by Unknown
“You have me at last,” he admitted.
“‘Sandys on Woman!’” exclaimed Mrs. Jerry, all rippling smiles once more. “Can I ever forget it!”
“I shall never pretend to know anything about women again,” Tommy answered dolefully, but with a creditable absence of vindictiveness.
“Please, please!” said the little hands again.
“It is a nasty jar, Mrs. Jerry.”
“Please!”
“Oh that I could forget so quickly!”
“Please!”
“I forgive you, if that is what you want.”
She waved her whip. “And you will come and see me?”
“When I have got over this. It needs — a little time.” He really said this to please her.
“You shall talk to me of the new book,” she said, confident that this would fetch him, for he was not her first author. “By the way, what is it about?”
“Can you ask, Mrs. Jerry?” replied Tommy, passionately. “Oh, woman, woman, can you ask?”
This puzzled her at the time, but she understood what he had meant when the book came out, dedicated to Pym. “Goodness gracious!” she said to herself as she went from chapter to chapter, and she was very selfconscious when she heard the book discussed in society, which was not quite as soon as it came out, for at first the ladies seemed to have forgotten their Tommy.
But the journals made ample amends. He had invented, they said, something new in literature, a story that was yet not a story, told in the form of essays which were no mere essays. There was no character mentioned by name, there was not a line of dialogue, essays only, they might say, were the net result, yet a human heart was laid bare, and surely that was fiction in its highest form. Fiction founded on fact, no doubt (for it would be ostrich-like to deny that such a work must be the outcome of a painful personal experience), but in those wise and penetrating pages Mr. Sandys called no one’s attention to himself; his subject was an experience common to humanity, to be borne this way or that; and without vainglory he showed how it should be borne, so that those looking into the deep waters of the book (made clear by his pellucid style) might see, not the author, but themselves.
A few of the critics said that if the book added nothing to his reputation, it detracted nothing from it, but probably their pen added this mechanically when they were away. What annoyed him more was the two or three who stated that, much as they liked “Unrequited Love,” they liked the “Letters” still better. He could not endure hearing a good word said for the “Letters” now.
The great public, I believe, always preferred the “Letters,” but among important sections of it the new book was a delight, and for various reasons. For instance, it was no mere story. That got the thoughtful public. Its style, again, got the public which knows it is the only public that counts.
Society still held aloof (there was an African traveller on view that year), but otherwise everything was going on well, when the bolt came, as ever, from the quarter whence it was least expected. It came in a letter from Grizel, so direct as to be almost as direct as this: “I think it is a horrid book. The more beautifully it is written the more horrid it seems. No one was ever loved more truly than you. You can know nothing about unrequited love. Then why do you pretend to know? I see why you always avoided telling me anything about the book, even its title. It was because you knew what I should say. It is nothing but sentiment. You were on your wings all the time you were writing it. That is why you could treat me as you did. Even to the last moment you deceived me. I suppose you deceived yourself also. Had I known what was in the manuscript I would not have kissed it, I would have asked you to burn it. Had you not had the strength, and you would not, I should have burned it for you. It would have been a proof of my love. I have ceased to care whether you are a famous man or not. I want you to be a real man. But you will not let me help you. I have cried all day. GRIZEL.”
Fury. Dejection. The heroic. They came in that order.
“This is too much!” he cried at first, “I can stand a good deal, Grizel, but there was once a worm that turned at last, you know. Take care, madam, take care. Oh, but you are a charming lady; you can decide everything for everybody, can’t you! What delicious letters you write, something unexpected in everyone of them! There are poor dogs of men, Grizel, who open their letters from their loves knowing exactly what will be inside — words of cheer, words of love, of confidence, of admiration, which help them as they sit into the night at their work, fighting for fame that they may lay it at their loved one’s feet. Discouragement, obloquy, scorn, they get in plenty from others, but they are always sure of her, — do you hear, my original Grizel? — those other dogs are always sure of her. Hurrah! Grizel, I was happy, I was actually honoured, it was helping me to do better and better, when you quickly put an end to all that. Hurrah, hurrah!”
I feel rather sorry for him. If he had not told her about his book it was because she did not and never could understand what compels a man to write one book instead of another. “I had no say in the matter; the thing demanded of me that I should do it, and I had to do it. Some must write from their own experience, they can make nothing of anything else; but it is to me like a chariot that won’t budge; I have to assume a character, Grizel, and then away we go. I don’t attempt to explain how I write, I hate to discuss it; all I know is that those who know how it should be done can never do it. London is overrun with such, and everyone of them is as cock-sure as you. You have taken everything else, Grizel; surely you might leave me my books.”
Yes, everything else, or nearly so. He put upon the table all the feathers he had extracted since his return to London, and they did make some little show, if less than it seemed to him. That little adventure in the park; well, if it started wrongly, it but helped to show the change in him, for he had determinedly kept away from Mrs. Jerry’s house. He had met her once since the book came out, and she had blushed exquisitely when referring to it, and said: “How you have suffered! I blame myself dreadfully.” Yes, and there was an unoccupied sofa near by, and he had not sat down on it with her and continued the conversation. Was not that a feather? And there were other ladies, and, without going into particulars, they were several feathers between them. How doggedly, to punish himself, he had stuck to the company of men, a sex that never interested him!
“But all that is nothing. I am beyond the pale, I did so monstrous a thing that I must die for it. What was this dreadful thing? When I saw you with that glove I knew you loved me, and that you thought I loved you, and I had not the heart to dash your joy. You don’t know it, but that was the crime for which I must be exterminated, fiend that I am!”
Gusts of fury came at intervals all the morning. He wrote her appalling letters and destroyed them. He shook his fist and snapped his fingers at her, and went out for drink (having none in the house), and called a hansom to take him to Mrs. Jerry’s, and tore round the park again and glared at everybody. He rushed on and on. “But the one thing you shall never do, Grizel, is to interfere with my work; I swear it, do you hear? In all else I am yours to mangle at your will, but touch it, and I am a beast at bay.”
And still saying such things, he drew near the publishing offices of Goldie & Goldie, and circled round them, less like a beast at bay than a bird that is taking a long way to its nest. And about four of the afternoon what does this odd beast or bird or fish do but stalk into Goldie & Goldie’s and order “Unrequited Love” to be withdrawn from circulation.
“Madam, I have carried out your wishes, and the man is hanged.”
Not thus, but in words to that effect, did Tommy announce his deed to Grizel.
“I think you have done the right thing,” she wrote back, “and I admire you for it.” But he thought she did not admire him sufficiently for it, and he did not answer her letter, so it was the last that passed between them.
Such is the true explanation (now first published) of an affair that at the time created no small stir. “Why withdraw the
book?” Goldie & Goldie asked of Tommy, but he would give no reason. “Why?” the public asked of Goldie & Goldie, and they had to invent several. The public invented the others. The silliest were those you could know only by belonging to a club.
I swear that Tommy had not foreseen the result. Quite unwittingly the favoured of the gods had found a way again. The talk about his incomprehensible action was the turning-point in the fortunes of the book. There were already a few thousand copies in circulation, and now many thousand people wanted them. Sandys, Sandys, Sandys! where had the ladies heard that name before? Society woke up, Sandys was again its hero; the traveller had to go lecturing in the provinces.
The ladies! Yes, and their friends, the men. There was a Tommy society in Mayfair that winter, nearly all of the members eminent or beautiful, and they held each other’s hands. Both sexes were eligible, married or single, and the one rule was something about sympathy. It afterwards became the Souls, but those in the know still call them the Tommies.
They blackballed Mrs. Jerry (she was rather plump), but her married stepdaughter, Lady Pippinworth (who had been a Miss Ridge-Fulton), was one of them. Indeed, the Ridge-Fultons are among the thinnest families in the country.
T. Sandys was invited to join the society, but declined, and thus never quite knew what they did, nor can any outsider know, there being a regulation among the Tommies against telling. I believe, however, that they were a brotherhood, with sisters. You had to pass an examination in unrequited love, showing how you had suffered, and after that either the men or the women (I forget which) dressed in white to the throat, and then each got some other’s old love’s hand to hold, and you all sat on the floor and thought hard. There may have been even more in it than this, for one got to know Tommies at sight by a sort of careworn halo round the brow, and it is said that the House of Commons was several times nearly counted out because so many of its middle-aged members were holding the floor in another place.
Of course there were also the Anti-Tommies, who called themselves (rather vulgarly) the Tummies. Many of them were that shape. They held that, though you had loved in vain, it was no such mighty matter to boast of; but they were poor in argument, and their only really strong card was that Mr. Sandys was stoutish himself.
Their organs in the press said that he was a man of true genius, and slightly inclined to embonpoint.
This maddened him, but on the whole his return was a triumph, and despite thoughts of Grizel he was very, very happy, for he was at play again. He was a boy, and all the ladies were girls. Perhaps the lady he saw most frequently was Mrs. Jerry’s stepdaughter. Lady Pippinworth was a friend of Lady Rintoul, and had several times visited her at the Spittal, but that was not the sole reason why Tommy so frequently drank tea with her. They had met first at a country house, where, one night after the ladies had retired to rest, Lady Pippinworth came stealing into the smoking-room with the tidings that there were burglars in the house. As she approached her room she had heard whispers, and then, her door being ajar, she had peeped upon the miscreants. She had also seen a pile of her jewellery on the table, and a pistol keeping guard on top of it. There were several men in the house, but that pistol cowed all of them save Tommy. “If we could lock them in!” someone suggested, but the key was on the wrong side of the door. “I shall put it on the right side,” Tommy said pluckily, “if you others will prevent their escaping by the window”; and with characteristic courage he set off for her Ladyship’s room. His intention was to insert his hand, whip out the key, and lock the door on the outside, a sufficiently hazardous enterprise; but what does he do instead? Locks the door on the inside, and goes for the burglars with his fists! A happy recollection of Corp’s famous one from the shoulder disposed at once of the man who had seized the pistol; with the other gentleman Tommy had a stand-up fight in which both of them took and gave, but when support arrived, one burglar was senseless on the floor and T. Sandys was sitting on the other. Courageous of Tommy, was it not? But observe the end. He was left in the dining-room to take charge of his captives until morning, and by and by he was exhorting them in such noble language to mend their ways that they took the measure of him, and so touching were their family histories that Tommy wept and untied their cords and showed them out at the front door and gave them ten shillings each, and the one who begged for the honour of shaking hands with him also took his watch. Thus did Tommy and Lady Pippinworth become friends, but it was not this that sent him so often to her house to tea. She was a beautiful woman, with a reputation for having broken many hearts without damaging her own. He thought it an interesting case.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVI
GRIZEL ALL ALONE
It was Tommy who was the favoured of the gods, you remember, not Grizel.
Elspeth wondered to see her, after the publication of that book, looking much as usual. “You know how he loved you now,” she said, perhaps a little reproachfully.
“Yes,” Grizel answered, “I know; I knew before the book came out.”
“You must be sorry for him?”
Grizel nodded.
“But proud of him also,” Elspeth said. “You have a right to be proud.”
“I am as proud,” Grizel replied, “as I have a right to be.”
Something in her voice touched Elspeth, who was so happy that she wanted everyone to be happy. “I want you to know, Grizel,” she said warmly, “that I don’t blame you for not being able to love him; we can’t help those things. Nor need you blame yourself too much, for I have often heard him say that artists must suffer in order to produce beautiful things.”
“But I cannot remember,” Elspeth had to admit, with a sigh, to David, “that she made any answer to that, except ‘Thank you.’”
Grizel was nearly as reticent to David himself. Once only did she break down for a moment in his presence. It was when he was telling her that the issue of the book had been stopped.
“But I see you know already,” he said. “Perhaps you even know why — though he has not given any sufficient reason to Elspeth.”
David had given his promise, she reminded him, not to ask her any questions about Tommy.
“But I don’t see why I should keep it,” he said bluntly.
“Because you dislike him,” she replied.
“Grizel,” he declared, “I have tried hard to like him. I have thought and thought about it, and I can’t see that he has given me any just cause to dislike him.”
“And that,” said Grizel, “makes you dislike him more than ever.”
“I know that you cared for him once,” David persisted, “and I know that he wanted to marry you—”
But she would not let him go on. “David,” she said, “I want to give up my house, and I want you to take it. It is the real doctor’s house of Thrums, and people in need of you still keep ringing me up of nights. The only door to your surgery is through my passage; it is I who should be in lodgings now.”
“Do you really think I would, Grizel!” he cried indignantly.
“Rather than see the dear house go into another’s hands,” she answered steadily; “for I am determined to leave it. Dr. McQueen won’t feel strange when he looks down, David, if it is only you he sees moving about the old rooms, instead of me.”
“You are doing this for me, Grizel, and I won’t have it.”
“I give you my word,” she told him, “that I am doing it for myself alone. I am tired of keeping a house, and of all its worries. Men don’t know what they are.”
She was smiling, but his brows wrinkled in pain. “Oh, Grizel!” he said, and stopped. And then he cried, “Since when has Grizel ceased to care for housekeeping?”
She did not say since when. I don’t know whether she knew; but it was since she and Tommy had ceased to correspond. David’s words showed her too suddenly how she had changed, and it was then that she broke down before him — because she had ceased to care for housekeeping.
But she had her way, and early in the new year D
avid and his wife were established in their new home, with all Grizel’s furniture, except such as was needed for the two rooms rented by her from Gavinia. She would have liked to take away the old doctor’s chair, because it was the bit of him left behind when he died, and then for that very reason she did not. She no longer wanted him to see her always. “I am not so nice as I used to be, and I want to keep it from you,” she said to the chair when she kissed it goodbye.
Was Grizel not as nice as she used to be? How can I answer, who love her the more only? There is one at least, Grizel, who will never desert you.
Ah, but was she?
I seem again to hear the warning voice of Grizel, and this time she is crying: “You know I was not.”
She knew it so well that she could say it to herself quite calmly. She knew that, with whatever repugnance she drove those passions away, they would come back — yes, and for a space be welcomed back. Why does she leave Gavinia’s blue hearth this evening, and seek the solitary Den? She has gone to summon them, and she knows it. They come thick in the Den, for they know the place. It was there that her mother was wont to walk with them. Have they been waiting for you in the Den, Grizel, all this time? Have you found your mother’s legacy at last?
Don’t think that she sought them often. It was never when she seemed to have anything to live for. Tommy would not write to her, and so did not want her to write to him; but if that bowed her head, it never made her rebel. She still had her many duties. Whatever she suffered, so long as she could say, “I am helping him,” she was in heart and soul the Grizel of old. In his fits of remorse, which were many, he tried to produce work that would please her. Thus, in a heroic attempt to be practical, he wrote a political article in one of the reviews, quite in the ordinary style, but so much worse than the average of such things that they would never have printed it without his name. He also contributed to a magazine a short tale, — he who could never write tales, — and he struck all the beautiful reflections out of it, and never referred to himself once, and the result was so imbecile that kindly people said there must be another writer of the same name. “Show them to Grizel,” Tommy wrote to Elspeth, inclosing also some of the animadversions of the press, and he meant Grizel to see that he could write in his own way only. But she read those two efforts with delight, and said to Elspeth, “Tell him I am so proud of them.”