure

Tommy was of that! And he must lay this ghost; he gave his whole heart

to the laying of it.

Few men, and never a woman, could do a fine thing so delicately as he;

but of course it included a divergence from the truth, for to Tommy

afloat on a generous scheme the truth was a buoy marking sunken rocks.

She had feared him in her childhood, as he knew well; he therefore

proceeded to prove to her that she had never feared him. She had

thought him masterful, and all his reminiscences now went to show that

it was she who had been the masterful one.

"You must often laugh now," he said, "to remember how I feared you.

The memory of it makes me afraid of you still. I assure you, I joukit

back, as Corp would say, that day I saw you in church. It was the

instinct of self-preservation. 'Here comes Grizel to lord it over me

again,' I heard something inside me saying. You called me masterful,

and yet I had always to give in to you. That shows what a gentle,

yielding girl you were, and what a masterful character I was!"

His intention, you see, was, without letting Grizel know what he was

at, to make her think he had forgotten certain unpleasant incidents in

their past, so that, seeing they were no longer anything to him, they

might the sooner become nothing to her. And she believed that he had

forgotten, and she was glad. She smiled when he told her to go on

being masterful, for old acquaintance had made him like it. Hers,

indeed, was a masterful nature; she could not help it; and if the time

ever came when she must help it, the glee of living would be gone from

her.

She did continue to be masterful--to a greater extent than Tommy, thus

nobly behaving, was prepared for; and his shock came to him at the

very moment when he was modestly expecting to receive the prize. She

had called when Elspeth happened to be out; and though now able to

move about the room with the help of a staff, he was still an

interesting object. He saw that she thought so, and perhaps it made

him hobble slightly more, not vaingloriously, but because he was such

an artist. He ceased to be an artist suddenly, however, when Grizel

made this unexpected remark:

"How vain you are!"

Tommy sat down, quite pale. "Did you come here to say that to me,

Grizel?" he inquired, and she nodded frankly over her high collar of

fur. He knew it was true as Grizel said it, but though taken aback, he

could bear it, for she was looking wistfully at him, and he knew well

what Grizel's wistful look meant; so long as women admired him Tommy

could bear anything from them. "God knows I have little to be vain

of," he said humbly.

"Those are the people who are most vain," she replied; and he laughed

a short laugh, which surprised her, she was so very serious.

"Your methods are so direct," he explained. "But of what am I vain,

Grizel? Is it my book?"

"No," she answered, "not about your book, but about meaner things.

What else could have made you dislocate your ankle rather than admit

that you had been rather silly?"

Now "silly" is no word to apply to a gentleman, and, despite his

forgiving nature, Tommy was a little disappointed in Grizel.

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

stiffness.

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

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

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

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

"I like the book very much," she answered gravely. "No one can be more

proud of your fame than I. You are hurting me very much by pretending

to think that it is a pleasure to me to find fault with you." There

was no getting past the honesty of her, and he was touched by it.

Besides, she did admire him, and that, after all, is the great thing.

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

"But if they are true?"

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

distressed.

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

"You are so anxious to have me grow up," he replied, with proper

dolefulness. "If you like the book, Grizel, you must have patience

with the kind of thing that produced it. That night in the Den, when I

won your scorn, I was in the preliminary stages of composition. At

such times an author should be locked up; but I had got out, you see.

I was so enamoured of my little fancies that I forgot I was with you.

No wonder you were angry."

"I was not angry with you for forgetting me," she said sharply. (There

was no catching Grizel, however artful you were.) "But you were

sighing to yourself, you were looking as tragic as if some dreadful

calamity had occurred--"

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

"But you looked triumphant, too."

"That was because I saw I could make something of it." "Why did you

walk as if you were lame?"

"The man I was thinking of," Tommy explained, "had broken his leg. I

don't mind telling you that it was Corp."

He ought to have minded telling her, for it could only add to her

indignation; but he was too conceited to give weight to that.

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

"I broke it for him," replied Tommy; and when he had explained, her

eyes accused him of heartlessness.

"If it had been my own," he said, in self-defence, "it should have

gone crack just the same."

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

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

with a soldier."

"You dared to conceive that?"

"It helped."

Grizel stamped her foot. "You could take away dear Gavinia's character

with a smile!"

"On the contrary," said Tommy, "my heart bled for her. Did you not

notice that I was crying?" But he could not make Grizel smile; so, to

please her, he said, with a smile that was not very sincere: "I wish I

were different, but that is how ideas come to me--at least, all those

that are of any value."

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

This to Tommy, who held out sugar to them to lure them to him! But

still he treated her with consideration.

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

kindly.

"Then why not give it up?"

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

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

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

"What does that matter, if it does you harm?" In her eagerness to

persuade him, her words came pell-mell. "If writing makes you live in

such an unreal world, it must do you harm. I see now what Mr. Cathro

meant, long ago, when he called you Senti----"

Tommy winced. "I remember what Mr. Cathro called me," he said, with

surprising hauteur for such a good-natured man. "But he does not call

me that now. No one calls me that now, except you, Grizel."

"What does that matter," she replied distressfully, "if it is true? In

the definition of sentimentality in the dictionary--"

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

have you, Grizel?"

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

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

vanity."

"I think," she said, "it was vanity that gave you the courage to do

it." And he liked one word in this remark.

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

"I think you could do the most courageous things," she told him, "so

long as there was no real reason why you should do them."

It was a shot that rang the bell. Oh, our Tommy heard it ringing. But,

to do him justice, he bore no malice; he was proud, rather, of

Grizel's marksmanship. "At least," he said meekly, "it was courageous

of me to tell you the truth in the end?" But, to his surprise, she

shook her head.

"No," she replied; "it was sweet of you. You did it impulsively,

because you were sorry for me, and I think it was sweet. But impulse

is not courage."

So now Tommy knew all about it. His plain-spoken critic had been

examining him with a candle, and had paid particular attention to his

defects; but against them she set the fact that he had done something

chivalrous for her, and it held her heart, though the others were in

possession of the head. "How like a woman!" he thought, with a

pleased smile. He knew them!

Still he was chagrined that she made so little of his courage, and it

was to stab her that he said, with subdued bitterness: "I always had a

suspicion that I was that sort of person, and it is pleasant to have

it pointed out by one's oldest friend. No one will ever accuse you of

want of courage, Grizel."

She was looking straight at him, and her eyes did not drop, but they

looked still more wistful. Tommy did not understand the courage that

made her say what she had said, but he knew he was hurting her; he

knew that if she was too plain-spoken it was out of loyalty, and that

to wound Grizel because she had to speak her mind was a shame--yes, he

always knew that.

But he could do it; he could even go on: "And it is satisfactory that

you have thought me out so thoroughly, because you will not need to

think me out any more. You know me now, Grizel, and can have no more

fear of me."

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

suspiciously now.

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

soon as he had said it.

There was a long pause. "So you remembered it all the time," she said

quietly. "You have been making pretence--again!" He asked her to

forgive him, and she nodded her head at once. "But why did you pretend

to have forgotten?"

"I thought it would please you, Grizel."

"Why should pretence please me?" She rose suddenly, in a white heat.

"You don't mean to say that you think I am afraid of you still?"

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

"Don't be angry with me, Grizel," he begged her, earnestly. "I am so

glad I was mistaken. It made me miserable. I have been a terrible

blunderer, but I mean well; I misread your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"They have always seemed to be watching me, and often there was such a

wistful look in them--it reminded me of the past."

"You thought I was still afraid of you! Say it," said Grizel, stamping

her foot. But he would not say it. It was not merely fear that he

thought he had seen in her eyes, you remember. This was still his

comfort, and, I suppose, it gave the touch of complacency to his face

that made Grizel merciless. She did not mean to be merciless, but only

to tell the truth. If some of her words were scornful, there was

sadness in her voice all the time, instead of triumph. "For years and

years," she said, standing straight as an elvint, "I have been able to

laugh at all the ignorant fears of my childhood; and if you don't

know why I have watched you and been unable to help watching you since

you came back, I shall tell you. But I think you might have guessed,

you who write books about women. It is because I liked you when you

were a boy. You were often horrid, but you were my first friend when

every other person was against me. You let me play with you when no

other boy or girl would let me play. And so, all the time you have

been away, I have been hoping that you were growing into a noble man;

and when you came back, I watched to see whether you were the noble

man I wanted you so much to be, and you are not. Do you see now why my

eyes look wistful? It is because I wanted to admire you, and I can't."

She went away, and the great authority on women raged about the room.

Oh, but he was galled! There had been five feet nine of him, but he

was shrinking. By and by the red light came into his eyes.

CHAPTER IX

GALLANT BEHAVIOUR OF T. SANDYS

There were now no fewer than three men engaged, each in his own way,

in the siege of Grizel, nothing in common between them except insulted

vanity. One was a broken fellow who took for granted that she

preferred to pass him by in the street. His bow was also an apology to

her for his existence. He not only knew that she thought him wholly

despicable, but agreed with her. In the long ago (yesterday, for

instance) he had been happy, courted, esteemed; he had even esteemed

himself, and so done useful work in the world. But she had flung him

to earth so heavily that he had made a hole in it out of which he

could never climb. There he lay damned, hers the glory of destroying

him--he hoped she was proud of her handiwork. That was one Thomas

Sandys, the one, perhaps, who put on the velvet jacket in the morning.

But it might be number two who took that jacket off at night. He was

a good-natured cynic, vastly amused by the airs this little girl put

on before a man of note, and he took a malicious pleasure in letting

her see that they entertained him. He goaded her intentionally into

expressions of temper, because she looked prettiest then, and trifled

with her hair (but this was in imagination only), and called her a

quaint child (but this was beneath his breath). The third--he might be

the one who wore the jacket--was a haughty boy who was not only done

with her for ever, but meant to let her see it. (His soul cried, Oh,

oh, for a conservatory and some of society's darlings, and Grizel at

the window to watch how he got on with them!) And now that I think of

it, there was also a fourth: Sandys, the grave author, whose life (in

two vols. 8vo.) I ought at this moment to be writing, without a word

about the other Tommies. They amused him a good deal. When they were

doing something big he would suddenly appear and take a note of it.

The boy, who was stiffly polite to her (when Tommy was angry he became

very polite), told her that he had been invited to the Spittal, the

seat of the Rintoul family, and that he understood there were some

charming girls there.

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

"If you could see how they will like me!" he wanted to reply; but of

course he could not, and unfortunately there was no one by to say it

for him. Tommy often felt this want of a secretary.

The abject one found a glove of Grizel's, that she did not know she

had lost, and put it in his pocket. There it lay, unknown to her. He

knew that he must not even ask them to bury it with him in his grave.

This was a little thing to ask, but too much for him. He saw his

effects being examined after all that was mortal of T. Sandys had been

consigned to earth, and this pathetic little glove coming to light.

Ah, then, then Grizel would know! By the way, what would she have

known? I am sure I cannot tell you. Nor could Tommy, forced to face

the question in this vulgar way, have told you. Yet, whatever it was,

it gave him some moist moments. If Grizel saw him in this mood, her

reproachful look implied that he was sentimentalizing again. How

little this chit understood him!

The man of the world sometimes came upon the glove in his pocket, and

laughed at it, as such men do when they recall their callow youth. He

took walks with Grizel without her knowing that she accompanied him;

or rather, he let her come, she was so eager. In his imagination (for

bright were the dreams of Thomas!) he saw her looking longingly after

him, just as the dog looks; and then, not being really a cruel man, he

would call over his shoulder, "Put on your hat, little woman; you can

come." Then he conceived her wandering with him through the Den and

Caddam Wood, clinging to his arm and looking up adoringly at him.

"What a loving little soul it is!" he said, and pinched her ear,

whereat she glowed with pleasure. "But I forgot," he would add,

bantering her; "you don't admire me. Heigh-ho! Grizel wants to admire

me, but she can't!" He got some satisfaction out of these flights of

fancy, but it had a scurvy way of deserting him in the hour of

greatest need; where was it, for instance, when the real Grizel

appeared and fixed that inquiring eye on him?

He went to the Spittal several times, Elspeth with him when she cared

to go; for Lady Rintoul and all the others had to learn and remember

that, unless they made much of Elspeth, there could be no T. Sandys

for them. He glared at anyone, male or female, who, on being

introduced to Elspeth, did not remain, obviously impressed, by her

side. "Give pleasure to Elspeth or away I go," was written all over

him. And it had to be the right kind of pleasure, too. The ladies must

feel that she was more innocent than they, and talk accordingly. He

would walk the flower-garden with none of them until he knew for

certain that the man walking it with little Elspeth was a person to be

trusted. Once he was convinced of this, however, he was very much at

their service, and so little to be trusted himself that perhaps they

should have had careful brothers also. He told them, one at a time,

that they were strangely unlike all the other women he had known, and

held their hands a moment longer than was absolutely necessary, and

then went away, leaving them and him a prey to conflicting and

puzzling emotions.

Lord Rintoul, whose hair was so like his skin that in the family

portraits he might have been painted in one colour, could never rid

himself of the feeling that it must be a great thing to a writing chap

to get a good dinner; but her ladyship always explained him away with

an apologetic smile which went over his remarks like a piece of

india-rubber, so that in the end he had never said anything. She was a

slight, pretty woman of nearly forty, and liked Tommy because he

remembered so vividly her coming to the Spittal as a bride. He even

remembered how she had been dressed--her white bonnet, for instance.

"For long," Tommy said, musing, "I resented other women in white

bonnets; it seemed profanation."

"How absurd!" she told him, laughing. "You must have been quite a

small boy at the time."

"But with a lonely boy's passionate admiration for beautiful things,"

he answered; and his gravity was a gentle rebuke to her. "It was all a

long time ago," he said, taking both her hands in his, "but I never

forget, and, dear lady, I have often wanted to thank you." What he was

thanking her for is not precisely clear, but she knew that the

artistic temperament is an odd sort of thing, and from this time Lady

Rintoul liked Tommy, and even tried to find the right wife for him

among the families of the surrounding clergy. His step was sometimes

quite springy when he left the Spittal; but Grizel's shadow was always

waiting for him somewhere on the way home, to take the life out of

him, and after that it was again, oh, sorrowful disillusion! oh, world

gone gray! Grizel did not admire him. T. Sandys was no longer a wonder

to Grizel. He went home to that as surely as the labourer to his

evening platter.

And now we come to the affair of the Slugs. Corp had got a holiday,

and they were off together fishing the Drumly Water, by Lord Rintoul's

permission. They had fished the Drumly many a time without it, and

this was to be another such day as those of old. The one who woke at

four was to rouse the other. Never had either waked at four; but one

of them was married now, and any woman can wake at any hour she

chooses, so at four Corp was pushed out of bed, and soon thereafter

they took the road. Grizel's blinds were already up. "Do you mind,"

Corp said, "how often, when we had boasted we were to start at four

and didna get roaded till six, we wriggled by that window so that

Grizel shouldna see us?"

"She usually did see us," Tommy replied ruefully. "Grizel always

spotted us, Corp, when we had anything to hide, and missed us when we

were anxious to be seen."

"There was no jouking her," said Corp. "Do you mind how that used to

bother you?" a senseless remark to a man whom it was bothering

still--or shall we say to a boy? For the boy came back to Tommy when

he heard the Drumly singing; it was as if he had suddenly seen his

mother looking young again. There had been a thunder-shower as they

drew near, followed by a rush of wind that pinned them to a dike,

swept the road bare, banged every door in the glen, and then sank

suddenly as if it had never been, like a mole in the sand. But now the

sun was out, every fence and farm-yard rope was a string of diamond

drops. There was one to every blade of grass; they lurked among the

wild roses; larks, drunken with song, shook them from their wings. The

whole earth shone so gloriously with them that for a time Tommy ceased

to care whether he was admired. We can pay nature no higher

compliment.

But when they came to the Slugs! The Slugs of Kenny is a wild crevice

through which the Drumly cuts its way, black and treacherous, into a

lovely glade where it gambols for the rest of its short life; you

would not believe, to see it laughing, that it had so lately escaped

from prison. To the Slugs they made their way--not to fish, for any

trout that are there are thinking for ever of the way out and of

nothing else, but to eat their luncheon, and they ate it sitting on

the mossy stones their persons had long ago helped to smooth, and

looking at a roan-branch, which now, as then, was trailing in the

water.

There were no fish to catch, but there was a boy trying to catch them.

He was on the opposite bank; had crawled down it, only other boys can

tell how, a barefooted urchin of ten or twelve, with an enormous

bagful of worms hanging from his jacket button. To put a new worm on

the hook without coming to destruction, he first twisted his legs

about a young birch, and put his arms round it. He was after a big

one, he informed Corp, though he might as well have been fishing in a

treatise on the art of angling.

Corp exchanged pleasantries with him; told him that Tommy was Captain

Ure, and that he was his faithful servant Alexander Bett, both of

Edinburgh. Since the birth of his child, Corp had become something of

a humourist. Tommy was not listening. As he lolled in the sun he was

turning, without his knowledge, into one of the other Tommies. Let us

watch the process.

He had found a half-fledged mavis lying dead in the grass. Remember

also how the larks had sung after rain.

Tommy lost sight and sound of Corp and the boy. What he seemed to see

was a baby lark that had got out of its nest sideways, a fall of half

a foot only, but a dreadful drop for a baby. "You can get back this

way," its mother said, and showed it the way, which was quite easy,

but when the baby tried to leap, it fell on its back. Then the mother

marked out lines on the ground, from one to the other of which it was

to practise hopping, and soon it could hop beautifully so long as its

mother was there to say every moment, "How beautifully you hop!" "Now

teach me to hop up," the little lark said, meaning that it wanted to

fly; and the mother tried to do that also, but in vain; she could soar

up, up, up bravely, but could not explain how she did it. This

distressed her very much, and she thought hard about how she had

learned to fly long ago last year, but all she could recall for

certain was that you suddenly do it. "Wait till the sun comes out

after rain," she said, half remembering. "What is sun? What is rain?"

the little bird asked. "If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to

sing." "When the sun comes out after rain," the mother replied, "then

you will know how to sing." The rain came, and glued the little bird's

wings together. "I shall never be able to fly nor to sing," it wailed.

Then, of a sudden, it had to blink its eyes; for a glorious light had

spread over the world, catching every leaf and twig and blade of grass

in tears, and putting a smile into every tear. The baby bird's breast

swelled, it did not know why; and it fluttered from the ground, it did

not know how. "The sun has come out after the rain," it trilled.

"Thank you, sun; thank you, thank you! Oh, mother, did you hear me? I

can sing!" And it floated up, up, up, crying, "Thank you, thank you,

thank you!" to the sun. "Oh, mother, do you see me? I am flying!" And

being but a baby, it soon was gasping, but still it trilled the same

ecstasy, and when it fell panting to earth it still trilled, and the

distracted mother called to it to take breath or it would die, but it

could not stop. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" it sang to the sun

till its little heart burst.

With filmy eyes Tommy searched himself for the little pocket-book in

which he took notes of such sad thoughts as these, and in place of the

book he found a glove wrapped in silk paper. He sat there with it in

his hand, nodding his head over it so broken-heartedly you could not

have believed that he had forgotten it for several days.

Death was still his subject; but it was no longer a bird he saw: it

was a very noble young man, and his white, dead face stared at the sky

from the bottom of a deep pool. I don't know how he got there, but a

woman who would not admire him had something to do with it. No sun

after rain had come into that tragic life. To the water that had ended

it his white face seemed to be saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank

you." It was the old story of a faithless woman. He had given her his

heart, and she had played with it. For her sake he had striven to be

famous; for her alone had he toiled through dreary years in London,

the goal her lap, in which he should one day place his book--a poor,

trivial little work, he knew (yet much admired by the best critics).

Never had his thoughts wandered for one instant of that time to

another woman; he had been as faithful in life as in death; and now

she came to the edge of the pool and peered down at his staring eyes

and laughed.

He had got thus far when a shout from Corp brought him, dazed, to his

feet. It had been preceded by another cry, as the boy and the sapling

he was twisted round toppled into the river together, uprooted stones

and clods pounding after them and discolouring the pool into which the

torrent rushes between rocks, to swirl frantically before it dives

down a narrow channel and leaps into another caldron.

There was no climbing down those precipitous rocks. Corp was shouting,

gesticulating, impotent. "How can you stand so still?" he roared.

For Tommy was standing quite still, like one not yet thoroughly

awake. The boy's head was visible now and again as he was carried

round in the seething water; when he came to the outer ring down that

channel he must infallibly go, and every second or two he was in a

wider circle.

Tommy was awake now, and he could not stand still and see a boy drown

before his eyes. He knew that to attempt to save him was to face a

terrible danger, especially as he could not swim; but he kicked off

his boots. There was some gallantry in the man.

"You wouldna dare!" Corp cried, aghast.

Tommy hesitated for a moment, but he had abundance of physical

courage. He clenched his teeth and jumped. But before he jumped he

pushed the glove into Corp's hand, saying, "Give her that, and tell

her it never left my heart." He did not say who she was; he scarcely

knew that he was saying it. It was his dream intruding on reality, as

a wheel may revolve for a moment longer after the spring breaks.

Corp saw him strike the water and disappear. He tore along the bank as

he had never run before, until he got to the water's edge below the

Slugs, and climbed and fought his way to the scene of the disaster.

Before he reached it, however, we should have had no hero had not the

sapling, the cause of all this pother, made amends by barring the way

down the narrow channel. Tommy was clinging to it, and the boy to

him, and, at some risk, Corp got them both ashore, where they lay

gasping like fish in a creel.

The boy was the first to rise to look for his fishing-rod, and he was

surprised to find no six-pounder at the end of it. "She has broke the

line again!" he said; for he was sure then and ever afterwards that a

big one had pulled him in.

Corp slapped him for his ingratitude; but the man who had saved this

boy's life wanted no thanks. "Off to your home with you, wherever it

is," he said to the boy, who obeyed silently; and then to Corp: "He is

a little fool, Corp, but not such a fool as I am." He lay on his face,

shivering, not from cold, not from shock, but in a horror of himself.

I think it may fairly be said that he had done a brave if foolhardy

thing; it was certainly to save the boy that he had jumped, and he had

given himself a moment's time in which to draw back if he chose, which

vastly enhances the merit of the deed. But sentimentality had been

there also, and he was now shivering with a presentiment of the length

to which it might one day carry him.

They lit a fire among the rocks, at which he dried his clothes, and

then they set out for home, Corp doing all the talking. "What a town

there will be about this in Thrums!" was his text; and he was

surprised when Tommy at last broke silence by saying passionately:

"Never speak about this to me again, Corp, as long as you live.

Promise me that. Promise never to mention it to anyone. I want no one

to know what I did to-day, and no one will ever know unless you tell;

the boy can't tell, for we are strangers to him."

"He thinks you are a Captain Ure, and that I'm Alexander Bett, his

servant," said Corp. "I telled him that for a divert."

"Then let him continue to think that."

Of course Corp promised. "And I'll go to the stake afore I break my

promise," he swore, happily remembering one of the Jacobite oaths. But

he was puzzled. They would make so much of Tommy if they knew. They

would think him a wonder. Did he not want that?

"No," Tommy replied.

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

"I have changed."

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

books?"

Tommy did not say, but it was more recently than that. What he was

surrendering no one could have needed to be told less than he; the

magnitude of the sacrifice was what enabled him to make it. He was

always at home among the superlatives; it was the little things that

bothered him. In his present fear of the ride that sentimentality

might yet goad him to, he craved for mastery over self; he knew that

his struggles with his Familiar usually ended in an embrace, and he

had made a passionate vow that it should be so no longer. The best

beginning of the new man was to deny himself the glory that would be

his if his deed were advertised to the world. Even Grizel must never

know of it--Grizel, whose admiration was so dear to him. Thus he

punished himself, and again I think he deserves respect.

CHAPTER X

GAVINIA ON THE TRACK

Corp, you remember, had said that he would go to the stake rather than

break his promise; and he meant it, too, though what the stake was,

and why such a pother about going to it, he did not know. He was to

learn now, however, for to the stake he had to go. This was because

Gavinia, when folding up his clothes, found in one of the pockets a

glove wrapped in silk paper.

Tommy had forgotten it until too late, for when he asked Corp for the

glove it was already in Gavinia's possession, and she had declined to

return it without an explanation. "You must tell her nothing," Tommy

said sternly. He was uneasy, but relieved to find that Corp did not

know whose glove it was, nor even why gentlemen carry a lady's glove

in their pocket.

At first Gavinia was mildly curious only, but her husband's refusal to

answer any questions roused her dander. She tried cajolery, fried his

take of trout deliciously for him, and he sat down to them sniffing.

They were small, and the remainder of their brief career was in two

parts. First he lifted them by the tail, then he laid down the tail.

But not a word about the glove.

She tried tears. "Dinna greet, woman," he said in distress. "What

would the bairn say if he kent I made you greet?"

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

side.

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

"Your ain bairn!"

"I meant the glove!" he roared.

It was curiosity only that troubled Gavinia. A reader of romance, as

you may remember, she had encountered in the printed page a score of

ladies who, on finding such parcels in their husbands' pockets, left

their homes at once and for ever, and she had never doubted but that

it was the only course to follow; such is the power of the writer of

fiction. But when the case was her own she was merely curious; such

are the limitations of the writer of fiction. That there was a woman

in it she did not believe for a moment. This, of course, did not

prevent her saying, with a sob, "Wha is the woman?"

With great earnestness Corp assured her that there was no woman. He

even proved it: "Just listen to reason, Gavinia. If I was sich a

black as to be chief wi' ony woman, and she wanted to gie me a

present, weel, she might gie me a pair o' gloves, but one glove, what

use would one glove be to me? I tell you, if a woman had the impidence

to gie me one glove, I would fling it in her face."

Nothing could have been clearer, and he had put it thus considerately

because when a woman, even the shrewdest of them, is excited (any man

knows this), one has to explain matters to her as simply and patiently

as if she were a four-year-old; yet Gavinia affected to be

unconvinced, and for several days she led Corp the life of a lodger in

his own house.

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

If he reproved her, she replied meekly, "What can you expect frae a

woman that doesna wear gloves?"

To the baby she said: "He despises you, my bonny, because you hae no

gloves. Ay, that's what maks him turn up his nose at you. But your

mother is fond o' you, gloves or no gloves."

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

additions.

When Corp came home from his work, she said that a poor, love-lorn

female had called with a boot for him, and a request that he should

carry it in the pocket of his Sabbath breeks.

Worst of all, she listened to what he said in the night. Corp had a

habit of talking in his sleep. He was usually taking tickets at such

times, and it had been her custom to stop him violently; but now she

changed her tactics: she encouraged him. "I would be lying in my bed,"

he said to Tommy, "dreaming that a man had fallen into the Slugs, and

instead o' trying to save him I cried out, 'Tickets there, all tickets

ready,' and first he hands me a glove and neist he hands me a boot and

havers o' that kind sich as onybody dreams. But in the middle o' my

dream it comes ower me that I had better waken up to see what

Gavinia's doing, and I open my een, and there she is, sitting up,

hearkening avidly to my every word, and putting sly questions to me

about the glove."

"What glove?" Tommy asked coldly.

"The glove in silk paper."

"I never heard of it," said Tommy.

Corp sighed. "No," he said loyally, "neither did I"; and he went back

to the station and sat gloomily in a wagon. He got no help from Tommy,

not even when rumours of the incident at the Slugs became noised

abroad.

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

"What laddie?" Tommy inquired.

"Him that fell into the Slugs."

"Ah, yes," Tommy said; "I have just been reading about it in the

paper. A plucky fellow, this Captain Ure who saved him. I wonder who

he is."

"I wonder!" Corp said with a groan.

"There was an Alexander Bett with him, according to the papers," Tommy

went on. "Do you know any Bett?"

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

"What do you mean?" Tommy asked blankly.

Corp sighed, and went back again to the wagon. He was particularly

truculent that evening when the six-o'clock train came in. "Tickets,

there; look slippy wi' your tickets." His head bobbed up at the window

of another compartment. "Tick----" he began, and then he ducked.

The compartment contained a boy looking as scared as if he had just

had his face washed, and an old woman who was clutching a large linen

bag as if expecting some scoundrel to appear through the floor and

grip it. With her other hand she held on to the boy, and being unused

to travel, they were both sitting very self-conscious, humble, and

defiant, like persons in church who have forgotten to bring their

Bible. The general effect, however, was lost on Corp, for whom it was

enough that in one of them he recognized the boy of the Slugs. He

thought he had seen the old lady before, also, but he could not give

her a name. It was quite a relief to him to notice that she was not

wearing gloves.

He heard her inquiring for one Alexander Bett, and being told that

there was no such person in Thrums, "He's married on a woman of the

name of Gavinia," said the old lady; and then they directed her to the

house of the only Gavinia in the place. With dark forebodings Corp

skulked after her. He remembered who she was now. She was the old

woman with the nut-cracker face on whom he had cried in, more than a

year ago, to say that Gavinia was to have him. Her mud cottage had

been near the Slugs. Yes, and this was the boy who had been supping

porridge with her. Corp guessed rightly that the boy had remembered

his unlucky visit. "I'm doomed!" Corp muttered to himself--pronouncing

it in another way.

The woman, the boy, and the bag entered the house of Gavinia, and

presently she came out with them. She was looking very important and

terrible. They went straight to Ailie's cottage, and Corp was

wondering why, when he suddenly remembered that Tommy was to be there

at tea to-day.

CHAPTER XI

THE TEA-PARTY

It was quite a large tea-party, and was held in what had been the

school-room; nothing there now, however, to recall an academic past,

for even the space against which a map of the world (Mercator's

projection) had once hung was gone the colour of the rest of the

walls, and with it had faded away the last relic of the Hanky School.

"It will not fade so quickly from my memory," Tommy said, to please

Mrs. McLean. His affection for his old schoolmistress was as sincere

as hers for him. I could tell you of scores of pretty things he had

done to give her pleasure since his return, all carried out, too, with

a delicacy which few men could rival, and never a woman; but they

might make you like him, so we shall pass them by.

Ailie said, blushing, that she had taught him very little. "Everything

I know," he replied, and then, with a courteous bow to the gentleman

opposite, "except what I learned from Mr. Cathro."

"Thank you," Cathro said shortly. Tommy had behaved splendidly to him,

and called him his dear preceptor, and yet the Dominie still itched to

be at him with the tawse as of old. "And fine he knows I'm itching,"

he reflected, which made him itch the more.

It should have been a most successful party, for in the rehearsals

between the hostess and her maid Christina every conceivable

difficulty had been ironed out. Ailie was wearing her black silk, but

without the Honiton lace, so that Miss Sophia Innes need not become

depressed; and she had herself taken the chair with the weak back. Mr.

Cathro, who, though a lean man, needed a great deal of room at table,

had been seated far away from the spinet, to allow Christina to pass

him without climbing. Miss Sophia and Grizel had the doctor between

them, and there was also a bachelor, but an older one, for Elspeth.

Mr. McLean, as stout and humoursome as of yore, had solemnly promised

his wife to be jocular but not too jocular. Neither minister could

complain, for if Mr. Dishart had been asked to say grace, Mr. Gloag

knew that he was to be called on for the benediction. Christina,

obeying strict orders, glided round the table leisurely, as if she

were not in the least excited, though she could be heard rushing

along the passage like one who had entered for a race. And, lastly,

there was, as chief guest, the celebrated Thomas Sandys. It should

have been a triumph of a tea-party, and yet it was not. Mrs. McLean

could not tell why.

Grizel could have told why; her eyes told why every time they rested

scornfully on Mr. Sandys. It was he, they said, who was spoiling the

entertainment, and for the pitiful reason that the company were not

making enough of him. He was the guest of the evening, but they were

talking admiringly of another man, and so he sulked. Oh, how she

scorned Tommy!

That other man was, of course, the unknown Captain Ure, gallant

rescuer of boys, hero of all who admire brave actions except the

jealous Sandys. Tommy had pooh-poohed him from the first, to Grizel's

unutterable woe.

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

asked in despair.

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

"I advise you in your own interests not to talk in that way to

others," she said. "Don't you see what they will say?"

"I can't help that," answered Tommy the just. "If they ask my opinion,

I must give them the truth. I thought you were fond of the truth,

Grizel." To that she could only wring her hands and say nothing; but

it had never struck her that the truth could be so bitter.

And now he was giving his opinion at Mrs. McLean's party, and they

were all against him, except, in a measure, Elspeth's bachelor, who

said cheerily, "We should all have done it if we had been in Captain

Ure's place; I would have done it myself, Miss Elspeth, though not

fond of the water." He addressed all single ladies by their Christian

name with a Miss in front of it. This is the mark of the confirmed

bachelor, and comes upon him at one-and-twenty.

"I could not have done it," Grizel replied decisively, though she was

much the bravest person present, and he explained that he meant the

men only. His name was James Bonthron; let us call him Mr. James.

"Men are so brave!" she responded, with her eyes on Tommy, and he

received the stab in silence. Had the blood spouted from the wound, it

would have been an additional gratification to him. Tommy was like

those superb characters of romance who bare their breast to the enemy

and say, "Strike!"

"Well, well," Mr. Cathro observed, "none of us was on the spot, and so

we had no opportunity of showing our heroism. But you were near by,

Mr. Sandys, and if you had fished up the water that day, instead of

down, you might have been called upon. I wonder what you would have

done?"

Yes, Tommy was exasperating to him still as in the long ago, and

Cathro said this maliciously, yet feeling that he did a risky thing,

so convinced was he by old experience that you were getting in the way

of a road-machine when you opposed Thomas Sandys.

"I wonder," Tommy replied quietly.

The answer made a poor impression, and Cathro longed to go on. "But he

was always most dangerous when he was quiet," he reflected uneasily,

and checked himself in sheer funk.

Mr. Gloag came, as he thought, to Tommy's defence. "If Mr. Sandys

questions," he said heavily, "whether courage would have been

vouchsafed to him at that trying hour, it is right and fitting that he

should admit it with Christian humility."

"Quite so, quite so," Mr. James agreed, with heartiness. He had begun

to look solemn at the word "vouchsafed."

"For we are differently gifted," continued Mr. Gloag, now addressing

his congregation. "To some is given courage, to some learning, to some

grace. Each has his strong point," he ended abruptly, and tucked

reverently into the jam, which seemed to be his.

"If he would not have risked his life to save the boy," Elspeth

interposed hotly, "it would have been because he was thinking of me."

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

Tommy said.

"I am sure it would," said Grizel.

Mr. Cathro was rubbing his hands together covertly, yet half wishing

he could take her aside and whisper: "Be canny; it's grand to hear

you, but be canny; he is looking most extraordinar meek, and unless he

has cast his skin since he was a laddie, it's not chancey to meddle

with him when he is meek."

The doctor also noticed that Grizel was pressing Tommy too hard, and

though he did not like the man, he was surprised--he had always

thought her so fair-minded.

"For my part," he said, "I don't admire the unknown half so much for

what he did as for his behaviour afterwards. To risk his life was

something, but to disappear quietly without taking any credit for it

was finer and I should say much more difficult."

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

"I don't see it," said Tommy, and the silence that followed should

have been unpleasant to him; but he went on calmly: "Doubtless it was

a mere impulse that made him jump into the pool, and impulse is not

courage." He was quoting Grizel now, you observe, and though he did

not look at her, he knew her eyes were fixed on him reproachfully.

"And so," he concluded, "I suppose Captain Ure knew he had done no

great thing, and preferred to avoid exaggerated applause."

Even Elspeth was troubled; but she must defend her dear brother. "He

would have avoided it himself," she explained quickly. "He dislikes

praise so much that he does not understand how sweet it is to smaller

people."

This made Tommy wince. He was always distressed when timid Elspeth

blurted out things of this sort in company, and not the least of his

merits was that he usually forbore from chiding her for it afterwards,

so reluctant was he to hurt her. In a world where there were no women

except Elspeths, Tommy would have been a saint. He saw the doctor

smiling now, and at once his annoyance with her changed to wrath

against him for daring to smile at little Elspeth. She saw the smile,

too, and blushed; but she was not angry: she knew that the people who

smiled at her liked her, and that no one smiled so much at her as Dr.

Gemmell.

The Dominie said fearfully: "I have no doubt that explains it, Miss

Sandys. Even as a boy I remember your brother had a horror of vulgar

applause."

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

Tommy replied quietly;

"I am afraid that was not my character, Mr. Cathro; but I hope I have

changed since then, and that I could pull a boy out of the water

without wanting to be extolled for it."

That he could say such things before her was terrible to Grizel. It

was perhaps conceivable that he might pull the boy out of the water,

as he so ungenerously expressed it; but that he could refrain from

basking in the glory thereof, that, she knew, was quite impossible.

Her eyes begged him to take back those shameful words, but he bravely

declined; not even to please Grizel could he pretend that what was not

was. No more sentiment for T. Sandys.

"The spirit has all gone out of him; what am I afraid of?" reflected

the Dominie, and he rose suddenly to make a speech, tea-cup in hand.

"Cathro, Cathro, you tattie-doolie, you are riding to destruction,"

said a warning voice within him, but against his better judgment he

stifled it and began. He begged to propose the health of Captain Ure.

He was sure they would all join with him cordially in drinking it,

including Mr. Sandys, who unfortunately differed from them in his

estimation of the hero; that was only, however, as had been

conclusively shown, because he was a hero himself, and so could make

light of heroic deeds--with other sly hits at Mr. Sandys. But when all

the others rose to drink the toast, Tommy remained seated. The Dominie

coughed. "Perhaps Mr. Sandys means to reply," Grizel suggested

icily. And it was at this uncomfortable moment that Christina appeared

suddenly, and in a state of suppressed excitement requested her

mistress to speak with her behind the door. All the knowing ones were

aware that something terrible must have happened in the kitchen. Miss

Sophia thought it might be the china tea-pot. She smiled reassuringly

to signify that, whatever it was, she would help Mrs. McLean through,

and so did Mr. James. He was a perfect lady.

How dramatic it all was, as Ailie said frequently afterwards. She was

back in a moment, with her hand on her heart. "Mr. Sandys," were her

astounding words, "a lady wants to see you."

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

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

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

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

All eyes turned on the door so longingly that it opened under their

pressure, and a boy who had been at the keyhole stumbled forward.

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

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

"He's a liar," said the boy. His manner was that of the police, and

it had come so sharply upon Tommy that he looked not unlike a detected

criminal.

Most of them thought he was being accused of something vile, and the

Dominie demanded, with a light heart, "Who is the woman?" while Mr.

James had a pleasant feeling that the ladies should be requested to

retire. But just then the woman came in, and she was much older than

they had expected.

"That's him, granny," the boy said, still severely; "that's the man as

saved my life at the Slugs." And then, when the truth was dawning on

them all, and there were exclamations of wonder, a pretty scene

suddenly presented itself, for the old lady, who had entered with the

timidest courtesy, slipped down on her knees before Tommy and kissed

his hand. That young rascal of a boy was all she had.

They were all moved by her simplicity, but none quite so much as

Tommy. He gulped with genuine emotion, and saw her through a maze of

beautiful thoughts that delayed all sense of triumph and even made him

forget, for a little while, to wonder what Grizel was thinking of him

now. As the old lady poured out her thanks tremblingly, he was

excitedly planning her future. He was a poor man, but she was to be

brought by him into Thrums to a little cottage overgrown with roses.

No more hard work for these dear old hands. She could sell scones,

perhaps. She should have a cow. He would send the boy to college and

make a minister of him; she should yet hear her grandson preach in the

church to which as a boy--

But here the old lady somewhat imperilled the picture by rising

actively and dumping upon the table the contents of the bag--a fowl

for Tommy.

She was as poor an old lady as ever put a halfpenny into the church

plate on Sundays; but that she should present a hen to the preserver

of her grandson, her mind had been made up from the moment she had

reason to think she could find him, and it was to be the finest hen in

all the country round. She was an old lady of infinite spirit, and

daily, dragging the boy with her lest he again went a-fishing, she

trudged to farms near and far to examine and feel their hens. She was

a brittle old lady who creaked as she walked, and cracked like a

whin-pod in the heat, but she did her dozen miles or more a day, and

passed all the fowls in review, and could not be deceived by the

craftiest of farmers' wives; and in the tail of the day she became

possessor, and did herself thraw the neck of the stoutest and toughest

hen that ever entered a linen bag head foremost. By this time the boy

had given way in the legs, and hence the railway journey, its cost

defrayed by admiring friends.

With careful handling he should get a week out of her gift, she

explained complacently, besides two makes of broth; and she and the

boy looked as if they would like dearly to sit opposite Tommy during

those seven days and watch him gorging.

If you look at the matter aright it was a handsomer present than many

a tiara, but if you are of the same stuff as Mr. James it was only a

hen. Mr. James tittered, and one or two others made ready to titter.

It was a moment to try Tommy, for there are doubtless heroes as

gallant as he who do not know how to receive a present of a hen.

Grizel, who had been holding back, moved a little nearer. If he hurt

that sweet old woman's feelings, she could never forgive him--never!

He heard the titter, and ridicule was terrible to him; but he also

knew why Grizel had come closer, and what she wanted of him. Our

Tommy, in short, had emerged from his emotion, and once more knew what

was what. It was not his fault that he stood revealed a hero: the

little gods had done it; therefore let him do credit to the chosen of

the little gods. The way he took that old lady's wrinkled hand, and

bowed over it, and thanked her, was an ode to manhood. Everyone was

touched. Those who had been about to titter wondered what on earth Mr.

James had seen to titter at, and Grizel almost clapped her hands with

joy; she would have done it altogether had not Tommy just then made

the mistake of looking at her for approval. She fell back, and,

intoxicated with himself, he thought it was because her heart was too

full for utterance. Tommy was now splendid, and described the affair

at the Slugs with an adorable modesty.

"I assure you, it was a much smaller thing to do than you imagine; it

was all over in a few minutes; I knew that in your good nature you

would make too much of it, and so--foolishly, I can see now--I tried

to keep it from you. As for the name Captain Ure, it was an invention

of that humourous dog, Corp."

And so on, with the most considerate remarks when they insisted on

shaking hands with him: "I beseech you, don't apologize to me; I see

clearly that the fault was entirely my own. Had I been in your place,

Mr. James, I should have behaved precisely as you have done, and had

you been at the Slugs you would have jumped in as I did. Mr. Cathro,

you pain me by holding back; I assure you I esteem my old Dominie more

than ever for the way in which you stuck up for Captain Ure, though

you must see why I could not drink that gentleman's health."

And Mr. Cathro made the best of it, wringing Tommy's hand effusively,

while muttering, "Fool, donnard stirk, gowk!" He was addressing

himself and any other person who might be so presumptuous as to try to

get the better of Thomas Sandys. Cathro never tried it again. Had

Tommy died that week his old Dominie would have been very chary of

what he said at the funeral.

They were in the garden now, the gentlemen without their hats. "Have

you made your peace with him?" Cathro asked Grizel, in a cautious

voice. "He is a devil's buckie, and I advise you to follow my example,

Miss McQueen, and capitulate. I have always found him reasonable so

long as you bend the knee to him."

"I am not his enemy," replied Grizel, loftily, "and if he has done a

noble thing I am proud of him and will tell him so."

"I would tell him so," said the Dominie, "whether he had done it or

not."

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

it?"

"No, no, no," he answered hurriedly; "or mercy's sake, don't tell him

I think that." And then, as Tommy was out of ear-shot: "But I see

there is no necessity for my warning you against standing in his way

again, Miss McQueen, for you are up in arms for him now."

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

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

But though it was thus that she defended Tommy when others hinted

doubts, she had not yet said she was proud of him to the man who

wanted most to hear it. For one brief moment Grizel had exulted on

learning that he and Captain Ure were one, and then suddenly, to all

the emotions now running within her, a voice seemed to cry, "Halt!"

and she fell to watching sharply the doer of noble deeds. Her eyes

were not wistful, nor were they contemptuous, but had Tommy been less

elated with himself he might have seen that they were puzzled and

suspicious. To mistrust him in face of such evidence seemed half a

shame; she was indignant with herself even while she did it; but she

could not help doing it, the truth about Tommy was such a vital thing

to Grizel. She had known him so well, too well, up to a minute ago,

and this was not the man she had known.

How unfair she was to Tommy while she watched! When the old lady was

on her knees thanking him, and every other lady was impressed by the

feeling he showed, it seemed to Grizel that he was again in the arms

of some such absurd sentiment as had mastered him in the Den. When he

behaved so charmingly about the gift she was almost sure he looked at

her as he had looked in the old days before striding his legs and

screaming out, "Oh, am I not a wonder? I see by your face that you

think me a wonder!" All the time he was so considerately putting those

who had misjudged him at their ease she believed he did it

considerately that they might say to each other, "How considerate he

is!" When she misread Tommy in such comparative trifles as these, is

it to be wondered that she went into the garden still tortured by a

doubt about the essential? It was nothing less than torture to her;

when you discover what is in her mind, Tommy, you may console yourself

with that.

He discovered what was in her mind as Mr. Cathro left her. She felt

shy, he thought, of coming to him after what had taken place, and,

with the generous intention of showing that she was forgiven, he

crossed good-naturedly to her.

"You were very severe, Grizel," he said, "but don't let that distress

you for a moment; it served me right for not telling the truth at

once."

She did not flinch. "Do we know the truth now?" she asked, looking at

him steadfastly. "I don't want to hurt you--you know that; but please

tell me, did you really do it? I mean, did you do it in the way we

have been led to suppose?"

It was a great shock to Tommy. He had not forgotten his vows to change

his nature, and had she been sympathetic now he would have confessed

to her the real reason of his silence. He wanted boyishly to tell her,

though of course without mention of the glove; but her words hardened

him.

"Grizel!" he cried reproachfully, and then in a husky voice: "Can you

really think so badly of me as that?"

"I don't know what to think," she answered, pressing her hands

together, "I know you are very clever."

He bowed slightly.

"Did you?" she asked again. She was no longer chiding herself for

being over-careful; she must know the truth.

He was silent for a moment. Then, "Grizel," he said, "I am about to

pain you very much, but you give me no option. I did do it precisely

as you have heard. And may God forgive you for doubting me," he added

with a quiver, "as freely as I do."

You will scarcely believe this, but a few minutes afterwards, Grizel

having been the first to leave, he saw her from the garden going, not

home, but in the direction of Corp's house, obviously to ask him

whether Tommy had done it. Tommy guessed her intention at once, and he

laughed a bitter ho-ho-ha, and wiped her from his memory.

"Farewell, woman; I am done with you," are the terrible words you may

conceive Tommy saying. Next moment, however, he was hurriedly bidding

his hostess good-night, could not even wait for Elspeth, clapped his

hat on his head, and was off after Grizel. It had suddenly struck him

that, now the rest of the story was out, Corp might tell her about the

glove. Suppose Gavinia showed it to her!

Sometimes he had kissed that glove passionately, sometimes pressed his

lips upon it with the long tenderness that is less intoxicating but

makes you a better man; but now, for the first time, he asked himself

bluntly why he had done those things, with the result that he was

striding to Corp's house. It was not only for his own sake that he

hurried; let us do him that justice. It was chiefly to save Grizel the

pain of thinking that he whom she had been flouting loved her, as she

must think if she heard the story of the glove. That it could be

nothing but pain to her he was boyishly certain, for assuredly this

scornful girl wanted none of his love. And though she was scornful,

she was still the dear companion of his boyhood. Tommy was honestly

anxious to save Grizel the pain of thinking that she had flouted a man

who loved her.

He took a different road from hers, but, to his annoyance, they met at

Couthie's corner. He would have passed her with a distant bow, but she

would have none of that. "You have followed me," said Grizel, with

the hateful directness that was no part of Tommy's character.

"Grizel!"

"You followed me to see whether I was going to question Corp. You were

afraid he would tell me what really happened. You wanted to see him

first to tell him what to say."

"Really, Grizel--"

"Is it not true?"

There are no questions so offensive to the artistic nature as those

that demand a Yes or No for answer. "It is useless for me to say it is

not true," he replied haughtily, "for you won't believe me."

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

Tommy tried standing on the other foot, but it was no help. "I presume

I may have reasons for wanting to see Corp that you are unacquainted

with," he said.

"Oh, I am sure of it!" replied Grizel, scornfully. She had been hoping

until now, but there was no more hope left in her.

"May I ask what it is that my oldest friend accuses me of? Perhaps you

don't even believe that I was Captain Ure?"

"I am no longer sure of it."

"How you read me, Grizel! I could hoodwink the others, but never you.

I suppose it is because you have such an eye for the worst in

anyone."

It was not the first time he had said something of this kind to her;

for he knew that she suspected herself of being too ready to find

blemishes in others, to the neglect of their better qualities, and

that this made her uneasy and also very sensitive to the charge.

To-day, however, her own imperfections did not matter to her; she was

as nothing to herself just now, and scarcely felt his insinuations.

"I think you were Captain Ure," she said slowly, "and I think you did

it, but not as the boy imagines."

"You may be quite sure," he replied, "that I would not have done it

had there been the least risk. That, I flatter myself, is how you

reason it out."

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

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

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

"Go on," said he, "though I can guess what agreeable thing you were

going to say."

But she said something else: "You may have noticed that I took the boy

aside and questioned him privately."

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

impostor."

She clenched her hands again; it was all so hard to say, and yet she

must say it! "I did not. I saw he believed his story. I was asking him

whether you had planned his coming with it to Mrs. McLean's house at

that dramatic moment."

"You actually thought me capable of that!"

"It makes me horrid to myself," she replied wofully, "but if I thought

you had done that I could more readily believe the rest."

"Very well, Grizel," he said, "go on thinking the worst of me; I would

not deprive you of that pleasure if I could."

"Oh, cruel, cruel!" she could have replied; "you know it is no

pleasure; you know it is a great pain." But she did not speak.

"I have already told you that the boy's story is true," he said, "and

now you ask me why I did not shout it from the housetops myself.

Perhaps it was for your sake, Grizel; perhaps it was to save you the

distress of knowing that in a momentary impulse I could so far forget

myself as to act the part of a man."

She pressed her hands more tightly. "I may be wronging you," she

answered; "I should love to think so; but--you have something you want

to say to Corp before I see him."

"Not at all," Tommy said; "if you still want to see Corp, let us go

together." She hesitated, but she knew how clever he was. "I prefer

to go alone," she replied. "Forgive me if I ask you to turn back."

"Don't go," he entreated her. "Grizel, I give you my word of honour it

is to save you acute pain that I want to see Corp first." She smiled

wanly at that, for though, as we know, it was true, she misunderstood

him. He had to let her go on alone.

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH A COMEDIAN CHALLENGES TRAGEDY TO BOWLS

When Grizel opened the door of Corp's house she found husband and wife

at home, the baby in his father's arms; what is more, Gavinia was

looking on smiling and saying, "You bonny litlin, you're windy to have

him dandling you; and no wonder, for he's a father to be proud o'."

Corp was accepting it all with a complacent smirk. Oh, agreeable

change since last we were in this house! oh, happy picture of domestic

bliss! oh--but no, these are not the words; what we meant to say was,

"Gavinia, you limmer, so you have got the better of that man of yours

at last."

How had she contrived it? We have seen her escorting the old lady to

the Dovecot, Corp skulking behind. Our next peep at them shows Gavinia

back at her house, Corp peering through the window and wondering

whether he dare venture in. Gavinia was still bothered, for though she

knew now the story of Tommy's heroism, there was no glove in it, and

it was the glove that maddened her.

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

"Not a sylup was said about a glove," maintained Christina, who had

given her a highly coloured narrative of what took place in Mrs.

McLean's parlour.

"And yet there's a glove in't as sure as there's a quirk in't,"

Gavinia kept muttering to herself. She rose to have another look at

the hoddy-place in which she had concealed the glove from her husband,

and as she did so she caught sight of him at the window. He bobbed at

once, but she hastened to the door to scarify him. The clock had given

only two ticks when she was upon him, but in that time she had

completely changed her plan of action. She welcomed him with smiles of

pride. Thus is the nimbleness of women's wit measured once and for

all. They need two seconds if they are to do the thing comfortably.

"Never to have telled me, and you behaved so grandly!" she cried, with

adoring glances that were as a carpet on which he strode pompously

into the house.

"It wasna me that did it; it was him," said Corp, and even then he

feared that he had told too much. "I kenna what you're speaking

about," he added loyally.

"Corp," she answered, "you needna be so canny, for the laddie is in

the town, and Mr. Sandys has confessed all."

"The whole o't?"

"Every risson."

"About the glove, too?"

"Glove and all," said wicked Gavinia, and she continued to feast her

eyes so admiringly on her deceived husband that he passed quickly from

the gratified to the dictatorial.

"Let this be a lesson to you, woman," he said sternly; and Gavinia

intimated with humility that she hoped to profit by it.

"Having got the glove in so solemn a way," he went on, "it would have

been ill done of me to blab to you about it. Do you see that now,

woman?"

She said it was as clear as day to her. "And a solemn way it was," she

added, and then waited eagerly.

"My opinion," continued Corp, lowering his voice as if this were not

matter for the child, "is that it's a love-token frae some London

woman."

"Behear's!" cried Gavinia.

"Else what," he asked, "would make him hand it to me so solemn-like,

and tell me to pass it on to her if he was drowned? I didna think o'

that at the time, but it has come to me, Gavinia; it has come."

This was a mouthful indeed to Gavinia. So the glove was the property

of Mr. Sandys, and he was in love with a London lady, and--no, this is

too slow for Gavinia; she saw these things in passing, as one who

jumps from the top of a house may have lightning glimpses through many

windows on the way down. What she jumped to was the vital question,

Who was the woman?

But she was too cunning to ask a leading question.

"Ay, she's his lady-love," she said, controlling herself, "but I

forget her name. It was a very wise-like thing o' you to speir the

woman's name."

"But I didna."

"You didna!"

"He was in the water in a klink."

Had Gavinia been in Corp's place she would have had the name out of

Tommy, water or no water; but she did not tell her husband what she

thought of him.

"Ay, of course," she said pleasantly. "It was after you helped him out

that he telled you her name."

"Did he say he telled me her name?"

"He did."

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

Instead of boxing his ears she begged him to reflect. Result of

reflection, that if the name had been mentioned to Corp, which he

doubted, it began with M.

Was it Mary?

That was the name.

Or was it Martha?

It had a taste of Martha about it.

It was not Margaret?

It might have been Margaret.

Or Matilda?

It was fell like Matilda.

And so on. "But wi' a' your wheedling," Corp reminded his wife,

bantering her from aloft, "you couldna get a scraping out o' me till I

was free to speak."

He thought it a good opportunity for showing Gavinia her place once

and for all. "In small matters," he said, "I gie you your ain way, for

though you may be wrang, thinks I to mysel', 'She's but a woman'; but

in important things, Gavinia, if I humoured you I would spoil you, so

let this be a telling to you that there's no diddling a determined

man"; to which she replied by informing the baby that he had a father

to be proud of.

A father to be proud of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she

entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in

that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who

had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep

the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been

won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy's

mistake, he was swaggering in that other's clothes (oh, baser still!).

Everything was revealed to her in a flash, and she stooped over the

baby to hide a sudden tear. She did not want to hear any more.

The baby cried. Babies are aware that they can't do very much; but all

of them who knew Grizel were almost contemptuously confident of their

power over her, and when this one saw (they are very sharp) that in

his presence she could actually think of something else, he was so

hurt that he cried.

Was she to be blamed for thinking so meanly of Tommy? You can blame

her with that tear in her eye if you choose; but I can think only of

the gladness that came afterwards when she knew she had been unjust to

him. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" the bird sang to its Creator

when the sun came out after rain, and it was Grizel's song as she

listened to Corp's story of heroic Tommy. There was no room in her

exultant heart for remorse. It would have shown littleness to be able

to think of herself at all when she could think so gloriously of him.

She was more than beautiful now; she was radiant; and it was because

Tommy was the man she wanted him to be. As those who are cold hold

out their hands to the fire did she warm her heart at what Corp had to

tell, and the great joy that was lit within her made her radiant. Now

the baby was in her lap, smiling back to her. He thought he had done

it all. "So you thought you could resist me!" the baby crowed.

The glove had not been mentioned yet. "The sweetest thing of all to

me," Grizel said, "is that he did not want me to hear the story from

you, Corp, because he knew you would sing his praise so loudly."

"I'm thinking," said Gavinia, archly, "he had another reason for no

wanting you to question Corp. Maybe he didna want you to ken about the

London lady and her glove. Will you tell her, man, or will I?"

They told her together, and what had been conjectures were now put

forward as facts. Tommy had certainly said a London lady, and as

certainly he had given her name, but what it was Corp could not

remember. But "Give her this and tell her it never left my heart"--he

could swear to these words.

"And no words could be stronger," Gavinia said triumphantly. She

produced the glove, and was about to take off its paper wrapping when

Grizel stopped her.

"We have no right, Gavinia." "I suppose we hinna, and I'm thinking

the pocket it came out o' is feeling gey toom without it. Will you

take it back to him?"

"It was very wrong of you to keep it," Grizel answered, "but I can't

take it to him, for I see now that his reason for wanting me not to

come here was to prevent my hearing about it. I am sorry you told me.

Corp must take it back." But when she saw it being crushed in Corp's

rough hand, a pity for the helpless glove came over her. She said:

"After all, I do know about it, so I can't pretend to him that I

don't. I will give it to him, Corp"; and she put the little package in

her pocket with a brave smile.

Do you think the radiance had gone from her face now? Do you think the

joy that had been lit in her heart was dead? Oh, no, no! Grizel had

never asked that Tommy should love her; she had asked only that he

should be a fine man. She did not ask it for herself, only for him.

She could not think of herself now, only of him. She did not think she

loved him. She thought a woman should not love any man until she knew

he wanted her to love him.

But if Tommy had wanted it she would have been very glad. She knew,

oh, she knew so well, that she could have helped him best. Many a

noble woman has known it as she stood aside.

In the meantime Tommy had gone home in several states of

mind--reckless, humble, sentimental, most practical, defiant,

apprehensive. At one moment he was crying, "Now, Grizel, now, when it

is too late, you will see what you have lost." At the next he quaked

and implored the gods to help him out of his predicament. It was

apprehension that, on the whole, played most of the tunes, for he was

by no means sure that Grizel would not look upon the affair of the

glove as an offer of his hand, and accept him. They would show her the

glove, and she would, of course, know it to be her own. "Give her this

and tell her it never left my heart." The words thumped within him

now. How was Grizel to understand that he had meant nothing in

particular by them?

I wonder if you misread him so utterly as to believe that he thought

himself something of a prize? That is a vulgar way of looking at

things of which our fastidious Tommy was incapable. As much as Grizel

herself, he loathed the notion that women have a thirsty eye on man;

when he saw them cheapening themselves before the sex that should hold

them beyond price, he turned his head and would not let his mind dwell

on the subject. He was a sort of gentleman, was Tommy. And he knew

Grizel so well that had all the other women in the world been of this

kind, it would not have persuaded him that there was a drop of such

blood in her. Then, if he feared that she was willing to be his, it

must have been because he thought she loved him? Not a bit of it. As

already stated, he thought he had abundant reason to think otherwise.

It was remorse that he feared might bring her to his feet, the

discovery that while she had been gibing at him he had been a heroic

figure, suffering in silence, eating his heart for love of her.

Undoubtedly that was how Grizel must see things now; he must seem to

her to be an angel rather than a mere man; and in sheer remorse she

might cry, "I am yours!" Vain though Tommy was, the picture gave him

not a moment's pleasure. Alarm was what he felt.

Of course he was exaggerating Grizel's feelings. She had too much

self-respect and too little sentiment to be willing to marry any man

because she had unintentionally wronged him. But this was how Tommy

would have acted had he happened to be a lady. Remorse, pity, no one

was so good at them as Tommy.

In his perturbation he was also good at maidenly reserve. He felt

strongly that the proper course for Grizel was not to refer to the

glove--to treat that incident as closed, unless he chose to reopen it.

This was so obviously the correct procedure that he seemed to see her

adopting it like a sensible girl, and relief would have come to him

had he not remembered that Grizel usually took her own way, and that

it was seldom his way.

There were other ways of escape. For instance, if she would only let

him love her hopelessly. Oh, Grizel had but to tell him there was no

hope, and then how finely he would behave! It would bring out all that

was best in him. He saw himself passing through life as her very

perfect knight. "Is there no hope for me?" He heard himself begging

for hope, and he heard also her firm answer: "None!" How he had always

admired the outspokenness of Grizel. Her "None!" was as splendidly

decisive as of yore.

The conversation thus begun ran on in him, Tommy doing the speaking

for both (though his lips never moved), and feeling the scene as

vividly as if Grizel had really been present and Elspeth was not.

Elspeth was sitting opposite him.

"At least let me wait, Grizel," he implored. "I don't care for how

long; fix a time yourself, and I shall keep to it, and I promise never

to speak one word of love to you until that time comes, and then if

you bid me go I shall go. Give me something to live for. It binds you

to nothing, and oh, it would make such a difference to me."

Then Grizel seemed to reply gently, but with the firmness he adored:

"I know I cannot change, and it would be mistaken kindness to do as

you suggest. No, I can give you no hope; but though I can never marry

you, I will watch your future with warm regard, for you have to-day

paid me the highest compliment a man can pay a woman."

(How charmingly it was all working out!)

Tommy bowed with dignity and touched her hand with his lips. What is

it they do next in Pym and even more expensive authors? Oh, yes! "If

at any time in your life, dear Grizel," he said, "you are in need of a

friend, I hope you will turn first to me. It does not matter where

your message reaches me, I will come to you without delay."

In his enthusiasm he saw the letter being delivered to him in Central

Africa, and immediately he wheeled round on his way to Thrums.

"There is one other little request I should like to make of you," he

said huskily. "Perhaps I ask too much, but it is this: may I keep your

glove?"

She nodded her head; she was so touched that she could scarcely trust

herself to speak. "But you will soon get over this," she said at last;

"another glove will take the place of mine; the time will come when

you will be glad that I said I could not marry you."

"Grizel!" he cried in agony. He was so carried away by his feelings

that he said the word aloud.

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

"Was it not she who passed just now?" he replied promptly; and they

were still discussing his mistake when Grizel did pass, but only to

stop at the door. She came in.

"My brother must have the second sight," declared Elspeth, gaily, "for

he saw you coming before you came"; and she told what had happened,

while Grizel looked happily at Tommy, and Tommy looked apprehensively

at her. Grizel, he might have seen, was not wearing the tragic face of

sacrifice; it was a face shining with gladness, a girl still too happy

in his nobility to think remorsefully of her own misdeeds. To let him

know that she was proud of him, that was what she had come for

chiefly, and she was even glad that Elspeth was there to hear. It was

an excuse to her to repeat Corp's story, and she told it with defiant

looks at Tommy that said, "You are so modest, you want to stop me, but

Elspeth will listen; it is nearly as sweet to Elspeth as it is to me,

and I shall tell her every word, yes, and tell her a great deal of it

twice."

It was not modesty which made Tommy so anxious that she should think

less of him, but naturally it had that appearance. The most heroic

fellows, I am told, can endure being extolled by pretty girls, but

here seemed to be one who could not stand it.

"You need not think it is of you we are proud," she assured him

light-heartedly; "it is really of ourselves. I am proud of being your

friend. To-morrow, when I hear the town ringing your praises, I shall

not say, 'Yes, isn't he wonderful?' I shall say, 'Talk of me; I, too,

am an object of interest, for I am his friend.'"

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

complacently.

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

friends."

For a time he could suck no sweetness from it. She avoided the glove,

he was sure, only because of Elspeth's presence. But anon there

arrived to cheer him a fond hope that she had not heard of it, and as

this became conviction, exit the Tommy who could not abide himself,

and enter another who was highly charmed therewith. Tommy had a notion

that certain whimsical little gods protected him in return for the

sport he gave them, and he often kissed his hand to them when they

came to the rescue. He would have liked to kiss it now, but gave a

grateful glance instead to the corner in the ceiling where they sat

chuckling at him. Grizel admired him at last. Tra, la, la! What a dear

girl she was! Into his manner there crept a certain masterfulness, and

instead of resisting it she beamed. Rum-ti-tum!

"If you want to spoil me," he said lazily, "you will bring me that

footstool to rest my heroic feet upon." She smiled and brought it.

She even brought a cushion for his heroic head. Adoring little thing

that she was, he must be good to her.

He was now looking forward eagerly to walking home with her. I can't

tell you how delicious he meant to be. When she said she must go, he

skipped upstairs for his hat, and wafted the gods their kiss. But it

was always the unexpected that lay in wait for Tommy. He and she were

no sooner out of the house than Grizel said, "I did not mention the

glove, as I was not sure whether Elspeth knew of it."

He had turned stone-cold.

"Corp and Gavinia told me," she went on quietly, "before I had time to

stop them. Of course I should have preferred not to know until I heard

it from yourself."

Oh, how cold he was!

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

They had stopped, for his legs would carry him no farther. "Get us out

of this," every bit of him was crying, but not one word could Tommy

say.

"I knew you would want to have it again," Grizel said brightly,

producing the little parcel from her pocket, "so I brought it to you."

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

flown away.

No, they were actually giving him another chance. What was this

Grizel was saying? "I have not looked at it, for to take it out of its

wrapping would have been profanation. Corp told me she was a London

girl; but I know nothing more, not even her name. You are not angry

with me for speaking of her, are you? Surely I may wish you and her

great happiness."

He was saved. The breath came back quickly to him. He filled like a

released ball. Had ever a heart better right to expand? Grizel,

looking so bright and pleased, had snatched him from the Slugs. Surely

you will be nice to your preserver, Tommy. You will not be less

grateful than a country boy?

Ah me! not even yet have we plumed his vanity. But we are to do it

now. He could not have believed it of himself, but in the midst of his

rejoicings he grew bitter, and for no better reason than that Grizel's

face was bright.

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

you."

His tone surprised her; but she was in a humble mood, and answered,

without being offended: "It is sweet news to me. How could you think

otherwise?"

So it was sweet to her to think that he was another's! He who had been

modestly flattering himself a few moments ago that he must take care

not to go too far with this admiring little girl! O woman, woman, how

difficult it is to know you, and how often, when we think we know you

at last, have we to begin again at the beginning! He had never asked

an enduring love from her; but surely, after all that had passed

between them, he had a right to expect a little more than this. Was it

maidenly to bring the glove and hand it to him without a tremor? If

she could do no more, she might at least have turned a little pale

when Corp told her of it, and then have walked quietly away. Next day

she could have referred to it, with just the slightest break in her

voice. But to come straight to him, looking delighted--

"And, after all, I am entitled to know first," Grizel said, "for I am

your oldest friend."

Friend! He could not help repeating the word with bitter emphasis. For

her sake, as it seemed to him now, he had flung himself into the black

waters of the Drumly. He had worn her glove upon his heart. It had

been the world to him. And she could stand there and call herself his

friend. The cup was full. Tommy nodded his head sorrowfully three

times.

"So be it, Grizel," he said huskily; "so be it!" Sentiment could now

carry him where it willed. The reins were broken.

"I don't understand."

Neither did he; but, "Why should you? What is it to you!" he cried

wildly. "Better not to understand, for it might give you five

minutes' pain, Grizel, a whole five minutes, and I should be sorry to

give you that."

"What have I said! What have I done!"

"Nothing," he answered her, "nothing. You have been most exemplary;

you have not even got any entertainment out of it. The thing never

struck you as possible. It was too ludicrous!"

He laughed harshly at the package, which was still in his hand. "Poor

little glove," he said; "and she did not even take the trouble to look

at you. You might have looked at it, Grizel. I have looked at it a

good deal. It meant something to me once upon a time when I was a vain

fool. Take it and look at it before you fling it away. It will make

you laugh."

Now she knew, and her arms rocked convulsively. Joy surged to her

face, and she drove it back. She looked at him steadfastly over the

collar of her jacket; she looked long, as if trying to be suspicious

of him for the last time. Ah, Grizel, you are saying good-bye to your

best friend!

As she looked at him thus there was a mournfulness in her brave face

that went to Tommy's heart and almost made a man of him. It was as if

he knew that she was doomed.

"Grizel," he cried, "don't look at me in that way!" And he would have

taken the package from her, but she pressed it to her heart.

"Don't come with me," she said almost in a whisper, and went away.

He did not go back to the house. He wandered into the country, quite

objectless when he was walking fastest, seeing nothing when he stood

still and stared. Elation and dread were his companions. What elation

whispered he could not yet believe; no, he could not believe it. While

he listened he knew that he must be making up the words. By and by he

found himself among the shadows of the Den. If he had loved Grizel he

would have known that it was here she would come, to the sweet Den

where he and she had played as children, the spot where she had loved

him first. She had always loved him--always, always. He did not know

what figure it was by the Cuttle Well until he was quite close to

her. She was kissing the glove passionately, and on her eyes lay

little wells of gladness.

CHAPTER XIII

LITTLE WELLS OF GLADNESS

It was dusk, and she had not seen him. In the silent Den he stood

motionless within a few feet of her, so amazed to find that Grizel

really loved him that for the moment self was blotted out of his mind.

He remembered he was there only when he heard his heavy breathing, and

then he tried to check it that he might steal away undiscovered.

Divers emotions fought for the possession of him. He was in the

meeting of many waters, each capable of whirling him where it chose,

but two only imperious: the one the fierce joy of being loved; the

other an agonizing remorse. He would fain have stolen away to think

this tremendous thing over, but it tossed him forward. "Grizel," he

said in a husky whisper, "Grizel!"

She did not start; she was scarcely surprised to hear his voice: she

had been talking to him, and he had answered. Had he not been there

she would still have heard him answer. She could not see him more

clearly now than she had been seeing him through those little wells of

gladness. Her love for him was the whole of her. He came to her with

the opening and the shutting of her eyes; he was the wind that bit her

and the sun that nourished her; he was the lowliest object by the

Cuttle Well, and he was the wings on which her thoughts soared to

eternity. He could never leave her while her mortal frame endured.

When he whispered her name she turned her swimming eyes to him, and a

strange birth had come into her face. Her eyes said so openly they

were his, and her mouth said it was his, her whole being went out to

him; in the radiance of her face could be read immortal designs: the

maid kissing her farewell to innocence was there, and the reason why

it must be, and the fate of the unborn; it was the first stirring for

weal or woe of a movement that has no end on earth, but must roll on,

growing lusty on beauty or dishonour till the crack of time. This

birth which comes to every woman at that hour is God's gift to her in

exchange for what He has taken away, and when He has given it He

stands back and watches the man.

To this man she was a woman transformed. The new bloom upon her face

entranced him. He knew what it meant. He was looking on the face of

love at last, and it was love coming out smiling from its hiding-place

because it thought it had heard him call. The artist in him who had

done this thing was entranced, as if he had written an immortal page.

But the man was appalled. He knew that he had reached the critical

moment in her life and his, and that if he took one step farther

forward he could never again draw back. It would be comparatively easy

to draw back now. To remain a free man he had but to tell her the

truth; and he had a passionate desire to remain free. He heard the

voices of his little gods screaming to him to draw back. But it could

be done only at her expense, and it seemed to him that to tell this

noble girl, who was waiting for him, that he did not need her, would

be to spill for ever the happiness with which she overflowed, and sap

the pride that had been the marrow of her during her twenty years of

life. Not thus would Grizel have argued in his place; but he could not

change his nature, and it was Sentimental Tommy, in an agony of

remorse for having brought dear Grizel to this pass, who had to decide

her future and his in the time you may take to walk up a garden path.

Either her mistake must be righted now or kept hidden from her for

ever. He was a sentimentalist, but in that hard moment he was trying

to be a man. He took her in his arms and kissed her reverently,

knowing that after this there could be no drawing back. In that act he

gave himself loyally to her as a husband. He knew he was not worthy of

her, but he was determined to try to be a little less unworthy; and as

he drew her to him a slight quiver went through her, so that for a

second she seemed to be holding back--for a second only, and the

quiver was the rustle of wings on which some part of the Grizel we

have known so long was taking flight from her. Then she pressed close

to him passionately, as if she grudged that pause. I love her more

than ever, far more; but she is never again quite the Grizel we have

known.

He was not unhappy; in the near hereafter he might be as miserable as

the damned--the little gods were waiting to catch him alone and

terrify him; but for the time, having sacrificed himself, Tommy was

aglow with the passion he had inspired. He so loved the thing he had

created that in his exultation he mistook it for her. He believed all

he was saying. He looked at her long and adoringly, not, as he

thought, because he adored her, but because it was thus that look

should answer look; he pressed her wet eyes reverently because thus it

was written in his delicious part; his heart throbbed with hers that

they might beat in time. He did not love, but he was the perfect

lover; he was the artist trying in a mad moment to be as well as to

do. Love was their theme; but how to know what was said when between

lovers it is only the loose change of conversation that gets into

words? The important matters cannot wait so slow a messenger; while

the tongue is being charged with them, a look, a twitch of the mouth,

a movement of a finger, transmits the story, and the words arrive,

like Blücher, when the engagement is over.

With a sudden pretty gesture--ah, so like her mother's!--she held the

glove to his lips. "It is sad because you have forgotten it."

"I have kissed it so often, Grizel, long before I thought I should

ever kiss you!"

She pressed it to her innocent breast at that. And had he really done

so? and which was the first time, and the second, and the third? Oh,

dear glove, you know so much, and your partner lies at home in a

drawer knowing nothing. Grizel felt sorry for the other glove. She

whispered to Tommy as a terrible thing, "I think I love this glove

even more than I love you--just a tiny bit more." She could not part

with it. "It told me before you did," she explained, begging him to

give it back to her.

"If you knew what it was to me in those unhappy days, Grizel!"

"I want it to tell me," she whispered.

And did he really love her? Yes, she knew he did, but how could he?

"Oh, Grizel, how could I help it!"

He had to say it, for it is the best answer; but he said it with a

sigh, for it sounded like a quotation.

But how could she love him? I think her reply disappointed him.

"Because you wanted me to," she said, with shining eyes. It is

probably the commonest reason why women love, and perhaps it is the

best; but his vanity was wounded--he had expected to hear that he was

possessed of an irresistible power.

"Not until I wanted you to?"

"I think I always wanted you to want me to," she replied, naïvely;

"but I would never have let myself love you," she continued very

seriously, "until I was sure you loved me."

"You could have helped it, Grizel!" He drew a blank face.

"I did help it," she answered. "I was always fighting the desire to

love you,--I can see that plainly,--and I always won. I thought God

had made a sort of compact with me that I should always be the kind of

woman I wanted to be if I resisted the desire to love you until you

loved me."

"But you always had the desire!" he said eagerly.

"Always, but it never won. You see, even you did not know of it. You

thought I did not even like you! That was why you wanted to prevent

Corp's telling me about the glove, was it not? You thought it would

pain me only! Do you remember what you said: 'It is to save you acute

pain that I want to see Corp first'?"

All that seemed so long ago to Tommy now!

"How could you think it would be a pain to me!" she cried.

"You concealed your feelings so well, Grizel."

"Did I not?" she said joyously. "Oh, I wanted to be so careful, and I

was careful. That is why I am so happy now." Her face was glowing. She

was full of odd, delightful fancies to-night. She kissed her hand to

the gloaming; no, not to the gloaming--to the little hunted, anxious

girl she had been.

[Illustration: "She is standing behind that tree looking at us."]

"She is looking at us," she said. "She is standing behind that tree

looking at us. She wanted so much to grow into a dear, good woman that

she often comes and looks at me eagerly. Sometimes her face is so

fearful! I think she was a little alarmed when she heard you were

coming back."

"She never liked me, Grizel."

"Hush!" said Grizel, in a low voice. "She always liked you; she always

thought you a wonder. But she would be distressed if she heard me

telling you. She thought it would not be safe for you to know. I must

tell him now, dearest, darlingest," she suddenly called out boldly to

the little self she had been so quaintly fond of because there was no

other to love her. "I must tell him everything now, for you are no

longer your own. You are his."

"She has gone away rocking her arms," she said to Tommy.

"No," he replied. "I can hear her. She is singing because you are so

happy."

"She never knew how to sing."

"She has learned suddenly. Everybody can sing who has anything to sing

about. And do you know what she said about your dear wet eyes, Grizel?

She said they were just sweet. And do you know why she left us so

suddenly? She ran home gleefully to stitch and dust and beat carpets,

and get baths ready, and look after the affairs of everybody, which

she is sure must be going to rack and ruin because she has been away

for half an hour!"

At his words there sparkled in her face the fond delight with which a

woman assures herself that the beloved one knows her little

weaknesses, for she does not truly love unless she thirsts to have him

understand the whole of her, and to love her in spite of the foibles

and for them. If he does not love you a little for the foibles, madam,

God help you from the day of the wedding.

But though Grizel was pleased, she was not to be cajoled. She

wandered with him through the Den, stopping at the Lair, and the

Queen's Bower, and many other places where the little girl used to

watch Tommy suspiciously; and she called, half merrily, half

plaintively: "Are you there, you foolish girl, and are you wringing

your hands over me? I believe you are jealous because I love him

best."

"We have loved each other so long, she and I," she said apologetically

to Tommy. "Ah," she said impulsively, when he seemed to be hurt,

"don't you see it is because she doubts you that I am so sorry for the

poor thing!"

"Dearest, darlingest," she called to the child she had been, "don't

think that you can come to me when he is away, and whisper things

against him to me. Do you think I will listen to your croakings, you

poor, wet-faced thing!"

"You child!" said Tommy.

"Do you think me a child because I blow kisses to her?"

"Do you like me to think you one?" he replied.

"I like you to call me child," she said, "but not to think me one."

"Then I shall think you one," said he, triumphantly. He was so perfect

an instrument for love to play upon that he let it play on and on, and

listened in a fever of delight. How could Grizel have doubted Tommy?

The god of love himself would have sworn that there were a score of

arrows in him. He wanted to tell Elspeth and the others at once that

he and Grizel were engaged. I am glad to remember that it was he who

urged this, and Grizel who insisted on its being deferred. He even

pretended to believe that Elspeth would exult in the news; but Grizel

smiled at him for saying this to please her. She had never been a

great friend of Elspeth's, they were so dissimilar; and she blamed

herself for it now, and said she wanted to try to make Elspeth love

her before they told her. Tommy begged her to let him tell his sister

at once; but she remained obdurate, so anxious was she that her

happiness, when revealed, should bring only happiness to others. There

had not come to Grizel yet the longing to be recognized as his by the

world. This love was so beautiful and precious to her that there was

an added joy in sharing the dear secret with him alone; it was a live

thing that might escape if she let anyone but him look between the

fingers that held it.

The crowning glory of loving and being loved is that the pair make no

real progress; however far they have advanced into the enchanted land

during the day, they must start again from the frontier next morning.

Last night they had dredged the lovers' lexicon for superlatives and

not even blushed; to-day is that the heavens cracking or merely

someone whispering "dear"? All this was very strange and wonderful to

Grizel. She had never been so young in the days when she was a little

girl.

"I can never be quite so happy again!" she had said, with a wistful

smile, on the night of nights; but early morn, the time of the day

that loves maidens best, retold her the delicious secret as it kissed

her on the eyes, and her first impulse was to hurry to Tommy. When joy

or sorrow came to her now, her first impulse was to hurry with it to

him.

Was he still the same, quite the same? She, whom love had made a child

of, asked it fearfully, as if to gaze upon him openly just at first

might be blinding; and he pretended not to understand. "The same as

what, Grizel?"

"Are you still--what I think you?"

"Ah, Grizel, not at all what you think me."

"But you do?"

"Coward! You are afraid to say the word. But I do!"

"You don't ask whether I do!"

"No."

"Why? Is it because you are so sure of me?"

He nodded, and she said it was cruel of him.

"You don't mean that, Grizel."

"Don't I?" She was delighted that he knew it.

"No; you mean that you like me to be sure of it."

"But I want to be sure of it myself." "You are. That was why you

asked me if I loved you. Had you not been sure of it you would not

have asked."

"How clever you are!" she said gleefully, and caressed a button of his

velvet coat. "But you don't know what that means! It does not mean

that I love you--not merely that."

"No; it means that you are glad I know you so well. It is an ecstasy

to you, is it not, to feel that I know you so well?"

"It is sweet," she said. She asked curiously: "What did you do last

night, after you left me? I can't guess, though I daresay you can

guess what I did."

"You put the glove under your pillow, Grizel." (She had got the

precious glove.)

"However could you guess!"

"It has often lain under my own."

"Oh!" said Grizel, breathless.

"Could you not guess even that?"

"I wanted to be sure. Did it do anything strange when you had it

there?"

"I used to hear its heart beating."

"Yes, exactly! But this is still more remarkable. I put it away at

last in my sweetest drawer, and when I woke in the morning it was

under my pillow again. You could never have guessed that."

"Easily. It often did the same thing with me." "Story-teller! But

what did you do when you went home?"

He could not have answered that exhaustively, even if he would, for

his actions had been as contradictory as his emotions. He had feared

even while he exulted, and exulted when plunged deep in fears. There

had been quite a procession of Tommies all through the night; one of

them had been a very miserable man, and the only thing he had been

sure of was that he must be true to Grizel. But in so far as he did

answer he told the truth.

"I went for a stroll among the stars," he said. "I don't know when I

got to bed. I have found a way of reaching the stars. I have to say

only, 'Grizel loves me,' and I am there."

"Without me!"

"I took you with me."

"What did we see? What did we do?"

"You spoiled everything by thinking the stars were badly managed. You

wanted to take the supreme control. They turned you out."

"And when we got back to earth?"

"Then I happened to catch sight of myself in a looking-glass, and I

was scared. I did not see how you could possibly love me. A terror

came over me that in the Den you must have mistaken me for someone

else. It was a darkish night, you know." "You are wanting me to say

you are handsome."

"No, no; I am wanting you to say I am very, very handsome. Tell me you

love me, Grizel, because I am beautiful."

"Perhaps," she replied, "I love you because your book is beautiful."

"Then good-bye for ever," he said sternly.

"Would not that please you?"

"It would break my heart."

"But I thought all authors--"

"It is the commonest mistake in the world. We are simple creatures,

Grizel, and yearn to be loved for our face alone."

"But I do love the book," she said, when they became more serious,

"because it is part of you."

"Rather that," he told her, "than that you should love me because I am

part of it. But it is only a little part of me, Grizel; only the best

part. It is Tommy on tiptoes. The other part, the part that does not

deserve your love, is what needs it most."

"I am so glad!" she said eagerly. "I want to think you need me."

"How I need you!"

"Yes, I think you do--I am sure you do; and it makes me so happy."

"Ah," he said, "now I know why Grizel loves me." And perhaps he did

know now. She loved to think that she was more to him than the new

book, but was not always sure of it; and sometimes this saddened her,

and again she decided that it was right and fitting. She would hasten

to him to say that this saddened her. She would go just as impulsively

to say that she thought it right.

Her discoveries about herself were many.

"What is it to-day?" he would say, smiling fondly at her. "I see it is

something dreadful by your face."

"It is something that struck me suddenly when I was thinking of you,

and I don't know whether to be glad or sorry."

"Then be glad, you child."

"It is this: I used to think a good deal of myself; the people here

thought me haughty; they said I had a proud walk."

"You have it still," he assured her; the vitality in her as she moved

was ever a delicious thing to him to look upon.

"Yes, I feel I have," she admitted, "but that is only because I am

yours; and it used to be because I was nobody's!"

"Do you expect my face to fall at that?"

"No, but I thought so much of myself once, and now I am nobody at all.

At first it distressed me, and then I was glad, for it makes you

everything and me nothing. Yes, I am glad, but I am just a little bit

sorry that I should be so glad!" "Poor Grizel!" said he.

"Poor Grizel!" she echoed. "You are not angry with me, are you, for

being almost sorry for her? She used to be so different. 'Where is

your independence, Grizel?' I say to her, and she shakes her sorrowful

head. The little girl I used to be need not look for me any more; if

we were to meet in the Den she would not know me now."

Ah, if only Tommy could have loved in this way! He would have done it

if he could. If we could love by trying, no one would ever have been

more loved than Grizel. "Am I to be condemned because I cannot?" he

sometimes said to himself in terrible anguish; for though pretty

thoughts came to him to say to her when she was with him, he suffered

anguish for her when he was alone. He knew it was tragic that such

love as hers should be given to him, but what more could he do than he

was doing?

CHAPTER XIV

ELSPETH

Ever since the beginning of the book we have been neglecting Elspeth

so pointedly that were she not the most forgiving creature we should

be afraid to face her now. You are not angry with us, are you,

Elspeth? We have been sitting with you, talking with you, thinking of

you between the chapters, and the only reason why you have so seldom

got into them is that our pen insisted on running after your

fascinating brother.

(That is the way to get round her.)

Tommy, it need not be said, never neglected her. The mere fact of his

having an affair of his own at present is a sure sign that she is

comfortable, for, unless all were well with Elspeth, no venture could

have lured him from her side. "Now I am ready for you," he said to the

world when Elspeth had been, figuratively speaking, put to sleep; but

until she was nicely tucked up the world had to wait. He was still as

in his boyhood, when he had to see her with a good book in her hand

before he could set off on deeds of darkness. If this was but the

story of a brother and sister, there were matter for it that would

make the ladies want to kiss Tommy on the brow.

That Dr. Gemmell disliked or at least distrusted him, Tommy knew

before their acquaintance was an hour old; yet that same evening he

had said cordially to Elspeth:

"This young doctor has a strong face."

She was evidently glad that Tommy had noticed it. "Do you think him

handsome?" she inquired.

"Decidedly so," he replied, very handsomely, for it is an indiscreet

question to ask of a plain man.

There was nothing small about Tommy, was there? He spoke thus

magnanimously because he had seen that the doctor liked Elspeth, and

that she liked him for liking her. Elspeth never spoke to him of such

things, but he was aware that an extra pleasure in life came to her

when she was admired; it gave her a little of the self-confidence she

so wofully lacked; the woman in her was stirred. Take such presents as

these to Elspeth, and Tommy would let you cast stones at himself for

the rest of the day, and shake your hand warmly on parting. In

London Elspeth had always known quickly, almost at the first clash of

eyes, whether Tommy's friends were attracted by her, but she had not

known sooner than he. Those acquaintanceships had seldom ripened; but

perhaps this was because, though he and she avoided talking of them,

he was all the time taking such terrifying care of her. She was always

little Elspeth to him, for whom he had done everything since the

beginning of her, a frail little female counterpart of himself that

would never have dared to grow up had he not always been there to show

her the way, like a stronger plant in the same pot. It was even

pathetic to him that Elspeth should have to become a woman while he

was a man, and he set to, undaunted, to help her in this matter also.

To be admired of men is a woman's right, and he knew it gratified

Elspeth; therefore he brought them in to admire her. But beyond

profound respect they could not presume to go, he was watching them so

vigilantly. He had done everything for her so far, and it was evident

that he was now ready to do the love-making also, or at least to sift

it before it reached her. Elspeth saw this, and perhaps it annoyed her

once or twice, though on the whole she was deeply touched; and the

young gentlemen saw it also: they saw that he would not leave them

alone with her for a moment, and that behind his cordial manner sat a

Tommy who had his eye on them. Subjects suitable for conversation

before Elspeth seemed in presence of this strict brother to be

limited. You had just begun to tell her the plot of the new novel when

T. Sandys fixed you with his gleaming orb. You were in the middle of

the rumour about Mrs. Golightly when he let the poker fall. If the

newsboys were yelling the latest horror he quickly closed the window.

He made all visitors self-conscious. If she was not in the room few of

them dared to ask if she was quite well. They paled before expressing

the hope that she would feel stronger to-morrow. Yet when Tommy went

up to sit beside her, which was the moment the front door closed, he

took care to mention, incidentally, that they had been inquiring after

her. One of them ventured on her birthday to bring her flowers, but

could not present them, Tommy looked so alarming. A still more daring

spirit once went the length of addressing her by her Christian name.

She did not start up haughtily (the most timid of women are a surprise

at times), but the poker fell with a crash.

He knew Elspeth so well that he could tell exactly how these poor

young men should approach her. As an artist as well as a brother, he

frowned when they blundered. He would have liked to be the medium

through which they talked, so that he could give looks and words their

proper force. He had thought it all out so thoroughly for Elspeth's

benefit that in an hour he could have drawn out a complete guide for

her admirers.

"At the first meeting look at her wistfully when she does not see you.

She will see you." It might have been Rule One.

Rule Two: "Don't talk so glibly." How often that was what the poker

meant!

Being herself a timid creature, Elspeth showed best among the timid,

because her sympathetic heart immediately desired to put them at their

ease. The more glibly they could talk, the less, she knew, were they

impressed by her. Even a little boorishness was more complimentary

than chatter. Sometimes when she played on the piano which Tommy had

hired for her, the visitor was so shy that he could not even mutter

"Thank you" to his hat; yet she might play to him again, and not to

the gallant who remarked briskly: "How very charming! What is that

called?"

To talk disparagingly of other women is so common a way among men of

penetrating into the favour of one that, of course, some tried it with

Elspeth. Tommy could not excuse such blundering, for they were making

her despise them. He got them out of the house, and then he and she

had a long talk, not about them, but about men and women in general,

from which she gathered once again that there was nobody like Tommy.

When they bade each other good-night, she would say to him: "I think

you are the one perfect gentleman in the world."

Or he might say: "You expect so much of men, Elspeth."

To which her reply: "You have taught me to do it, and now I expect

others to be like you." Sometimes she would even say: "When I see you

so fond of me, and taking such care of me, I am ashamed. You think me

so much better than I am. You consider me so pure and good, while I

know that I am often mean, and even have wicked thoughts. It makes me

ashamed, but so proud of you, for I see that you are judging me by

yourself."

And then this Tommy would put the gas out softly and go to his own

room, and, let us hope, blush a little.

One stripling had proposed to Elspeth, and on her agitatedly declining

him, had flung out of the room in a pet. It spoiled all her

after-thoughts on the subject, and so roused her brother's indignation

with the fellow. If the great baby had only left all the arrangements

to Tommy, he could so easily have made that final scene one which

Elspeth would remember with gratification for the remainder of her

days; for, of course, pride in the offer could not be great unless she

retained her respect for the man who made it. From the tremulous

proposal and the manly acceptance of his fate to his dignified exit

("Don't grieve for me, Miss Sandys; you never gave me the least

encouragement, and to have loved you will always make me a better

man"), even to a touching way of closing the door with one long, last,

lingering look, Tommy could have fitted him like a tailor.

From all which it will be seen that our splendid brother thought

exclusively of what was best for Elspeth, and was willing that the

gentlemen, having served their purpose, should, if it pleased them, go

hang. Also, though he thought out every other possible move for the

suitor, it never struck him to compose a successful proposal, for the

simple reason that he was quite certain Elspeth would have none of

them. Their attentions pleased her; but exchange Tommy for one of

them--never! He knew it from her confessions at all stages of her

life; he had felt it from the days when he began to be father and

mother to her as well as brother. In his heart he believed there was

something of his own odd character in Elspeth which made her as

incapable of loving as himself, and some of his devotion to her was

due to this belief; for perhaps nothing touches us to the quick more

than the feeling that another suffers under our own curse; certainly

nothing draws two souls so close together in a lonely comradeship. But

though Tommy had reflected about these things, he did not trouble

Elspeth with his conclusions. He merely gave her to understand that he

loved her and she loved him so much that neither of them had any love

to give to another. It was very beautiful, Elspeth thought, and a

little tragic.

"You are quite sure that you mean that," she might ask timidly, "and

that you are not flinging away your life on me?"

"You are all I need," he answered cheerily, and he believed it. Or, if

he was in another mood, he might reflect that perhaps he was

abstaining from love for Elspeth's sake, and that made him cheery

also.

And now David Gemmell was the man, and Tommy genially forgave him all

else for liking Elspeth. He invited the doctor, who so obviously

distrusted him, to drop in of an evening for a game at the dambrod

(which they both abominated, but it was an easy excuse); he asked him

confidentially to come in and see Aaron, who had been coughing last

night; he put on all the airs of a hail-fellow-well-met, though they

never became him, and sat awkwardly on his face. David always seemed

eager to come, and tried to rise above his suspicions of Tommy, as

Tommy saw, and failed, as Tommy saw again. Elspeth dosed the doctor

with stories of her brother's lovely qualities, and Tommy, the

forgiving, honestly pitied the poor man for having to listen to them.

He knew that if all went well Gemmell would presently propose, and

find that Elspeth (tearful at having to strike a blow) could not

accept him; but he did not look forward maliciously to this as his

revenge on the doctor; he was thinking merely of what was good for

Elspeth.

There was no open talk about David between the brother and sister.

Some day, Tommy presumed, she would announce that the doctor had asked

her to marry him; and oh, how sorry she was; and oh, what a good man

he was; and oh, Tommy knew she had never encouraged him; and oh, she

could never leave Tommy! But until that day arrived they avoided

talking directly about what brought Gemmell there. That he came to see

Elspeth neither of them seemed to conceive as possible. Did Tommy

chuckle when he saw David's eyes following her? No; solemn as a cat

blinking at the fire; noticed nothing. The most worldly chaperon, the

most loving mother, could not have done more for Elspeth. Yet it was

not done to find her a husband, but quite the reverse, as we have

seen. On reflection Tommy must smile at what he has been doing, but

not while he is working the figures. The artist never smiles at

himself until afterwards.

And now he not only wondered at times how Elspeth and David were

getting on, but whether she noticed how he was getting on with Grizel;

for in matters relating to Tommy Elspeth was almost as sharp as he in

matters that related to her, and he knew it. When he proposed to

Elspeth that they should ask Gemmell to go fishing with them on the

morrow ("He has been overworked of late and it would do him good") he

wanted to add, in a careless voice, "We might invite Grizel also," but

could not; his lips suddenly went dry. And when Elspeth said the words

that were so difficult to him, he wondered, "Did she say that because

she knew I wished it?" But he decided that she did not, for she was

evidently looking forward to to-morrow, and he knew she would be

shuddering if she thought her Tommy was slipping.

"I am so glad it was she who asked me," Grizel said to him when he

told her. "Don't you see what it means? It means that she wants to get

you out of the way! You are not everything to her now as you used to

be. Are you glad, glad?"

"If I could believe it!" Tommy said.

"What else could make her want to be alone with him?"

Nothing else could have made Grizel want to be alone with him, and

she must always judge others by herself. But Tommy knew that Elspeth

was different, and that a girl with some of himself in her might want

to be alone with a man who admired her without wanting to marry him.

CHAPTER XV

BY PROSEN WATER

That day by the banks of Prosen Water was one of Grizel's beautiful

memories. All the days when she thought he loved her became beautiful

memories.

It was the time of reds and whites, for the glory of the broom had

passed, except at great heights, and the wild roses were trooping in.

When the broom is in flame there seems to be no colour but yellow; but

when the wild roses come we remember that the broom was flaunting. It

was not quite a lady, for it insisted on being looked at; while these

light-hearted things are too innocent to know that there is anyone to

look. Grizel was sitting by the side of the stream, adorning her hat

fantastically with roses red and white and some that were neither.

They were those that cannot decide whether they look best in white or

red, and so waver for the whole of their little lives between the two

colours; there are many of them, and it is the pathetic thing about

wild roses. She did not pay much heed to her handiwork. What she was

saying to herself was that in another minute he and she would be

alone. Nothing else in the world mattered very much. Every bit of her

was conscious of it as the supreme event. Her fingers pressed it upon

the flowers. It was in her eyes as much as in her heart. He went on

casting his line, moving from stone to stone, dropping down the bank,

ascending it, as if the hooking of a trout was something to him. Was

he feeling to his marrow that as soon as those other two figures

rounded the bend in the stream he and she would have the world to

themselves? Ah, of course he felt it, but was it quite as much to him

as it was to her?

"Not quite so much," she said bravely to herself. "I don't want it to

be quite so much--but nearly."

[Illustration: She did not look up, she waited.]

And now they were alone as no two can be except those who love; for

when the third person leaves them they have a universe to themselves,

and it is closed in by the heavens, and the air of it is the

consciousness of each other's presence. She sat motionless

now--trembling, exulting. She could no longer hear the talking of the

water, but she heard his step. He was coming slowly towards her. She

did not look up--she waited; and while she waited time was

annihilated.

He was coming to her to treat her as if she were a fond child; that

she, of all women, could permit it was still delicious to him, and a

marvel. She had let him do it yesterday, but perhaps she had regained

her independence in the night. As he hesitated he became another

person. In a flood of feeling he had a fierce desire to tell her the

truth about himself. But he did not know what it was. He put aside his

rod, and sat down very miserably beside her.

"Grizel, I suppose I am a knave." His lips parted to say it, but no

words came. She had given him an adorable look that stopped them as if

her dear hand had been placed upon his mouth.

Was he a knave? He wanted honestly to know. He had not tried to make

her love him. Had he known in time he would even have warned her

against it. He would never have said he loved her had she not first,

as she thought, found it out; to tell her the truth then would have

been brutal. He had made believe in order that she might remain happy.

Was it even make-belief? Assuredly he did love her in his own way, in

the only way he was capable of. She was far more to him than any

other person except Elspeth. He delighted in her, and would have

fought till he dropped rather than let any human being injure her. All

his feelings for her were pure. He was prepared to marry her; but if

she had not made that mistake, oh, what a delight it would have been

to him never to marry anyone! He felt keenly miserable.

"Grizel, I seem to be different from all other men. There seems to be

some curse upon me that makes me unable to love as they do. I want to

love you, dear one; you are the only woman I ever wanted to love; but

apparently I can't. I have decided to go on with this thing because it

seems best for you; but is it? I would tell you all and leave the

decision to you, were it not that I fear you would think I wanted you

to let me off."

It would have been an honest speech, and he might have said it had he

begun at once, for it was in a passion to be out, so desirous was he

that dear Grizel should not be deceived; but he tried its effect first

upon himself, and as he went on the tragedy he saw mastered him. He

forgot that she was there, except as a figure needed to complete the

picture of the man who could not love. He saw himself a splendidly

haggard creature with burning eyes standing aside while all the world

rolled by in pursuit of the one thing needful. It was a river, and he

must stand parched on the bank for ever and ever. Should he keep that

sorrowful figure a man or turn it into a woman? He tried a woman. She

was on the bank now, her arms outstretched to the flood. Ah! she would

be so glad to drink, though she must drown.

Grizel saw how mournful he had become as he gazed upon her. In his

face she had been seeing all the glories that can be given to mortals.

Thoughts had come to her that drew her nearer to her God. Her trust in

him stretched to eternity. All that was given to her at that moment

she thought was also given to him. She seemed to know why, with love

lighting up their souls to each other, he could yet grow mournful.

"Oh," she cried, with a movement that was a passionate caress, "do you

indeed love me so much as that? I never wanted you to love me quite so

much as that!"

It brought him back to himself, but without a start. Those sudden

returns to fact had ceased to bewilder him; they were grown so common

that he passed between dreams and reality as through tissue-paper.

"I did not mean," she said at last, in a tremor, "that I wanted you to

love me less, but I am almost sorry that you love me quite so much."

He dared say nothing, for he did not altogether understand. "I have

those fears, too, sometimes," she went on; "I have had them when I was

with you, but more often when I was alone. They come to me suddenly,

and I have such eager longings to run to you and tell you of them, and

ask you to drive them away. But I never did it; I kept them to

myself."

"You could keep something back from me, Grizel?"

"Forgive me," she implored; "I thought they would distress you, and I

had such a desire to bring you nothing but happiness. To bear them by

myself seemed to be helping you, and I was glad, I was proud, to feel

myself of use to you even to that little extent. I did not know you

had the same fears; I thought that perhaps they came only to women;

have you had them before? Fears," she continued, so wistfully, "that

it is too beautiful to end happily? Oh, have you heard a voice crying,

'It is too beautiful; it can never be'?"

He saw clearly now; he saw so clearly that he was torn with emotion.

"It is more than I can bear!" he said hoarsely. Surely he loved her.

"Did you see me die?" she asked, in a whisper. "I have seen you die."

"Don't, Grizel!" he cried.

But she had to go on. "Tell me," she begged; "I have told you."

"No, no, never that," he answered her. "At the worst I have had only

the feeling that you could never be mine."

She smiled at that. "I am yours," she said softly; "nothing can take

away that--nothing, nothing. I say it to myself a hundred times a day,

it is so sweet. Nothing can separate us but death; I have thought of

all the other possible things, and none of them is strong enough. But

when I think of your dying, oh, when I think of my being left without

you!"

She rocked her arms in a frenzy, and called him dearest, darlingest.

All the sweet names that had been the child Grizel's and the old

doctor's were Tommy's now. He soothed her, ah, surely as only a lover

could soothe. She was his Grizel, she was his beloved. No mortal could

have been more impassioned than Tommy. He must have loved her. It

could not have been merely sympathy, or an exquisite delight in being

the man, or the desire to make her happy again in the quickest way, or

all three combined? Whatever it was, he did not know; all he knew was

that he felt every word he said, or seemed to feel it.

"It is a punishment to me," Grizel said, setting her teeth, "for

loving you too much. I know I love you too much. I think I love you

more than God."

She felt him shudder.

"But if I feel it," she said, shuddering also, yet unable to deceive

herself, "what difference do I make by saying it? He must know it is

so, whether I say it or not."

There was a tremendous difference to Tommy, but not of a kind he could

explain, and she went on; she must tell him everything now.

"I pray every night and morning; but that is nothing--everyone does

it. I know I thank God sincerely; I thank Him again and again and

again. Do you remember how, when I was a child, you used to be

horrified because I prayed standing? I often say little prayers

standing now; I am always thanking Him for giving me you. But all the

time it is a bargain with Him. So long as you are well I love Him, but

if you were to die I would never pray again. I have never said it in

words until to-day, but He must know it, for it is behind all my

prayers. If He does not know, there cannot be a God."

She was watching his face, half wofully, half stubbornly, as if,

whatever might be the issue of those words, she had to say them. She

saw how pained he was. To admit the possible non-existence of a God

when you can so easily leave the subject alone was horrible to Tommy.

"I don't doubt Him," she continued. "I have believed in Him ever since

the time when I was such a lonely child that I did not know His name.

I shall always believe in Him so long as He does not take you from me.

But if He does, then I shall not believe in Him any more. It may be

wrong, but that is what I feel.

"It makes you care less for me!" she cried in anguish.

"No, no, dear."

"I don't think it makes God care less for me," she said, very

seriously. "I think He is pleased that I don't try to cheat Him."

Somehow Tommy felt uncomfortable at that.

"There are people," he said vaguely, like one who thought it best to

mention no names, who would be afraid to challenge God in that way."

"He would not be worth believing in," she answered, "if He could be

revengeful. He is too strong, and too loving, and too pitiful for

that." But she took hold of Tommy as if to protect him. Had they been

in physical danger, her first impulse would have been to get in front

of him to protect him. The noblest women probably always love in this

way, and yet it is those who would hide behind them that men seem to

love the best.

"I always feel--oh, I never can help feeling," she said, "that nothing

could happen to you, that God Himself could not take you from me,

while I had hold of you."

"Grizel!"

"I mean only that He could not have the heart," she said hastily.

"No, I don't," she had to add. "I meant what you thought I meant. That

is why I feel it would be so sweet to be married, so that I could be

close to you every moment, and then no harm could come to you. I would

keep such a grip of you, I should be such a part of you, that you

could not die without my dying also.

"Oh, do you care less for me now?" she cried. "I can't see things as

clearly as you do, dearest, darlingest. I have not a beautiful nature

like yours. I am naturally rebellious. I have to struggle even to be

as good as I am. There are evil things in my blood. You remember how

we found out that. God knew it, too, and He is compassionate. I think

He makes many pitying allowances for me. It is not wicked, is it, to

think that?"

"You used to know me too well, Grizel, to speak of my beautiful

nature," he said humbly.

"I did think you vain," she replied. "How odd to remember that!"

"But I was, and am."

"I love to hear you proving you are not," said she, beaming upon him.

"Do you think," she asked, with a sudden change of manner to the

childish, like one trying to coax a compliment out of him, "that I

have improved at all during those last days? I think I am not quite

such a horrid girl as I used to be; and if I am not, I owe it to you.

I am so glad to owe it to you." She told him that she was trying to

make herself a tiny bit more like him by studying his book. "It is not

exactly the things you say of women that help me, for though they are

lovely I am not sure that they are quite true. I almost hope they are

not true; for if they are, then I am not even an average woman." She

buried her face in his coat. "You say women are naturally purer than

men, but I don't know. Perhaps we are more cunning only. Perhaps it is

not even a thing to wish; for if we were, it would mean that we are

good because there is less evil in us to fight against. Dear, forgive

me for saying that; it may be all wrong; but I think it is what nearly

all women feel in their hearts, though they keep it locked up till

they die. I don't even want you to believe me. You think otherwise of

us, and it is so sweet of you that we try to be better than we are--to

undeceive you would hurt so. It is not the book that makes me a better

woman--it is the man I see behind it."

He was too much moved to be able to reply--too much humbled. He vowed

to himself that, whether he could love or not, he would be a good

husband to this dear woman.

"Ah, Grizel," he declared, by and by, "what a delicious book you are,

and how I wish I had written you! With every word you say, something

within me is shouting, 'Am I not a wonder!' I warned you it would be

so as soon as I felt that I had done anything really big, and I have.

I have somehow made you love me. Ladies and gentlemen," he exclaimed,

addressing the river and the trees and the roses, "I have somehow made

her love me! Am I not a wonder?"

Grizel clapped her hands gaily; she was merry again. She could always

be what Tommy wanted her to be. "Ladies and gentlemen," she cried,

"how could I help it?"

David had been coming back for his fly-book, and though he did not

hear their words, he saw a light in Grizel's face that suddenly set

him thinking. For the rest of the day he paid little attention to

Elspeth; some of his answers showed her that he was not even listening

to her.

CHAPTER XVI

"HOW COULD YOU HURT YOUR GRIZEL SO!"

To concentrate on Elspeth so that he might find out what was in her

mind was, as we have seen, seldom necessary to Tommy; for he had

learned her by heart long ago. Yet a time was now come when he had to

concentrate, and even then he was doubtful of the result. So often he

had put that mind of hers to rights that it was an open box to him, or

had been until he conceived the odd notion that perhaps it contained a

secret drawer. This would have been resented by most brothers, but

Tommy's chagrin was nothing compared to the exhilaration with which he

perceived that he might be about to discover something new about

woman. He was like the digger whose hand is on the point of closing on

a diamond--a certain holiness added.

What puzzled him was the state of affairs now existing between Elspeth

and the doctor. A week had elapsed since the fishing excursion, and

David had not visited them. Too busy? Tommy knew that it is the busy

people who can find time. Could it be that David had proposed to her

at the waterside?

No, he could not read that in Elspeth's face. He knew that she would

be in distress lest her refusal should darken the doctor's life for

too long a time; but yet (shake your fist at him, ladies, for so

misunderstanding you!) he expected also to note in that sympathetic

face a look of subdued triumph, and as it was not there, David could

not have proposed.

The fact of her not having told him about it at once did not prove to

Tommy that there had been no proposal. His feeling was that she would

consider it too sacred a thing to tell even to him, but that it would

force its way out in a week or two.

On the other hand, she could not have resisted dropping shyly such

remarks as these: "I think Dr. Gemmell is a noble man," or, "How

wonderfully good Dr. Gemmell is to the poor!"

Also she would sometimes have given Tommy a glance that said, "I

wonder if you guess." Had they quarrelled? Tommy smiled. If it was

but a quarrel he was not merely appeased--he was pleased. Had he had

the ordering of the affair, he would certainly have included a lovers'

quarrel in it, and had it not been that he wanted to give her the

pleasure of finding these things out for herself, he would have taken

her aside and addressed her thus: "No need to look tragic, Elspeth;

for to a woman this must be really one of the most charming moments in

the comedy. You feel that he would not have quarrelled had he had any

real caring for you, and yet in your heart you know it is a proof that

he has. To a woman, I who know assure you that nothing can be more

delicious. Your feeling for him, as you and I well know, is but a

sentiment of attraction because he loves you as you are unable to love

him, and as you are so pained by this quarrel, consider how much more

painful it must be to him. You think you have been slighted; that when

a man has seemed to like you so much you have a right to be told so by

him, that you may help him with your sympathy. Oh, Elspeth, you think

yourself unhappy just now when you are really in the middle of one of

the pleasantest bits of it! Love is a series of thrills, the one

leading to the other, and, as your careful guardian, I would not have

you miss one of them. You will come to the final bang quickly enough,

and find it the finest thrill of all, but it is soon over. When you

have had to tell him that you are not for him, there are left only the

pleasures of memory, and the more of them there were, the more there

will be to look back to. I beg you, Elspeth, not to hurry; loiter

rather, smelling the flowers and plucking them, for you may never be

this way again."

All these things he might have pointed out to Elspeth had he wanted

her to look at the matter rationally, but he had no such wish. He

wanted her to enjoy herself as the blessed do, without knowing why. No

pity for the man, you see, but no ill will to him. David was having

his thrills also, and though the last of them would seem a staggerer

to him at the time, it would gradually become a sunny memory. The only

tragedy is not to have known love. So long as you have the

experiences, it does not greatly matter whether your suit was a

failure or successful.

So Tommy decided, but he feared at the same time that there had been

no quarrel--that David had simply drawn back.

How he saw through Elspeth's brave attempts to show that she had never

for a moment thought of David's having any feeling for her save

ordinary friendship--yes, they were brave, but not brave enough for

Tommy. At times she would say something bitter about life (not about

the doctor, for he was never mentioned), and it was painful to her

brother to see gentle Elspeth grown cynical. He suffered even more

when her manner indicated that she knew she was too poor a creature to

be loved by any man. Tommy was in great woe about Elspeth at this

time. He was thinking much more about her than about Grizel; but do

not blame him unreservedly for that: the two women who were his dears

were pulling him different ways, and he could not accompany both. He

had made up his mind to be loyal to Grizel, and so all his pity could

go to Elspeth. On the day he had his talk with the doctor, therefore,

he had, as it were, put Grizel aside only because she was happy just

now, and so had not Elspeth's need of him.

The doctor and he had met on the hill, whence the few who look may see

one of the fairest views in Scotland. Tommy was strolling up and down,

and the few other persons on the hill were glancing with good-humoured

suspicion at him, as we all look at celebrated characters. Had he been

happy he would have known that they were watching him, and perhaps

have put his hands behind his back to give them more for their money,

as the saying is; but he was miserable. His one consolation was that

the blow he must strike Elspeth when he told her of his engagement

need not be struck just yet. David could not have chosen a worse

moment, therefore, for saying so bluntly what he said: "I hear you are

to be married. If so, I should like to congratulate you."

Tommy winced like one charged with open cruelty to his sister--charged

with it, too, by the real criminal.

"It is not true?" David asked quietly, and Tommy turned from him

glaring. "I am sorry I spoke of it, as it is not true," the doctor

said after a pause, the crow's-feet showing round his eyes as always

when he was in mental pain; and presently he went away, after giving

Tommy a contemptuous look. Did Tommy deserve that look? We must

remember that he had wanted to make the engagement public at once; if

he shrank from admitting it for the present, it was because of

Elspeth's plight. "Grizel, you might have given her a little time to

recover from this man's faithlessness," was what his heart cried. He

believed that Grizel had told David, and for the last time in his life

he was angry with her. He strode down the hill savagely towards Caddam

Wood, where he knew he should find her.

Soon he saw her. She was on one of the many tiny paths that lead the

stranger into the middle of the wood and then leave him there

maliciously or because they dare not venture any farther themselves.

They could play no tricks on Grizel, however, for she knew and was

fond of them all. Tommy had said that she loved them because they were

such little paths, that they appealed to her like babies; and perhaps

there was something in it.

She came up the path with the swing of one who was gleefully happy.

Some of the Thrums people, you remember, said that Grizel strutted

because she was so satisfied with herself, and if you like an ugly

word, we may say that she strutted to-day. It was her whole being

giving utterance to the joy within her that love had brought. As

Grizel came up the path on that bright afternoon, she could no more

have helped strutting than the bud to open on the appointed day. She

was obeying one of Nature's laws. I think I promised long ago to tell

you of the day when Grizel would strut no more. Well, this is the day.

Observe her strutting for the last time. It was very strange and

touching to her to remember in the after years that she had once

strutted, but it was still more strange and touching to Tommy.

She was like one overfilled with delight when she saw him. How could

she know that he was to strike her?

He did not speak. She was not displeased. When anything so tremendous

happened as the meeting of these two, how could they find words at

once?

She bent and pressed her lips to his sleeve; but he drew away with a

gesture that startled her.

"You are not angry?" she said, stopping.

"Yes," he replied doggedly.

"Not with me?" Her hand went to her heart. "With me!" A wounded animal

could not have uttered a cry more pathetic. "Not with me!" She

clutched his arm.

"Have I no cause to be angry?" he said.

She looked at him in bewilderment. Could this be he? Oh, could it be

she?

"Cause? How could I give you cause?"

It seemed unanswerable to her. How could Grizel do anything that would

give him the right to be angry with her? Oh, men, men! will you never

understand how absolutely all of her a woman's love can be? If she

gives you everything, how can she give you more? She is not another

person; she is part of you. Does one finger of your hand plot against

another?

He told her sullenly of his scene with the doctor.

"I am very sorry," she said; but her eyes were still searching for the

reason why Tommy could be angry with her.

"You made me promise to tell no one," he said, "and I have kept my

promise: but you----"

The anguish that was Grizel's then! "You can't think that I told him!"

she cried, and she held out her arms as if to remind him of who she

was. "You can believe that of your Grizel?"

"I daresay you have not done it wittingly; but this man has guessed,

and he could never have guessed it from look or word of mine."

"It must have been I!" she said slowly. "Tell me," she cried like a

suppliant, "how have I done it?"

"Your manner, your face," he answered; "it must have been that. I

don't blame you. Grizel, but--yes, it must have been that, and it is

hard on me."

He was in misery, and these words leaped out. They meant only that it

was hard on him if Elspeth had to be told of his engagement in the

hour of her dejection. He did not mean to hurt Grizel to the quick.

However terrible the loss of his freedom might be to the man who could

not love, he always intended to be true to her. But she gave the words

a deeper meaning.

She stood so still she seemed to be pondering, and at last she said

quietly, as if they had been discussing some problem outside

themselves: "Yes, I think it must have been that." She looked long at

him. "It is very hard on you," she said.

"I feel sure it was that," she went on; and now her figure was erect,

and again it broke, and sometimes there was a noble scorn in her

voice, but more often there was only pitiful humility. "I feel sure it

was that, for I have often wondered how everybody did not know. I have

broken my promise. I used always to be able to keep a promise. I had

every other fault,--I was hard and proud and intolerant,--but I was

true. I think I was vain of that, though I see now it was only

something I could not help; from the moment when I had a difficulty in

keeping a promise, I ceased to keep it. I love you so much that I

carry my love in my face for all to read. They cannot see me meet you

without knowing the truth; they cannot hear me say your name but I

betray myself; I show how I love you in every movement; I am full of

you. How can anyone look at me and not see you? I should have been

more careful--oh, I could have been so much more careful had I loved

you a little less! It is very hard on you."

The note of satire had died out of her voice; her every look and

gesture carried in it nothing but love for him; but all the unhappy

dog could say was something about self-respect.

Her mouth opened as if for bitterness; but no sound came. "How much

self-respect do you think is left for me after to-day?" she said

mournfully at last; and then she quickly took a step nearer her dear

one, as if to caress the spot where these words had struck him. But

she stopped, and for a moment she was the Grizel of old. "Have no

fear," she said, with a trembling, crooked smile; "there is only one

thing to be done now, and I shall do it. All the blame is mine. You

shall not be deprived of your self-respect."

He had not been asking for his freedom; but he heard it running to him

now, and he knew that if he answered nothing he would be whistling it

back for ever. A madness to be free at any cost swept over him. He let

go his hold on self-respect, and clapped his hand on freedom.

He answered nothing, and the one thing for her to do was to go; and

she did it. But it was only for a moment that she could be altogether

the Grizel of old. She turned to take a long, last look at him; but

the wofulness of herself was what she saw. She cried, with infinite

pathos, "Oh, how could you hurt your Grizel so!"

He controlled himself and let her go. His freedom was fawning on him,

licking his hands and face, and in that madness he actually let Grizel

go. It was not until she was out of sight that he gave utterance to a

harsh laugh. He knew what he was at that moment, as you and I shall

never be able to know him, eavesdrop how we may.

He flung himself down in a blaeberry-bed, and lay there doggedly, his

weak mouth tightly closed. A great silence reigned; no, not a great

silence, for he continued to hear the cry: "Oh, how could you hurt

your Grizel so!" She scarcely knew that she had said it; but to him

who knew what she had been, and what he had changed her into, and for

what alone she was to blame, there was an unconscious pathos in it

that was terrible. It was the epitome of all that was Grizel, all that

was adorable and all that was pitiful in her. It rang in his mind like

a bell of doom. He believed its echo would not be quite gone from his

ears when he died. If all the wise men in the world had met to

consider how Grizel could most effectively say farewell to Tommy, they

could not have thought out a better sentence. However completely he

had put himself emotionally in her place with this same object, he

would have been inspired by nothing quite so good.

But they were love's dying words. He knew he could never again, though

he tried, be to Grizel what he had been. The water was spilled on the

ground. She had thought him all that was glorious in man--that was

what her love had meant; and it was spilled. There was only one way in

which he could wound her more cruelly than she was already hurt, and

that was by daring to ask her to love him still. To imply that he

thought her pride so broken, her independence, her maidenly modesty,

all that make up the loveliness of a girl, so lost that by entreaties

he could persuade her to forgive him, would destroy her altogether. It

would reveal to her how low he thought her capable of falling.

I suppose we should all like to think that it would have been thus

with Grizel, but our wishes are of small account. It was not many

minutes since she left Tommy, to be his no more, his knife still in

her heart; but she had not reached the end of the wood when all in

front of her seemed a world of goblins, and a future without him not

to be faced. He might beat her or scorn her, but not for an hour could

she exist without him. She wrung her arms in woe; the horror of what

she was doing tore her in pieces; but not all this prevented her

turning back. It could not even make her go slowly. She did not walk

back; she stole back in little runs. She knew it was her destruction,

but her arms were outstretched to the spot where she had left him.

He was no longer there, and he saw her between the firs before she

could see him. As he realized what her coming back meant, his frame

shook with pity for her. All the dignity had gone from her. She looked

as shamed as a dog stealing back after it had been whipped. She knew

she was shamed. He saw she knew it: the despairing rocking of her arms

proved it; yet she was coming back to him in little runs.

Pity, chivalry, oh, surely love itself, lifted him to his feet, and

all else passed out of him save an imperious desire to save her as

much humiliation as he could--to give her back a few of those garments

of pride and self-respect that had fallen from her. At least she

should not think that she had to come all the way to him. With a

stifled sob, he rose and ran up the path towards her.

"Grizel! it is you! My beloved! how could you leave me! Oh, Grizel, my

love, how could you misunderstand me so!"

She gave a glad cry. She sought feebly to hold him at arm's length, to

look at him watchfully, to read him as in the old days; but the old

days were gone. He strained her to him. Oh, surely it was love at

last! He thanked God that he loved at last.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW TOMMY SAVED THE FLAG

He loved at last, but had no time to exult just now, for he could not

rejoice with Tommy while his dear one drooped in shame. Ah, so well he

understood that she believed she had done the unpardonable thing in

woman, and that while she thought so she must remain a broken column.

It was a great task he saw before him--nothing less than to make her

think that what she had done was not shameful, but exquisite; that she

had not tarnished the flag of love, but glorified it. Artfulness, you

will see, was needed; but, remember, he was now using all his arts in

behalf of the woman he loved.

"You were so long in coming back to me, Grizel. The agony of it!"

"Did it seem long?" She spoke in a trembling voice, hiding her face in

him. She listened like one anxious to seize his answer as it left his

heart.

"So long," he answered, "that it seemed to me we must be old when we

met again. I saw a future without you stretching before me to the

grave, and I turned and ran from it."

"That is how I felt," she whispered.

"You!" Tommy cried, in excellent amazement.

"What else could have made me come?"

"I thought it was pity that had brought you--pity for me, Grizel. I

thought you had perhaps come back to be angry with me--"

"How could I be!" she cried.

"How could you help it, rather?" said he. "I was cruel, Grizel; I

spoke like a fool as well as like a dastard. But it was only anxiety

for Elspeth that made me do it. Dear one, be angry with me as often as

you choose, and whether I deserve it or not; but don't go away from

me; never send me from you again. Anything but that."

It was how she had felt again, and her hold on him tightened with

sudden joy. So well he knew what that grip meant! He did not tell her

that he had not loved her fully until now. He would have liked to tell

her how true love had been born in him as he saw her stealing back to

him, but it was surely best for her not to know that any

transformation had been needed. "I don't say that I love you more now

than ever before," he said carefully, "but one thing I do know: that I

never admired you quite so much."

She looked up in surprise.

"I mean your character," he said determinedly. "I have always known

how strong and noble it was, but I never quite thought you could do

anything so beautiful as this."

"Beautiful!" She could only echo the word.

"Many women, even of the best," he told her, "would have resorted to

little feminine ways of humbling such a blunderer as I have been: they

would have spurned him for weeks; made him come to them on his knees;

perhaps have thought that his brutality of a moment outweighed all his

love. When I saw you coming to meet me half-way--oh, Grizel, tell me

that you were doing that?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" she answered eagerly, so that she might not detain

him a moment.

"When I saw you I realized that you were willing to forgive me; that

you were coming to say so; that no thought of lowering me first was in

your mind; that yours was a love above the littleness of ordinary

people: and the adorableness of it filled me with a glorious joy; I

saw in that moment what woman in her highest development is capable

of, and that the noblest is the most womanly."

She said "Womanly?" with a little cry. It had always been such a sweet

word to her, and she thought it could never be hers again!

"It is by watching you," he replied, "that I know the meaning of the

word. I thought I knew long ago, but every day you give it a nobler

meaning."

If she could have believed it! For a second or two she tried to

believe it, and then she shook her head.

"How dear of you to think that of me!" she answered. She looked up at

him with exquisite approval in her eyes. She had always felt that men

should have high ideas about women.

"But it was not to save you pain that I came back," she said bravely.

There was something pathetic in the way the truth had always to come

out of her. "I did not think you wanted me to come back. I never

expected you to be looking for me, and when I saw you doing it, my

heart nearly stopped for gladness. I thought you were wearied of me,

and would be annoyed when you saw me coming back. I said to myself,

'If I go back I shall be a disgrace to womanhood,' But I came; and now

do you know what my heart is saying, and always will be saying? It is

that pride and honour and self-respect are gone. And the terrible

thing is that I don't seem to care; I, who used to value them so

much, am willing to let them go if you don't send me away from you.

Oh, if you can't love me any longer, let me still love you! That is

what I came back to say."

"Grizel, Grizel!" he cried. It was she who was wielding the knife now.

"But it is true," she said.

"We could so easily pretend that it isn't." That was not what he said,

though it was at his heart. He sat down, saying:

"This is a terrible blow, but better you should tell it to me than

leave me to find it out." He was determined to save the flag for

Grizel, though he had to try all the Tommy ways, one by one.

"Have I hurt you?" she asked anxiously. She could not bear to hurt him

for a moment. "What did I say?"

"It amounts to this," he replied huskily: "you love me, but you wish

you did not; that is what it means."

He expected her to be appalled by this; but she stood still, thinking

it over. There was something pitiful in a Grizel grown undecided.

"Do I wish I did not?" she said helplessly. "I don't know. Perhaps

that is what I do wish. Ah, but what are wishes! I know now that they

don't matter at all."

"Yes, they matter," he assured her, in the voice of one looking upon

death. "If you no longer want to love me, you will cease to do it

soon enough." His manner changed to bitterness. "So don't be cast

down, Grizel, for the day of your deliverance is at hand."

But again she disappointed him, and as the flag must be saved at

whatever cost, he said.

"It has come already. I see you no longer love me as you did." Her

arms rose in anguish; but he went on ruthlessly: "You will never

persuade me that you do; I shall never believe it again."

I suppose it was a pitiable thing about Grizel--it was something he

had discovered weeks ago and marvelled over--that nothing distressed

her so much as the implication that she could love him less. She knew

she could not; but that he should think it possible was the strangest

woe to her. It seemed to her to be love's only tragedy. We have seen

how difficult it was for Grizel to cry. When she said "How could you

hurt your Grizel so!" she had not cried, nor when she knew that if she

went back to him her self-respect must remain behind. But a painful

tear came to her eyes when he said that she loved him less. It almost

unmanned him, but he proceeded, for her good:

"I daresay you still care for me a little, as the rank and file of

people love. What right had I, of all people, to expect a love so rare

and beautiful as yours to last? It had to burn out, like a great fire,

as such love always does. The experience of the world has proved it."

"Oh!" she cried, and her body was rocking. If he did not stop, she

would weep herself to death.

"Yes, it seems sad," Tommy continued; "but if ever man knew that it

served him right, I know it. And they maintain, the wiseacres who have

analyzed love, that there is much to be said in favour of a calm

affection. The glory has gone, but the material comforts are greater,

and in the end--"

She sank upon the ground. He was bleeding for her, was Tommy. He went

on his knees beside her, and it was terrible to him to feel that every

part of her was alive with anguish. He called her many sweet names,

and she listened for them between her sobs; but still she sobbed. He

could bear it no longer; he cried, and called upon God to smite him.

She did not look up, but her poor hands pulled him back. "You said I

do not love you the same!" she moaned.

"Grizel!" he answered, as if in sad reproof; "it was not I who said

that--it was you. I put into words only what you have been telling me

for the last ten minutes."

"No, no," she cried. "Oh, how could I!"

He flung up his arms in despair. "Is this only pity for me, Grizel,"

he implored, looking into her face as if to learn his fate, "or is it

love indeed?"

"You know it is love--you know!"

"But what kind of love?" he demanded fiercely. "Is it the same love

that it was? Quick, tell me. I can't have less. If it is but a little

less, you will kill me."

The first gleam of sunshine swept across her face (and oh, how he was

looking for it!). "Do you want it to be the same--do you really want

it? Oh, it is, it is!"

"And you would not cease to love me if you could?"

"No, no, no!" She would have come closer to him, but he held her back.

"One moment, Grizel," he said in a hard voice that filled her with

apprehension. "There must be no second mistake. In saying that love,

and love alone, brought you back, you are admitting, are you not, that

you were talking wildly about loss of pride and honour? You did the

loveliest thing you have ever done when you came back. If I were you,

my character would be ruined from this hour--I should feel so proud of

myself."

She smiled at that, and fondled his hand. "If you think so," she said,

"all is well."

But he would not leave it thus. "You must think so also," he insisted;

and when she still shook her head, "Then I am proud of your love no

longer," said he, doggedly. "How proud of it I have been! A man

cannot love a woman without reverencing her, without being touched to

the quick a score of times a day by the revelations she gives of

herself--revelations of such beauty and purity that he is abashed in

her presence. The unspoken prayers he offers up to God at those times

he gives to her to carry. And when such a one returns his love, he is

proud indeed. To me you are the embodiment of all that is fair in

woman, and it is love that has made you so, that has taken away your

little imperfections--love for me. Ah, Grizel, I was so proud to think

that somehow I had done it; but even now, in the moment when your love

has manifested itself most splendidly, you are ashamed of it, and what

I respect and reverence you for most are changes that have come about

against your will. If your love makes you sorrowful, how can I be

proud of it? Henceforth it will be my greatest curse."

She started up, wringing her hands. It was something to have got her

to her feet.

"Surely," he said, like one puzzled as well as pained by her

obtuseness, "you see clearly that it must be so. True love, as I

conceive it, must be something passing all knowledge, irresistible;

something not to be resented for its power, but worshipped for it;

something not to fight against, but to glory in. And such is your

love; but you give the proof of it with shame, because your ideal of

love is a humdrum sort of affection. That is all you would like to

feel, Grizel, and because you feel something deeper and nobler you say

you have lost your self-respect. I am the man who has taken it from

you. Can I ever be proud of your love again?"

He paused, overcome with emotion. "What it has been to me!" he cried.

"I walked among my fellows as if I were a colossus. It inspired me at

my work. I felt that there was nothing great I was not capable of, and

all because Grizel loved me."

She stood trembling with delight at what he said, and with

apprehension at what he seemed to threaten. His head being bent, he

could not see her, and amid his grief he wondered a little what she

was doing now.

"But you spoke"--she said it timidly, as if to refer to the matter at

all was cruel of her--"you spoke as if I was disgracing you because I

could not conceal my love. You said it was hard on you." She pressed

her hands together. "Yes, that is what you said."

This was awkward for Tommy. "She believes I meant that," he cried

hoarsely. "Grizel believes that of me! I have behaved since then as if

that was what I meant, have I? I meant only that it would be hard on

me if Elspeth learned of our love at the very moment when this man is

treating her basely. I look as if I had meant something worse, do I? I

know myself at last! Grizel has shown me what I am."

He covered his face with his hands. Strong man as he was, he could not

conceal his agony.

"Don't!" she cried. "If I was wrong--"

"If you were wrong!"

"I was wrong! I know I was wrong. Somehow it was a mistake. I don't

know how it arose. But you love me and you want me to love you still.

That is all I know. I thought you did not, but you do. If you wanted

me to come back----"

"If I wanted it!"

"I know you wanted it now, and I am no longer ashamed to have come. I

am glad I came, and if you can still be proud of my love and respect

me----"

"Oh, Grizel, if!"

"Then I have got back my pride and my self-respect again. I cannot

reason about it, but they have come back again."

It was she who was trying to comfort him by this time, caressing his

hair and his hands. But he would not be appeased at once; it was good

for her to have something to do.

"You are sure you are happy again, Grizel? You are not pretending in

order to please me?"

"So happy!"

"But your eyes are still wet."

"That is because I have hurt you so. Oh, how happy I should be if I

could see you smile again!"

"How I would smile if I saw you looking happy!"

"Then smile at once, sir," she could say presently, "for see how happy

I am looking." And as she beamed on him once more he smiled as well as

he was able to. Grizel loved him so much that she actually knew when

that face of his was smiling, and soon she was saying gaily to his

eyes: "Oh, silly eyes that won't sparkle, what is the use of you?" and

she pressed her own upon them; and to his mouth she said: "Mouth that

does not know how to laugh--poor, tragic mouth!" He let her do nearly

all the talking. She sat there crooning over him as if he were her

child.

And so the flag was saved. He begged her to let him tell their little

world of his love for her, and especially was he eager to go straight

with it to the doctor. But she would not have this. "David and Elspeth

shall know in good time," she said, very nobly. "I am sure they are

fond of each other, and they shall know of our happiness on the day

when they tell us of their own." And until that great day came she was

not to look upon herself as engaged to Tommy, and he must never kiss

her again until they were engaged. I think it was a pleasure to her to

insist on this. It was her punishment to herself for ever having

doubted Tommy.

* * * * *

PART II

* * * * *