by Unknown
“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 to grow weak, Grizel, as I grow strong?”
She had not thought of that, and she would have liked to rock her arms. But she was able to reply: “I am not trying to help you in order to make you love me; you know, quite well, that all that is over and done 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 a man of him at the cost of his possible love? This faced her when she was alone with her passionate nature, and she fought it, and with her fists clenched she cried: “Yes, yes, yes!”
Do we know all that Grizel had to fight? There were times when Tommy’s mind wandered to excuses for himself; he knew what men were, and he shuddered to think of the might have been, had a girl who could love as 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 avoided raising passions in her. I wonder how he was so sure. Do we know all that Grizel had to fight?
* * *
They spoke much during those days of the coming parting, and she always said that she could bear it if she saw him go away more of a man than he had come.
“Then anything I have suffered or may suffer,” she told him, “will have been done to help you, and perhaps in time that will make me proud of my poor little love-story. It would be rather pitiful, would it not, if I have gone through so much for no end at all?”
She spoke, he said, almost reproachfully, as if she thought he might go away on his wings, after all.
“We can’t be sure,” she murmured, she was so eager to make him watchful.
“Yes,” he said, humbly but firmly, “I may be a scoundrel, Grizel, I am a scoundrel, but one thing you may be sure of, I am done with sentiment.” But even as he said it, even as he felt that he could tear himself asunder for being untrue to Grizel, a bird was singing at his heart because he was free again, free to go out into the world and play as if it were but a larger den. Ah, if only Tommy could always have 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 to catch her if she fainted, and Ailie weeping, and Aaron Latta rubbing his gleeful hands, and a smiling bridesmaid who had once thought she might be a bride. But that was a day in Elspeth’s story, not in Tommy’s and Grizel’s. Only one incident in their story crept into that happy day. There were speeches at the feast, and the Rev. Mr. Dishart referred 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 he had 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 set the dominies on his left talking about precocity. “To produce such a graybeard of a book at two and twenty, Mr. Sandys,” said Cathro, “is amazing. It partakes, sir, of the nature of the miraculous; it’s onchancey, 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 by ladies, who could say it so much better), Tommy turned to his neighbours on the right.
Oddly enough, they also were discussing deviations from the normal. On the table was a plant in full flower, and Ailie, who had lent it, was expressing surprise that it should bloom so late in the season.
“So early in its life, I should rather say,” the doctor remarked after examining it. “It is a young plant, and in the ordinary course would not have come to flower before next year. But it is afraid that it will never see next year. It is one of those poor little plants that bloom prematurely because they are diseased.”
Tommy was a little startled. He had often marvelled over his own precocity, but never guessed that this might be the explanation why he was in flower at twenty-two. “Is that a scientific fact?” he asked.
“It is a law of nature,” the doctor replied gravely, and if anything more was said on the subject our Tommy did not hear it. What did he hear? He was a child again, in miserable lodgings, and it was sometime in the long middle of the night, and what he heard from his bed was his 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 his mother that the people through the wall were complaining because she would not die more quietly; but when he reached her bed it was not his mother he saw lying there, but himself, aged twenty-four or thereabouts. For Tommy had inherited his mother’s cough; he had known it 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 the floor.
He asked Ailie to give him the plant, and he kept it in his room very lovingly, though he forgot to water it. He sat for long periods looking at it, and his thoughts were very deep, but all he actually said aloud was, “There are two of us.” Aaron sometimes saw them together, and thought they were an odd pair, and perhaps they were.
Tommy did not tell Grizel of the tragedy that was hanging over him. He was determined to save her that pain. He knew that most men in his position would have told her, and was glad to find that he could keep it so gallantly to himself. She was brave; perhaps some day she would discover 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 he held 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 and Grizel must say goodbye. He was returning to London. His luggage was already in Corp’s barrow, all but the insignificant part of it, which yet made a bulky package in its author’s pocket, for it was his new manuscript, for which he would have fought a regiment, yes, and beaten them. Little cared Tommy what became of the rest of his luggage so long 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 this manuscript might be his last.
And it was the only bitter thing she said. Even when he looked very sorry for her, she took advantage of his emotion to help him only. “Don’t be too sorry for me,” she said calmly; “remember, rather, that there is one episode in a woman’s life to which she must always cling in memory, whether it was a pride to her or a shame, and that it rests with you to make mine proud or shameful.”
In other words, he was to get rid of his wings. How she harped on that!
He wanted to kiss her on the brow, but she would not have it. He was about to do it, not to gratify any selfish desire, but of a beautiful impulse that if anything happened she would have this to remember as the last of him. But she drew back almost angrily. Positively, she was putting 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 Grizel kissed Tommy’s baby, and then she turned away her face.
* * *
CHAPTER XXV
MR. T. SANDYS HAS RETURNED TO TOWN
It is disquieting to reflect that we have devoted so much paper (this is the third shilling’s worth) to telling what a real biographer would almost certainly have summed up in a few pages. “Caring nothing for glory, engrossed in his work alone, Mr. Sandys, soon after the publication of the ‘Letters,’ sought the peace of his mother’s native village, and there, alike undisturbing and undisturbed, he gave his life, as ever, to laborious days and quiet contemplation. The one vital fact in these six months of lofty endeavour is that he was making progress with the new book. Fishing and other distractions were occasionally indulged in, but merely that he might rise fresher next morning to a book which absorbed,” etc.
&
nbsp; One can see exactly how it should be done, it has been done so often before. And there is a deal to be said for this method. His book was what he had been at during nearly the whole of that time; comparatively speaking, the fishing and “other distractions” (a neat phrase) had got an occasional hour only. But while we admire, we can’t do it in that way. We seem fated to go on taking it for granted that you know the “vital facts” about Tommy, and devoting our attention to the things that the real biographer leaves out.
Tommy arrived in London with little more than ten pounds in his pockets. All the rest he had spent on Elspeth.
He looked for furnished chambers in a fashionable quarter, and they were much too expensive. But the young lady who showed them to him asked if it was the Mr. Sandys, and he at once took the rooms. Her mother subsequently said that she understood he wrote books, and would he deposit five pounds?
Such are the ups and downs of the literary calling.
The book, of course, was “Unrequited Love,” and the true story of how it was not given to the world by his first publishers has never been told. They had the chance, but they weighed the manuscript in their hands as if it were butter, and said it was very small.
“If you knew how much time I have spent in making it smaller,” replied Tommy, haughtily.
The madmen asked if he could not add a few chapters, whereupon, with a shudder, he tucked baby under his wing and flew away. That is how Goldie & Goldie got the book.
For one who had left London a glittering star, it was wonderful how little he brightened it by returning. At the club they did not know that he had been away. In society they seemed to have forgotten to expect him back.
He had an eye for them — with a touch of red in it; but he bided his time. It was one of the terrible things about Tommy that he could bide his time. Pym was the only person he called upon. He took Pym out to dinner and conducted him home again. His kindness to Pym, the delicacy with which he pretended not to see that poor old Pym was degraded and done for — they would have been pretty even in a woman, and we treat Tommy unfairly in passing them by with a bow.
Pym had the manuscript to read, and you may be as sure he kept sober that night as that Tommy lay awake. For when literature had to be judged, who could be so grim a critic as this usually lenient toper? He could forgive much, could Pym. You had run away without paying your rent, was it? Well, well, come in and have a drink. Broken your wife’s heart, have you? Poor chap, but you will soon get over it. But if it was a split infinitive, “Go to the devil, sir.”
“Into a cocked hat,” was the verdict of Pym, meaning thereby that thus did Tommy’s second work beat his first. Tommy broke down and wept.
Presently Pym waxed sentimental and confided to Tommy that he, too, had once loved in vain. The sad case of those who love in vain, you remember, is the subject of the book. The saddest of autobiographies, it has been called.
An odd thing, this, I think. Tearing home (for the more he was engrossed in mind the quicker he walked), Tommy was not revelling in Pym’s praise; he was neither blanching nor smiling at the thought that he of all people had written as one who was unloved; he was not wondering what Grizel would say to it; he had even forgotten to sigh over his own coming dissolution (indeed, about this time the flower-pot began to fade from his memory). What made him cut his way so excitedly through the streets was this: Pym had questioned his use of the word “untimely” in chapter eight. And Tommy had always been uneasy about that word.
He glared at every person he passed, and ran into perambulators. He rushed past his chambers like one who no longer had a home. He was in the park now, and did not even notice that the Row was empty, that mighty round a deserted circus; management, riders, clowns, all the performers gone on their provincial tour, or nearly all, for a lady on horseback sees him, remembers to some extent who he is, and gives chase. It is our dear Mrs. Jerry.
“You wretch,” she said, “to compel me to pursue you! Nothing could have induced me to do anything so unwomanly except that you are the only man in town.”
She shook her whip so prettily at him that it was as seductive as a smile. It was also a way of gaining time while she tried to remember what it was he was famous for.
“I believe you don’t know me!” she said, with a little shriek, for Tommy had looked bewildered. “That would be too mortifying. Please pretend you do!”
Her look of appeal, the way in which she put her plump little hands together, as if about to say her prayers, brought it all back to Tommy. The one thing he was not certain of was whether he had proposed to her.
It was the one thing of which she was certain.
“You think I can forget so soon,” he replied reproachfully, but carefully.
“Then tell me my name,” said she; she thought it might lead to his mentioning his own.
“I don’t know what it is now. It was Mrs. Jerry once.”
“It is Mrs. Jerry still.”
“Then you did not marry him, after all?”
No wild joy had surged to his face, but when she answered yes, he nodded his head with gentle melancholy three times. He had not the smallest desire to deceive the lady; he was simply an actor who had got his cue and liked his part.
“But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry,” she said softly.
“But my friends still call me Mrs. Jerry,” she said softly. “I suppose it suits me somehow.”
“You will always be Mrs. Jerry to me,” he replied huskily. Ah, those meetings with old loves!
“If you minded so much,” Mrs. Jerry said, a little tremulously (she had the softest heart, though her memory was a trifle defective), “you might have discovered whether I had married him or not.”
“Was there no reason why I should not seek to discover it?” Tommy asked with tremendous irony, but not knowing in the least what he meant.
It confused Mrs. Jerry. They always confused her when they were fierce, and yet she liked them to be fierce when she re-met them, so few of them were.
But she said the proper thing. “I am glad you have got over it.”
Tommy maintained a masterly silence. No wonder he was a power with women.
“I say I am glad you have got over it,” murmured Mrs. Jerry again. Has it ever been noticed that the proper remark does not always gain in propriety with repetition?
It is splendid to know that right feeling still kept Tommy silent.
Yet she went on briskly as if he had told her something: “Am I detaining you? You were walking so quickly that I thought you were in pursuit of someone.”
It brought Tommy back to earth, and he could accept her now as an old friend he was glad to meet again. “You could not guess what I was in pursuit of, Mrs. Jerry,” he assured her, and with confidence, for words are not usually chased down the Row.
But, though he made the sound of laughter, that terrible face which Mrs. Jerry remembered so well, but could not give a name to, took no part in the revelry; he was as puzzling to her as those irritating authors who print their jokes without a note of exclamation at the end of them. Poor Mrs. Jerry thought it must be a laugh of horrid bitterness, and that he was referring to his dead self or something dreadful of that sort, for which she was responsible.
“Please don’t tell me,” she said, in such obvious alarm that again he laughed that awful laugh. He promised, with a profound sigh, to carry his secret unspoken to the grave, also to come to her “At Home” if she sent him a card.
He told her his address, but not his name, and she could not send the card to “Occupier.”
“Now tell me about yourself,” said Mrs. Jerry, with charming cunning. “Did you go away?”
“I came back a few days ago only.”
“Had you any shooting?” (They nearly always threatened to make for a distant land where there was big game.)
Tommy smiled. He had never “had any shooting” except once in his boyhood, when he and Corp acted as beaters, and he had wept passionately over the first bird killed, an
d harangued the murderer.
“No,” he replied; “I was at work all the time.”
This, at least, told her that his work was of a kind which could be done out of London. An inventor?
“When are we to see the result?” asked artful Mrs. Jerry.
“Very soon. Everything comes out about this time. It is our season, you know.”
Mrs. Jerry pondered while she said: “How too entrancing!” What did come out this month? Oh, plays! And whose season was it? The actor’s, of course! He could not be an actor with that beard, but — ah, she remembered now!
“Are they really clever this time?” she asked roguishly—”for you must admit that they are usually sticks.”
Tommy blinked at this. “I really believe, Mrs. Jerry,” he said slowly, “it is you who don’t know who I am!”
“You prepare the aristocracy for the stage, don’t you?” she said plaintively.
“I!” he thundered.
“He had a beard,” she said, in self-defence.
“Who?”
“Oh, I don’t know! Please forgive me! I do remember, of course, who you are — I remember too well!” said Mrs. Jerry, generously.
“What is my name?” Tommy demanded.
She put her hands together again, beseechingly. “Please, please!” she said. “I have such a dreadful memory for names, but — oh, please!”
“What am I?” he insisted.
“You are the — the man who invents those delightful thingumbobs,” she cried with an inspiration.
“I never invented anything, except two books,” said Tommy, looking at her reproachfully.
“I know them by heart,” she cried.
“One of them is not published yet,” he informed her.
“I am looking forward to it so excitedly,” she said at once.
“And my name is Sandys,” said he.
“Thomas Sandys,” she said, correcting him triumphantly. “How is that dear, darling little Agnes — Elspeth?”