by Unknown
At this Gavinia jumped with joy, and then cried, “Up wi’ her!” words whose bearing the schoolmistress fortunately did not understand. All save Tommy looked at Miss Ailie, and she put her arm on Mr. McLean’s, and, yes, it was obvious, Miss Ailie was a lover at the Cuttle Well at last, like so many others. She had often said that the Den parade was vulgar, but she never said it again.
It was unexpected news to Tommy, but that was not what lowered his head in humiliation now. In the general rejoicing he had been nigh forgotten; even Elspeth was hanging on Miss Ailie’s skirts, Gavinia had eyes for none but lovers, Corp was rapturously examining five half-crowns that had been dropped into his hands for distribution. Had Tommy given an order now, who would have obeyed it? His power was gone, his crew would not listen to another word against Mr. McLean.
“Tommy thought Mr. McLean hated you!” said Elspeth to Miss Ailie.
“It was queer you made sic a mistake!” said Corp to Tommy.
“Oh, the tattie-doolie!” cried Gavinia.
So they knew that Mr. McLean had only been speaking sarcastically; of a sudden they saw through and despised their captain. Tears of mortification rose in Tommy’s eyes, and kind-hearted Miss Ailie saw them, and she thought it was her lover’s irony that made him smart. She had said little hitherto, but now she put her hand on his shoulder, and told them all that she did indeed owe the supreme joy that had come to her to him. “No, Gavinia,” she said, blushing, “I will not give you the particulars, but I assure you that had it not been for Tommy, Mr. McLean would never have asked me to marry him.”
Elspeth crossed proudly to the side of her noble brother (who could scarcely trust his ears), and Gavinia cried, in wonder, “What did he do?”
Now McLean had seen Tommy’s tears also, and being a kindly man he dropped the satirist and chimed in warmly, “And if I had not asked Miss Ailie to marry me I should have lost the great happiness of my life, so you may all imagine how beholden I feel to Tommy.”
Again Tommy was the centre-piece, and though these words were as puzzling to him as to his crew, their sincerity was unmistakable, and once more his head began to waggle complacently.
“And to show how grateful we are,” said Miss Ailie, “we are to give him a — a sort of marriage present. We are to double the value of the bursary he wins at the university—” She could get no farther, for now Elspeth was hugging her, and Corp cheering frantically, and Mr. McLean thought it necessary to add the warning, “If he does carry a bursary, you understand, for should he fail I give him nothing.”
“Him fail!” exclaimed Corp, with whom Miss Ailie of course agreed. “And he can spend the money in whatever way he chooses,” she said, “what will you do with it, Tommy?”
The lucky boy answered, instantly, “I’ll take Elspeth to Aberdeen to bide with me,” and then Elspeth hugged him, and Miss Ailie said, in a delighted aside to Mr. McLean, “I told you so,” and he, too, was well pleased.
“It was the one thing needed to make him work,” the schoolmistress whispered. “Is not his love for his sister beautiful?”
McLean admitted that it was, but half-banteringly he said to Elspeth:
“What could you do in lodgings, you excited mite?”
“I can sit and look at Tommy,” she answered, quickly.
“But he will be away for hours at his classes.”
“I’ll sit at the window waiting for him,” said she.
“And I’ll run back quick,” said Tommy.
All this time another problem had been bewildering Gavinia, and now she broke in, eagerly: “But what was it he did? I thought he was agin Mr. McLean.”
“And so did I,” said Corp.
“I cheated you grandly,” replied Tommy with the audacity he found so useful.
“And a’ the time you was pretending to be agin him,” screamed Gavinia, “was you — was you bringing this about on the sly?”
Tommy looked up into Mr. McLean’s face, but could get no guidance from it, so he said nothing; he only held his head higher than ever. “Oh, the clever little curse!” cried Corp, and Elspeth’s delight was as ecstatic, though differently worded. Yet Gavinia stuck to her problem, “How did you do it, what was it you did?” and the cruel McLean said: “You may tell her, Tommy; you have my permission.”
It would have been an awkward position for most boys, and even
Tommy — but next moment he said, quite coolly: “I think you and me and
Miss Ailie should keep it to oursels, Gavinia’s sic a gossip.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of him!” cried Miss Ailie, the deceived, and McLean said: “How very thoughtful!” but now he saw in a flash why Mr. Cathro still had hopes that Tommy might carry a bursary.
Thus was the repentant McLean pardoned, and nothing remained for him to do save to show the crew his Lair, which they had sworn to destroy. He had behaved so splendidly that they had forgotten almost that they were the emissaries of justice, but not to destroy the Lair seemed a pity, it would be such a striking way of bringing their adventures in the Den to a close. The degenerate Stuart read this feeling in their faces, and he was ready, he said, to show them his Lair if they would first point it out to him; but here was a difficulty, for how could they do that? For a moment it seemed as if the negotiations must fall through; but Sandys, that captain of resource, invited McLean to step aside for a private conference, and when they rejoined the others McLean said, gravely, that he now remembered where the Lair was and would guide them to it.
They had only to cross a plank, invisible in the mist until they were close to it, and climb a slippery bank strewn with fallen trees. McLean, with a mock serious air, led the way, Miss Ailie on his arm. Corp and Gavinia followed, weighted and hampered by their new half-crowns, and Tommy and Elspeth, in the rear, whispered joyously of the coming life. And so, very unprepared for it, they moved toward the tragedy of the night.
CHAPTER XXXI
A LETTER TO GOD
“Do you keep a light burning in the Lair?” McLean turned to ask, forgetting for the moment that it was not their domicile, but his.
“No, there’s no light,” replied Corp, equally forgetful, but even as he spoke he stopped so suddenly that Elspeth struck against him. For he had seen a light. “This is queer!” he cried, and both he and Gavinia fell back in consternation. McLean pushed forward alone, and was back in a trice, with a new expression on his face. “Are you playing some trick on me?” he demanded suspiciously of Tommy. “There is some one there; I almost ran against a pair of blazing eyes.”
“But there’s nobody; there can be nobody there,” answered Tommy, in a bewilderment that was obviously unfeigned, “unless — unless—” He looked at Corp, and the eyes of both finished the sentence. The desolate scene at Double Dykes, which the meeting with McLean and Miss Ailie had driven from their minds, again confronted them, and they seemed once more to hear the whimpering of the Painted Lady’s door.
“Unless what?” asked the man, impatiently, but still the two boys only stared at each other. “The Den’s no mous the night,” said Corp at last, in a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that Miss Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and Gavinia whispered, “Let’s away hame, we can come back in the daylight.”
But McLean chafed and pressed upward, and next moment a girl’s voice was heard, crying: “It is no business of yours; I won’t let you touch her.”
“Grizel!” exclaimed Tommy and his crew, simultaneously, and they had no more fear until they were inside the Lair. What they saw had best be described very briefly. A fire was burning in a corner of the Lair, and in front of it, partly covered with a sheet, lay the Painted Lady, dead. Grizel stood beside the body guarding it, her hands clenched, her eyes very strange. “You sha’n’t touch her!” she cried, passionately, and repeated it many times, as if she had lost the power to leave off, but Corp crept past her and raised the coverlet.
“She’s straikit!” he shouted. “Did you d
o it yoursel’, Grizel? God behears, she did it hersel’!”
A very long silence it seemed to be after that.
Miss Ailie would have taken the motherless girl to her arms, but first, at Corp’s discovery, she had drawn back in uncontrollable repulsion, and Grizel, about to go to her, saw it, and turned from her to Tommy. Her eyes rested on him beseechingly, with a look he saw only once again in them until she was a woman, but his first thought was not for Grizel. Elspeth was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her, “Shut your een,” and then led her tenderly away. He was always good to Elspeth.
*
There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through the town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den. But to all the questions put to her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to Double Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, “I don’t want anything to eat. I shall stay all night beside her. I am not frightened at my mamma. I won’t tell you why she was in the Den. I am not sure how long she has been dead. Oh, what do these little things matter?”
The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told her little tale. She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her and her mamma. Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes she used to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long time, but that hope never lasted long. The reason she sat so much with Ballingall was just to find out what doctors did to dying people to make them live a little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to do it to her mamma when the time came. She was sure none of the women would consent to straik her mamma. On the previous night, she could not say at what hour, she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew that the door was open. She put out her hand in the darkness and found that her mamma was not beside her. It had happened before, and she was not frightened. She had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed down the window, but her mamma had found the key. Grizel rose, lit the lamp, and, having dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den. Her mamma was generally as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she had shaking fits, and after them she thought it was the time of long ago. Then she went to the Den to meet a man who had promised, she said, to be there, but he never came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually induce her to return home. Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait for him in the old Lair, because it was less cold there, and she had got her to do this last night. Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she fell asleep, and she died sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double Dykes for linen and straiked her.
Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only the growth of later years. Grizel had done all she could do, and through the long Saturday she sat by the side of the body, helpless and unable to cry. She knew that it could not remain there much longer, but every time she rose to go and confess, fear of the indignities to which the body of her darling mamma might be subjected pulled her back. The boys had spoken idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so much more than any of them, believed it all.
It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house. She had only gone there to listen to human voices. When she discovered from the talk of her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes and the door open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had sent her to the house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who had stolen past them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door. Then she had returned to her mamma’s side.
The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least. Again and again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he turned on her passionately.
“Think shame of yoursel’,” he thundered, “for keeping me in the dark,” and of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning was, “I shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor child’s confidence.”
Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all. But she was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly: “I did mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you said I was a thief, and then how could I tell you?”
This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was, “You fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I can forgive you for that?”
“I don’t care whether you forgive me,” replied Grizel at once.
“Nor do I care whether you care,” he rapped out, all the time wishing he could strike himself; “but I’m the doctor of this place, and when your mother was ill you should have come straight to me. What had I done that you should be afraid of me?”
“I am not afraid of you,” she replied, “I am not afraid of anyone, but mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about her, and I thought — I won’t tell you what I thought.” But with a little pressing she changed her mind and told him. “I was not sure whether you would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream. And that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried with a stake through her—”
“Oh, these blackguard laddies!” cried McQueen, clenching his fists.
“And so I dared not tell you,” Grizel concluded calmly; “I am not frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling mamma,” and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.
The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, “How did I not know of this, why was I not told?” and he knew that the fault had been his own, and so was furious when Grizel told him so.
“Yes, it is,” she insisted, “you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and that the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you must have known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and wandered about all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you should have been sorry for her; and if you had been sorry you would have come to see her and been kind to her, and then you would have found it all out.”
“Have done, lassie!” he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she did not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly: “And you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night — they have not come for a long time — but you never tried to stop their coming, and I could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know at first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me.”
“Have done!” It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with other gossips, who they were.
He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, “And Ballingall’s was the only corpse you ever saw straiked?” he said in wonder, she had done her work so well. But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this girl was clothed in truthfulness.
“Was it you that kept this house so clean?” he asked, almost irritably, for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and he was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging by a thread.
“Yes.”
“What age are you?”
“I think I am thirteen.”
He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only picturing the probable future of a painted lady’s child, and he said mournfully to himself, “Ay, it does not even end here; and that’s the crowning pity of it.” But Grizel only heard him say, “Poor thing!” and she bridled immediately.
>
“I won’t let you pity me,” she cried.
“You dour brat!” he retorted. “But you need not think you are to have everything your own way still. I must get some Monypenny woman to take you till the funeral is over, and after that—”
“I won’t go,” said Grizel, determinedly, “I shall stay with mamma till she is buried.”
He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot. “You shall do as you are told,” he said.
“I won’t!” replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.
“Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I’ll send in a woman to sleep with you.”
“I want no one. Do you think I am afraid?”
“I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find yourself alone with — with it.”
“I sha’n’t, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in the cemetery, and that will make me happy.”
“You unnatural—”
“Besides, I sha’n’t sleep, I have something to do.”
His curiosity again got the better of the doctor. “What can you have to do at such a time?” he demanded, and her reply surprised him:
“I am to make a dress.”
“You!”
“I have made them before now,” she said indignantly.
“But at such a time!”
“It is a black dress,” she cried, “I don’t have one, I am to make it out of mamma’s.”
He said nothing for some time, then “When did you think of this?”
“I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be ready, and—”
She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly. “I don’t care what you think,” she said.
“What I do think,” he retorted, taking up his hat, “is, that you are a most exasperating lassie. If I bide here another minute I believe you’ll get round me.”
