Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  “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 earshot: “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 goodnight, 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.