by Unknown
“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 goodnight — 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 desig
n 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.”
