Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  He neither advanced to her nor retreated. Could 72 the unhappy girl not see that she was walking into the arms of the soldiers? But doubtless she had been driven from all her hiding-places. For a moment Gavin had it in his heart to warn her. But it was only for a moment. The next a sudden horror shot through him. She was stealing toward him, so softly that he had not seen her start. The woman had designs on him! Gavin turned from her. He walked so quickly that judges would have said he ran.

  The soldiers, I have said, stood in the dim light. Gavin had almost reached them, when a little hand touched his arm.

  “Stop,” cried the sergeant, hearing some one approaching, and then Gavin stepped out of the darkness with the gypsy on his arm.

  “It is you, Mr. Dishart,” said the sergeant, “and your lady?”

  “I —— ,” said Gavin.

  His lady pinched his arm.

  “Yes,” she answered, in an elegant English voice that made Gavin stare at her, “but, indeed, I am sorry I ventured into the streets tonight. I thought I might be able to comfort some of these unhappy people, captain, but I could do little, sadly little.”

  “It is no scene for a lady, ma’am, but your husband has —— . Did you speak, Mr. Dishart?”

  “Yes, I must inf — —”

  “My dear,” said the Egyptian, “I quite agree with you, so we need not detain the captain.”

  “I’m only a sergeant, ma’am.”

  “Indeed!” said the Egyptian, raising her pretty eyebrows, “and how long are you to remain in Thrums, sergeant?”

  “Only for a few hours, Mrs. Dishart. If this gypsy lassie had not given us so much trouble, we might have been gone by now.”

  “I HOPE YOU WILL CATCH HER, SERGEANT.”

  “Ah, yes, I hope you will catch her, sergeant.”

  73

  “Sergeant,” said Gavin, firmly, “I must — —”

  “You must, indeed, dear,” said the Egyptian, “for you are sadly tired. Goodnight, sergeant.”

  “Your servant, Mrs. Dishart. Your servant, sir.”

  “But —— ,” cried Gavin.

  “Come, love,” said the Egyptian, and she walked the distracted minister through the soldiers and up the manse road.

  The soldiers left behind, Gavin flung her arm from him, and, standing still, shook his fist in her face.

  “You — you — woman!” he said.

  This, I think, was the last time he called her a woman.

  But she was clapping her hands merrily.

  “It was beautiful!” she exclaimed.

  “It was iniquitous!” he answered. “And I a minister!”

  “You can’t help that,” said the Egyptian, who pitied all ministers heartily.

  “No,” Gavin said, misunderstanding her, “I could not help it. No blame attaches to me.”

  “I meant that you could not help being a minister. You could have helped saving me, and I thank you so much.”

  “Do not dare to thank me. I forbid you to say that I saved you. I did my best to hand you over to the authorities.”

  “Then why did you not hand me over?”

  Gavin groaned.

  “All you had to say,” continued the merciless Egyptian, “was, ‘This is the person you are in search of.’ I did not have my hand over your mouth. Why did you not say it?”

  “Forbear!” said Gavin, woefully.

  “It must have been,” the gypsy said, “because you really wanted to help me.”

  “Then it was against my better judgment,” said Gavin.

  74

  “I am glad of that,” said the gypsy. “Mr. Dishart, I do believe you like me all the time.”

  “Can a man like a woman against his will?” Gavin blurted out.

  “Of course he can,” said the Egyptian, speaking as one who knew. “That is the very nicest way to be liked.”

  Seeing how agitated Gavin was, remorse filled her, and she said in a wheedling voice —

  “It is all over, and no one will know.”

  Passion sat on the minister’s brow, but he said nothing, for the gypsy’s face had changed with her voice, and the audacious woman was become a child.

  “I am very sorry,” she said, as if he had caught her stealing jam. The hood had fallen back, and she looked pleadingly at him. She had the appearance of one who was entirely in his hands.

  There was a torrent of words in Gavin, but only these trickled forth —

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “You are not angry any more?” pleaded the Egyptian.

  “Angry!” he cried, with the righteous rage of one who when his leg is being sawn off is asked gently if it hurts him.

  “I know you are,” she sighed, and the sigh meant that men are strange.

  “Have you no respect for law and order?” demanded Gavin.

  “Not much,” she answered, honestly.

  He looked down the road to where the red-coats were still visible, and his face became hard. She read his thoughts.

  “No,” she said, becoming a woman again, “It is not yet too late. Why don’t you shout to them?”

  She was holding herself like a queen, but there was no stiffness in her. They might have been a pair of lovers, and she the wronged one. Again she looked 75 timidly at him, and became beautiful in a new way. Her eyes said that he was very cruel, and she was only keeping back her tears till he had gone. More dangerous than her face was her manner, which gave Gavin the privilege of making her unhappy; it permitted him to argue with her; it never implied that though he raged at her he must stand afar off; it called him a bully, but did not end the conversation.

  Now (but perhaps I should not tell this) unless she is his wife a man is shot with a thrill of exultation every time a pretty woman allows him to upbraid her.

  “I do not understand you,” Gavin repeated weakly, and the gypsy bent her head under this terrible charge.

  “Only a few hours ago,” he continued, “you were a gypsy girl in a fantastic dress, barefooted — —”

  The Egyptian’s bare foot at once peeped out mischievously from beneath the cloak, then again retired into hiding.

  “You spoke as broadly,” complained the minister, somewhat taken aback by this apparition, “as any woman in Thrums, and now you fling a cloak over your shoulders, and immediately become a fine lady. Who are you?”

  “Perhaps,” answered the Egyptian, “it is the cloak that has bewitched me.” She slipped out of it. “Ay, ay, ou losh!” she said, as if surprised, “it was just the cloak that did it, for now I’m a puir ignorant bit lassie again. My, certie, but claithes does make a differ to a woman!”

  This was sheer levity, and Gavin walked scornfully away from it.

  “Yet, if you will not tell me who you are,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “tell me where you got the cloak.”

  “Na faags,” replied the gypsy out of the cloak. “Really, Mr. Dishart, you had better not ask,” she added, replacing it over her.

  76

  She followed him, meaning to gain the open by the fields to the north of the manse.

  “Goodbye,” she said, holding out her hand, “if you are not to give me up.”

  “I am not a policeman,” replied Gavin, but he would not take her hand.

  “Surely, we part friends, then?” said the Egyptian, sweetly.

  “No,” Gavin answered. “I hope never to see your face again.”

  “I cannot help,” the Egyptian said, with dignity, “your not liking my face.” Then, with less dignity, she added, “There is a splotch of mud on your own, little minister; it came off the divit you flung at the captain.”

  With this parting shot she tripped past him, and Gavin would not let his eyes follow her. It was not the mud on his face that distressed him, nor even the hand that had flung the divit. It was the word “little.” Though even Margaret was not aware of it, Gavin’s shortness had grieved him all his life. There had been times when he tried to keep the secret from himself. In his boyhoo
d he had sought a remedy by getting his larger comrades to stretch him. In the company of tall men he was always selfconscious. In the pulpit he looked darkly at his congregation when he asked them who, by taking thought, could add a cubit to his stature. When standing on a hearthrug his heels were frequently on the fender. In his bedroom he has stood on a footstool and surveyed himself in the mirror. Once he fastened high heels to his boots, being ashamed to ask Hendry Munn to do it for him; but this dishonesty shamed him, and he tore them off. So the Egyptian had put a needle into his pride, and he walked to the manse gloomily.

  “SURELY, WE PART FRIENDS, THEN?”

  Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he saw her though she did not see him. He was stepping 77 into the middle of the road to wave his hand to her, when some sudden weakness made him look towards the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded thanks for his interest in her, but he scowled and pretended to be studying the sky. Next moment he saw her running back to him.

  “There are soldiers at the top of the field,” she cried. “I cannot escape that way.”

  “There is no other way,” Gavin answered.

  “Will you not help me again?” she entreated.

  She should not have said “again.” Gavin shook his head, but pulled her closer to the manse dyke, for his mother was still in sight.

  “Why do you do that?” the girl asked, quickly, looking round to see if she were pursued. “Oh, I see,” she said, as her eyes fell on the figure at the window.

  “It is my mother,” Gavin said, though he need not have explained, unless he wanted the gypsy to know that he was a bachelor.

  “Only your mother?”

  “Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than you for your behaviour tonight!”

  “How can she?”

  “If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I helped you to escape?”

  “But you said you did not.”

  “Yes, I helped you,” Gavin admitted. “My God! what would my congregation say if they knew I had let you pass yourself off as — as my wife?”

  He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety to blush.

  “It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of,” Gavin said, bitterly, “but from my conscience. No, that is not true. I do fear exposure, but for my mother’s sake. Look at her; she is happy, because she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials as you cannot know of, and now, when at last I seemed 78 able to do something for her, you destroy her happiness. You have her life in your hands.”

  The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped angrily on the dry ground. Then, child of impulse as she always was, she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the road.

  “Where are you going?” he cried.

  “To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I will clear you.”

  There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking back.

  “Stop!” Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched her shoulder.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Why—” whispered Gavin, giddily, “why — why do you not hide in the manse garden? — No one will look for you there.”

  There were genuine tears in the gypsy’s eyes now.

  “You are a good man,” she said; “I like you.”

  “Don’t say that,” Gavin cried in horror. “There is a summer-seat in the garden.”

  “‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ SHE ASKED.”

  Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took his advice, hastened to the manse. Once inside, he snibbed the door.

  * * *

  79

  Chapter Nine.

  THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE — ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.

  About six o’clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing. The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might make up on the clock.

  Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered her vow, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.

  On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist. It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might have been awaiting her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums. From the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some people at the Tenements run 80 to their houses at sound of the drum. Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake in the manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight by thin spars.

  Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead into Gavin’s room to look admiringly at him as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with his own hand. Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick socks in the place of thin ones, and it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his belongings in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and the secret places at the back of drawers, occasionally led to their being lost when wanted. “They are safe, at any rate, for I put them away some gait,” was then Margaret’s comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper the next instant, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his room he would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for self-neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

  81

  On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin’s door to stand and look, for she was fearful of awakening him after his heavy night. Even before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise that, for the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters. She concluded that he had done this lest the light should rouse him. He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put his open hand before his face, as if to guard himself, and again he frowned and seemed to draw back from something. He pointed his finger sternly to the north, ordering the weavers, his mother thought, to return to their homes, and then he muttered to himself so that she heard the words, “And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Then suddenly he bent forward, his eyes open and fixed on the window. Thus he sat, for the space of half a minute, like one listening with painful intentness. When he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the night over again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of the woman in the garden.

  Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from
Margaret’s room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to her mistress. Jean’s cheerfulness would have told him that her father was safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I suppose he was at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the shutters and looking out as cautiously as a burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.

  But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer of water when these words from the kitchen capsized it: —

  “Ay, an Egyptian. That’s what the auld folk call a gypsy. Weel, Mrs. Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums as would baffle description, 82 though I kent the fits and fors o’t as I dinna. Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is — —”

  Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing, of course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless queerer things about this hussy and her “husband” were being bawled from door to door. To the girl’s probable sufferings he gave no heed. What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to yield to the machinations of a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw his folly in the face.

  The tray in Jean’s hands clattered against the dresser, and Gavin sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front door.

  In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates had been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a means of helping her with her work. But with such a to-do in Thrums, and she the possessor of exclusive information, Jean’s reverence for Gavin only took her to-day as far as the door, where she lingered half in the parlour and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from the minister, but her ears his entirely.