CHAPTER XXIV
THE MONSTER
Tommy's new character was that of a monster. He always liked the bigparts.
Concealed, as usual, in the garments that clung so oddly to him,modesty, generosity, indifference to applause and all the noblerimpulses, he could not strip himself of them, try as he would, and sohe found, to his scornful amusement, that he still escaped the publicfury. In the two months that preceded Elspeth's marriage there waspositively scarce a soul in Thrums who did not think rather well ofhim. "If they knew what I really am," he cried with splendidbitterness, "how they would run from me!"
Even David could no longer withhold the hand of fellowship, for Grizelwould tell him nothing, except that, after all, and for reasonssufficient to herself, she had declined to become Mrs. Sandys. Hesought in vain to discover how Tommy could be to blame. "And now,"Tommy said grimly to Grizel, "our doctor thinks you have used mebadly, and that I am a fine fellow to bear no resentment! Elspeth toldme that he admires the gentle and manly dignity with which I submit tothe blow, and I have no doubt that, as soon as I heard that, I made itmore gentle and manly than ever!
"I have forbidden Elspeth," he told her, "to upbraid you for notaccepting me, with the result that she thinks me too good to live! Ha,ha! what do you think, Grizel?"
It became known in the town that she had refused him. Everybody was onTommy's side. They said she had treated him badly. Even Aaron wasstaggered at the sight of Tommy accepting his double defeat in suchgood part. "And all the time I am the greatest cur unhung," saysTommy. "Why don't you laugh, Grizel?"
Never, they said, had there been such a generous brother. The town wasastir about this poor man's gifts to the lucky bride. There wererumours that among the articles was a silver coal-scuttle, but itproved to be a sugar-bowl in that pattern. Three bandboxes came forher to select from; somebody discovered who was on the watch, but mayI be struck dead if more than one went back. Yesterday it was bonnets;to-day she is at Tilliedrum again, trying on her going-away dress. Andshe really was to go away in it, a noticeable thing, for in Thrumssociety, though they usually get a going-away dress, they are toocanny to go away in it The local shops were not ignored, but the bestof the trousseau came from London. "That makes the second box thisweek, as I'm a living sinner," cries the lady on the watch again. Whenboxes arrived at the station Corp wheeled them up to Elspeth withoutso much as looking at the label.
Ah, what a brother! They said it openly to their own brothers, and toTommy in the way they looked at him.
"There has been nothing like it," he assured Grizel, "since RedRiding-hood and the wolf. Why can't I fling off my disguise and cry,'The better to eat you with!'"
He always spoke to her now in this vein of magnificent bitterness, butGrizel seldom rewarded him by crying, "Oh, oh!" She might, however,give him a patient, reproachful glance instead, and it had theirritating effect of making him feel that perhaps he was underlife-size, instead of over it.
"I daresay you are right," says Tommy, savagely.
"I said nothing."
"You don't need to say it. What a grand capacity you have for knockingme off my horse, Grizel!"
"Are you angry with me for that?"
"No; it is delicious to pick one's self out of the mud, especiallywhen you find it is a baby you are picking up, instead of a brute. AmI a baby only, Grizel?"
"I think it is childish of you," she replied, "to say you are abrute."
"There is not to be even that satisfaction left to me! You are hard onme, Grizel."
"I am trying to help you. How can you be angry with me?"
"The instinct of self-preservation, I suppose. I see myself dwindlingso rapidly under your treatment that soon there will be nothing of meleft."
It was said cruelly, for he knew that the one thing Grizel could notbear now was the implication that she saw his faults only. She alwayswent down under that blow with pitiful surrender, showing the womansuddenly, as if under a physical knouting.
He apologized contritely. "But, after all, it proves my case," hesaid, "for I could not hurt you in this way, Grizel, if I were not apretty well-grown specimen of a monster."
"Don't," she said; but she did not seek to help him by drawing himaway to other subjects, which would have been his way. "What is theremonstrous," she asked, "in your being so good to Elspeth? It is verykind of you to give her all these things."
"Especially when by rights they are yours, Grizel!"
"No, not when you did not want to give them to me."
He dared say nothing to that; there were some matters on which he mustnot contradict Grizel now.
"It is nice of you," she said, "not to complain, though Elspeth isdeserting you. It must have been a blow."
"You and I only know why," he answered. "But for her, Grizel, I mightbe whining sentiment to you at this moment."
"That," she said, "would be the monstrous thing."
"And it is not monstrous, I suppose, that I should let Gemmell pressmy hand under the conviction that, after all, I am a trump."
"You don't pose as one."
"That makes them think the more highly of me! Nothing monstrous,Grizel, in my standing quietly by while you are showing Elspeth how tofurnish her house--I, who know why you have the subject at yourfinger-tips!"
For Grizel had given all her sweet ideas to Elspeth. Heigh-ho! how shehad guarded them once, confiding them half reluctantly even to Tommy;half reluctantly, that is, at the start, because they were her veryown, but once she was embarked on the subject talking with suchrapture that every minute or two he had to beg her to be calm. She wasthe first person in that part of the world to think that old furnitureneed not be kept in the dark corners, and she knew where there was anoak bedstead that was looked upon as a disgrace, and where to obtainthe dearest cupboards, one of them in use as the retiring-chamber of arabbit-hutch, and stately clocks made in the town a hundred years ago,and quaint old-farrant lamps and cogeys and sand-glasses thatapologized if you looked at them, and yet were as willing to be lovedagain as any old lady in a mutch. You will not buy them easily now,the people will not chuckle at you when you bid for them now. We havebecome so cute in Thrums that when the fender breaks we think it mayhave increased in value, and we preserve any old board lest the wormshave made it artistic. Grizel, however, was in advance of her time.She could lay her hands on all she wanted, and she did, but it was forElspeth's house.
"And the table-cloths and the towels and the sheets," said Tommy."Nothing monstrous in my letting you give Elspeth them?"
The linen, you see, was no longer in Grizel's press.
"I could not help making them," she answered, "they were so longing tobe made. I did not mean to give them to her. I think I meant to putthem back in the press, but when they were made it was natural thatthey should want to have something to do. So I gave them to Elspeth."
"With how many tears on them?"
"Not many. But with some kisses."
"All which," says Tommy, "goes to prove that I have nothing with whichto reproach myself!"
"No, I never said that," she told him. "You have to reproach yourselfwith wanting me to love you."
She paused a moment to let him say, if he dared, that he had not donethat, when she would have replied instantly, "You know you did." Hecould have disabused her, but it would have been cruel, and so on thissubject, as ever, he remained silent.
"But that is not what I have been trying to prove," she continued."You know as well as I that the cause of this unhappiness hasbeen--what you call your wings."
He was about to thank her for her delicacy in avoiding its real name,when she added, "I mean your sentiment," and he laughed instead.
"I flatter myself that I no longer fly, at all events," he said. "Iknow what I am at last, Grizel"
"It is flattery only," she replied with her old directness. "Thisthing you are regarding with a morbid satisfaction is not you at all."
He groaned. "Which of them all is me, Grizel?" he asked gloomily.
r /> "We shall see," she said, "when we have got the wings off."
"They will have to come off a feather at a time."
"That," she declared, "is what I have been trying to prove."
"It will be a weary task, Grizel."
"I won't weary at it," she said, smiling.
Her cheerfulness was a continual surprise to him. "You bear upwonderfully well yourself," he sometimes said to her, almostreproachfully, and she never replied that, perhaps, that was one ofher ways of trying to help him.
She is not so heartbroken, after all, you may be saying, and I hadpromised to break her heart. But, honestly, I don't know how to do itmore thoroughly, and you must remember that we have not seen her aloneyet.
She tried to be very little alone. She helped David in his work morethan ever; not a person, for instance, managed to escape the bathbecause Grizel's heart was broken. You could never say that she wasalone when her needle was going, and the linen became sheets and thelike, in what was probably record time. Yet they could have been sewnmore quickly; for at times the needle stopped and she did not know it.Once a bedridden old woman, with whom she had been sitting up, laywatching her instead of sleeping, and finally said: "What makes yousit staring at a cauld fire, and speaking to yourself?" And there wasa strange day when she had been too long in the Den. When she startedfor home she went in the direction of Double Dykes, her old home,instead.
She could bear everything except doubt. She had told him so, when hewondered at her calmness; she often said it to herself. She couldtread any path, however drearily it stretched before her, so long asshe knew whither it led, but there could be no more doubt. Oh, he mustnever again disturb her mind with hope! How clearly she showed himthat, and yet they had perhaps no more than parted when it seemedimpossible to bear for the next hour the desolation she was sentencedto for life. She lay quivering and tossing on the hearth-rug of theparlour, beating it with her fists, rocking her arms, and calling tohim to give her doubt again, that she might get through the days.
"Let me doubt again!" Here was Grizel starting to beg it of him. Morethan once she got half-way to Aaron's house before she could turn; butshe always did turn, with the words unspoken; never did Tommy hear hersay them, but always that she was tranquil now. Was it pride thatsupported her in the trying hour? Oh, no, it was not pride. That is anold garment, which once became Grizel well, but she does not wear itnow; she takes it out of the closet, perhaps, at times to look at it.What gave her strength when he was by was her promise to help him. Itwas not by asking for leave to dream herself that she could make himdream the less. All done for you, Tommy! It might have helped you toloosen a few of the feathers.
Sometimes she thought it might not be Tommy, but herself, who was sounlike other people; that it was not he who was unable to love, butshe who could not be loved. This idea did not agitate her as aterrible thing; she could almost welcome it. But she did not go to himwith it. While it might be but a fancy, that was no way to help a manwho was overfull of them. It was the bare truth only that she wantedhim to see, and so she made elaborate inquiries into herself, todiscover whether she was quite unlovable. I suppose it would have beenquaint, had she not been quite so much in earnest. She examinedherself in the long mirror most conscientiously, and with adeterminedly open mind, to see whether she was too ugly for any man tolove. Our beautiful Grizel really did.
She had always thought that she was a nice girl, but was she? No onehad ever loved her, except the old doctor, and he began when she wasso young that perhaps he had been inveigled into it, like a father.Even David had not loved her. Was it because he knew her so well? Whatwas it in women that made men love them? She asked it of David in sucha way that he never knew she was putting him to the question. Hemerely thought that he and she were having a pleasant chat aboutElspeth, and, as a result, she decided that he loved Elspeth becauseshe was so helpless. His head sat with uncommon pride on his shoulderswhile he talked of Elspeth's timidity. There was a ring ofboastfulness in his voice as he paraded the large number of usefulthings that Elspeth could not do. And yet David was a sensible andcareful man.
Was it helplessness that man loved in woman, then? It seemed to beElspeth's helplessness that had made Tommy such a brother, and how ithad always appealed to Aaron! No woman could be less helpless thanherself, Grizel knew. She thought back and back, and she could notcome to a time when she was not managing somebody. Women, shereflected, fall more or less deeply in love with every baby they see,while men, even the best of them, can look calmly at other people'sbabies. But when the helplessness of the child is in the woman, thenother women are unmoved; but the great heart of man is stirred--womanis his baby. She remembered that the language of love is in twosexes--for the woman superlatives, for the man diminutives. The moreshe loves the bigger he grows, but in an ecstasy he could put her inhis pocket. Had not Tommy taught her this? His little one, his child!Perhaps he really had loved her in the days when they both madebelieve that she was infantile; but soon she had shown with fatalclearness that she was not. Instead of needing to be taken care of,she had obviously wanted to take care of him: their positions werereversed. Perhaps, said Grizel to herself, I should have been a man.
If this was the true explanation, then, though Tommy, who had tried sohard, could not love her, he might be able to love--what is thephrase?--a more womanly woman, or, more popular phrase still, a verywoman. Some other woman might be the right wife for him. She did notshrink from considering this theory, and she considered so long thatI, for one, cannot smile at her for deciding ultimately, as she did,that there was nothing in it.
The strong like to be leaned upon and the weak to lean, and thisirrespective of sex. This was the solution she woke up with onemorning, and it seemed to explain not only David's and Elspeth's love,but her own, so clearly that in her desire to help she put it beforeTommy. It implied that she cared for him because he was weak, and hedrew a very long face.
"You don't know how the feathers hurt as they come out," he explained.
"But so long as we do get them out!" she said.
"Every other person who knows me thinks that strength is my greatcharacteristic," he maintained, rather querulously.
"But when you know it is not," said Grizel. "You do know, don't you?"she asked anxiously. "To know the truth about one's self, that is thebeginning of being strong."
"You seem determined," he retorted, "to prevent my loving you."
"Why?" she asked.
"You are to make me strong in spite of myself, I understand. But,according to your theory, the strong love the weak only. Are you togrow weak, Grizel, as I grow strong?"
She had not thought of that, and she would have liked to rock herarms. But she was able to reply: "I am not trying to help you in orderto make you love me; you know, quite well, that all that is over anddone with. I am trying only to help you to be what a man should be."
She could say that to him, but to herself? Was she prepared to make aman of him at the cost of his possible love? This faced her when shewas alone with her passionate nature, and she fought it, and with herfists clenched she cried: "Yes, yes, yes!"
Do we know all that Grizel had to fight? There were times when Tommy'smind wandered to excuses for himself; he knew what men were, and heshuddered to think of the might have been, had a girl who could loveas Grizel did loved such a man as her father. He thanked his Maker,did Tommy, that he, who was made as those other men, had avoidedraising passions in her. I wonder how he was so sure. Do we know allthat Grizel had to fight?
* * * * *
They spoke much during those days of the coming parting, and shealways said that she could bear it if she saw him go away more of aman than he had come.
"Then anything I have suffered or may suffer," she told him, "willhave been done to help you, and perhaps in time that will make meproud of my poor little love-story. It would be rather pitiful, wouldit not, if I have gone through so much for no end at all?"
She spoke
, he said, almost reproachfully, as if she thought he mightgo away on his wings, after all.
"We can't be sure," she murmured, she was so eager to make himwatchful.
"Yes," he said, humbly but firmly, "I may be a scoundrel, Grizel, I ama scoundrel, but one thing you may be sure of, I am done withsentiment." But even as he said it, even as he felt that he could tearhimself asunder for being untrue to Grizel, a bird was singing at hisheart because he was free again, free to go out into the world andplay as if it were but a larger den. Ah, if only Tommy could alwayshave remained a boy!
Elspeth's marriage day came round, and I should like to linger in it,and show you Elspeth in her wedding-gown, and Tommy standing behind tocatch her if she fainted, and Ailie weeping, and Aaron Latta rubbinghis gleeful hands, and a smiling bridesmaid who had once thought shemight be a bride. But that was a day in Elspeth's story, not inTommy's and Grizel's. Only one incident in their story crept into thathappy day. There were speeches at the feast, and the Rev. Mr. Dishartreferred to Tommy in the kindliest way, called him "my young friend,"quoted (inaccurately) from his book, and expressed an opinion, formed,he might say, when Mr. Sandys was a lad at school (cheers), that hehad a career before him. Tommy bore it well, all except the quotation,which he was burning to correct, but sighed to find that it had setthe dominies on his left talking about precocity. "To produce such agraybeard of a book at two and twenty, Mr. Sandys," said Cathro, "isamazing. It partakes, sir, of the nature of the miraculous; it'sonchancey, by which we mean a deviation from the normal." And so on.To escape this kind of flattery (he had so often heard it said byladies, who could say it so much better), Tommy turned to hisneighbours on the right.
Oddly enough, they also were discussing deviations from the normal. Onthe table was a plant in full flower, and Ailie, who had lent it, wasexpressing surprise that it should bloom so late in the season.
"So early in its life, I should rather say," the doctor remarked afterexamining it. "It is a young plant, and in the ordinary course wouldnot have come to flower before next year. But it is afraid that itwill never see next year. It is one of those poor little plants thatbloom prematurely because they are diseased."
Tommy was a little startled. He had often marvelled over his ownprecocity, but never guessed that this might be the explanation why hewas in flower at twenty-two. "Is that a scientific fact?" he asked.
"It is a law of nature," the doctor replied gravely, and if anythingmore was said on the subject our Tommy did not hear it. What did hehear? He was a child again, in miserable lodgings, and it was sometimein the long middle of the night, and what he heard from his bed washis mother coughing away her life in hers. There was an angry knock,knock, knock, from somewhere near, and he crept out of bed to tell hismother that the people through the wall were complaining because shewould not die more quietly; but when he reached her bed it was not hismother he saw lying there, but himself, aged twenty-four orthereabouts. For Tommy had inherited his mother's cough; he had knownit every winter, but he remembered it as if for the first time now.
Did he hear anything else? I think he heard his wings slipping to thefloor.
He asked Ailie to give him the plant, and he kept it in his room verylovingly, though he forgot to water it. He sat for long periodslooking at it, and his thoughts were very deep, but all he actuallysaid aloud was, "There are two of us." Aaron sometimes saw themtogether, and thought they were an odd pair, and perhaps they were.
Tommy did not tell Grizel of the tragedy that was hanging over him. Hewas determined to save her that pain. He knew that most men in hisposition would have told her, and was glad to find that he could keepit so gallantly to himself. She was brave; perhaps some day she woulddiscover that he had been brave also. When she talked of wings now,what he seemed to see was a green grave. His eyes were moist, but heheld his head high. All this helped him.
Ah, well, but the world must jog along though you and I be damned.Elspeth was happily married, and there came the day when Tommy andGrizel must say good-bye. He was returning to London. His luggage wasalready in Corp's barrow, all but the insignificant part of it, whichyet made a bulky package in its author's pocket, for it was his newmanuscript, for which he would have fought a regiment, yes, and beatenthem. Little cared Tommy what became of the rest of his luggage solong as that palpitating package was safe.
"And little you care," Grizel said, in a moment of sudden bitterness,"whom you leave behind, so long as you take it with you."
He forgave her with a sad smile. She did not know, you see, that thismanuscript might be his last.
And it was the only bitter thing she said. Even when he looked verysorry for her, she took advantage of his emotion to help him only."Don't be too sorry for me," she said calmly; "remember, rather, thatthere is one episode in a woman's life to which she must always clingin memory, whether it was a pride to her or a shame, and that it restswith you to make mine proud or shameful."
In other words, he was to get rid of his wings. How she harped onthat!
He wanted to kiss her on the brow, but she would not have it. He wasabout to do it, not to gratify any selfish desire, but of a beautifulimpulse that if anything happened she would have this to remember asthe last of him. But she drew back almost angrily. Positively, she wasputting it down to sentiment, and he forgave her even that.
But she kissed the manuscript. "Wish it luck," he had begged of her;"you were always so fond of babies, and this is my baby." So Grizelkissed Tommy's baby, and then she turned away her face.