by J. M. Barrie
CHAPTER XX
A LOVE-LETTER
Some beautiful days followed, so beautiful to Grizel that as theypassed away she kissed her hand to them. Do you see her standing ontiptoe to see the last of them? They lit a fire in the chamber of hersoul which is the home of all pure maids, and the fagots that warmedGrizel were every fond look that had been on her lover's face andevery sweet word he had let fall. She counted and fondled them, andpretended that one was lost that she might hug it more than all theothers when it was found. To sit by that fire was almost better thanhaving the days that lit it; sometimes she could scarcely wait for theday to go.
Tommy's fond looks and sweet words! There was also a letter in thosedays, and, now that I remember, a little garnet ring; and there were afew other fagots, but all so trifling it must seem incredible to youthat they could have made so great a blaze--nothing else in it, on myhonour, except a girl's heart added by herself that the fire mightburn a moment longer.
And now, what so chilly as the fire that has gone out! Gone out longago, dear Grizel, while you crouched over it. You may put your hand inthe ashes; they will not burn you now. Ah, Grizel, why do you sitthere in the cold?
The day of the letter! It began in dread, but ended so joyfully, doyou think Grizel grudged the dread? It became dear to her; she lovedto return to it and gaze at the joy it glorified, as one sees thesunshine from a murky room. When she heard the postman's knock she wasnot even curious; so few letters came to her, she thought this must beMaggy Ann's monthly one from Aberdeen, and went on placidly dusting.At last she lifted it from the floor, for it had been slipped beneaththe door, and then Grizel was standing in her little lobby, panting asif at the end of a race. The letter lay in both her hands, and theyrose slowly until they were pressed against her breast.
She uttered some faint cries (it was the only moment in which I haveknown Grizel to be hysterical), and then she ran to her room andlocked herself in--herself and it. Do you know why that look ofelation had come suddenly to her face? It was because he had not evenwritten the address in a disguised hand to deceive the postmistress.So much of the old Grizel was gone that the pathos of her elation overthis was lost to her.
Several times she almost opened it. Why did she pause? why had thatfrightened look come into her eyes? She put the letter on her tableand drew away from it. If she took a step nearer, her hands wentbehind her back as if saying, "Grizel, don't ask us to open it; we areafraid."
Perhaps it really did say the dear things that love writes. Perhaps itwas aghast at the way she was treating it. Dear letter! Her mouthsmiled to it, but her hands remained afraid. As she stood irresolute,smiling, and afraid, she was a little like her mother. I have put offas long as possible saying that Grizel was ever like her mother. ThePainted Lady had never got any letters while she was in Thrums, butshe looked wistfully at those of other people. "They are so pretty,"she had said; "but don't open them: when you open them they break yourheart." Grizel remembered what her mother had said.
Had the old Grizel feared what might be inside, it would have made heropen the letter more quickly. Two minds to one person were unendurableto her. But she seemed to be a coward now. It was pitiable.
Perhaps it was quite a common little letter, beginning "Dear Grizel,"and saying nothing more delicious or more terrible than that he wantedher to lend him one of the doctor's books. She thought of a score oftrivialities it might be about; but the letter was still unopened whenDavid Gemmell called to talk over some cases in which he required hercounsel. He found her sitting listlessly, something in her lap whichshe at once concealed. She failed to follow his arguments, and he wentaway puckering his brows, some of the old doctor's sayings about herringing loud in his ears.
One of them was: "Things will be far wrong with Grizel when she isable to sit idle with her hands in her lap."
Another: "She is almost pitifully straightforward, man. Everythingthat is in Grizel must out. She can hide nothing."
Yet how cunningly she had concealed what was in her hands. Cunningapplied to Grizel! David shuddered. He thought of Tommy, and shut hismouth tight. He could do this easily. Tommy could not do it withoutfeeling breathless. They were types of two kinds of men.
David also remembered a promise he had given McQueen, and wondered, ashe had wondered a good deal of late, whether the time had come to keepit.
But Grizel sat on with her unopened letter. She was to meet Tommypresently on the croquet lawn of the Dovecot, when Ailie was to playMr. James (the champion), and she decided that she must wait tillthen. She would know what sort of letter it was the moment she saw hisface. And then! She pressed her hands together.
Oh, how base of her to doubt him! She said it to herself then andoften afterwards. She looked mournfully in her mother's long mirror atthis disloyal Grizel, as if the capacity to doubt him was the saddestof all the changes that had come to her. He had been so trueyesterday; oh, how could she tremble to-day? Beautiful yesterday! butyesterday may seem so long ago. How little a time had passed betweenthe moment when she was greeting him joyously in Caddam Wood and thatcry of the heart, "How could you hurt your Grizel so!" No, she couldnot open her letter. She could kiss it, but she could not open it.
Foolish fears! for before she had shaken hands with Tommy in Mrs.McLean's garden she knew he loved her still, and that the letterproved it. She was properly punished, yet surely in excess, for whenshe might have been reading her first love-letter, she had to join indiscussions with various ladies about Berlin wool and the like, and toapplaud the prowess of Mr. James with the loathly croquet mallet. Itseemed quite a long time before Tommy could get a private word withher. Then he began about the letter at once.
"You are not angry with me for writing it?" he asked anxiously. "Ishould not have done it; I had no right: but such a desire to do itcame over me, I had to; it was such a glory to me to say in writingwhat you are to me."
She smiled happily. Oh, exquisite day! "I have so long wanted to havea letter from you," she said. "I have almost wished you would go awayfor a little time, so that I might have a letter from you."
He had guessed this. He had written to give her delight.
"Did you like the first words of it, Grizel?" he asked eagerly.
The lover and the artist spoke together.
Could she admit that the letter was unopened, and why? Oh, the pain tohim! She nodded assent. It was not really an untruth, she toldherself. She did like them--oh, how she liked them, though she did notknow what they were!
"I nearly began 'My beloved,'" he said solemnly.
Somehow she had expected it to be this. "Why didn't you?" she asked, alittle disappointed.
"I like the other so much better," he replied. "To write it was sodelicious to me, I thought you would not mind."
"I don't mind," she said hastily. (What could it be?)
"But you would have preferred 'beloved'?"
"It is such a sweet name."
"Surely not so sweet as the other, Grizel?"
"No," she said, "no." (Oh, what could it be!)
"Have you destroyed it?" he asked, and the question was a shock toher. Her hand rose instinctively to defend something that lay near herheart.
"I could not," she whispered.
"Do you mean you wanted to?" he asked dolefully.
"I thought you wanted it," she murmured.
"I!" he cried, aghast, and she was joyous again.
"Can't you guess where it is?" she said.
He understood. "Grizel! You carry my letter there!"
She was full of glee; but she puzzled him presently.
"Do you think I could go now?" she inquired eagerly.
"And leave me?"
It was dreadful of her, but she nodded.
"I want to go home."
"Is it not home, Grizel, when you are with me?"
"I want to go away from home, then." She said it as if she loved totantalize him.
"But why?"
"I won't tell you." She was looking wistfully
at the door. "I havesomething to do."
"It can wait."
"It has waited too long." He might have heard an assenting rustle frombeneath her bodice.
"Do let me go," she said coaxingly, as if he held her.
"I can't understand----" he began, and broke off. She was facing himdemurely but exultantly, challenging him, he could see, to read hernow. "Just when I am flattering myself that I know everything aboutyou, Grizel," he said, with a long face, "I suddenly wonder whether Iknow anything."
She would have liked to clap her hands. "You must remember that wehave changed places," she told him. "It is I who understand you now."
"And I am devoutly glad," he made answer, with humble thankfulness."And I must ask you, Grizel, why you want to run away from me."
"But you think you know," she retorted smartly. "You think I want toread my letter again!"
Her cleverness staggered him. "But I am right, am I not, Grizel?"
"No," she said triumphantly, "you are quite wrong. Oh, if you knew howwrong you are!" And having thus again unhorsed him, she made herexcuses to Ailie and slipped away. Dr. Gemmell, who was present andhad been watching her narrowly, misread the flush on her face and herrestless desire to be gone.
"Is there anything between those two, do you think?" Mrs. McLean hadsaid in a twitter to him while Tommy and Grizel were talking, and hehad answered No almost sharply.
"People are beginning to think there is," she said in self-defence.
"They are mistaken," he told her curtly, and it was about this timethat Grizel left. David followed her to her home soon afterwards, andMaggy Ann, who answered his summons, did not accompany him upstairs.He was in the house daily, and she left him to find Grizel forhimself. He opened the parlour door almost as he knocked, and she wasthere, but had not heard him. He stopped short, like one who hadblundered unawares on what was not for him.
She was on her knees on the hearth-rug, with her head buried in whathad been Dr. McQueen's chair. Ragged had been the seat of it on theday when she first went to live with him, but very early on thefollowing morning, or, to be precise, five minutes after daybreak, hehad risen to see if there were burglars in the parlour, and behold, itwas his grateful little maid repadding the old arm-chair. How asituation repeats itself! Without disturbing her, the old doctor hadslipped away with a full heart. It was what the young doctor did now.
But the situation was not quite the same. She had been bubbling overwith glee then; she was sobbing now. David could not know that it wasa sob of joy; he knew only that he had never seen her crying before,and that it was the letter in her hands that had brought tears at lastto those once tranquil and steadfast eyes.
In an odd conversation which had once taken place in that room betweenthe two doctors, Gemmell had said: "But the time may come without myknowing it." And McQueen's reply was: "I don't think so, for she is soopen; but I'll tell you this, David, as a guide. I never saw her eyeswet. It is one of the touching things about her that she has the eyesof a man, to whom it is a shame to cry. If you ever see her greeting,David, I'm sore doubting that the time will have come."
As David Gemmell let himself softly out of the house, to return to itpresently, he thought the time had come. What he conceived he had todo was a hard thing, but he never thought of not doing it. He had kepthimself in readiness to do it for many days now, and he walked to itas firmly as if he were on his professional rounds. He did not knowthat the skin round his eyes had contracted, giving them the look ofpain which always came there when he was sorry or pitiful orindignant. He was not well acquainted with his eyes, and, had heglanced at them now in a glass, would have presumed that this wastheir usual expression.
Grizel herself opened the door to him this time, and "Maggy Ann, he isfound!" she cried victoriously. Evidently she had heard of hisprevious visit. "We have searched every room in the house for you,"she said gaily, "and had you disappeared for much longer, Maggy Annwould have had the carpets up."
He excused himself on the ground that he had forgotten something, andshe chided him merrily for being forgetful. As he sat with her Davidcould have groaned aloud. How vivacious she had become! but she wassparkling in false colours. After what he knew had been her distressof a few minutes ago, it was a painted face to him. She was trying todeceive him. Perhaps she suspected that he had seen her crying, andnow, attired in all a woman's wiles, she was defying him to believehis eyes.
Grizel garbed in wiles! Alack the day! She was shielding the man, andGemmell could have driven her away roughly to get at him. But she wasalso standing over her own pride, lest anyone should see that it hadfallen; and do you think that David would have made her budge an inch?
Of course she saw that he had something on his mind. She knew thosepuckered eyes so well, and had so often smoothed them for him.
"What is it, David?" she asked sympathetically. "I see you have comeas a patient to-night."
"As one of those patients," he rejoined, "who feel better at meresight of the doctor."
"Fear of the prescription?" said she.
"Not if you prescribe yourself, Grizel."
"David!" she cried. He had been paying compliments!
"I mean it."
"So I can see by your face. Oh, David, how stern you look!"
"Dr. McQueen and I," he retorted, "used to hold private meetings afteryou had gone to bed, at which we agreed that you should no longer beallowed to make fun of us. They came to nothing. Do you know why?"
"Because I continued to do it?"
"No; but because we missed it so much if you stopped."
"You are nice to-night, David," she said, dropping him a courtesy.
"We liked all your bullying ways," he went on. "We were children inyour masterful hands."
"I was a tyrant, David," she said, looking properly ashamed. "I wonderyou did not marry, just to get rid of me."
"Have you ever seriously wondered why I don't marry?" he askedquickly.
"Oh, David," she exclaimed, "what else do you think your patients andI talk of when I am trying to nurse them? It has agitated the townever since you first walked up the Marrywellbrae, and we can't get onwith our work for thinking of it."
"Seriously, Grizel?"
She became grave at once. "If you could find the right woman," shesaid wistfully.
"I have found her," he answered; and then she pressed her handstogether, too excited to speak.
"If she would only care a little for me," he said.
Grizel rocked her arms. "I am sure she does," she cried. "David, I amso glad!"
He saw what her mistake was, but pretended not to know that she hadmade one. "Are you really glad that I love you, Grizel?" he asked.
It seemed to daze her for a moment. "Not me, David," she said softly,as if correcting him. "You don't mean that it is me?" she saidcoaxingly. "David," she cried, "say it is not me!"
He drooped his head, but not before he had seen all the brightness dieout of her face. "Is it so painful to you even to hear me say it?" heasked gravely.
Her joy had been selfish as her sorrow was. For nigh a minute she hadbeen thinking of herself alone, it meant so much to her; but now shejumped up and took his hand in hers.
"Poor David!" she said, making much of his hand as if she had hurt it.But David Gemmell's was too simple a face to oppose to her pityingeyes, and presently she let his hand slip from her and stood regardinghim curiously. He had to look another way, and then she even smiled, alittle forlornly.
"Do you mind talking it over with me, Grizel?" he asked. "I havealways been well aware that you did not care for me in that way, butnevertheless I believe you might do worse."
"No woman could do better," she answered gravely. "I should like youto talk it over, David, if you begin at the beginning"; and she satdown with her hands crossed.
"I won't say what a good thing it would be for me," was his beginning;"we may take that for granted."
"I don't think we can," she remarked; "but it scarcely matters atpresent. That
is not the beginning, David."
He was very anxious to make it the beginning.
"I am weary of living in lodgings," he said. "The practice suffers bymy not being married. Many patients dislike being attended by a singleman. I ought to be in McQueen's house; it has been so long known asthe doctor's house. And you should be a doctor's wife--you who couldalmost be the doctor. It would be a shame, Grizel, if you who are somuch to patients were to marry out of the profession. Don't you followme?"
"I follow you," she replied; "but what does it matter? You have notbegun at the beginning." He looked at her inquiringly. "You mustbegin," she informed him, "by saying why you ask me to marry you whenyou don't love me." She added, in answer to another look from him:"You know you don't." There was a little reproach in it. "Oh, David,what made you think I could be so easily taken in!"
He looked so miserable that by and by she smiled, not so tremulouslyas before.
"How bad at it you are, David!" she said.
And how good at it she was! he thought gloomily.
"Shall I help you out?" she asked gently, but speaking with dignity."You think I am unhappy; you believe I am in the position in which youplaced yourself, of caring for someone who does not care for me."
"Grizel, I mistrust him."
She flushed; she was not quite so gentle now. "And so you offer meyour hand to save me! It was a great self-sacrifice, David, but youused not to be fond of doing showy things."
"I did not mean it to be showy," he answered.
She was well aware of that, but--"Oh, David," she cried, "that youshould believe I needed it! How little you must think of me!"
"Does it look as if I thought little of you?" he said.
"Little of my strength, David, little of my pride."
"I think so much of them that how could I stand by silently and watchthem go?"
"You think you have seen that!" She was agitated now.
He hesitated. "Yes," he said courageously.
Her eyes cried, "David, how could you be so cruel!" but they did notdaunt him.
"Have you not seen it yourself, Grizel?" he said.
She pressed her hands together. "I was so happy," she said, "until youcame!"
"Have you not seen it yourself?" he asked again.
"There may be better things," she retorted, "than those you rate sohighly."
"Not for you," he said.
"If they are gone," she told him, with a flush of resentment, "it isnot you who can bring them back."
"But let me try, Grizel," said he.
"David, can I not even make you angry with me?"
"No, Grizel, you can't. I am very sorry that I can make you angry withme."
"I am not," she said dispiritedly. "It would be contemptible in me."And then, eagerly: "But, David, you have made a great mistake, indeedyou have. You--you are a dreadful bungler, sir!" She was trying tomake his face relax, with a tremulous smile from herself to encouragehim; but the effort was not successful. "You see, I can't even bullyyou now!" she said. "Did that capacity go with the others, David?"
"Try a little harder," he replied. "I think you will find that Isubmit to it still"
"Very well." She forced some gaiety to her aid. After all, how couldshe let his monstrous stupidity wound a heart protected by such aletter?
"You have been a very foolish and presumptuous boy," she began. Shewas standing up, smiling, wagging a reproachful but nervous finger athim. "If it were not that I have a weakness for seeing medical menmaking themselves ridiculous so that I may put them right, I should bevery indignant with you, sir."
"Put me right, Grizel," he said. He was sure she was trying to blindhim again.
"Know, then, David, that I am not the poor-spirited, humble creatureyou 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 Iwas, but I glory in it. I used to be ostentatiously independent; now Iam only independent enough. My pride made me walk on air; now I walkon the earth, where there is less chance of falling. I have stillconfidence in myself; but I begin to see that ways are not necessarilyright because they are my ways. In short, David, I am evidently on theroad 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 youchanged so?"
"Because I am so happy. Do you remember how, in the old days, Isometimes 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 thisway," she said. "I think I have been very good in bearing with you solong."
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, "Iam not engaged to be married. And I must tell you nothing more," sheadded, shutting her mouth decisively. She must be faithful to herpromise.
"He forbids it?" Gemmell asked mercilessly.
She stamped her foot, not in rage, but in hopelessness. "How incapableyou 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 overyou has not been very successful, has it, David? We must not quarrel,though"--holding out her hand, which he grasped. "And you won'tquestion me any more?" She said it appealingly.
"Never again," he answered. "I never wanted to question you, Grizel. Iwanted only to marry you."
"And that can't be."
"I don't see it," he said, so stoutly that she was almost amused. Buthe would not be pushed aside. He had something more to say.
"Dr. McQueen wished it," he said; "above all else in the world hewished 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 forme. He hoped that it would come about."
"It has not come about, David, with either of us," she said gently. "Iam 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 pangto him. "I see no other way. It has got to be done. Dr. McQueen oftentalked to me about the things that troubled you when you were a littlegirl--the morbid fears you had then, and that had all been swept awayyears before I knew you. But though they had been long gone, you wereso much to him that he tried to think of everything that might happento you in the future, and he foresaw that they might possibly comeback. 'If she were ever to care for some false loon!' he has said tome, and then, Grizel, he could not go on."
Grizel beat her hands. "If he could not go on," she said, "it was notbecause he feared what I should do."
"No, no," David answered eagerly, "he never feared for that, but foryour happiness. He told me of a boy who used to torment you, oh, allso long ago, and of such little account that he had forgotten hisname. But that boy has come back, and you care for him, and he is afalse 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 torturefrom such a cause, speak to her openly about it. Tell her it is I whoam speaking through you. It will be a hard task to you, but wrestlethrough with it, David, in memory of any little kindness I may havedone you, and the great love I bore my Grizel.'"
She was standing rigid now. "Is there any more, David?" she said in alow voice.
"Only this. I admired you then as I admire you now. I may not loveyou, Grizel, but of this I am very sure"--he was speaking steadily, hewas forgetting no one--"that you are the noblest and brave
st woman Ihave 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 anyway without paining you by telling you these things, I would try thatway 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 criedmiserably, "and you won't see it. Oh, how you wrong him! I am thehappiest girl in the world, and it is he who makes me so happy. But Ican'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 therenothing you will let me do for you, Grizel?" he cried.
"I thought you were to do so much for me when you came into thisroom," she admitted wistfully, "and said that you were in love. Ithought it was with another woman."
He remembered that her face had brightened. "How could that havehelped you?" he asked.
She saw that she had but to tell him, and for her sake he would do itat 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. Itmay 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 Grizelgiddy.
"Do you love her, David?" she cried.
But he hesitated. "Is what you have told me true, that it would helpyou?" he asked, looking her full in the eyes.
"Do you love her?" she implored, but he was determined to have heranswer 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. Whyare you so blind?" She could have shaken him. "Don't you see that onceElspeth was willing to be taken care of by some other person----I mustnot 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 helpadding, "But he is still fonder of me."
The doctor pulled his arm over his eyes and sat down again. Presentlyhe was saying with a long face: "I came here to denounce the cause ofyour unhappiness, and I begin to see it is myself."
"Of course it is, you stupid David," she said gleefully. She was verykind to the man who had been willing to do so much for her; but as thedoor closed on him she forgot him. She even ceased to hear the warningvoice he had brought with him from the dead. She was re-reading theletter that began by calling her wife.