CHAPTER XXXII
TOMMY'S BEST WORK
And thus was begun a year and a half of as great devotion asremorseful man ever gave to woman. When she was asleep and he couldnot write, his mind would sometimes roam after abandoned things; itsought them in the night as a savage beast steals forth for water toslake the thirst of many days. But if she stirred in her sleep theywere all dispelled; there was not a moment in that eighteen monthswhen he was twenty yards from Grizel's side.
He would not let himself lose hope. All the others lost it. "The onlything you can do is to humour her," even David was reduced in time tosaying; but Tommy replied cheerily, "Not a bit of it." Every morninghe had to begin at the same place as on the previous morning, and hewas always as ready to do it, and as patient, as if this were thefirst time.
"I think she is a little more herself to-day," he would saydeterminedly, till David wondered to hear him.
"She makes no progress, Sandys."
"I can at least keep her from slipping back."
And he did, and there is no doubt that this was what saved Grizel inthe end. How he strove to prevent her slipping back! The morning wasthe time when she was least troubled, and had he humoured her thenthey would often have been easy hours for him. But it was the timewhen he tried most doggedly, with a gentleness she could not ruffle,to teach her the alphabet of who she was. She coaxed him to let heroff those mental struggles; she turned petulant and sulky; she waswilling to be good and sweet if he would permit her to sew or to singto herself instead, or to sit staring at the fire: but he would notyield; he promised those things as the reward, and in the end shestood before him like a child at lessons.
"What is your name?" The catechism always began thus.
"Grizel," she said obediently, if it was a day when she wanted toplease him.
"And my name?"
"Tommy." Once, to his great delight, she said, "Sentimental Tommy." Hequite bragged about this to David.
"Where is your home?"
"Here." She was never in doubt about this, and it was always apleasure to her to say it.
"Did you live here long ago?"
She nodded.
"And then did you live for a long time somewhere else?"
"Yes."
"Where was it?"
"Here."
"No, it was with the old doctor. You were his little housekeeper;don't you remember? Try to remember, Grizel; he loved you so much."
She tried to think. Her face was very painful when she tried to think."It hurts," she said.
"Do you remember him, Grizel?"
"Please let me sing," she begged, "such a sweet song!"
"Do you remember the old doctor who called you his little housekeeper?He used to sit in that chair."
The old chair was among Grizel's many possessions that had beenbrought to Double Dykes, and her face lit up with recollection. Sheran to the chair and kissed it.
"What was his name, Grizel?"
"I should love to know his name," she said wistfully.
He told her the name many times, and she repeated it docilely.
Or perhaps she remembered her dear doctor quite well to-day, andthought Tommy was some one in need of his services.
"He has gone into the country," she said, as she had so often said toanxious people at the door; "but he won't be long, and I shall givehim your message the moment he comes in."
But Tommy would not pass that. He explained to her again and againthat the doctor was dead, and perhaps she would remember, or perhaps,without remembering, she said she was glad he was dead.
"Why are you glad, Grizel?"
She whispered, as if frightened she might be overheard: "I don't wanthim to see me like this." It was one of the pathetic things about herthat she seemed at times to have some vague understanding of hercondition, and then she would sob. Her tears were anguish to him, butit was at those times that she clung to him as if she knew he wastrying to do something for her, and that encouraged him to go on. Hewent over, step by step, the time when she lived alone in the doctor'shouse, the time of his own coming back, her love for him and histreatment of her, the story of the garnet ring, her coming toSwitzerland, her terrible walk, her return; he would miss out nothing,for he was fighting for her. Day after day, month by month, it wenton, and to-morrow, perhaps, she would insist that the old doctor andthis man who asked her so many questions were one. And Tommy arguedwith her until he had driven that notion out, to make way for another,and then he fought it, and so on and on all round the circle of herdelusions, day by day and month by month.
She knew that he sometimes wrote while she was asleep, for she mightstart up from her bed or from the sofa, and there he was, laying downhis pen to come to her. Her eyes were never open for any largefraction of a minute without his knowing, and immediately he went toher, nodding and smiling lest she had wakened with some fear upon her.Perhaps she refused to sleep again unless he promised to put awaythose horrid papers for the night, and however intoxicating a point hehad reached in his labours, he always promised, and kept his word. Hewas most scrupulous in keeping any promise he made her, and one greatresult was that she trusted him implicitly. Whatever others promised,she doubted them.
There were times when she seemed to be casting about in her mind forsomething to do that would please him, and then she would bring piecesof paper to him, and pen and ink, and tell him to write. She thoughtthis very clever of her, and expected to be praised for it.
But she might also bring him writing materials at times when she hatedhim very much. Then there would be sly smiles, even pretendedaffection, on her face, unless she thought he was not looking, whenshe cast him ugly glances. Her intention was to trick him intoforgetting her so that she might talk to herself or slip out of theroom to the Den, just as her mother had done in the days when it wasGrizel who had to be tricked. He would not let her talk to herselfuntil he had tried endless ways of exorcising that demon byinteresting her in some sort of work, by going out with her, bytalking of one thing and another till at last a subject was lit uponthat made her forget to brood.
But sometimes it seemed best to let her go to the Den, she was in sucha quiver of desire to go. She hurried to it, so that he had to strideto keep up with her; and he said little until they got there, for shewas too excited to listen. She was very like her mother again; but itwas not the man who never came that she went in search of--it was alost child. I have not the heart to tell of the pitiful scenes in theDen while Grizel searched for her child. They always ended in thosetwo walking silently home, and for a day or two Grizel would be ill,and Tommy tended her, so that she was soon able to hasten to the Denagain, holding out her arms as she ran.
"She makes no progress," David said.
"I can keep her from slipping back," Tommy still replied. The doctormarvelled, but even he did not know the half of all her husband didfor Grizel. None could know half who was not there by night. Here, atleast, was one day ending placidly, they might say when she was in atractable mood,--so tractable that she seemed to be one ofthemselves,--and Tommy assented brightly, though he knew, and healone, that you could never be sure the long day had ended till thenext began.
Often the happiest beginning had the most painful ending. The greatestpleasure he could give her was to take her to see Elspeth's baby girl,or that sturdy rogue, young Shiach, who could now count with ease upto seven, but swayed at eight, and toppled over on his way to ten; ortheir mothers brought them to her, and Grizel understood quite wellwho her visitors were, sometimes even called Elspeth by her rightname, and did the honours of her house irreproachably, and presided atthe tea-table, and was rapture personified when she held the baby Jean(called after Tommy's mother), and sat gaily on the floor, ready tocatch little Corp when he would not stop at seven. But Tommy, whomnothing escaped, knew with what depression she might pay for her joywhen they had gone. Despite all his efforts, she might sit talking toherself, at first of pleasant things and then of things less pleasant.Or she stared at her refle
ction in the long mirror and said: "Isn'tshe sweet!" or "She is not really sweet, and she did so want to begood!" Or instead of that she would suddenly go upon her knees andsay, with clasped hands, the childish prayer, "Save me from masterfulmen," which Jean Myles had told Tommy to teach Elspeth. No one couldhave looked less masterful at those times than Tommy, but Grizel didnot seem to think so. And probably they had that night once more tosearch the Den.
"The children do her harm; she must not see them again," he decided.
"They give her pleasure at the time," David said. "It lightens yourtask now and then."
"It is the future I am thinking of, Gemmell. If she cannot progress,she shall not fall back. As for me, never mind me."
"Elspeth is in a sad state about you, though! And you can get throughso little work."
"Enough for all our wants." (He was writing magazine papers only.)
"The public will forget you."
"They have forgotten me."
David was openly sorry for him now. "If only your manuscript had beensaved!"
"Yes; I never thought the little gods would treat me so scurvily asthat."
"Who?"
"Did I never tell you of my little gods? I so often emerged triumphantfrom my troubles, and so undeservedly, that I thought I was especiallylooked after by certain tricky spirits in return for the entertainmentI gave them. My little gods, I called them, and we had quite a bowingacquaintance. But you see at the critical moment they flew awaylaughing."
He always knew that the lost manuscript was his great work. "Myseventh wave," he called it; "and though all the conditions werefavourable," he said, "I know that I could run to nothing more thanlittle waves at present. As for rewriting that book, I can't; I havetried."
Yet he was not asking for commiseration. "Tell Elspeth not to worryabout me. If I have no big ideas just now, I have some very passablelittle ones, and one in particular that--" He drew a great breath. "Ifonly Grizel were better," that breath said, "I think Tommy Sandyscould find a way of making the public remember him again."
So David interpreted it, and though he had been about to say, "Howchanged you are!" he did not say it.
And Tommy, who had been keeping an eye on her all this time, returnedto Grizel. As she had been through that long year, so she was duringthe first half of the next; and day by day and night by night hetended her, and still the same scenes were enacted in infinitevariety, and still he would not give in. Everything seemed to changewith the seasons, except Grizel, and Tommy's devotion to her.
Yet you know that she recovered, ever afterwards to be herself again;and though it seemed to come in the end as suddenly as the sight maybe restored by the removal of a bandage, I suppose it had been goingon all the time, and that her reason was given back to her on the dayshe had strength to make use of it. Tommy was the instrument of herrecovery. He had fought against her slipping backward so that shecould not do it; it was as if he had built a wall behind her, and intime her mind accepted that wall as impregnable and took a forwardmovement. And with every step she took he pushed the wall after her,so that still if she moved it must be forward. Thus Grizel progressedimperceptibly as along a dark corridor towards the door that shut outthe light, and on a day in early spring the door fell.
Many of them had cried for a shock as her only chance. But it camemost quietly. She had lain down on the sofa that afternoon to rest,and when she woke she was Grizel again. At first she was not surprisedto find herself in that room, nor to see that man nodding and smilingreassuringly; they had come out of the long dream with her, to makethe awakening less abrupt.
He did not know what had happened. When he knew, a terror that thiscould not last seized him. He was concealing it while he answered herpuzzled questions. All the time he was telling her how they came to bethere, he was watching in agony for the change.
She remembered everything up to her return to Thrums; then she walkedinto a mist.
"The truth," she begged of him, when he would have led her off bypretending that she had been ill only. Surely it was the real Grizelwho begged for the truth. She took his hand and held it when he toldher of their marriage. She cried softly, because she feared that shemight again become as she had been; but he said that was impossible,and smiled confidently, and all the time he was watching in agony forthe change.
"Do you forgive me, Grizel? I have always had a dread that when yourecovered you would cease to care for me." He knew that this wouldplease her if she was the real Grizel, and he was so anxious to makeher happy for evermore.
She put his hand to her lips and smiled at him through her tears. Herswas a love that could never change. Suddenly she sat up. "Whose babywas it?" she asked.
"I don't know what you mean, Grizel," he said uneasily.
"I remember vaguely," she told him, "a baby in white whom I seemed tochase, but I could never catch her. Was it a dream only?"
"You are thinking of Elspeth's little girl, perhaps. She was oftenbrought to see you."
"Has Elspeth a baby?" She rose to go exultantly to Elspeth.
"But too small a baby, Grizel, to run from you, even if she wantedto."
"What is she like?"
"She is always laughing."
"The sweet!" Grizel rocked her arms in rapture and smiled her crookedsmile at the thought of a child who was always laughing. "But I don'tremember her," she said. "It was a sad little baby I seemed to see."