THE LITTLE GODS DESERT HIM
And all next day he searched like a man whose eyes would never close
again. She had not passed the night in any inn or village house of St.
Gian; of that he made certain by inquiries from door to door. None of
the guides had seen her, though they are astir so late and so early,
patiently waiting at the hotel doors to be hired, that there seems to
be no night for them--darkness only, that blots them out for a time as
they stand waiting. At all hours there is in St. Gian the tinkle of
bells, the clatter of hoofs, the crack of a whip, dust in retreat; but
no coachman brought him news. The streets were thronged with other
coachmen on foot looking into every face in quest of some person who
wanted to return to the lowlands, but none had looked into her face.
Within five minutes of the hotel she might have been on any of half a
dozen roads. He wandered or rushed along them all for a space, and
came back. One of them was short and ended in the lake. All through
that long and beautiful day this miserable man found himself coming
back to the road that ended in the lake.
There were moments when he cried to himself that it was an apparition
he had seen and heard. He had avoided his friends all day; of the
English-speaking people in St. Gian one only knew why he was
distraught, and she was the last he wished to speak to; but more than
once he nearly sought her to say, "Partner in my shame, what did you
see? what did you hear?" In the afternoon he had a letter from Elspeth
telling him how she was enjoying her holiday by the sea, and
mentioning that David was at that moment writing to Grizel in Thrums.
But was it, then, all a dream? he cried, nearly convinced for the
first time, and he went into the arbour saying determinedly that it
was a dream; and in the arbour, standing primly in a corner, was
Grizel's umbrella. He knew that umbrella so well! He remembered once
being by while she replaced one of its ribs so deftly that he seemed
to be looking on at a surgical operation. The old doctor had given it
to her, and that was why she would not let it grow old before she was
old herself. Tommy opened it now with trembling hands and looked at
the little bits of Grizel on it: the beautiful stitching with which
she had coaxed the slits to close again; the one patch, so artful that
she had clapped her hands over it. And he fell on his knees and kissed
these little bits of Grizel, and called her "beloved," and cried to
his gods to give him one more chance.
"I woke up." It was all that she had said. It was Grizel's excuse for
inconveniencing him. She had said it apologetically and as if she did
not quite know how she came to be there herself. There was no look of
reproach on her face while the match burned; there had been a pitiful
smile, as if she was begging him not to be very angry with her; and
then when he said her name she gave that little cry as if she had
recognized herself, and stole away. He lived that moment over and over
again, and she never seemed to be horror-stricken until he cried
"Grizel!" when her recognition of herself made her scream. It was as
if she had wakened up, dazed by the terrible things that were being
said, and then, by the light of that one word "Grizel," suddenly knew
who had been listening to them.
Did he know anything more? He pressed his hands harshly on his temples
and thought. He knew that she was soaking wet, that she had probably
sought the arbour for protection from the rain, and that, if so, she
had been there for at least four hours. She had wakened up. She must
have fallen asleep, knocked down by fatigue. What fatigue it must have
been to make Grizel lie there for hours he could guess, and he beat
his brow in anguish. But why she had come he could not guess. "Oh,
miserable man, to seek for reasons," he cried passionately to himself,
"when it is Grizel--Grizel herself--you should be seeking for!"
He walked and ran the round of the lake, and it was not on the bank
that his staring eyes were fixed.
At last he came for a moment upon her track. The people of an inn six
miles from St. Gian remembered being asked yesterday by an English
miss, walking alone, how far she was from Bad-Platten. She was wearing
something brown, and her boots were white with dust, and these people
had never seen a lady look so tired before; when she stood still she
had to lean against the wall. They said she had red-hot eyes.
Tommy was in an einspänner now, the merry conveyance of the country
and more intoxicating than its wines, and he drove back through St.
Gian to Bad-Platten, where again he heard from Grizel, though he did
not find her. What he found was her telegram from London: "I am
coming. GRIZEL." Why had she come? why had she sent that telegram?
what had taken her to London? He was not losing time when he asked
himself distractedly these questions, for he was again in his gay
carriage and driving back to the wayside inn. He spent the night
there, afraid to go farther lest he should pass her in the darkness;
for he had decided that, if alive, she was on this road. That she had
walked all those forty miles uphill seemed certain, and apparently the
best he could hope was that she was walking back. She had probably no
money to enable her to take the diligence. Perhaps she had no money
with which to buy food. It might be that while he lay tossing in bed
she was somewhere near, dying for want of a franc.
He was off by morning light, and several times that day he heard of
her, twice from people who had seen her pass both going and coming,
and he knew it must be she when they said she rocked her arms as she
walked. Oh, he knew why she rocked her arms! Once he thought he had
found her. He heard of an English lady who was lying ill in the house
of a sawmiller, whose dog (we know the dogs of these regions, but not
the people) had found her prostrate in the wood, some distance from
the highroad. Leaving his einspänner in a village, Tommy climbed down
the mountain-side to this little house, which he was long in
discovering. It was by the side of a roaring river, and he arrived
only an hour too late. The lady had certainly been Grizel; but she was
gone. The sawyer's wife described to him how her husband had brought
her in, and how she seemed so tired and bewildered that she fell
asleep while they were questioning her. She held her hands over her
ears to shut out the noise of the river, which seemed to terrify her.
So far as they could understand, she told them that she was running
away from the river. She had been sleeping there for three hours, and
was still asleep when the good woman went off to meet her husband; but
when they returned she was gone.
He searched the wood for miles around, crying her name. The sawyer and
some of his fellow-workers left the trees they were stripping of bark
to help him, and for hours the wood rang with "Grizel, Grizel!" All
the mountains round took up the cry; but there never came an answer.
This long delay prevented his reaching the railway terminus until noon
of the following day, and there he was again too late. But she had
been here. He traced her to that hotel whence we saw her setting
forth, and the portier had got a ticket for her for London. He had
talked with her for some little time, and advised her, as she seemed
so tired, to remain there for the night. But she said she must go home
at once. She seemed to be passionately desirous to go home, and had
looked at him suspiciously, as if fearing he might try to hold her
back. He had been called away, and on returning had seen her
disappearing over the bridge. He had called to her, and then she ran
as if afraid he was pursuing her. But he had observed her afterwards
in the train.
So she was not without money, and she was on her way home! The relief
it brought him came to the surface in great breaths, and at first
every one of them was a prayer of thankfulness. Yet in time they were
triumphant breaths. Translated into words, they said that he had got
off cheaply for the hundredth time. His little gods had saved him
again, as they had saved him in the arbour by sending Grizel to him.
He could do as he liked, for they were always there to succour him;
they would never desert him--never. In a moment of fierce elation he
raised his hat to them, then seemed to see Grizel crying "I woke up,"
and in horror of himself clapped it on again. It was but a momentary
aberration, and is recorded only to show that, however remorseful he
felt afterwards, there was life in our Tommy still.
The train by which he was to follow her did not leave until evening,
and through those long hours he was picturing, with horrible vividness
and pain, the progress of Grizel up and down that terrible pass. Often
his shoulders shook in agony over what he saw, and he shuddered to the
teeth. He would have walked round the world on his knees to save her
this long anguish! And then again it was less something he saw than
something he was writing, and he altered it to make it more dramatic.
"I woke up." How awful that was! but in this new scene she uttered no
words. Lady Pippinworth was in his arms when they heard a little cry,
so faint that a violin string makes as much moan when it snaps. In a
dread silence he lit a match, and as it flared the figure of a girl
was seen upon the floor. She was dead; and even as he knew that she
was dead he recognized her. "Grizel!" he cried. The other woman who
had lured him from his true love uttered a piercing scream and ran
towards the hotel. When she returned with men and lanterns there was
no one in the arbour, but there were what had been a man and a girl.
They lay side by side. The startled onlookers unbared their heads. A
solemn voice said, "In death not divided."
He was not the only occupant of the hotel reading-room as he saw all
this, and when his head fell forward and he groaned, the others looked
up from their papers. A lady asked if he was unwell.
"I have had a great shock," he replied in a daze, pulling his hand
across his forehead.
"Something you have seen in your paper?" inquired a clergyman who had
been complaining that there was no news.
"People I knew," said Tommy, not yet certain which world he was in.
"Dead?" the lady asked sympathetically.
"I knew them well," he said, and staggered into the fresh air.
Poor dog of a Tommy! He had been a total abstainer from sentiment, as
one may say, for sixty hours, and this was his only glass. It was the
nobler Tommy, sternly facing facts, who by and by stepped into the
train. He even knew why he was going to Thrums. He was going to say
certain things to her; and he said them to himself again and again in
the train, and heard her answer. The words might vary, but they were
always to the same effect.
"Grizel, I have come back!"
He saw himself say these words, as he opened her door in Gavinia's
little house. And when he had said them he bowed his head.
At his sudden appearance she started up; then she stood pale and firm.
"Why have you come back?"
"Not to ask your forgiveness," he replied hoarsely; "not to attempt to
excuse myself; not with any hope that there remains one drop of the
love you once gave me so abundantly. I want only, Grizel, to put my
life into your hands. I have made a sorry mess of it myself. Will you
take charge of what may be left of it? You always said you were ready
to help me. I have come back, Grizel, for your help. What you were
once willing to do for love, will you do for pity now?"
She turned away her head, and he went nearer her. "There was always
something of the mother in your love, Grizel; but for that you would
never have borne with me so long. A mother, they say, can never quite
forget her boy--oh, Grizel, is it true? I am the prodigal come back.
Grizel, beloved, I have sinned and I am unworthy, but I am still your
boy, and I have come back. Am I to be sent away?"
At the word "beloved" her arms rocked impulsively. "You must not call
me that," she said.
"Then I am to go," he answered with a shudder, "for I must always call
you that; whether I am with you or away, you shall always be beloved
to me."
"You don't love me!" she cried. "Oh, do you love me at last!" And at
that he fell upon his knees.
"Grizel, my love, my love!"
"But you don't want to be married," she said.
"Beloved, I have come back to ask you on my knees to be my wife."
"That woman--"
"She was a married woman, Grizel."
"Oh, oh, oh!"
"And now you know the worst of me. It is the whole truth at last. I
don't know why you took that terrible journey, dear Grizel, but I do
know that you were sent there to save me. Oh, my love, you have done
so much, will you do no more?"
And so on, till there came a time when his head was on her lap and her
hand caressing it, and she was whispering to her boy to look up and
see her crooked smile again.
He passed on to the wedding. All the time between seemed to be spent
in his fond entreaties to hasten the longed-for day. How radiant she
looked in her bridal gown! "Oh, beautiful one, are you really mine?
Oh, world, pause for a moment and look at the woman who has given
herself to me!"
"My wife--this is my wife!" They were in London now; he was showing
her to London. How he swaggered! There was a perpetual apology on her
face; it begged people to excuse him for looking so proudly at her. It
was a crooked apology, and he hurried her into dark places and kissed
it.
Do you see that Tommy was doing all this for Grizel and pretending to
her that it was for himself? He was passionately desirous of making
amends, and he was to do it in the most generous way. Perhaps he
believed when he seemed to enter her room saying, "Grizel, I have come
back," that she loved him still; perhaps he knew that he did not love
in the way he said; perhaps he saw a remorseful man making splendid
atonement: but never should she know these things; tenderly as he had
begun he would go on to the end. Here at last is a Tommy worth looking
at, and he looked.
Yet as he drew near Thrums, after almost exactly two days of
continuous travel, many a shiver went down his back, for he could not
be sure that he should find Grizel here; he sometimes seemed to see
her lying ill at some wayside station in Switzerland, in France;
everything that could have happened to her he conceived, and he moved
restlessly in the carriage. His mouth went dry.
"Has she come back?"
The train had stopped for the taking of tickets, and his tremulous
question checked the joy of Corp at sight of him.
"She's back," Corp answered in an excited whisper; and oh, the relief
to Tommy! "She came back by the afternoon train; but I had scarce a
word wi' her, she was so awid to be hame. 'I am going home,' she
cried, and hurried away up the brae. Ay, and there's one queer thing."
"What?"
"Her luggage wasna in the van."
Tommy could smile at that. "But what sent her," he asked eagerly, "on
that journey?"
Corp told him the little he knew. "But nobody kens except me and
Gavinia," he said. We pretend she gaed to London to see her father. We
said he had wrote to her, wanting her to go to him. Gavinia said it
would never do to let folk ken she had gaen to see you, and even
Elspeth doesna ken."
"Is Elspeth back?"
"They came back yesterday."
Did David know the truth from Grizel? was what Tommy was asking
himself now as he strode up the brae. But again he was in luck, for
when he had explained away his abrupt return to Elspeth, and been
joyfully welcomed by her, she told him that her husband had been in
one of the glens all day. "He does not know that Grizel has come
back," she said. "Oh," she exclaimed, "but you don't even know that
she has been away! Grizel has been in London."
"Corp told me," said Tommy.
"And did he tell you why she had gone?"
"Yes."
"She came back an hour or two ago. Maggy Ann saw her go past. Fancy
her seeing her father at last! It must have been an ordeal for her. I
wonder what took place."
"I think I had better go and ask her," Tommy said. He was mightily
relieved for Grizel's sake. No one need ever know now what had called
her away except Corp and Gavinia, and even they thought she had merely
been to London. How well the little gods were managing the whole
affair! As he walked to Grizel's lodgings to say what he had been
saying in the train, the thought came to him for a moment that as no
one need ever know where she had been there was less reason why he
should do this generous thing. But he put it from him with lofty
disdain. Any effect it had was to make him walk more firmly to his
sacrifice, as if to show all ignoble impulses that they could find no
home in that swelling breast He was pleased with himself, was Tommy.
"Grizel, I have come back." He said it to the night, and bowed his
head. He said it with head accompaniment to Grizel's lighted window.
He said it to himself as he reached the door. He never said it again.
For Gavinia's first words were: "It's you, Mr. Sandys! Wherever is
she? For mercy's sake, dinna say you've come without her!" And when he
blinked at this, she took him roughly by the arm and cried,
"Wherever's Grizel?"
"She is here, Gavinia."
"She's no here."
"I saw her light."
"You saw my light."
"Gavinia, you are torturing me. She came back to-day."
"What makes you say that? You're dreaming. She hasna come back."
"Corp saw her come in by the afternoon train. He spoke to her."
Gavinia shook her head incredulously. "You're just imagining that,"
she said.
"He told me. Gavinia, I must see for myself," She stared after him as
he went up the stairs. "You are very cruel, Gavinia," he said, when he
came down. "Tell me where she is."
"May I be struck, Mr. Sandys, if I've seen or heard o' her since she
left this house eight days syne." He knew she was speaking the truth.
He had to lean against the door for support. "It canna be so bad as
you think," she cried in pity. "If you're sure Corp said he saw her,
she maun hae gone to the doctor's house."
"She is not there. But Elspeth knew she had come back. Others have
seen her besides Corp. My God, Gavinia! what can have happened?"
In little more than an hour he knew what had happened. Many besides
himself, David among them towards the end, were engaged in the search.
And strange stories began to fly about like night-birds; you will not
search for a missing woman without rousing them. Why had she gone off
to London without telling anyone? Had Corp concocted that story about
her father to blind them? Had she really been as far as London? Have
you seen Sandys?--he's back. It's said Corp telegraphed to him to
Switzerland that she had disappeared. It's weel kent Corp telegraphed.
Sandys came at once. He is in a terrible state. Look how white he is
aneath that lamp. What garred them telegraph for him? How is it he is
in sic a state? Fond o' her, was he? Yea, yea, even after she gave him
the go-by. Then it's a weary Sabbath for him, if half they say be
true. What do they say? They say she was queer when she came back.
Corp doesna say that. Maybe no; but Francie Crabb does. He says he met
her on the station brae and spoke to her, and she said never a word,
but put up her hands like as if she feared he was to strike her. The
Dundas lassies saw her frae their window, and her hands were at her
ears as if she was trying to drown the sound o' something. Do you mind
o' her mother? They say she was looking terrible like her mother.
It was only between the station and Gavinia's house that she had been
seen, but they searched far afield. Tommy, accompanied by Corp, even
sought for her in the Den. Do you remember the long, lonely path
between two ragged little dykes that led from the Den to the house of
the Painted Lady? It was there that Grizel had lived with her mamma.
The two men went down that path, which is oppressed with trees.
Elsewhere the night was not dark, but, as they had known so well when
they were boys, it is always dark after evenfall in the Double Dykes.
That is the legacy of the Painted Lady. Presently they saw the
house--scarcely the house, but a lighted window. Tommy remembered the
night when as a boy, Elspeth crouching beside him, he had peered in
fearfully at that corner window on Grizel and her mamma, and the
shuddersome things he had seen. He shuddered at them again.
"Who lives there now?" he asked.
"Nobody. It's toom."
"There is a light."
"Some going-about body. They often tak' bilbie in toom houses, and
that door is without a lock; it's keepit close wi' slipping a stick
aneath it. Do you mind how feared we used to be at that house?"
"She was never afraid of it."
"It was her hame."
He meant no more than he said, but suddenly they both stopped dead.
"It's no possible," Corp said, as if in answer to a question. "It's no
possible," he repeated beseechingly.
"Wait for me here, Corp."
"I would rather come wi' you."
"Wait here!" Tommy said almost fiercely, and he went on alone to that
little window. It had needed an effort to make him look in when he was
here before, and it needed a bigger effort now. But he looked.
What light there was came from the fire, and whether she had gathered
the logs or found them in the room no one ever knew. A vagrant stated
afterwards that he had been in the house some days before and left his
match-box in it.
By this fire Grizel was crouching. She was comparatively tidy and neat
again; the dust was gone from her boots, even. How she had managed to
do it no one knows, but you remember how she loved to be neat. Her
hands were extended to the blaze, and she was busy talking to herself.
His hand struck the window heavily, and she looked up and saw him. She
nodded, and put her finger to her lips as a sign that he must be
cautious. She had often, in the long ago, seen her mother signing thus
to an imaginary face at the window--the face of the man who never
came.
Tommy went into the house, and she was so pleased to see him that she
quite simpered. He put his arms round her, and she lay there with a
little giggle of contentment. She was in a plot of heat.
"Grizel! Oh, my God!" he said, "why do you look at me in that way?"
She passed her hand across her eyes, like one trying to think.
"I woke up," she said at last. Corp appeared at the window now, and
she pointed to him in terror. Thus had she seen her mother point, in
the long ago, at faces that came there to frighten her.
"Grizel," Tommy entreated her, "you know who I am, don't you?"
She said his name at once, but her eyes were on the window. "They want
to take me away," she whispered.
"But you must come away, Grizel. You must come home."
"This is home," she said. "It is sweet."
After much coaxing, he prevailed upon her to leave. With his arm round
her, and a terrible woe on his face, he took her to the doctor's
house. She had her hands over her ears all the way. She thought the
white river and the mountains and the villages and the crack of whips
were marching with her still.