Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  “Very well.” She forced some gaiety to her aid. After all, how could she let his monstrous stupidity wound a heart protected by such a letter?

  “You have been a very foolish and presumptuous boy,” she began. She was standing up, smiling, wagging a reproachful but nervous finger at him. “If it were not that I have a weakness for seeing medical men making themselves ridiculous so that I may put them right, I should be very indignant with you, sir.”

  “Put me right, Grizel,” he said. He was sure she was trying to blind him again.

  “Know, then, David, that I am not the poor-spirited, humble creature you seem to have come here in search of—”

  “But you admitted—”

  “How dare you interrupt me, sir! Yes, I admit that I am not quite as I was, but I glory in it. I used to be ostentatiously independent; now I am only independent enough. My pride made me walk on air; now I walk on the earth, where there is less chance of falling. I have still confidence in myself; but I begin to see that ways are not necessarily right because they are my ways. In short, David, I am evidently on the road to being a model character!”

  They were gay words, but she ended somewhat faintly.

  “I was satisfied with you as you were,” was the doctor’s comment.

  “I wanted to excel!”

  “You explain nothing, Grizel,” he said reproachfully. “Why have you changed so?”

  “Because I am so happy. Do you remember how, in the old days, I sometimes danced for joy? I could do it now.”

  “Are you engaged to be married, Grizel?”

  She took a quiet breath. “You have no right to question me in this way,” she said. “I think I have been very good in bearing with you so long.”

  But she laid aside her indignation at once; he was so old a friend, the sincerity of him had been so often tried. “If you must know, David,” she said, with a girlish frankness that became her better, “I am not engaged to be married. And I must tell you nothing more,” she added, shutting her mouth decisively. She must be faithful to her promise.

  “He forbids it?” Gemmell asked mercilessly.

  She stamped her foot, not in rage, but in hopelessness. “How incapable you are of doing him justice!” she cried. “If you only knew — —”

  “Tell me. I want to do him justice.”

  She sat down again, sighing. “My attempt to regain my old power over you has not been very successful, has it, David? We must not quarrel, though” — holding out her hand, which he grasped. “And you won’t question me any more?” She said it appealingly.

  “Never again,” he answered. “I never wanted to question you, Grizel. I wanted only to marry you.”

  “And that can’t be.”

  “I don’t see it,” he said, so stoutly that she was almost amused. But he would not be pushed aside. He had something more to say.

  “Dr. McQueen wished it,” he said; “above all else in the world he wished it. He often told me so.”

  “He never said that to me,” Grizel replied quickly.

  “Because he thought that to press you was no way to make you care for me. He hoped that it would come about.”

  “It has not come about, David, with either of us,” she said gently. “I am sure that would have been sufficient answer to him.”

  “No, Grizel, it would not, not now.”

  He had risen, and his face was whiter than she had ever seen it.

  “I am going to hurt you, Grizel,” he said, and every word was a pang to him. “I see no other way. It has got to be done. Dr. McQueen often talked to me about the things that troubled you when you were a little girl — the morbid fears you had then, and that had all been swept away years before I knew you. But though they had been long gone, you were so much to him that he tried to think of everything that might happen to you in the future, and he foresaw that they might possibly come back. ‘If she were ever to care for some false loon!’ he has said to me, and then, Grizel, he could not go on.”

  Grizel beat her hands. “If he could not go on,” she said, “it was not because he feared what I should do.”

  “No, no,” David answered eagerly, “he never feared for that, but for your happiness. He told me of a boy who used to torment you, oh, all so long ago, and of such little account that he had forgotten his name. But that boy has come back, and you care for him, and he is a false loon, Grizel.”

  She had risen too, and was flashing fire on David; but he went on.

  “‘If the time ever comes,’ he said to me, ‘when you see her in torture from such a cause, speak to her openly about it. Tell her it is I who am speaking through you. It will be a hard task to you, but wrestle through with it, David, in memory of any little kindness I may have done you, and the great love I bore my Grizel.’”

  She was standing rigid now. “Is there any more, David?” she said in a low voice.

  “Only this. I admired you then as I admire you now. I may not love you, Grizel, but of this I am very sure” — he was speaking steadily, he was forgetting no one—”that you are the noblest and bravest woman I have ever known, and I promised — he did not draw the promise from me, I gave it to him — that if I was a free man and could help you in any way without paining you by telling you these things, I would try that way first.”

  “And this is the way?”

  “I could think of no other. Is it of no avail?”

  She shook her head. “You have made such a dreadful mistake,” she cried miserably, “and you won’t see it. Oh, how you wrong him! I am the happiest girl in the world, and it is he who makes me so happy. But I can’t explain. You need not ask me; I promised, and I won’t.”

  “You used not to be so fond of mystery, Grizel.”

  “I am not fond of it now.”

  “Ah, it is he,” David said bitterly, and he lifted his hat. “Is there nothing you will let me do for you, Grizel?” he cried.

  “I thought you were to do so much for me when you came into this room,” she admitted wistfully, “and said that you were in love. I thought it was with another woman.”

  He remembered that her face had brightened. “How could that have helped you?” he asked.

  She saw that she had but to tell him, and for her sake he would do it at once. But she could not be so selfish.

  “We need not speak of that now,” she said.

  “We must speak of it,” he answered. “Grizel, it is but fair to me. It may be so important to me.”

  “You have shown that you don’t care for her, David, and that ends it.”

  “Who is it?” He was much stirred.

  “If you don’t know — —”

  “Is it Elspeth?”

  The question came out of him like a confession, and hope turned Grizel giddy.

  “Do you love her, David?” she cried.

  But he hesitated. “Is what you have told me true, that it would help you?” he asked, looking her full in the eyes.

  “Do you love her?” she implored, but he was determined to have her answer first.

  “Is it, Grizel?”

  “Yes, yes. Do you, David?”

  And then he admitted that he did, and she rocked her arms in joy.

  “But oh, David, to say such things to me when you were not a free man! How badly you have treated Elspeth to-day!”

  “She does not care for me,” he said.

  “Have you asked her?” — in alarm.

  “No; but could she?”

  “How could she help it?” She would not tell him what Tommy thought. Oh, she must do everything to encourage David.

  “And still,” said he, puzzling, “I don’t see how it can affect you.”

  “And I can’t tell you,” she moaned. “Oh, David, do, do find out. Why are you so blind?” She could have shaken him. “Don’t you see that once Elspeth was willing to be taken care of by some other person —— I must not tell you!”

  “Then he would marry you?”

  She cried in anxiety: “Have I told
you, or did you find out?”

  “I found out,” he said. “Is it possible he is so fond of her as that?”

  “There never was such a brother,” she answered. She could not help adding, “But he is still fonder of me.”

  The doctor pulled his arm over his eyes and sat down again. Presently he was saying with a long face: “I came here to denounce the cause of your unhappiness, and I begin to see it is myself.”

  “Of course it is, you stupid David,” she said gleefully. She was very kind to the man who had been willing to do so much for her; but as the door closed on him she forgot him. She even ceased to hear the warning voice he had brought with him from the dead. She was re-reading the letter that began by calling her wife.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE ATTEMPT TO CARRY ELSPETH BY NUMBERS

  That was one of Grizel’s beautiful days, but there were others to follow as sweet, if not so exciting; she could travel back through the long length of them without coming once to a moment when she had held her breath in sudden fear; and this was so delicious that she sometimes thought these were the best days of all.

  Of course she had little anxieties, but they were nearly all about David. He was often at Aaron’s house now, and what exercised her was this — that she could not be certain that he was approaching Elspeth in the right way. The masterful Grizel seemed to have come to life again, for, evidently, she was convinced that she alone knew the right way.

  “Oh, David, I would not have said that to her!” she told him, when he reported progress; and now she would warn him, “You are too humble,” and again, “You were overbold.” The doctor, to his bewilderment, frequently discovered, on laying results before her, that what he had looked upon as encouraging signs were really bad, and that, on the other hand, he had often left the cottage disconsolately when he ought to have been strutting. The issue was that he lost all faith in his own judgment, and if Grizel said that he was getting on well, his face became foolishly triumphant, but if she frowned, it cried, “All is over!”

  Of the proposal Tommy did not know; it seemed to her that she had no right to tell even him of that; but the rest she did tell him: that David, by his own confession, was in love with Elspeth; and so pleased was Tommy that his delight made another day for her to cherish.

  So now everything depended on Elspeth. “Oh, if she only would!” Grizel cried, and for her sake Tommy tried to look bright, but his head shook in spite of him.

  “Do you mean that we should discourage David?” she asked dolefully; but he said No to that.

  “I was afraid,” she confessed, “that as you are so hopeless, you might think it your duty to discourage him so as to save him the pain of a refusal.”

  “Not at all,” Tommy said, with some hastiness.

  “Then you do really have a tiny bit of hope?”

  “While there is life there is hope,” he answered.

  She said: “I have been thinking it over, for it is so important to us, and I see various ways in which you could help David, if you would.”

  “What would I not do, Grizel! You have to name them only.”

  “Well, for instance, you might show her that you have a very high opinion of him.”

  “Agreed. But she knows that already.”

  “Then, David is an only child. Don’t you think you could say that men who have never had a sister are peculiarly gentle and considerate to women?”

  “Oh, Grizel! But I think I can say that.”

  “And — and that having been so long accustomed to doing everything for themselves, they don’t need managing wives as men brought up among women need them.”

  “Yes. But how cunning you are, Grizel! Who would have believed it?”

  “And then — —” She hesitated.

  “Go on. I see by your manner that this is to be a big one.”

  “It would be such a help,” she said eagerly, “if you could be just a little less attentive to her. I know you do ever so much of the housework because she is not fond of it; and if she has a headache you sit with her all day; and you beg her to play and sing to you, though you really dislike music. Oh, there are scores of things you do for her, and if you were to do them a little less willingly, in such a way as to show her that they interrupt your work and are a slight trial to you, I — I am sure that would help!”

  “She would see through me, Grizel. Elspeth is sharper than you think her.”

  “Not if you did it very skilfully.”

  “Then she would believe I had grown cold to her, and it would break her heart.”

  “One of your failings,” replied Grizel, giving him her hand for a moment as recompense for what she was about to say, “is that you think women’s hearts break so easily. If, at the slightest sign that she notices any change in you, you think her heart is breaking, and seize her in your arms, crying, ‘Elspeth, dear little Elspeth!’ — and that is what your first impulse would be — —”

  “How well you know me, Grizel!” groaned Sentimental Tommy.

  “If that would be the result,” she went on, “better not do it at all. But if you were to restrain yourself, then she could not but reflect that many of the things you did for her with a sigh David did for pleasure, and she would compare him and you—”

  “To my disadvantage?” Tommy exclaimed, with sad incredulity. “Do you really think she could, Grizel?”

  “Give her the chance,” Grizel continued, “and if you find it hard, you must remember that what you are doing is for her good.”

  “And for ours,” Tommy cried fervently.

  Every promise he made her at this time he fulfilled, and more; he was hopeless, but all a man could do to make Elspeth love David he did.

  The doctor was quite unaware of it. “Fortunately, her brother had a headache yesterday and was lying down,” he told Grizel, with calm brutality, “so I saw her alone for a few minutes.”

  “The fibs I have to invent,” said Tommy, to the same confidante, “to get myself out of their way!”

  “Luckily he does not care for music,” David said, “so when she is at the piano he sometimes remains in the kitchen talking to Aaron.”

  Tommy and Aaron left together! Tommy described those scenes with much good humour. “I was amazed at first,” he said to Grizel, “to find Aaron determinedly enduring me, but now I understand. He wants what we want. He says not a word about it, but he is watching those two courting like a born matchmaker. Aaron has several reasons for hoping that Elspeth will get our friend (as he would express it): one, that this would keep her in Thrums; another, that to be the wife of a doctor is second only in worldly grandeur to marrying the manse; and thirdly and lastly, because he is convinced that it would be such a staggerer to me. For he thinks I have not a notion of what is going on, and that, if I had, I would whisk her away to London.”

  He gave Grizel the most graphic, solemn pictures of those evenings in the cottage. “Conceive the four of us gathered round the kitchen fire — three men and a maid; the three men yearning to know what is in the maid’s mind, and each concealing his anxiety from the others. Elspeth gives the doctor a look which may mean much or nothing, and he glares at me as if I were in the way, and I glance at Aaron, and he is on tenterhooks lest I have noticed anything. Next minute, perhaps, David gives utterance to a plaintive sigh, and Aaron and I pounce upon Elspeth (with our eyes) to observe its effect on her, and Elspeth wonders why Aaron is staring, and he looks apprehensively at me, and I am gazing absent-mindedly at the fender.

  “You may smile, Grizel,” Tommy would say, “and now that I think of it, I can smile myself, but we are an eerie quartet at the time. When the strain becomes unendurable, one of us rises and mends the fire with his foot, and then I think the rest of us could say ‘Thank you.’ We talk desperately for a little after that, but soon again the awful pall creeps down.”

  “If I were there,” cried Grizel, “I would not have the parlour standing empty all this time.”

  “W
e are coming to the parlour,” Tommy replies impressively. “The parlour, Grizel, now begins to stir. Elspeth has disappeared from the kitchen, we three men know not whither. We did not notice her go; we don’t even observe that she has gone — we are too busy looking at the fire. By and by the tremulous tinkling of an aged piano reaches us from an adjoining chamber, and Aaron looks at me through his fingers, and I take a lightning glance at Mr. David, and he uncrosses his legs and rises, and sits down again. Aaron, in the most unconcerned way, proceeds to cut tobacco and rub it between his fingers, and I stretch out my legs and contemplate them with passionate approval. While we are thus occupied David has risen, and he is so thoroughly at his ease that he has begun to hum. He strolls round the kitchen, looking with sudden interest at the mantelpiece ornaments; he reads, for the hundredth time, the sampler on the wall. Next the clock engages his attention; it is ticking, and that seems to impress him as novel and curious. By this time he has reached the door; it opens to his touch, and in a fit of abstraction he leaves the room.”

  “You don’t follow him into the parlour?” asks Grizel, anxiously.

  “Follow whom?” Tommy replies severely. “I don’t even know that he has gone to the parlour; now that I think of it, I have not even noticed that he has left the kitchen; nor has Aaron noticed it. Aaron and I are not in a condition to notice such things; we are conscious only that at last we have the opportunity for the quiet social chat we so much enjoy in each other’s company. That, at least, is Aaron’s way of looking at it, and he keeps me there with talk of the most varied and absorbing character; one topic down, another up; when very hard put to it, he even questions me about my next book, as if he would like to read the proof-sheets, and when I seem to be listening, a little restively, for sounds from the parlour (the piano has stopped), he has the face of one who would bar the door rather than lose my society. Aaron appreciates me at my true value at last, Grizel. I had begun to despair almost of ever bringing him under my charm.”

  “I should be very angry with you,” Grizel said warningly, “if I thought you teased the poor old man.”