CHAPTER XIX
OF THE CHANGE IN THOMAS
To find ways of making David propose to Elspeth, of making Elspethwilling to exchange her brother for David--they were heavy tasks, butTommy yoked himself to them gallantly and tugged like an Arab steed inthe plough. It should be almost as pleasant to us as to him to thinkthat love was what made him do it, for he was sure he loved Grizel atlast, and that the one longing of his heart was to marry her; the onemarvel to him was that he had ever longed ardently for anything else.Well, as you know, she longed for it also, but she was firm in herresolve that until Elspeth was engaged Tommy should be a single man.She even made him promise not to kiss her again so long as their lovehad to be kept secret. "It will be so sweet to wait," she saidbravely. As we shall see presently, his efforts to put Elspeth intothe hands of David were apparently of no avail, but though this wouldhave embittered many men, it drew only to the surface some of Tommy'snoblest attributes; as he suffered in silence he became gentler, moreconsiderate, and acquired a new command over himself. To conquer selffor her sake (this is in the "Letters to a Young Man") is the highesttribute a man can pay to a woman; it is the only real greatness, andTommy had done it now. I could give you a score of proofs. Let us takehis treatment of Aaron Latta.
One day about this time Tommy found himself alone in the house withAaron, and had he been the old Tommy he would have waited but a momentto let Aaron decide which of them should go elsewhere. It was thusthat these two, ever so uncomfortable in each other's presence,contrived to keep the peace. Now note the change.
"Aaron," said Tommy, in the hush that had fallen on that house sincequiet Elspeth left it, "I have never thanked you in words for all thatyou have done for me and Elspeth."
"Dinna do it now, then," replied the warper, fidgeting.
"I must," Tommy said cheerily, "I must"; and he did, while Aaronscowled.
"It was never done for you," Aaron informed him, "nor for the fatheryou are the marrows o'."
"It was done for my mother," said Tommy, reverently.
"I'm none so sure o't," Aaron rapped out. "I think I brocht you twahere as bairns, that the reminder of my shame should ever stand beforeme."
But Tommy shook his head, and sat down sympathetically beside thewarper. "You loved her, Aaron," he said simply. "It was an undyinglove that made you adopt her orphan children." A charming thought cameto him. "When you brought us here," he said, with some elation,"Elspeth used to cry at nights because our mother's spirit did notcome to us to comfort us, and I invented boyish explanations toappease her. But I have learned since why we did not see that spirit;for though it hovered round this house, its first thought was not forus, but for him who succoured us."
He could have made it much better had he been able to revise it, butsurely it was touching, and Aaron need not have said "Damn," which waswhat he did say.
One knows how most men would have received so harsh an answer to suchgentle words, and we can conceive how a very holy man, say a monk,would have bowed to it. Even as the monk did Tommy submit, or sayrather with the meekness of a nun.
"I wish I could help you in any way, Aaron," he said, with a sigh.
"You can," replied Aaron, promptly, "by taking yourself off to London,and leaving Elspeth here wi' me. I never made pretence that I wantedyou, except because she wouldna come without you. Laddie and man, asweel you ken, you were aye a scunner to me."
"And yet," said Tommy, looking at him admiringly, "you fed and housedand educated us. Ah, Aaron, do you not see that your dislike gives methe more reason only to esteem you?" Carried away by desire to helpthe old man, he put his hand kindly on his shoulder. "You have neverrespected yourself," he said, "since the night you and my motherparted at the Cuttle Well, and my heart bleeds to think of it. Many ayear ago, by your kindness to two forlorn children, you expiated thatsin, and it is blotted out from your account. Forget it, Aaron, asevery other person has forgotten it, and let the spirit of Jean Mylessee you tranquil once again."
He patted Aaron affectionately; he seemed to be the older of the two.
"Tak' your hand off my shuther," Aaron cried fiercely.
Tommy removed his hand, but he continued to look yearningly at thewarper. Another beautiful thought came to him.
"What are you looking so holy about?" asked Aaron, with misgivings.
"Aaron," cried Tommy, suddenly inspired, "you are not always thegloomy man you pass for being. You have glorious moments still. Youwake in the morning, and for a second of time you are in the heyday ofyour youth, and you and Jean Myles are to walk out to-night. As yousit by this fire you think you hear her hand on the latch of the door;as you pass down the street you seem to see her coming towards you. Itis for a moment only, and then you are a gray-haired man again, andshe has been in her grave for many a year; but you have that moment."
Aaron rose, amazed and wrathful. "The de'il tak' you," he cried, "howdid you find out that?"
Perhaps Tommy's nose turned up rapturously in reply, for the best ofus cannot command ourselves altogether at great moments, but when hespoke he was modest again.
"It was sympathy that told me," he explained; "and, Aaron, if you willonly believe me, it tells me also that a little of the man you werestill clings to you. Come out of the moroseness in which you haveenveloped yourself so long. Think what a joy it would be to Elspeth."
"It's little she would care."
"If you want to hurt her, tell her so."
"I'm no denying but what she's fell fond o' me."
"Then for her sake," Tommy pleaded.
But the warper turned on him with baleful eyes. "She likes me," hesaid in a grating voice, "and yet I'm as nothing to her; we are all asnothing to her beside you. If there hadna been you I should hae becomethe father to her I craved to be; but you had mesmerized her; she hadeyes for none but you. I sent you to the herding, meaning to breakyour power over her, and all she could think o' was my cruelty insindering you. Syne you ran aff wi' her to London, stealing her fraeme. I was without her while she was growing frae lassie to woman, theyears when maybe she could hae made o' me what she willed. MagerfulTam took the mother frae me, and he lived again in you to tak' thedochter."
"You really think me masterful--me!" Tommy said, smiling.
"I suppose you never were!" Aaron replied ironically.
"Yes," Tommy admitted frankly, "I was masterful as a boy, ah, and evenquite lately. How we change!" he said musingly.
"How we dinna change!" retorted Aaron, bitterly. He had learned thetruer philosophy.
"Man," he continued, looking Tommy over, "there's times when I seemair o' your mother than your father in you. She was a wonder atmaking believe. The letters about her grandeur that she wrote toThrums when she was starving! Even you couldna hae wrote them better.But she never managed to cheat hersel'. That's whaur you sail awayfrae her."
"I used to make believe, Aaron, as you say," Tommy replied sadly. "Ifyou knew how I feel the folly of it now, perhaps even you would wishthat I felt it less.
"But we must each of us dree his own weird," he proceeded, withwonderful sweetness, when Aaron did not answer. "And so far, at least,as Elspeth is concerned, surely I have done my duty. I had thebringing up of her from the days when she was learning to speak."
"She got into the way o' letting you do everything for her," thewarper responded sourly. "You thought for her, you acted for her, fraethe first; you toomed her, and then filled her up wi' yoursel'."
"She always needed some one to lean on."
"Ay, because you had maimed her. She grew up in the notion that youwere all the earth and the wonder o' the world."
"Could I help that?"
"Help it! Did you try? It was the one thing you were sure o' yoursel';it was the one thing you thought worth anybody's learning. You stoodbefore her crowing the whole day. I said the now I wished you would goand leave her wi' me: but I wouldna dare to keep her; she's helplesswithout you; if you took your arm awa frae her now, she would tumbleto the ground."
/> "I fear it is true, Aaron," Tommy said, with bent head. "Whether sheis so by nature, or whether I have made her so, I cannot tell, but Ifear that what you say is true."
"It's true," said Aaron, "and yours is the wite. There's no life forher now except what you mak'; she canna see beyond you. Go on thinkingyoursel' a wonder if you like, but mind this: if you were to cast heroff frae you now, she would die like an amputated hand."
To Tommy it was like listening to his doom. Ah, Aaron, even you couldnot withhold your pity, did you know how this man is being punishednow for having made Elspeth so dependent on him! Some such thoughtpassed through Tommy's head, but he was too brave to appeal for pity."If that is so," he said firmly, "I take the responsibility for it.But I began this talk, Aaron, not to intrude my troubles on you, buthoping to lighten yours. If I could see you smile, Aaron----"
"Drop it!" cried the warper; and then, going closer to him: "You wouldhae seen me smile, ay, and heard me laugh, gin you had been here whenMrs. McLean came yont to read your book to me. She fair insistit onreading the terrible noble bits to me, and she grat they were sosublime; but the sublimer they were, the mair I laughed, for I kenyou, Tommy, my man, I ken you."
He spoke with much vehemence, and, after all, our hero was notperfect. He withdrew stiffly to the other room. I think it was the useof the word Tommy that enraged him.
But in a very few minutes he scorned himself, and was possessed by apensive wonder that one so tragically fated as he could resent an oldman's gibe. Aaron misunderstood him. Was that any reason why he shouldnot feel sorry for Aaron? He crossed the hallan to the kitchen door,and stopped there, overcome with pity. The warper was still crouchingby the fire, but his head rested on his chest; he was a weary,desolate figure, and at the other side of the hearth stood an emptychair. The picture was the epitome of his life, or so it seemed to thesympathetic soul at the door, who saw him passing from youth to oldage, staring at the chair that must always be empty. At the samemoment Tommy saw his own future, and in it, too, an empty chair. Yet,hard as was his own case, at least he knew that he was loved; if herchair must be empty, the fault was as little hers as his, whileAaron----
A noble compassion drew him forward, and he put his hand determinedlyon the dear old man's shoulder.
"Aaron," he said, in a tremble of pity, "I know what is the realsorrow of your life, and I rejoice because I can put an end to it. Youthink that Jean Myles never cared for you; but you are strangelywrong. I was with my mother to the last, Aaron, and I can tell you,she asked me with her dying breath to say to you that she loved youall the time."
Aaron tried to rise, but was pushed back into his chair. "Love cannotdie," cried Tommy, triumphantly, like the fairy in the pantomime;"love is always young----"
He stopped in mid-career at sight of Aaron's disappointing face. "Areyou done?" the warper inquired. "When you and me are alane in thishouse there's no room for the both o' us, and as I'll never hae itsaid that I made Jean Myles's bairn munt, I'll go out mysel'."
And out he went, and sat on the dyke till Elspeth came home. It didnot turn Tommy sulky. He nodded kindly to Aaron from the window intoken of forgiveness, and next day he spent a valuable hour in makinga cushion for the old man's chair. "He must be left with theimpression that you made it," Tommy explained to Elspeth, "for hewould not take it from me."
"Oh, Tommy, how good you are!"
"I am far from it, Elspeth."
"There is a serenity about you nowadays," she said, "that I don't seemto have noticed before," and indeed this was true; it was the serenitythat comes to those who, having a mortal wound, can no more betroubled by the pinpricks.
"There has been nothing to cause it, has there?" Elspeth askedtimidly.
"Only the feeling that I have much to be grateful for," he replied. "Ihave you, Elspeth."
"And I have you," she said, "and I want no more. I could never carefor anyone as I care for you, Tommy."
She was speaking unselfishly; she meant to imply delicately that thedoctor's defection need not make Tommy think her unhappy. "Are youglad?" she asked.
He said Yes bravely. Elspeth, he was determined, should never have thedistress of knowing that for her sake he was giving up the one greatjoy which life contains. He was a grander character than most. Menhave often in the world's history made a splendid sacrifice for women,but if you turn up the annals you will find that the woman nearlyalways knew of it.
He told Grizel what Aaron had said and what Elspeth had said. He couldkeep nothing from her now; he was done with the world of make-believefor ever. And it seemed wicked of him to hope, he declared, or to lether hope. "I ought to give you up, Grizel," he said, with a groan.
"I won't let you," she replied adorably.
"Gemmell has not come near us for a week. I ask him in, but he avoidsthe house."
"I don't understand it," Grizel had to admit; "but I think he is fondof her, I do indeed."
"Even if that were so, I fear she would not accept him. I know Elspethso well that I feel I am deceiving you if I say there is any hope."
"Nevertheless you must say it," she answered brightly; "you must sayit and leave me to think it. And I do think it. I believe thatElspeth, despite her timidity and her dependence on you, is like othergirls at heart, and not more difficult to win.
"And even if it all comes to nothing," she told him, a little faintly,"I shall not be unhappy. You don't really know me if you think Ishould love to be married so--so much as all that."
"It is you, Grizel," he replied, "who don't see that it is myself I ampitying. It is I who want to be married as much as all that."
Her eyes shone with a soft light, for of course it was what she wantedhim to say. These two seemed to have changed places. That people couldlove each other, and there the end, had been his fond philosophy andher torment. Now, it was she who argued for it and Tommy who shook hishead.
"They can be very, very happy."
"No," he said.
"But one of them is."
"Not the other," he insisted; and of course it was again what shewanted him to say.
And he was not always despairing. He tried hard to find a way ofbringing David to Elspeth's feet, and once, at least, the apparentlyreluctant suitor almost succumbed. Tommy had met him near Aaron'shouse, and invited him to come in and hear Elspeth singing. "I did notknow she sang," David said, hesitating.
"She is so shy about it," Tommy replied lightly, "that we can hear herby stealth only. Aaron and I listen at the door. Come and listen atthe door."
And David had yielded and listened at the door, and afterwards gone inand remained like one who could not tear himself away. What was more,he and Elspeth had touched upon the subject of love in theirconversation, Tommy sitting at the window so engrossed in a letter toPym that he seemed to hear nothing, though he could repeat everythingafterwards to Grizel.
Elspeth had said, in her shrinking way, that if she were a man shecould love only a woman who was strong and courageous andhelpful--such a woman as Grizel, she had said.
"And yet," David replied, "women have been loved who had none of thosequalities."
"In spite of the want of them?" Elspeth asked.
"Perhaps because of it," said he.
"They are noble qualities," Elspeth maintained a little sadly, and heassented. "And one of them, at least, is essential," she said. "Awoman has no right to be loved who is not helpful."
"She is helpful to the man who loves her," David replied.
"He would have to do for her," Elspeth said, "the very things sheshould be doing for him."
"He may want very much to do them," said David.
"Then it is her weakness that appeals to him. Is not that loving herfor the wrong thing?"
"It may be the right thing," David insisted, "for him."
"And at that point," Tommy said, boyishly, to Grizel, "I ceased tohear them, I was so elated; I felt that everything was coming right. Icould not give another thought to their future, I was so busy mappingout my own.
I heard a hammering. Do you know what it was? It was ourhouse going up--your house and mine; our home, Grizel! It was nothere, nor in London. It was near the Thames. I wanted it to be uponthe bank, but you said No, you were afraid of floods. I wanted tosuperintend the building, but you conducted me contemptuously to mydesk. You intimated that I did not know how to build--that no one knewexcept yourself. You instructed the architect, and bullied theworkmen, and cried for more store-closets. Grizel, I saw the house goup; I saw you the adoration and terror of your servants; I heard yousinging from room to room."
He was touched by this; all beautiful thoughts touched him.
But as a rule, though Tommy tried to be brave for her sake, it wasusually she who was the comforter now, and he the comforted, and thiswas the arrangement that suited Grizel best. Her one thought need nolonger be that she loved him too much, but how much he loved her. Itwas not her self-respect that must be humoured back, but his. If herslagged, what did it matter? What are her own troubles to a woman whenthere is something to do for the man she loves?
"You are too anxious about the future," she said to him, if he hadgrown gloomy again. "Can we not be happy in the present, and leave thefuture to take care of itself?" How strange to know that it was Grizelwho said this to Tommy, and not Tommy who said it to Grizel!
She delighted in playing the mother to him. "Now you must go back toyour desk," she would say masterfully. "You have three hours' work todo to-night yet."
"It can wait. Let me stay a little longer with you, Grizel," heanswered humbly. Ha! it was Tommy who was humble now. Not so long agohe would not have allowed his work to wait for anyone, and Grizel knewit, and exulted.
"To work, sir," she ordered. "And you must put on your old coat beforeyou sit down to write, and pull up your cuffs so that they don'tscrape on the desk. Also, you must not think too much about me."
She tried to look businesslike, but she could scarce resist rockingher arms with delight when she heard herself saying such things tohim. It was as if she had the old doctor once more in her hands.
"What more, Grizel? I like you to order me about."
"Only this. Good afternoon."
"But I am to walk home with you," he entreated.
"No," she said decisively; but she smiled: once upon a time it hadbeen she who asked for this.
"If you are good," she said, "you shall perhaps see me to-morrow."
"Perhaps only?" He was scared; but she smiled happily again: it hadonce been she who had to beg that there should be no perhaps.
"If you are good," she replied,--"and you are not good when you havesuch a long face. Smile, you silly boy; smile when I order you. If youdon't I shall not so much as look out at my window to-morrow."
He was the man who had caused her so much agony, and she was lookingat him with the eternally forgiving smile of the mother. "Ah, Grizel,"Tommy cried passionately, "how brave and unselfish and noble you are,and what a glorious wife God intended you to be!"
She broke from him with a little cry, but when she turned round againit was to nod and smile to him.