Tommy and Grizel Read online

  CHAPTER II

  THE SEARCH FOR THE TREASURE

  Six years afterwards Tommy was a famous man, as I hope you do not needto be told; but you may be wondering how it came about. The wholequestion, in Pym's words, resolves itself into how the solemn littledevil got to know so much about women. It made the world marvel whenthey learned his age, but no one was quite so staggered as Pym, whohad seen him daily for all those years, and been damning him for hisindifference to the sex during the greater part of them.

  It began while he was still no more than an amanuensis, sitting withhis feet in the waste-paper basket, Pym dictating from the sofa, andswearing when the words would not come unless he was perpendicular.Among the duties of this amanuensis was to remember the name of theheroine, her appearance, and other personal details; for Pymconstantly forgot them in the night, and he had to go searching backthrough his pages for them, cursing her so horribly that Tommy signedto Elspeth to retire to her tiny bedroom at the top of the house. Hewas always most careful of Elspeth, and with the first pound he earnedhe insured his life, leaving all to her, but told her nothing aboutit, lest she should think it meant his early death. As she grew olderhe also got good dull books for her from a library, and gave her apiano on the hire system, and taught her many things about life, verycarefully selected from his own discoveries.

  Elspeth out of the way, he could give Pym all the information wanted."Her name is Felicity," he would say at the right moment; "she hascurly brown hair in which the sun strays, and a blushing neck, and hereyes are like blue lakes."

  "Height!" roared Pym. "Have I mentioned it?"

  "No; but she is about five feet six."

  "How the ---- could you know that?"

  "You tell Percy's height in his stocking-soles, and when she reachedto his mouth and kissed him she had to stand on her tiptoes so to do."

  Tommy said this in a most businesslike tone, but could not helpsmacking his lips. He smacked them again when he had to write: "Haveno fear, little woman; I am by your side." Or, "What a sweet child youare!"

  Pym had probably fallen into the way of making the Percys revel insuch epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but thisdelicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies,went to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had somenarrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissedher on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in,little woman?" He came to himself with a start.

  "I forgot," he said hurriedly, and got out of the room without tellingher what he had forgotten.

  Pym's publishers knew their man, and their arrangement with him wasthat he was paid on completion of the tale. But always before hereached the middle he struck for what they called his honorarium; andthis troubled them, for the tale was appearing week by week as it waswritten. If they were obdurate, he suddenly concluded his story insuch words as these:

  "Several years have passed since these events took place, and thescene changes to a lovely garden by the bank of old Father Thames. Ayoung man sits by the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as the sceneitself; for the storm has passed away, and Percy (for it is no other)has found an anchorage. As he sits musing over the past, Felicitysteals out by the French window and puts her soft arms around hisneck. 'My little wife!' he murmurs. _The End--unless you pay up bymessenger._"

  This last line, which was not meant for the world (but little wouldPym have cared though it had been printed), usually brought hisemployers to their knees; and then, as Tommy advanced in experience,came the pickings--for Pym, with money in his pockets, had importantengagements round the corner, and risked intrusting his amanuensiswith the writing of the next instalment, "all except the bang at theend."

  Smaller people, in Tommy's state of mind, would have hurried straightto the love-passages; but he saw the danger, and forced his Pegasusaway from them. "Do your day's toil first," he may be conceived sayingto that animal, "and at evenfall I shall let you out to browse." So,with this reward in front, he devoted many pages to the drearyadventures of pretentious males, and even found a certain pleasure inkeeping the lady waiting. But as soon as he reached her he lost hishead again.

  "Oh, you beauty! oh, you small pet!" he said to himself, with solemntransport.

  As the artist in him was stirred, great problems presented themselves;for instance, in certain circumstances was "darling" or "little one"the better phrase? "Darling" in solitary grandeur is more pregnant ofmeaning than "little one," but "little" has a flavour of thepatronizing which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets oversuch questions; but they were in his pocket when Pym or Elspeth openedthe door. It is wonderful how much you can conceal between the touchon the handle and the opening of the door, if your heart is in it.

  Despite this fine practice, however, he was the shyest of mankind inthe presence of women, and this shyness grew upon him with the years.Was it because he never tried to uncork himself? Oh, no! It was aboutthis time that he, one day, put his arm round Clara, the servant--notpassionately, but with deliberation, as if he were making anexperiment with machinery. He then listened, as if to hear Claraticking. He wrote an admirable love-letter--warm, dignified,sincere--to nobody in particular, and carried it about in his pocketin readiness. But in love-making, as in the other arts, those do itbest who cannot tell how it is done; and he was always stricken with apalsy when about to present that letter. It seemed that he was onlyable to speak to ladies when they were not there. Well, if he couldnot speak, he thought the more; he thought so profoundly that in timethe heroines of Pym ceased to thrill him.

  This was because he had found out that they were not flesh and blood.But he did not delight in his discovery: it horrified him; for what hewanted was the old thrill. To make them human so that they could behis little friends again--nothing less was called for. This meantslaughter here and there of the great Pym's brain-work, and Tommytried to keep his hands off; but his heart was in it. In Pym's pagesthe ladies were the most virtuous and proper of their sex (thoughdreadfully persecuted), but he merely told you so at the beginning,and now and again afterwards to fill up, and then allowed them to actwith what may be called rashness, so that the story did not reallysuffer. Before Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. Out went thisbecause she would not have done it, and that because she could nothave done it. Fathers might now have taken a lesson from T. Sandys inthe upbringing of their daughters. He even sternly struck out thediminutives. With a pen in his hand and woman in his head, he had suchnoble thoughts that his tears of exaltation damped the pages as hewrote, and the ladies must have been astounded as well as proud to seewhat they were turning into.

  That was Tommy with a pen in his hand and a handkerchief hard by; butit was another Tommy who, when the finest bursts were over, sat backin his chair and mused. The lady was consistent now, and he wouldthink about her, and think and think, until concentration, which is apair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her out of the pages to his side,and then he and she sported in a way forbidden in the tale. While hesat there with eyes riveted, he had her to dinner at a restaurant, andtook her up the river, and called her "little woman"; and when sheheld up her mouth he said tantalizingly that she must wait until hehad finished his cigar. This queer delight enjoyed, back he popped herinto the story, where she was again the vehicle for such glorioussentiments that Elspeth, to whom he read the best of them, feared hewas becoming too good to live.

  In the meantime the great penny public were slowly growing restive,and at last the two little round men called on Pym to complain that hewas falling off; and Pym turned them out of doors, and then sat downheroically to do what he had not done for two decades--to read hislatest work.

  "Elspeth, go upstairs to your room," whispered Tommy, and then hefolded his arms proudly. He should have been in a tremble, butlatterly he had often felt that he must burst if he did not soon readsome of his bits to Pym, more especially the passages about thehereafter; also the opening of Chapter Seventeen.

  A
t first Pym's only comment was, "It is the same old drivel as before;what more can they want?"

  But presently he looked up, puzzled. "Is this chapter yours or mine?"he demanded.

  "It is about half and half," said Tommy.

  "Is mine the first half? Where does yours begin?" "That is notexactly what I mean," explained Tommy, in a glow, but backing alittle; "you wrote that chapter first, and then I--I--"

  "You rewrote it!" roared Pym. "You dared to meddle with--" He wasspeechless with fury.

  "I tried to keep my hand off," Tommy said, with dignity, "but thething had to be done, and they are human now."

  "Human! who wants them to be human? The fiends seize you, boy! youhave even been tinkering with my heroine's personal appearance; whatis this you have been doing to her nose?"

  "I turned it up slightly, that's all," said Tommy.

  "I like them down," roared Pym.

  "I prefer them up," said Tommy, stiffly.

  "Where," cried Pym, turning over the leaves in a panic, "where is thescene in the burning house?"

  "It's out," Tommy explained, "but there is a chapter in its placeabout--it's mostly about the beauty of the soul being everything, andmere physical beauty nothing. Oh, Mr. Pym, sit down and let me read itto you."

  But Pym read it, and a great deal more, for himself. No wonder hestormed, for the impossible had been made not only consistent, butunreadable. The plot was lost for chapters. The characters no longerdid anything, and then went and did something else: you were toldinstead how they did it. You were not allowed to make up your own mindabout them: you had to listen to the mind of T. Sandys; he describedand he analyzed; the road he had tried to clear through the thicketwas impassable for chips.

  "A few more weeks of this," said Pym, "and we should all three beturned out into the streets."

  Tommy went to bed in an agony of mortification, but presently to hisside came Pym.

  "Where did you copy this from?" he asked. "'It is when we are thinkingof those we love that our noblest thoughts come to us, and the moreworthy they are of our love the nobler the thought; hence it is thatno one has done the greatest work who did not love God.'"

  "I copied it from nowhere," replied Tommy, fiercely; "it's my own."

  "Well, it has nothing to do with the story, and so is only a blot onit, and I have no doubt the thing has been said much better before.Still, I suppose it is true."

  "It's true," said Tommy; "and yet--"

  "Go on. I want to know all about it."

  "And yet," Tommy said, puzzled, "I've known noble thoughts come to mewhen I was listening to a brass band."

  Pym chuckled. "Funny things, noble thoughts," he agreed. He readanother passage: "'It was the last half-hour of day when I wasadmitted, with several others, to look upon my friend's dead face. Ahandkerchief had been laid over it. I raised the handkerchief. I knownot what the others were thinking, but the last time we met he hadtold me something, it was not much--only that no woman had ever kissedhim. It seemed to me that, as I gazed, the wistfulness came back tohis face. I whispered to a woman who was present, and stooping overhim, she was about to--but her eyes were dry, and I stopped her. Thehandkerchief was replaced, and all left the room save myself. Again Iraised the handkerchief. I cannot tell you how innocent he looked.'"

  "Who was he?" asked Pym.

  "Nobody," said Tommy, with some awe; "it just came to me. Do younotice how simple the wording is? It took me some time to make it sosimple."

  "You are just nineteen, I think?"

  "Yes."

  Pym looked at him wonderingly.

  "Thomas," he said, "you are a very queer little devil."

  He also said: "And it is possible you may find the treasure you arealways talking about. Don't jump to the ceiling, my friend, because Isay that. I was once after the treasure, myself; and you can seewhether I found it."

  From about that time, on the chances that this mysterious treasuremight spring up in the form of a new kind of flower, Pym zealouslycultivated the ground, and Tommy had an industrious time of it. He wastaken off his stories, which at once regained their elasticity, andput on to exercises.

  "If you have nothing to say on the subject, say nothing," was one ofthe new rules, which few would have expected from Pym. Another was:"As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other personhas thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man."

  "Without concentration, Thomas, you are lost; concentrate, though yourcoat-tails be on fire.

  "Try your hand at description, and when you have done chortling overthe result, reduce the whole by half without missing anything out.

  "Analyze your characters and their motives at the prodigious length inwhich you revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analysis out. It is foryour own guidance, not the reader's.

  "'I have often noticed,' you are always saying. The story has nothingto do with you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will be your stiffestjob.

  "Stop preaching. It seems to me the pulpit is where you should lookfor the treasure. Nineteen, and you are already as didactic asseventy."

  And so on. Over his exercises Tommy was now engrossed for so long aperiod that, as he sits there, you may observe his legs slowlylengthening and the coming of his beard. No, his legs lengthened as hesat with his feet in the basket; but I feel sure that his beard burstthrough prematurely some night when he was thinking too hard about theladies.

  There were no ladies in the exercises, for, despite their altercationabout noses, Pym knew that on this subject Tommy's mind was a blank.But he recognized the sex's importance, and becoming possessed oncemore of a black coat, marched his pupil into the somewhat shoddydrawing-rooms that were still open to him, and there ordered Tommy tobe fascinated for his future good. But it was as it had always been.Tommy sat white and speechless and apparently bored; could not evensay, "You sing with so much expression!" when the lady at thepianoforte had finished.

  "Shyness I could pardon," the exasperated Pym would roar; "but want ofinterest is almost immoral. At your age the blood would have beencoursing through my veins. Love! You are incapable of it. There is nota drop of sentiment in your frozen carcass."

  "Can I help that?" growled Tommy. It was an agony to him even to speakabout women.

  "If you can't," said Pym, "all is over with you. An artist withoutsentiment is a painter without colours. Young man, I fear you aredoomed."

  And Tommy believed him, and quaked. He had the most gallant struggleswith himself. He even set his teeth and joined a dancing-class; thoughneither Pym nor Elspeth knew of it, and it never showed afterwards inhis legs. In appearance he was now beginning to be the Sandys of thephotographs: a little over the middle height and rather heavily built;nothing to make you uncomfortable until you saw his face. That solemncountenance never responded when he laughed, and stood coldly by whenhe was on fire; he might have winked for an eternity, and still theonlooker must have thought himself mistaken. In his boyhood the maskhad descended scarce below his mouth, for there was a dimple in thechin to put you at ease; but now the short brown beard had come, andhe was for ever hidden from the world.

  He had the dandy's tastes for superb neckties, velvet jackets, and hegot the ties instead of dining; he panted for the jacket, knew all theshop-windows it was in, but for years denied himself, with a moan, sothat he might buy pretty things for Elspeth. When eventually he gotit, Pym's friends ridiculed him. When he saw how ill his face matchedit he ridiculed himself. Often when Tommy was feeling that now at lastthe ladies must come to heel, he saw his face suddenly in a mirror,and all the spirit went out of him. But still he clung to his velvetjacket.

  I see him in it, stalking through the terrible dances, a heroic figureat last. He shuddered every time he found himself on one leg; he gotsternly into everybody's way; he was the butt of the little noodle ofan instructor. All the social tortures he endured grimly, in the hopethat at last the cork would come out. Then, though there were allkinds of girls in the class, merry, sentimental,
practical,coquettish, prudes, there was no kind, he felt, whose heart he couldnot touch. In love-making, as in the favourite Thrums game of thedambrod, there are sixty-one openings, and he knew them all. Yet atthe last dance, as at the first, the universal opinion of his partners(shop-girls, mostly, from the large millinery establishments, who hadto fly like Cinderellas when the clock struck a certain hour) was thathe kept himself to himself, and they were too much the lady to make upto a gentleman who so obviously did not want them.

  Pym encouraged his friends to jeer at Tommy's want of interest in thesex, thinking it a way of goading him to action. One evening, thebottles circulating, they mentioned one Dolly, goddess at some bar, asa fit instructress for him. Coarse pleasantries passed, but for a timehe writhed in silence, then burst upon them indignantly for theirunmanly smirching of a woman's character, and swept out, leaving thema little ashamed. That was very like Tommy.

  But presently a desire came over him to see this girl, and it camebecause they had hinted such dark things about her. That was like himalso.

  There was probably no harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right toquestion it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, andstretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change withdisdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of theminor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the onlyone who could have given an artistic justification for it.

  This one was a bearded stranger who, when he knew that Pym and hisfriends were elsewhere, would enter the bar with a cigar in his mouth,and ask for a whisky-and-water, which was heroism again, for smokingwas ever detestable to him, and whisky more offensive than quinine.But these things are expected of you, and by asking for the whisky youget into talk with Dolly; that is to say, you tell her several timeswhat you want, and when she has served every other body you get it.The commercial must be served first; in the barroom he blocks the waylike royalty in the street. There is a crown for us all somewhere.

  Dolly seldom heard the bearded one's "good-evening"; she could notpossibly have heard the "dear," for though it was there, it remainedbehind his teeth. She knew him only as the stiff man who got separatedfrom his glass without complaining, and at first she put this down toforgetfulness, and did nothing, so that he could go away withoutdrinking; but by and by, wherever he left his tumbler, cunninglyconcealed behind a water-bottle, or temptingly in front of acommercial, she restored it to him, and there was a twinkle in hereye.

  "You little rogue, so you see through me!" Surely it was an easy thingto say; but what he did say was "Thank you." Then to himself he said,"Ass, ass, ass!"

  Sitting on the padded seat that ran the length of the room, andsurreptitiously breaking his cigar against the cushions to help it onits way to an end, he brought his intellect to bear on Dolly at adistance, and soon had a better knowledge of her than could be claimedby those who had Dollied her for years. He also wove romances abouther, some of them of too lively a character, and others so noble andsad and beautiful that the tears came to his eyes, and Dolly thoughthe had been drinking. He could not have said whether he would preferher to be good or bad.

  These were but his leisure moments, for during the long working hourshe was still at the exercises, toiling fondly, and right willing totear himself asunder to get at the trick of writing. So he passedfrom exercises to the grand experiment.

  It was to be a tale, for there, they had taken for granted, lay thetreasure. Pym was most considerate at this time, and mentioned womanwith an apology.

  "I have kept away from them in the exercises," he said in effect,"because it would have been useless (as well as cruel) to force you tolabour on a subject so uncongenial to you; and for the same reason Ihave decided that it is to be a tale of adventure, in which theheroine need be little more than a beautiful sack of coals which yourcavalier carries about with him on his left shoulder. I am afraid wemust have her to that extent, Thomas, but I am not asking much of you;dump her down as often as you like."

  And Thomas did his dogged best, the red light in his eye; though hehad not, and never could have had, the smallest instinct forstory-writing, he knew to the finger-tips how it is done; but for everhe would have gone on breaking all the rules of the game. How hewrestled with himself! Sublime thoughts came to him (nearly all aboutthat girl), and he drove them away, for he knew they beat only againstthe march of his story, and, whatever befall, the story must march.Relentlessly he followed in the track of his men, pushing the drearydogs on to deeds of valour. He tried making the lady human, and thenshe would not march; she sat still, and he talked about her; hedumped her down, and soon he was yawning. This weariness was whatalarmed him most, for well he understood that there could be notreasure where the work was not engrossing play, and he doubted nomore than Pym that for him the treasure was in the tale or nowhere.Had he not been sharpening his tools in this belief for years? Strangeto reflect now that all the time he was hacking and sweating at thatnovel (the last he ever attempted) it was only marching towards thewaste-paper basket!

  He had a fine capacity, as has been hinted, for self-deception, and intime, of course, he found a way of dodging the disquieting truth.This, equally of course, was by yielding to his impulses. He allowedhimself an hour a day, when Pym was absent, in which he wrote thestory as it seemed to want to write itself, and then he cut this pieceout, which could be done quite easily, as it consisted only ofmoralizings. Thus was his day brightened, and with this relaxation tolook forward to be plodded on at his proper work, delving so hard thathe could avoid asking himself why he was still delving. What shall wesay? He was digging for the treasure in an orchard, and every now andagain he came out of his hole to pluck an apple; but though the applewas so sweet to the mouth, it never struck him that the treasuremight be growing overhead. At first he destroyed the fruit of hisstolen hour, and even after he took to carrying it about fondly in hispocket, and to rewriting it in a splendid new form that had come tohim just as he was stepping into bed, he continued to conceal it fromhis overseer's eyes. And still he thought all was over with him whenPym said the story did not march.

  "It is a dead thing," Pym would roar, flinging down themanuscript,--"a dead thing because the stakes your man is playing for,a woman's love, is less than a wooden counter to you. You are a finepiece of mechanism, my solemn-faced don, but you are a watch thatwon't go because you are not wound up. Nobody can wind the artist upexcept a chit of a girl; and how you are ever to get one to take pityon you, only the gods who look after men with a want can tell.

  "It becomes more impenetrable every day," he said. "No use yoursitting there tearing yourself to bits. Out into the street with you!I suspend these sittings until you can tell me you have kissed agirl."

  He was still saying this sort of thing when the famous "Letters" werepublished--T. Sandys, author. "Letters to a Young Man About to beMarried" was the full title, and another almost as applicable wouldhave been "Bits Cut Out of a Story because They Prevented itsMarching." If you have any memory you do not need to be told how thatsplendid study, so ennobling, so penetrating, of woman at her best,took the town. Tommy woke a famous man, and, except Elspeth, no onewas more pleased than big-hearted, hopeless, bleary Pym.

  "But how the ---- has it all come about!" he kept roaring.

  "A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have herbe," says the "Letters"; and "Oh," said woman everywhere, "if all menhad the same idea of us as Mr. Sandys!"

  "To meet Mr. T. Sandys." Leaders of society wrote it on theirinvitation cards. Their daughters, athirst for a new sensation,thrilled at the thought, "Will he talk to us as nobly as he writes?"And oh, how willing he was to do it, especially if their noses wereslightly tilted!