by Unknown
No, she did not hurt him, for he understood her. “But you are naturally so impulsive,” he said, “it has often been a sharp pain to me to see you so careful.”
“It was not a pain to me to be careful; it was a joy. Oh, the thousand dear, delightful joys I have had with you!”
“It has made you strong, Grizel, and I rejoice in that; but sometimes I fear that it has made you too difficult to win.”
“I don’t want to be won,” she told him.
“You don’t quite mean that, Grizel.”
“No,” she said at once. She whispered to him impulsively: “It is the only thing I am at all afraid of now.”
“What?”
“Love.”
“You will not be afraid of it when it comes.”
“But I want to be afraid,” she said.
“You need not,” he answered. “The man on whom those clear eyes rest lovingly will be worthy of it all. If he were not, they would be the first to find him out.”
“But need that make any difference?” she asked. “Perhaps though I found him out I should love him just the same.”
“Not unless you loved him first, Grizel.”
“No,” she said at once again. “I am not really afraid of love,” she whispered to him. “You have made me so happy that I am afraid of nothing.”
Yet she wondered a little that he was not afraid to die, but when she told him this he smiled and said: “Everybody fears death except those who are dying.” And when she asked if he had anything on his mind, he said: “I leave the world without a care. Not that I have seen all I would fain have seen. Many a time, especially this last year, when I have seen the mother in you crooning to some neighbour’s child, I have thought to myself, ‘I don’t know my Grizel yet; I have seen her in the bud only,’ and I would fain—” He broke off. “But I have no fears,” he said. “As I lie here, with you sitting by my side, looking so serene, I can say, for the first time for half a century, that I have nothing on my mind.
“But, Grizel, I should have married,” he told her. “The chief lesson my life has taught me is that they are poor critturs — the men who don’t marry.”
“If you had married,” she said, “you might never have been able to help me.”
“It is you who have helped me,” he replied. “God sent the child; He is most reluctant to give any of us up. Ay, Grizel, that’s what my life has taught me, and it’s all I can leave to you.” The last he saw of her, she was holding his hand, and her eyes were dry, her teeth were clenched; but there was a brave smile upon her face, for he had told her that it was thus he would like to see her at the end. After his death, she continued to live at the old house; he had left it to her (“I want it to remain in the family,” he said), with all his savings, which were quite sufficient for the needs of such a manager. He had also left her plenty to do, and that was a still sweeter legacy.
And the other Jacobites, what of them? Hi, where are you, Corp? Here he comes, grinning, in his spleet new uniform, to demand our tickets of us. He is now the railway porter. Since Tommy left Thrums “steam” had arrived in it, and Corp had by nature such a gift for giving luggage the twist which breaks everything inside as you dump it down that he was inevitably appointed porter. There was no travelling to Thrums without a ticket. At Tilliedrum, which was the junction for Thrums, you showed your ticket and were then locked in. A hundred yards from Thrums. Corp leaped upon the train and fiercely demanded your ticket. At the station he asked you threateningly whether you had given up your ticket. Even his wife was afraid of him at such times, and had her ticket ready in her hand.
His wife was one Gavinia, and she had no fear of him except when she was travelling. To his face she referred to him as a doited sumph, but to Grizel pleading for him she admitted that despite his warts and quarrelsome legs he was a great big muckle sonsy, stout, buirdly well set up, wise-like, havering man. When first Corp had proposed to her, she gave him a clout on the head; and so little did he know of the sex that this discouraged him. He continued, however, to propose and she to clout him until he heard, accidentally (he woke up in church), of a man in the Bible who had wooed a woman for seven years, and this example he determined to emulate; but when Gavinia heard of it she was so furious that she took him at once. Dazed by his good fortune, he rushed off with it to his aunt, whom he wearied with his repetition of the great news.
“To your bed wi’ you,” she said, yawning.
“Bed!” cried Corp, indignantly. “And so, auntie, says Gavinia, ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘I’ll hae you.’ Those were her never-to-be-forgotten words.”
“You pitiful object,” answered his aunt. “Men hae been married afore now without making sic a stramash.”
“I daursay,” retorted Corp; “but they hinna married Gavinia.” And this is the best known answer to the sneer of the cynic.
He was a public nuisance that night, and knocked various people up after they had gone to bed, to tell them that Gavinia was to have him. He was eventually led home by kindly though indignant neighbours; but early morning found him in the country, carrying the news from farm to farm.
“No, I winna sit down,” he said; “I just cried in to tell you Gavinia is to hae me.” Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them again. “Auld wifie,” said Corp, “I dinna ken you, but I’ve just stepped up to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me.”
It made him the butt of the sportive. If he or Gavinia were nigh, they gathered their fowls round them and then said: “Hens, I didna bring you here to feed you, but just to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me.” This flustered Gavinia; but Grizel, who enjoyed her own jokes too heartily to have more than a polite interest in those of other people, said to her: “How can you be angry! I think it was just sweet of him.”
“But was it no vulgar?”
“Vulgar!” said Grizel. “Why, Gavinia, that is how every lady would like a man to love her.”
And then Gavinia beamed. “I’m glad you say that,” she said; “for, though I wouldna tell Corp for worlds, I fell likit it.”
But Grizel told Corp that Gavinia liked it.
“It was the proof,” she said, smiling, “that you have the right to marry her. You have shown your ticket. Never give it up, Corp.”
About a year afterwards Corp, armed in his Sunday stand, rushed to Grizel’s house, occasionally stopping to slap his shiny knees. “Grizel,” he cried, “there’s somebody come to Thrums without a ticket!” Then he remembered Gavinia’s instructions. “Mrs. Shiach’s compliments,” he said ponderously, “and it’s a boy.”
“Oh, Corp!” exclaimed Grizel, and immediately began to put on her hat and jacket. Corp watched her uneasily. “Mrs. Shiach’s compliments,” he said firmly, “and he’s ower young to be bathed yet; but she’s awid to show him off to you,” he hastened to add. “‘Tell Grizel,’ was her first words.”
“Tell Grizel”! They were among the first words of many mothers. None, they were aware, would receive the news with quite such glee as she. They might think her cold and reserved with themselves, but to see the look on her face as she bent over a baby, and to know that the baby was yours! What a way she had with them! She always welcomed them as if in coming they had performed a great feat. That is what babies are agape for from the beginning. Had they been able to speak they would have said “Tell Grizel” themselves.
“And Mrs. Shiach’s compliments,” Corp remembered, “and she would be windy if you would carry the bairn at the christening.”
“I should love it, Corp! Have you decided on the name?”
“Lang syne. Gin it were a lassie we were to call her Grizel—”
“Oh, how sweet of you!”
“After the finest lassie we ever kent,” continued Corp, stoutly. “But I was sure it would be a laddie.”
“Why?” “Because if it was a laddie it was to be called after Him,”
he said, with emphasis on the last word; “and thinks I to mysel’, ‘He’ll find a way.’ What a crittur he was for finding a way, Grizel! And he lookit so holy a’ the time. Do you mind that swear word o’ his—’stroke’? It just meant ‘damn’; but he could make even ‘damn’ look holy.”
“You are to call the baby Tommy?”
“He’ll be christened Thomas Sandys Shiach,” said Corp. “I hankered after putting something out o’ the Jacobites intil his name; and I says to Gavinia, ‘Let’s call him Thomas Sandys Stroke Shiach,’ says I, ‘and the minister’ll be nane the wiser’; but Gavinia was scandalized.”
Grizel reflected. “Corp,” she said, “I am sure Gavinia’s sister will expect to be asked to carry the baby. I don’t think I want to do it.”
“After you promised!” cried Corp, much hurt. “I never kent you to break a promise afore.”
“I will do it, Corp,” she said, at once.
She did not know then that Tommy would be in church to witness the ceremony, but she knew before she walked down the aisle with T.S. Shiach in her arms. It was the first time that Tommy and she had seen each other for seven years. That day he almost rivalled his namesake in the interests of the congregation, who, however, took prodigious care that he should not see it — all except Grizel; she smiled a welcome to him, and he knew that her serene gray eyes were watching him.
* * *
CHAPTER V
THE TOMMY MYTH
On the evening before the christening, Aaron Latta, his head sunk farther into his shoulders, his beard gone grayer, no other perceptible difference in a dreary man since we last saw him in the book of Tommy’s boyhood, had met the brother and sister at the station, a barrow with him for their luggage. It was a great hour for him as he wheeled the barrow homeward, Elspeth once more by his side; but he could say nothing heartsome in Tommy’s presence, and Tommy was as uncomfortable in his. The old strained relations between these two seemed to begin again at once. They were as selfconscious as two mastiffs meeting in the street; and both breathed a sigh of relief when Tommy fell behind.
“You’re bonny, Elspeth,” Aaron then said eagerly. “I’m glad, glad to see you again.”
“And him too, Aaron?” Elspeth pleaded.
“He took you away frae me.”
“He has brought me back.” “Ay, and he has but to whistle to you and away you go wi’ him again. He’s ower grand to bide lang here now.”
“You don’t know him, Aaron. We are to stay a long time. Do you know Mrs. McLean invited us to stay with her? I suppose she thought your house was so small. But Tommy said, ‘The house of the man who befriended us when we were children shall never be too small for us.’”
“Did he say that? Ay, but, Elspeth, I would rather hear what you said.”
“I said it was to dear, good Aaron Latta I was going back, and to no one else.”
“God bless you for that, Elspeth.”
“And Tommy,” she went on, “must have his old garret room again, to write as well as sleep in, and the little room you partitioned off the kitchen will do nicely for me.”
“There’s no a window in it,” replied Aaron; “but it will do fine for you, Elspeth.” He was almost chuckling, for he had a surprise in waiting for her. “This way,” he said excitedly, when she would have gone into the kitchen, and he flung open the door of what had been his warping-room. The warping-mill was gone — everything that had been there was gone. What met the delighted eyes of Elspeth and Tommy was a cozy parlour, which became a bedroom when you opened that other door. “You are a leddy now, Elspeth,” Aaron said, husky with pride, “and
you have a leddy’s room. Do you see the piano?”
He had given up the warping, having at last “twa three hunder’” in the bank, and all the work he did now was at a loom which he had put into the kitchen to keep him out of languor. “I have sorted up the garret, too, for you,” he said to Tommy, “but this is Elspeth’s room.”
“As if Tommy would take it from me!” said Elspeth, running into the kitchen to hug this dear Aaron.
“You may laugh,” Aaron replied vindictively, “but he is taking it frae you already”; and later, when Tommy was out of the way, he explained his meaning. “I did it all for you, Elspeth; ‘Elspeth’s room,’ I called it. When I bought the mahogany armchair, ‘That’s Elspeth’s chair,’ I said to mysel’; and when I bought the bed, ‘It’s hers,’ I said. Ay; but I was soon disannulled o’ that thait, for, in spite of me, they were all got for him. Not a rissom in that room is yours or mine, Elspeth; every muhlen belongs to him.”
“But who says so, Aaron? I am sure he won’t.”
“I dinna ken them. They are leddies that come here in their carriages to see the house where Thomas Sandys was born.”
“But, Aaron, he was born in London!” “They think he was born in this house,” Aaron replied doggedly, “and it’s no for me to cheapen him.”
“Oh, Aaron, you pretend — —”
“I was never very fond o’ him,” Aaron admitted, “but I winna cheapen Jean Myles’s bairn, and when they chap at my door and say they would like to see the room Thomas Sandys was born in, I let them see the best room I have. So that’s how he has laid hands on your parlor, Elspeth. Afore I can get rid o’ them they gie a squeak and cry, ‘Was that Thomas Sandys’s bed?’ and I says it was. That’s him taking the very bed frae you, Elspeth.”
“You might at least have shown them his bed in the garret,” she said.
“It’s a shilpit bit thing,” he answered, “and I winna cheapen him. They’re curious, too, to see his favourite seat.”
“It was the fender,” she declared.
“It was,” he assented, “but it’s no for me to cheapen him, so I let them see your new mahogany chair. ‘Thomas Sandys’s chair,’ they call it, and they sit down in it reverently. They winna even leave you the piano. ‘Was this Thomas Sandys’s piano?’ they speir. ‘It was,’ says I, and syne they gowp at it.” His under lip shot out, a sure sign that he was angry. “I dinna blame him,” he said, “but he had the same masterful way of scooping everything into his lap when he was a laddie, and I like him none the mair for it”; and from this position Aaron would not budge.
“Quite right, too,” Tommy said, when he heard of it. “But you can tell him, Elspeth, that we shall allow no more of those prying women to come in.” And he really meant this, for he was a modest man that day, was Tommy. Nevertheless, he was, perhaps, a little annoyed to find, as the days went on, that no more ladies came to be turned away.
He heard that they had also been unable to resist the desire to shake hands with Thomas Sandys’s schoolmaster. “It must have been a pleasure to teach him,” they said to Cathro.
“Ah me, ah me!” Cathro replied enigmatically. It had so often been a pleasure to Cathro to thrash him!
“Genius is odd,” they said. “Did he ever give you any trouble?”
“We were like father and son,” he assured them. With natural pride he showed them the ink-pot into which Thomas Sandys had dipped as a boy. They were very grateful for his interesting reminiscence that when the pot was too full Thomas inked his fingers. He presented several of them with the ink-pot.
Two ladies, who came together, bothered him by asking what the Hugh Blackadder competition was. They had been advised to inquire of him about Thomas Sandys’s connection therewith by another schoolmaster, a Mr. Ogilvy, whom they had met in one of the glens.
Mr. Cathro winced, and then explained with emphasis that the Hugh Blackadder was a competition in which the local ministers were the sole judges; he therefore referred the ladies to them. The ladies did go to a local minister for enlightenment, to Mr. Dishart; but, after reflecting, Mr. Dishart said that it was too long a story, and this answer seemed to amuse Mr. Ogilvy, who happened to be present.
It was Mr. McLean who retailed this news to Tommy. He and Ailie had walked home from church with the newcomers on the day after their arrival, the day of the christening. They h
ad not gone into Aaron’s house, for you are looked askance at in Thrums if you pay visits on Sundays, but they had stood for a long time gossiping at the door, which is permitted by the strictest. Ailie was in a twitter, as of old, and not able even yet to speak of her husband without an apologetic look to the ladies who had none. And oh, how proud she was of Tommy’s fame! Her eyes were an offering to him.
“Don’t take her as a sample of the place, though,” Mr. McLean warned him, “for Thrums does not catch fire so readily as London.” It was quite true. “I was at the school wi’ him,” they said up there, and implied that this damned his book.
But there were two faithful souls, or, more strictly, one, for Corp could never have carried it through without Gavinia’s help. Tommy called on them promptly at their house in the Bellies Brae (four rooms, but a lodger), and said, almost before he had time to look, that the baby had Corp’s chin and Gavinia’s eyes. He had made this up on the way. He also wanted to say, so desirous was he of pleasing his old friends, that he should like to hold the baby in his arms; but it was such a thundering lie that even an author could not say it.
Tommy sat down in that house with a very warm heart for its inmates; but they chilled him — Gavinia with her stiff words, and Corp by looking miserable instead of joyous.
“I expected you to come to me first, Corp,” said Tommy, reproachfully. “I had scarcely a word with you at the station.”
“He couldna hae presumed,” replied Gavinia, primly.
“I couldna hae presumed,” said Corp, with a groan.
“Fudge!” Tommy said. “You were my greatest friend, and I like you as much as ever, Corp.” Corp’s face shone, but Gavinia said at once, “You werena sic great friends as that; were you, man?”
“No,” Corp replied gloomily.
“Whatever has come over you both?” asked Tommy, in surprise. “You will be saying next, Gavinia, that we never played at Jacobites in the Den!”
“I dinna deny that Corp and me played,” Gavinia answered determinedly, “but you didna. You said to us, ‘Think shame,’ you said, ‘to be playing vulgar games when you could be reading superior books.’ They were his very words, were they no, man?” she demanded of her unhappy husband, with a threatening look.