IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 ^^ ^ ^^= itt lU 12.2 II £ li£ 12.0 I.I s. 1^ UA 11-25 ■1.4 m\.b l^^^g IHH^^s MHH ■ 1 i 1^ ^. HiotogFaphic Scoioes GarparatJon II VMST MAM STMIT WIMTM,N.Y. 14SM (7U)t7a^l03 4^ ' ■ 1 i I CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHIVI/ICIVIH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Instituta for Historical IMiororaproductiona / Inatitut Canadian da microraproductions Itittoriquaa Tachnical and Bibliographic Notaa/Notaa tachniquaa at bilMiographiquaa Tha Instituta haa attamptad to obtain tha baat original copy availabia for filming. Faaturaa of thia copy which may ba ioibliographically uniqua. which may altar any of tha imagaa in tha raproduction, or which may aignificantly changa tha uaual mathod of filming, ara chaclcad balow. 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Additional commanta:/ Commantairas suppl4mantairas: L'Inatitut a mierofiimA la maiHaur axampiaira qu1l lui a At* poaaibia da aa procurar. Laa details da eat axampiaira qui aont paut-Atra uniquaa du point da vua Mbllographiqua. qui pauvant modifiar una imaga raproduita, ou qui pauvant axigar una modification dana la mAthoda normala da filmaga aont indiquAa d'daaaoua. pn Colourad pagaa/ Pagaa da coulaur Pagaa damagad/ Pagaa andommagAas Pagaa raatorad and/oi Pagaa raataurAaa at/ou palliculAaa Pagaa diacolourad. stainad or foxai Pagaa dAcolorAaa, tachatAas ou piquias Pagaa datachad/ Pagaa dAtachias r~| Pagaa damagad/ pn Pagaa raatorad and/or laminatad/ Pagaa diacolourad. stainad or foxad/ Pagaa rri Pagaa datachad/ r"! Showthrough/ Tranaparanca Quality of prir QuaHt* inigala da I'impraaaion Includaa aupplamantary matarli Comprand du matirlal auppMmantaira Only adHion avaMabIa/ •aula MMon diaponibia I I Quality of print variaa/ I I Includaa aupplamantary matarial/ I — I Only adHion avaNabIa/ Pagaa wholly or partially obseurad by arrata sNpa. tiaauaa. ate., hava baan ralilmad to anaura tha baat poasiMa image/ Laa pagaa tota l a m e n t ou partlaNamant obaeurelee par un fauiNai d'arrata. una palura. ate., ofit AlA fHmAaa A nouvaau da faeon A obtanir la malNaura Imaga poasiMa. This item is filmed at tha reduction ratio eheefced below/ Ce document est filmA au taux do rAduetion indlquA 10X 14X WX atx nx MX c J 3 12X ItX »x Hweofiy totiM hwa hM iMMi raproducwl thanks of: DouglM Library QuMn't Unhraraity L'cxMnplaira fHmi fut rcproduit grioa A la OAnAroait* da: Douglas Library Quaan's Univaraity Tha imagaa appaaring hara ara tha baat quality possMMa conaMarlng tha condition and laglbllity off tha original copy and in kaaping wHh tha ffllming contraet spaeHicationa. Original eoplaa bi prtoitad papar eovara ara ffUmad bagbinbig wHh tha front eovar and andtaig on tha last paga with a printad or IHuatratad Impraa- sion. or tlia baok covar whan apimipriata. All othar original eopiaa ara fHmad baglnning on tha first paga with a printad or Nhastratod impraa* slon, and anding on tlia iaat paga with a printad or Hiustratsd Impraaaion. Tha Iaat raeordod frama on aaeh mierofielta sImH eontabi tlia symbol — ^> imaaning "CON- TiNUED"). or tha symbol ▼ (moaning "END"). Laa Imagaa suivantas ont €U raproduitas avac la plus grand soin, eompta tanu da la condition at da la nattati da I'axampiaira film*, at an conformitA avac laa conditions du contrat da ffllmaga. Laa axamplairas originaux dont la couvartura an IMpiar aat ImprimAa sont ffUmAs an commanpant par la pramlar plat at an tarminant soit psr la damlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'impraaaion ou dIHustration, soit par la sacond plat, salon la caa. Tous Iss autras axamplairas originaux sont fflimAs sn commandant par la pramlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta dimpraaaion ou d'iliustratlon at an tarminant par bi damiAra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Un daa aymbolaa suivants apparaltra sur la darnlAra imaga da cliaqua microfficlM, salon la cas: la symbola ^ signiffia "A 8UIVRE", la aymboia ▼ signiffia "FIN". Mapa, plataa. charts, ate., may ba ffHmad at dif fa ra nt raduetion rathM. Thoaa too larga to ba anttoaly bwbidad in ona axpoaura ara fHmad bagbiiiing bt tha uppar loft hand eomar. laft to right and top to bottom, aa many fframaa aa raqulrad. Tha ffoNowbig diagrama Nhistrata tha mathod: Laa cartas, planchas, tablaaux. ate. pauvant Atra ffHmAa A daa taux da rAductton diffffArants. LArsqua la document aat trap grand pour Atra raproduit an un saul cllcliA. 11 aat ffilmA A partir da i'angia aupAriaur gaucha. da gaucha A droita, at da iMNit an baa. an pranam la nombra d'Imagaa nAoaaaaira. Laa diagrammas suivants Hiustrant bi mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ^ J " I WOULD GIVE A POUND NOTE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'LL BE TEN YEARS FROM NOW" e ,/ /&^^ :-:./: .>'V-«»— - €-"■>•• "> kA m MEj^TAI X} n \t 7^jra s'TOEY oi' irns' BOrjlOOJ) ;T -VEEli!: -/J/r^'^^ ^r WCLUAM tiATBMMMhl, *' mmmm I>&|J|»L.^.J,-.. »''..-Ui»iW4«M9>^'MMM««Mllfa^ I WOOLD give a pound note to know what YOi'Lt BF. TFN -rAKS FROM NOW" A /lerx. . /%4^ ^ <2.b^.n SENTIMENTAL TOMMY THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD BY jfMr BABRIE ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM HATHERELL TORONTO THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, Limited 1896 v pi^yu'i4'^^ /^^<^ t k Copyright, 1886, by Oluurles Seribner's Sons, for the United States of America. Priated by John HHIaon and 8on, Unifenlty Pnh, '■?■ ■■f. "?, , i'' ... "5 *, %. TO MY WIFE 9486 ■ !i if I mmmmmmmmm . I CONTENTS I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX PAoa Tommy Contrives to keep One out ... i But the Other gets in is Showing how Tommy was suddenly trans- formed INTO A Young Gentleman . . 26 The End of an Idyll 40 The Girl with Two Mothers 54 The Enchanted Street 68 Comic Overture to a Tragedy .... 76 The Boy with Two Mothbes 86 AuLD Lang Syne 101 The Favorite op the Ladies 112 Aaron Latta 127 A Child's Tragedy 141 Shows how Tommy took Care of Elspeth 158 The Hanky School . . * 165 The Man WHO Never Came 175 The Painted Lady i87 In which Tommy Solves the Woman Problem ig^ The Muckley 2O6 Corp is Brought to Heel — Grizel De- fiant 219 The Shadow op Sir Walter 281 \ \ VI CHAPm XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII CONTENTS The Last Jacobite Risino 244 The Siege of Thrums 259 Grizel pays Three Visits 278 A Romance of Two Old Maids and a Stout Bachelor 283 A Penny Pass- Book 802 Tommy Repents, and is none the Worse FOR it . . . . . . . . . ... 816 The Longer Catechism . . . . . . . 828 But it should have been Miss Kitty . . 887 Tommy the Scholar 848 End of the Jacobite Rising . . . . . 856 A Letter TO God 869 An £lopement . . . . . . . '. . . 888 There is Some One to love Grizel AT Last 401 Who told Tommy to Speak . . . . .- . 416 The Branding of Tommy . . . . . . 429 Of Four Ministers who afterwards BOASTED that THEY HAD KNOWN ToMMY Sandys 446 The End of a Boyhood . . . . . . 466 Pasb . . 244 . . 259 . . 278 HD A . . 283 . . S02 ^ORSB . . 815 . . 828 ' . ; 887 . . 848 . . 856 . . 869 . . 888 RIZEL . . 401 . . 415 . . 429 ARD8 >MMT . 446 . 466 ^ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Paob " I WOULD GIVE A POUND NOTE TO KNOW WHAT YOU 'lL BE TEN TEiRS FROM NOw" FroHttspiece Bob FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM ON THE SPOT 60 "Let HER ALANE. Let ht bairn prat for Jean Mtles" 74 "She's dtino, man," he cried 138 Thet saw the window open and a figure in a white shawl creep out of it 194 They waylaid Grizel when she was alone .... 974 Tommy crouched behind Haggart's Stone 316 Over* her head was a little muslin window-blind, representing a bride's veil 338 Grizel stood by the body, guarding it 370 He ran them down within a mile of Tilliedrum . . 404 A GIRL rose from THE BROOM 476 ■"•''» •■ ^-Mt*;..»ui^:in.mm»' € I -'if Ci t t I *1» \ ^. I .j^ SENTIMENTAL TOMMY <^ I THE STORY OF HIS BOYHOOD /< CHAPTER I \ TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT ;i * i The celebrated Tommy first comes into view on a dirty London stair, and he was in sexless garments, which were all he had, and he was five, and so though we are looking at him, we must do it sideways, lest he sit down hurriedly to hide them. That inscrutable face, which made the clubmen of his later days uneasy and even puzzled the ladies while he was making love to them, was already his, except when he smiled at one of his pretty thoughts or stopped at an open door to sniff a potful. On his way up and down the stair he often paused to sniff, but he never asked for anything; his mother had warned him against it, and he carried out her injunction with almost unnecessary spirit, declining offers before they were made, as when passing a room, whence came the smell of fried fish, he might call in, "I don't not want none of your fish," or "My mother says I don't not want the littlest bit," or wistfully, " I 1 T 2 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ain't hungry," or more wistfully still, " My mother says I ain't hungry." His mother heard of this and was angry, crying that he had let the neighbors know some- thing she was anxious to conceal, but what he had re- vealed to them Tommy could not make out, and when he questioned her artlessly, she took him with sudden passion to her flat breast, and often after that she looked at him long and wofully and wrung her hands. The only other pleasant smell known to Tommy was when the water-carts passed the mouth of his little street. His street, which ended in a dead wall, was near the river, but on the doleful south side of it, opening off a longer street where the cabs of Waterloo station some- times found themselves when they took the wrong turn- ing ; his home was at the top of a house of four floors, each with accommodation for at least two families, and here he had lived with his mother since his father's death six months ago. There was oil-cloth on the stair as far as the second floor; there had been oil-cloth between the * second floor and the third — Tommy could point out pieces of it still adhering to the wood like remnants of a plaster. This stair was nursery to all the children whose homes opened on it, not so safe as nurseries in the part of Lon- don that is chiefly inhabited by boys in sailor suits, but preferable as a centre of adventure, and here on an after- noon sat two. They were very busy boasting, but only the smaller had imagination, and as he used it recklessly, TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT their positions soon changed ; sexless garments was now prone on a step, breeches sitting on him. " , r Shovel, a man of seven, had said, " None oii*your lip. You were n't never at Thrums yourself.*' Tommy's reply was, "Ain't my mother a Thrums woman?" Shovel, who had but one eye, and that bloodshot, fixed it on him threateningly. " The Thames is in London," he said. . " 'Cos they would n't not have it in Thrums," replied Tommy. ** 'Amstead 'Eath's in London,! tell yer," Shovel said. "The cemetery is in Thrums," said Tommy. "There ain't no queens in Thrums, anyhow." " ' "There's the auld licht minister." i .;- " Well, then, if you jest seed Trafalgar Square 1 " "If you jest seed the Thrums town-house! " " St. Paul's ain't in Thrums." ' ' "■} • /^ « It would like to be." * ' ' ' " ' ' ^ * ' ^ " After reflecting, Shovel said in desperation, " Well, then, my father were once at a hanging." Tommy replied instantly, " It were my father what was hanged." There was no possible answer to this save a knock- down blow, but though Tommy was vanquished in body, his spirit remained stanch ; he raised his head and gasped, " You should see how they knock down in Thrums ! " It was then that Shovel sat on him. 1 1 4 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY Such was their position when an odd figure in that house, a gentleman, passed them without a word, so desirous was he to make a breath taken at the foot of the close stair last him to the top. Tommy merely gaped after this fine sight, but Shovel had experience, and '' It 's a kid or a coffin," he said, sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a doctor here. Watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the past, and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again. " Hello, it 's your old woman ! " cried Shovel. " Is she a deader ? '' he asked, brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair. The question had no meaning for bewildered Tommy, but he saw that if his mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his companion's eye. So he hoped she was a deader. ** If it 's only a kid,'' Shovel began, with such scorn that Tommy at once screamed, ''It ain't!" and, cross- examined, he swore eagerly that his mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she was cold. Then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way possible in that street. Shovel did not shake Tommy's hand warmly, the forms of congratula- tion varying in different parts of London, but he looked TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT i in that word, 80 )0t of the }ly gaped ince, and ring that strained had been ometimes I. irel. "Is rals made Tommy, whatever apanion's ch scorn id, oross- ks in bed still in ler face, notion in did not igratula- le looked his admiration so plainly that Tommy's head waggled proudly. Evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well as to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. He said from his eleva- tion that he hoped Shovel would believe his tales about Thrums now, and Shovel, who had often cuffed Tommy for sticking to him so closely, cringed in the most snob- bish manner, craving permission to be seen in his com- pany for the next three days. Tommy, the upstart, did not see his way to grant this favor for nothing, and Shovel offered a knife, but did not have it with him ; it was his sister Ameliar's knife, and he would take it from her, help his davy. Tommy would wait there till Shovel fetched it. Shovel, baf&ed, wanted to know what Tommy was putting on hairs for. Tommy smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. Then Shovel collapsed, and his wind passed into Tommy. The reign of Thomas Sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for with this question was he overthrown : " How did yer know she were cold ? " "Because," replied Tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself." Shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with Ameliar's knife in it. "It's only a kid arter all!" screamed Shovel, furi* a SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ously. Disappointment gave him eloquence, and Tommy cowered under his sneers, not understanding them, but they seemed to amount to this, that in having a baby he had disgraced the house. "But I think," he said, with diffidence, "I think I were once one." Then all Shovel could say was that he had better keep it dark on that stair. Tommy squeezed his fist into one eye, and the tears came out at the other. A good-natured impulse was about to make Shovel say that though kids are un- doubtedly humiliations, mothers and boys get used to them in time, and go on as brazenly as before, but it was checked by Tommy's unfortunate question, '< Shovel, when will it come ? " Shovel, speaking from local experience, replied truth- fully that they usually came very soon after the doctor, and at times before him. "It ain't come before him," Tommy said, confidently. " How do yer know ? " "*Cos it weren't there at dinner-time, and I been here since dinner-time." The words meant that Tommy thought it could only enter by way of the stair, and Shovel quivered with delight. "H'st!" he cried, dramatically, and to his joy Tommy looked anxiously down the stair, instead of up it. " Did you hear it ? " Tommy whispered. % ■\ , TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT Before he could control himself Shovel blurted out: " Do you think as they come on their feet ? " "How then?" demanded Tommy; but Shovel had exhausted his knowledge of the subject. Tommy, who had begun to descend to hold the door, turned and climbed upwards, and his tears were now but the drop left in a cup too hurriedly dried. Where was he o£E to? Shovel called after him; and he answered, in a deter- mined whisper : " To shove of it out if it tries to come in at the winder." This was enough for the more knowing urchin, now so full of good things that with another added he must spill, and away he ran for an audience, which could also help him to bait Tommy, that being a game most sportive when there are several to fling at once. At the door he knocked over, and was done with, a laugh- ing little girl who had strayed from a more fashionable street. She rose solemnly, and kissing her muff, to reassure it if it had got a fright, toddled in at the first open door to be out of the way of unmannerly boys. Tommy, climbing courageously, heard the door slam, and looking down he saw — a strange child. He climbed no higher. It had come. After a long time he was one flight of stairs nearer it. It was making itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came hopping up. Another dozen steps, and — It was beautifully dressed in one piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its 8 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY feet, with a bit left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near that he could hear it cooing : thought itself as good as upstairs, did it! He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand. "Out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals. She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by his dress. "None of your cheek! " roared insulted manhood. "Oo boy," she said, decisively. With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard. "You don't needn't think as we '11 have you," he an- nounced, firmly. " You had best go away to — go to — " His imagination failed him. "You had best go back," he said. She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now ; " but mother was a new word to the girl, and she asked, gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting him to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother." "You won't not get mine," replied Tommy, doggedly. ■m TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down for her. He might come at any moment. A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come. For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by trade because of a ^t^rge round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be one way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a hard-hearted way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having been long lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it lay very lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear it respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the time of day in passing. Thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread his benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow went, when he and Shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent pin. This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring; but instead of saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly, 10 v\ SENTIMENTAL TOMMY " Oo know tories ? " " Stories I " he exclaimed, " I *11 — I '11 tell you about Thrums/' and was about to do it for love, but stopped in time. "This ain't a good stair for stories," he said, cunningly. " I can't not tell stories on this stair, but I — I know a good stair for stories." The ninny of a girl was completely hoodwinked; and see, there they go, each with a hand in the muff, the one leering, oh, so triumphantly; the other trusting and gleeful. There was an exuberance of vitality about her as if she lived too quickly in her gladness, which you may remember in some child who visited the earth for but a little while. How superbly Tommy had done it! It had been another keen brain pitted against his, and at first he was not winning. Then up came Thrums, and — But the thing has happened before; in a word, Blticher. Nevertheless, Tommy just managed it, for he got the girl out of the street and on to another stair no more than in time to escape a ragged rabble, headed by Shovel, who, finding their quarry gone, turned on their leader viciously, and had gloomy views of life till his cap was kicked down a sewer, which made the world bright again. Of the tales told by Tommy that day in words Scotch and cockney, of Thrums, home of heroes and the arts, where the lamps are lit by a magician called Leerie- leerie-licht-the-lamps (but he is also friendly, and you TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT 11 can fling stones at him), and the merest children are allowed to set the spinning-wheels a-whirling, and dagont is the swear, and the stairs are so fine that the houses wear them outside for show, and you drop a pail at the end of a rope down a hole, and sometimes it comes up full of water, and sometimes full of fairies — of these and other wonders, if you would know, ask not a dull historian, nor even go to Thrums, but to those rather who have been boys and girls there and now are exiles. Such a one Tommy knows, an unhappy woman, foolish, not very lovable, flung like a stone out of the red quarry upon a land where it cannot grip, and tear- ing her heart for a sight of the home she shall see no more. From her Tommy had his pictures, and he colored them rarely. Never before had he such a listener. " Oh, dagont, dagont!" he would cry in ecstasy over these fair scenes, and she, awed or gurgling with mirth according to the nature of the last, demanded " 'Nother, 'nother! " whereat he remembered who and what she was, and showing her a morsel of the new one, drew her to more distant parts, until they were so far from his street that he thought she would never be able to find the way back. His intention had been, on reaching such a spot, to desert her promptly, but she gave him her hand in the muff so confidingly that against his judgment he fell a-pltying the trustful mite who was wandering the 12 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY world in search nf o .-, "e Whole that the chances iTaV" """'^ ■'''^''^«'' o" "efore corning. Ataoatrrnr""'" "'"'•''« -« '-^ about hi» fo. a suitar:~^ '* •*«- ^ They were now in o .t ^-e than the apn^ ^1^' "*"«' 'o '"-'- own ;-PP-e. It was new ZTZ T "^ '^ '"" *» the aon,e of fashion by tboZ' I' "^'^^ '' »« '^'th ".ost of their spikes ! T """ "«"«' «"tag» -th the word "Apart^e": ' Tt' T' '^'"' -"' "''oets as this before when in sh f, '''"•""«'' ""o* ;W had watched the toif /ou'^f ^ "'"^^' -"^ •"•dly sight, for first the toff ? '"' '^'^ '' '^as a 'o- at the top and thenf T^^«"t. '' "" '"'" -" Pooped at hin, fron, beW^l^l; T*^ ""' «"'»°*. ^«' and then the door^;:.' *";" ^« P""*-! «■« «" fo-'hadaglin.p^eof wondeXd Jr *"" •''^'•"'' «»n« hats on. He had not Z, , * P^*"" ^^ hang- - handsome for the JasTi ^ ^ '""* '"^'^"^ -tabiish her here ? 'rLZ ^Z It'"" "'•'"" ^« -' » v,ew. and thrilling with a! ""^^ I^'We mothers ^ almost fi.ed on one S m -T °' '" ««"-°«% he eye. and on another when 1 '™;*''' '"'' «'^t in her «-«8an undarnerhf'' ^o-" by tripping ^udd^ldf^i^y;!^ "'■'' ^^'>- the girl of , "■eani.giess to Tommy ll^^"'" '^^^ ^"^ was a,^ y as mother had been to her, but TOMMY CONTRIVES TO KEEP ONE OUT 13 diddled on finding one began to his own led him to lized it as i; railings rds scored ered such pany, and 1 it was a that was servant, I the rail side, and :or hang- lything he not iothers •sity he in her ipping of a [inted, [as as r, but he saw that she was drawing his attention to a woman some thirty yards away. "Man — mant" he echoed, chiding her ignorance; "no, no, you blether, that ain't a man, that 's a woman; that 's woman — woman." "Ooman — ooman," the girl repeated, docilely, but when she looked again, "Ma-ma, ma-ma," she insisted, and this was Tommy's first lesson that however young you catch them they will never listen to reason. She seemed of a mind to trip oS. to this woman, and as long as his own mother wasi safe, it did not greatly matter to Tommy whom she chose, but if it was this one, she was going the wrong way about it. You can- not snap them up in the street. The proper course was to track her to her house, which he proceeded to do, and his quarry, who was looking about her anxiously, as if she had lost some- thing, gave him but a short chase. In the next street to the one in which they had first seen her, a street so like it that Tommy might have admired her for know- ing the difference, she opened the door with a key and entered, shutting the door behind her. Odd to tell, the child had pointed to this door as the one she would stop at, which surprised Tommy very much. On the steps he gave her his final instructions, and she dimpled and gurgled, obviously full of admiration for him, which was a thing he approved of, but he would have liked to see her a little more serious. i 1 14 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY "That is the door w«n *t. J^hat was all. anri J... • i. , ^^' -eond in waving the n.„ffTo\it '« "" " "^"^'''^ ""'earned beneath his bratl ^^ "^» ^on go," he 'J-e door eloped. He wa' ted «' r"*" «"« ^•"•'"d and «>'tbereabont,andshehrnoth ' °' ""> "'»»'«". ^ ^'"^ a dr„« beating nt'r;'"'^'- ''"""""" '"o-.e, where, alas, a bo^ 2 w v" """"""^ ^'"-"o" through it _ 3^"*^ ''a.bng to put bi, foot /' CHAPTER II BUT THE OTHER GETS IN To Tommy, a swaggerer, came Shovel sour-visaged ; having now no cap of his own, he exchanged with Tommy, would also have bled the blooming mouth of him, but knew of a revenge that saves the knuckles: announced, with jeers and offensive finger exercise, that " it " had come. Shovel was a liar. If he only knowed what Tommy knowed I If Tommy only heard what Shovel had hearn I '- Tommy was of opinion that Shovel had n't not heard anything. i Shovel believed as Tommy didn't know nuthin. Tommy wouldn't listen to what Shovel had heard. Neither would Shovel listen to what Tommy knew. > If Shovel would tell what he had heard, Tommy would tell what he knew. Well, then. Shovel had listened at the door, and heard it mewling. ^ ' Tommy knowed it well, and it never mewled. How could Tommy know it ? '\. \ 16 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY I ^ 'Cos he had been with it a long time. Gosh ! Why, it had only corned a minute ago. This made Tommy uneasy, and he asked a leading question cunningly. A boy, was n't it ? Ko, ShovePs old woman had been up helping to hold it, and she said it were a girl. Shutting his mouth tightly, which was never natural to him, the startled Tommy mounted the stair, listened and was convinced. He did not enter his dishonored home. He had no intention of ever entering it again. With one salt tear he renounced — a child, a mother. On his way downstairs he was received by Shovel and party, who planted their arrows neatly. Kids cried steadily, he was told, for the first year. A boy one was bad enough, but a girl one was oh lawks. He must never again expect to get playing with blokes like what they was. Already she had got round his old gal who would care for him no more. What would they say about this in Thrums ? Shovel even insisted on returning him his cap, and for some queer reason, this cut deepest. Tommy about to charge, with his head down, now walked away so quietly that Shovel, who could not help liking the funny little cuss, felt a twinge of remorse, and nearly followed him with a magnanimous offer: to treat him as if he were still respectable. Tommy lay down on a distant stair, one of the very stairs where she had sat with him. Ladies, don't you % BUT THE OTHER GETS IN H dare to pity him now, for he won't stand it. Rage was what he felt, and a man in a rage (as you may know if you are married) is only to be soothed by the sight of all womankind in terror of him. But you may look upon your handiwork, and gloat, an you will, on the wreck you have made. A young gentleman trusted one of you; behold the result. 0! 0! 01 0! Now do you understand why we men cannot abide you ? If she had told him flat that his mother, and his alone, she would have, and so there was an end of it. Ah, catch them taking a straight road. But to put on those airs of helplessness, to wave him that gay good- by, and then the moment his back was turned, to be off through the air on — perhaps on her muff, to the home he had thought to lure her from. In a word, to be diddled by a girl when one flatters himself he is did- dling! S'death, a dashing fellow finds it hard to bear. Nevertheless, he has to bear it, for oh. Tommy, Tommy, 't is the common lot of man. His hand sought his pocket for the penny that had brought him comfort in dark hours before now; but, alack, she had deprived him even of it. Never again should his pinkie finger go through that warm hole, and at the thought a sense of his forlornness choked him. and he cried. You may pity him a little now. Darkness came and hid him even from himself. He is not found again until a time of the night that is not marked on ornamental clocks, but has an hour to itself X it Bm 18 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY on the watch which a hundred thousand or so of London women carry in their breasts ; the hour when men steal homewards trickling at the mouth and drawing back from their own shadows to the wives they once went a-maying with, or the mothers who had such travail at the bearing of them, as if for great ends. Out of this, the drunkard's hour, rose the wan face of Tommy, who had waked up somewhere clammy cold and quaking, and he was a very little boy, so he ran to his mother. Such a shabby dark room it was, but it was home, such a weary worn woman in the bed, but he was her son, and she had been wringing her hands because he was so long in coming, and do you think he hurt her when he pressed his head on her. poor breast, and do you think she grudged the heat his cold hands drew from her warm face ? He squeezed her with a violence that put more heat into her blood than he took out of it. And he was very considerate, too: not a word of reproach in him, though he knew very well what that bundle in the back of the bed was. She guessed that he had heard the news and stayed away through jealousy of his sister, and by and by she said, with a faint smile, " I have a present for you, laddie." In the great world without, she used few Thrums words now; you would have known she was Scotch only by her accent, but when she and Tommy were together in that room, with the door shut, she I BUT THE OTHER GETS IN 19 (\ always spoke as if her window still looked out on the bonny Marywellbrae. It is not really bonny, it is gey an' mean an' bleak, and you must not come to see it. It is just a steep wind-swept street, old and wrinkled, like your mother's face. She had a present for him, she said, and Tommy replied, "I knows," with averted face. "Such a bonny thing." "Bonny enough," he said, bitterly. "Look at her, laddie." But he shrank from the ordeal, crying, "No, no, keep her covered up!" The little traitor seemed to be asleep, and so he ventured to say, eagerly, "It wouldn't not take long to carry all our things to another house, would it ? Me and Shovel could near do it ourselves." "And that's God's truth," the woman said, with a look round the room. "But what for should we do that?" " Do you no see, mother ? " he whispered, excitedly. "Then you and me could slip away, and — and leave her — in the press." The feeble smile with which his mother received this he interpreted thus, "Wherever we go'd to she would be thei? before us." " The little besom ! " he cried, helplessly. His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his horse, wliich needed only one slap ■t'^^THBasu I I' fl ; 20 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY to make it go a mile ; but she was a spiritless woman, and replied, indi£ferently, "You 're a funny litlin." Presently a dry sob broke from her, and thinking the child was the cause, soft-hearted Tommy said, "It can't not be helped, mother; don't cry, mother, I'm fond on yer yet, mother; I — I took her away. I found another woman — but she would come." "She's God's gift, man," his mother said, but she added, in a different tone, "Ay, but he hasna sent her keep." " God's gift I " Tommy shuddered, but he said, sourly , " I wish he would take her back. Do you wish that, too, mother?" The weary woman almost said she did, but her arms — they gripped the baby as if frightened that he had sent for it. Jealous Tommy, suddenly deprived of his mother's hand, cried, "It's true what Shovel says, you don't not love me never again ; you jest loves that little limmerl" "Na, na," the mother answered, passionate at last, "she can never be to me what you hae been, my laddie, for you came to me when my hame was in hell, and we tholed it thegither, you and me." This bewildered though it comforted him. He thought his mother might be speaking about the room in which they had lived until six months ago, when his father was put into the black box, but when he asked her if this were so, she told him to sleep, for she was if~ BUT THE OTHBB GETS IN a dog-tired. She always evaded him in this way when he questioned her about his past, but at times his mind would wander backwards unbidden to those distant days, and then he saw flitting dimly through them the elusive form of a child. He knew it was himself, and for moments he could see it clearly, but when he moved a step nearer it was not there. So does the child we once were play hide and seek with us among the mists of infancy, until one day he trips and falls into the daylight. Then we seize him, and with that touch we two are one. It is the birth of self -consciousness. Hitherto he had slept at the back of his mother's bed, but to-night she could not have him there, the place being occupied, and rather sulkily he consented to lie crosswise at her feet, undressing by the feeble fire and taking care, as he got into bed, not to look at the usurper. His mother watched him furtively, and was relieved to read in his face that he had no recollec- tion of ever having slept at the foot of a bed before. But soon after he fell asleep he awoke, and was afraid to move lest his father should kick him. He opened his eyes stealthily, and this was neither the room nor the bed he had expected to see. The floor was bare save for a sheepskin beside the bed. Tommy always stood on the sheepskin while he was dressing because it was warm to the feet, though risky, as your toes sometimes caught in knots in it. There was a deal table in the middle of the floor with r \ \ 22 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY some dirty crockery on it and a kettle that would leave a mark; but they had been left there by Shovel's old girl, for Mrs. Sandys usually kept her house clean. The chairs were of the commonest, and the press door would not remain shut unless you stuck a knife between its halves ; but there was a gay blue wardrobe, spotted white where Tommy's mother had scraped off the mud that had once bespattered it during a lengthy sojourn at the door of a shop; and on the mantelpiece was a clock in a little brown and yellow house, and on the clock a Bible that had been in Thrums. But what Tommy was proudest of was his mother's kist, to which the chests of Londoners are not to be compared, though like it in appearance. On the inside of the lid of this kist was pasted, after a Thrums custom, something that his mother called her marriage lines, which she forced Shovel's mother to come up and look at one day, when that lady had made an innuendo Tommy did not under- stand, and Shovel's mother had looked, and though she could not read, was convinced, knowing them by the shape. Tommy lay at the foot of the bed looking at this room, which was his home now, and trying to think of the other one, and by and by the fire helped him by. falling to ashes, when darkness came in, and packing the furniture in grotesque cloths, removed it piece by piece, all but the clock. Then the room took a new shape. The fireplace was over there instead of here, BUT THE OTHER GETS IN the torn yellow blind gave way to one made of spars of green wood, that were bunched up at one side, like a lady out for a walk. On a round table there was a beautiful blue cloth, with very few gravy marks, and here a man ate beef when a woman and a boy ate bread, and near the fire was the man's big soft chair, out of which you could pull hairs, just as if it were Shovel's sister. Of this man who was his father he could get no hold. He could feel his presence, but never see him. Yet he had a face. It sometimes pressed Tommy's face against it in order to hurt him, which it could do, being all short needles at the chin. Once in those days Tommy and his mother ran away and hid from some one. He did not know from whom nor for how long, though it was but for a week, and it left only two impressions on his mind, the one that he often asked, " Is this starving now, mother ? " the other that before turning a corner she always peered round it fearfully. Then they went back again to the man and he laughed when he saw them, but did not take his feet off the mantelpiece. There came a time when the man was always in bed, but still Tommy could not see his face. What he did see was the man's clothes lying on the large chair just as he had placed them there when he undressed for the last time. The black coat and worsted waistcoat which he could take off together were on the seat, and the light trousers hung over the side. #* 24 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY (! ' ll the legs on the hearthrug, with the red socks still stick- ing in them : a man without a body. But the boy had one vivid recollection, of how his mother received the news of his father's death. A& old man with a white beard and gentle ways, who often came to give the invalid physic, was standing at the bedside, and Tommy and his mother were sitting on the fender. The old man came to her and said, ** It is all over," and put her softly into the big chair. She covered her face with her hands, and he must have thought she was crying, for he tried to comfort her. But as soon as he was gone she rose, with such a queer face, and went on tiptoe to the bed, and looked intently at her husband, and then she clapped her hands joyously three times. At last Tommy fell asleep with his mouth open, which is the most important thing that has been told of him as yet, and while he slept day came and restored the furniture that night had stolen. But when the boy woke he did not even notice the change; his brain traversed the hours it had lost since he lay down as quickly as you may put on a stopped clock, and with his first tick he was thinking of nothing but the deceiver in the back of the bed. He raised his head, but could only see that she had crawled under the coverlet to escape his wrath. His mother was asleep. Tommy sat up and peeped over the edge of the bed, then he let his eyes wander round the room; he was ^\L BUT THE OTHER GETS IN 25 looking for the girPs clothes, but they were nowhere to be seen. It is distressing to have to tell that what was in his mind was merely the recovery of his penny. Perhaps as they were Sunday clothes she had hung them up in the wardrobe ? He .slipped on to the floor and crossed to the wardrobe, but not even the muft' could he find. Had she been tired, and gone to bed in them ? Very softly he crawled over his mother, and pulling the coverlet ofi the child's face, got the great shock of his childhood. It was another one ! '.'t^^. r ■MM CHAPTER III I t« SHOWING HOW TOMMY WAS SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN It would have fared ill with Mrs. Sandys now, had her standoffishness to her neighbors been repaid in the same coin, but they were full of sympathy, especially ShovePs old girl, from whom she had often drawn back offensively on the stair, but who nevertheless waddled up several times a day with savory messes, explaining, when Mrs. Sandys sniffed, that it was not the tapiocar but merely the cup that smelt of gin. When Tommy returned the cups she noticed not only that they were suspiciously clean, but that minute particles of the mess were adhering to his nose and chin (perched there like shipwrecked mariners on a rock, just out of reach of the devouring element), and after this discovery she brought two cupfuls at a time. She was an Irish, woman who could have led the House of Commons, and in walking she seldom raised her carpet shoes from the ground, perhaps because of her weight, for she had an expansive figure that bulged in all directions, and there were always bits of her here and there that she had forgotten to lace. Bound the corner was a delightful TOMMY A TOTJNG GENTLEMAN 27 eating-house, through whose window you were allowed to gaze at the great sweating dumplings, and Tommy thought Shovel's mother was rather like a dumpling that had not been a complete success. If he ever knew her name he forgot it. Shovel, who probably had another name also, called her his old girl or his old woman or his old lady, and it was a sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor, and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then Shovel sauced his father for interfer- ing, saying she should lick him as long as she blooming well liked, which made his father go for him with a dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his eye. For reasons less unselfish than his old girl's Shovel also was willing to make up to Tommy at this humili- ating time. It might be said of these two boys that Shovel knew everything but Tommy knew other things, and as the other things are best worth hearing of Shovel liked to listen to them, even when they were about Thrums, as they usually were. The very first time Tommy told him of the wondrous spot. Shovel had drawn a great breath, and said, thoughtfully : " I allers knowed as there were sich a beauty place, but I didn't jest know its name." \ SENTIMENTAL TOMMY If I " How could yer know ? " Tommy asked, jealously. "I ain't sure," said Shovel, "p'raps I dreamed on it." "That's it," Tommy cried. "I tell yer, everybody dreams on it!" and Tommy was right; everybody dreams of it, though not all call it Thrums. On the whole, then, the coming of the kid, who turned out to be called Elspeth, did not ostracize Tommy, but he wished that he had let the other girl in, for he never doubted that her admittance would have kept this one out. He told neither his mother nor his friend of the other girl, fearing that his mother would be angry with him when she learned what she had missed, and that Shovel would crow over his blunder- ing, but occasionally he took a side glance at the victo- rious infant, and a poorer affair, he thought, he had never set eyes on. Sometimes it was she who looked at him, and then her chuckle of triumph was hard to bear. As long as his mother was there, however, he endured in silence, but the first day she went out in a vain search for work (it is about as difficult to get washing as to get into the Cabinet), he gave the infant a piece of his mind, poking up her head with a stick so that she was bound to listen. " You thinks as it was clever on you, does yer ? Oh, if I had been on the stair I " You need n't not try to get round me. I likes the other one five times better ; yes, three times better. r TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 29 on " Thievey, thievey, thief, that 's her place you is lying in. What? " If you puts out your tongue at me again — ! What do yer say ? " She was twice bigger than you. You ain't got no hair, nor yet no teeth. You're the littlest I ever seed. Eh ? Don't not speak then, sulks ! " Prudence had kept him away from the other girl, but he was feeling a great want : someone to applaud him. When we grow older we call it sympathy. How Reddy (as he called her because she had beautiful red-brown hair) had appreciated him ! She had a way he liked of opening her eyes very wide when she looked at him. Oh, what a difference from that thing in the back of the bed ! Not the mere selfish desire to see her again, how- ever, would take him in quest of Reddy. He was one of those superior characters, was Tommy, who got his pleasure in giving it, and therefore gave it. Now, Reddy was a worthy girl. In suspecting her of overreaching him he had maligned her : she had taken what he offered, and been thankful. It was fitting that he should give her a treat : let her see him again. His mother was at last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street, she usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tommy's move- ments. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, how- ever, did not reach her as soon as doubtless she would / ■5 r 6 M VI 30 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY have liked, because the first two or three times he saw her she was walking with the lady of his choice, and of course he was not such a fool as to show himself. But he walked behind them and noted with satisfaction that the lady seemed to be reconciled to her lot and inclined to let bygones be bygones ; when at length Reddy and her patron met, Tommy thought this a good sign too, that Ma-ma (as she would call the lady) had told her not to go farther away than the lamp-post, lest she should get lost again. So evidently she had got lost once already, and the lady had been sorry. He asked Reddy many shrewd questions about how Ma-ma treated her, and if she got the top of the Sunday egg and had the licking of the pan and wore flannel underneath and slept at the back ; and the more he inquired, the more clearly he saw that he had got her one of the right kind. Tommy arranged with her that she should always be on the outlook for him at the window, and he would come sometimes, and after that they met frequently, and she proved a credit to him, gurgling with mirth at his tales of Thrums, and pinching him when he had finished, to make sure that he was really made just like common human beings. He was a thin, pale boy, while she looked like a baby rose full blown in a night because her time was short ; and his movements were sluggish, but if she was not walking she must be dancing, and sometimes when there were few people in the street, the little armful of delight that she was jumped up and »3 TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 31 ;| the and down like a ball, while Tommy kept the time, singing "Thruramy, Thrummy, Thrum Thrum Thrummy." They must have seemed a quaint pair to the lady as she sat at her window watching them and beckoning to Tommy to come in. One day he went in, but only because she had come up behind and taken his hand before he could run. Then did Tommy quake, for he knew from Eeddy how the day after the mother-making episode. Ma-ma and she had sought in vain for his door, and he saw that the object had been to call down curses on his head. So that head was hanging limply now. You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, but don't be too sure ; you just wait and see. Ma-ma and Reddy (who was clucking rather heartlessly) first took him into a room prettier even than the one he had lived in long ago (but there was no bed in it), and then, because someone they were in search of was not there, into another room without a bed (where on earth did they sleep ?) whose walls were lined with books. Never having seen rows of books before except on sale in the streets, Tommy at once looked about him for the barrow. The table was strewn with sheets of paper of the size that they roll a quarter of butter in, and it was an amazing thick table, a solid square of wood, save for a narrow lane down the centre for the man to put his legs in — if he had legs, which unfortunately there was reason to doubt. He was a formidable man, whose beard licked the table while he %r :.;;:-j rj: r?3 at v\ SENTIMENTAL TOMMY wrote, and he wore something like a brown blanket, with a rope tied round it at the middle. Even more uncanny than himself were three busts on a shelf, which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared the blanket might blow open and show that the man also ended at the waist. But he did not, for presently he turned round to see who had come in (the seat of his chair turning with him in the most startling way) and then Tommy was relieved to notice two big feet far away at the end of him. "This is the boy, dear," the lady said. "I had to bring him in by force." Tommy raised his arm instinctively to protect his face, this being the kind of man who could hit hard. But presently he was confused, and also, alas, leering a little. You may remember that Reddy had told him she must not go beyond the lamp-post, lest she should be lost again. She had given him no details of the adven- ture, but he learned now from Ma-ma and Papa (the man^s name was Papa) that she had strayed when Ma-ma was in a shop and that some good kind boy had found her and brought her home ; and what do you say to this, they thought Tommy was that boy! In his amazement he very nearly blurted out that he was the other boy, but just then the lady asked Papa if he had a shilling, and this abruptly closed Tommy's mouth. Ever after- wards he remembered Papa as the man that was not sure whether he had a shilling until he felt his pockets — a new kind of mortal to Tommy, who grabbed the TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 33 shilling when it was offered to him, and then looked at Reddy imploringly, he was so afraid she would tell. But she behaved splendidly, and never even shook her head at him. After this, as hardly need be told, his one desire was to get out of the house with his shilling before they discovered their mistake, and it was well that they were unsuspicious people, for he was making strange hissing sounds in his throat, the result of trying hard to keep his sniggers under control. There were many ways in which Tommy could have disposed of his shilling. He might have been a good boy and returned it next day to Papa. He might have given Reddy half of it for not telling. It could have carried him over the winter. He might have stalked with it into the shop where the greasy puddings were and come rolling out hours afterwards. Some of these schemes did cross his little mind, but he decided to spend the whole shilling on a present to his mother, and it was to be something useful. He devoted much thought to what she was most in need of, and at last he bought her a colored picture of Lord Byron swimming the Hellespont. He told her that he got his shilling from two toffs for playing with a little girl, and the explanation satisfied her ; but she could have cried at the waste of the money, which would have been such a God-send to her. He cried altogether, however, at sight of her face, having expected it to look so pleased, and then she told him, 3 / ii if 34 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY with caresses, that the picture was the one thing she had been longing for ever since she came to London. How had he known this, she asked, and he clapped his hands gleefully, and said he just knowed when he saw it in the shop window. " It was noble of you," she said, " to spend all your siller on me." " Was n't it, mother ? " he crowed. " I 'm thinking there ain't many as noble as I is!" . w He did not say why he had been so good to her, but it was because she had written no letters to Thrums since the intrusion of Elspeth; a strange reason for a boy whose greatest glory at one time had been to sit on the fender and exultingly watch his mother write down words that would be read aloud in the wonderful place. She was a long time in writing a letter, but that only made the whole evening romantic, and he found an arduous employment in keeping his tongue wet in preparation for the licking of the stamp. But she could not write to the Thrums folk now without telling them of Elspeth, who was at present sleeping the sleep of the shameless in the hollow of the bed, and so for his sake. Tommy thought, she meant to write no more. For his sake, mark you, not for her own. She had often told him that some day he should go to Thrums, but not with her ; she would be far away from him then in a dark place she was aiwid to be lying in. Thus it seemed to Tommy that TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 35 she denied herself the pleasure of writing to Thrums lest the sorry news of Elspeth's advent should spoil his reception when he went north. So grateful Tommy gave her the picture, hoping that it would fill the void. But it did not. She put it on the mantelpiece so that she might just sit and look at it, she said, and he grinned at it from every part of the room, but when he returned to her, he saw that she was neither looking at it nor thinking of it. She was look- ing straight before her, and sometimes her lips twitched, and then she drew them into her mouth to keep them still. It is a kind of dry weeping that sometimes comes to miserable ones when their minds stray into the happy past, and Tommy sat and watched her silently for a long time, never doubting that the cause of all her woe was that she could not write to Thrums. He had seldom seen tears on his mother's face, but he saw one now. They had been reluctant to come for many a day, and this one formed itself beneath her eye and sat there like a blob of blood. His own began to come more freely. But she need n*t not expect him to tell her to write nor to say that he did n't care what Thrums thought of him so long as she was happy. The tear rolled down his mother's thin cheek and fell on the gray shawl that had come from Thrums. She did not hear her boy as he dragged a chair to the press and standing on it got something down from HI 1II 't rnfiir'm'-^iWKn^ni'^ir.'';'::^:: ct-m» ;m», fiB»»rf-ffi!»y 7jf| WWMI 36 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY t!|i the top shelf. She had forgotten him, and she started when presently the pen was slipped into her hand and Tommy said, " You can do it, mother, I wants yer to do it, mother, I won't not greet, mother!" ^ • When she saw what he wanted her to do she patted his face approvingly, but without realizing the extent of his sacrifice. She knew that he had some maggot in his head that made him regard Elspeth as a sore on the family honor, but ascribing his views to jealousy she had never tried seriously to change them. Her main reason for sending no news to Thrums of late had been but the cost of the stamp, though she was also a little conscience-stricken at the kind of letters she wrote, and the sight of the materials lying ready for her proved sufficient to draw her to the table. "Is it to your grandmother you is writting the letter?" Tommy asked, for her grandmother had brought Mrs. Sandys up and was her only surviving relative. This was all Tommy knew of his mother's life in Thrums, though she had told him much about other Thrums folk, and not till long afterwards did he see that there must be something queer about herself, which she was hiding from him. This letter was not for her granny, however, and Tommy asked next, " Is it to Aaron Latta ? " which so startled her that she dropped the pen. " Whaur heard you that name ? " she said, sharply. "I never spoke" it to you." TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 87 "IVe heard you saying it when you was sleeping, mother." " Did I say onything but the name ? Quick, tell me." "You said, *0h, Aaron Latta, oh, Aaron, little did we think, Aaron,* and things like that. Are you angry with me, mother ? " "No," she said, relieved, but it was some time before the desire to write came back to her. Then she told him " The letter is to a woman that was gey cruel to me," adding, with a complacent pursing of her lips, the curi- ous remark, " That 's the kind I like to write to best." The pen went scrape, scrape, but Tommy did not weary, though he often sighed, because his mother would never read aloud to him what she wrote. The Thrums people never answered her letters, for the reason, she said, that those she wrote to could not write, which seemed to simple Tommy to be a suffi- cient explanation. So he had never heard the inside of a letter talking, though a postman lived in the house, and even Shovel's old girl got letters; once when her uncle died she got a telegram, which Shovel proudly wheeled up and down the street in a barrow, other blokes keeping guard at the side. To give a letter to a woman who had been cruel to you struck Tommy as the height of nobility. " She '11 be uplifted when she gets it ! " he cried. "She'll be mad when she gets it," answered his mother, without looking up. n : Jlil It I 88 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY This was the letter : — " My dear Esther, — I send you these few scrapes to let you see 1 have not forgot you, though my way is now grand by yours. A spleet new black silk, Esther, being the second in a twelvemonth, as I *m a living woman. The other is no none tashed yet, but my gudeman fair insisted on buying a new one, for says he * Rich folk like us can afford to be mislaird, and nothing 's ower braw for my bonny Jean.' Tell Aaron Latta that. When I'm sailing in my silks, Esther, I sometimes pic- ture you turning your wincey again, for I 'se uphaud that 's all the new frock you've ha 'en the year. I dinna want to give you a scunner of your man, Esther, more by token they said if your mither had not took him in hand you would never have kent the color of his nightcap, but when you are wraxing ower your kail-pot in a plot of heat, just picture me ringing the bell for my servant, and saying, with a wave of my hand, 'Servant, lay the dinner.' And ony bonny afternoon when your man is cleaning out stables and you 're at the tub in a short gown, picture my man taking me and the children out a ride in a carriage, and I sair doubt your bairns was never in nothing more genteel than a coal cart. For bairns is yours, Esther, and children is mine, and that *s a burn without a brig till 't. " Deary me, Esther, what with one thing and another, namely buying a sofa, thirty shillings as I 'm a sinner, I have forgot to tell you about my second, and it's a girl this time, my man say- ing he would like a change. We have christened her Elspeth after my grandmamma, and if my auld granny 's aye living, you can tell her that's her. My man is terrible windy of his two beautiful children, but he says he would have been the happiest gentleman in London though he had just had me, and really his fondness for me, it cows, Esther, sitting aside me on the bed, two pounds without the blankets, about the time Elspeth TOMMY A YOUNG GENTLE»1AN 39 was born, and feeding me with the fat of the land, namely, tapiocas and sherry wine. Tell Aaron Latta that. "I pity you from the bottom of my heart, Esther, for having to bide in Thrums, but you have never seen no better, your man having neither the siller nor the desire to take you jaunts, and I 'm thinking that is just as well, for if you saw how the like of me lives it might disgust you with your own bit house. I often laugh, Esther, to think that 1 was once like you, and looked upon Thrums as a bonny place. How is the old hole ? My son makes grand sport of the onfortunate bairns as has to bide in Thrums, and I see him doing it the now to his favorite companion, which is a young gentleman of ladylike manners, as bides in our terrace. So no more at present, for my man is sitting ganting for my society, and I daresay yours is crying to you to darn his old socks. Mind and tell Aaron Latta." This letter was posted next day by Tommy, with the assistance of Shovel, who seems to have been the young gentleman of ladylike manners referred to in the text. V ' ) f riMU :r i CHAPTER IV liy<. II. I 1:^ THE END OF AN IDYLL Tommy never saw Reddy again owing to a fright he got about this time, for which she was really to blame, though a woman who lived in his house was the instrument. It is, perhaps, idle to attempt a summary of those who lived in that house, as one at least will be off, and another in his place, while we are giving ^* ^m a line apiece. They were usually this kind wh ^ed through the wall from Mrs. Sandys, but beneath her were the two rooms of Hankey, the postman, and his lodger, the dreariest of middle-aged clerks except when telling wistfully of his ambition, which was to get out of the tea department into the coffee department, where there is an easier way of counting up the figures. Shovel and family were also on this floor, and in the rooms under them was a newly married couple. When the husband was away at his work, his wife would make some change in the furniture, taking the picture from this wall, for instance, and hanging it on that wall, or wheeling the funny chair she had lain in before THE END OF AN IDYLL 41 she could walk without a crutch, to the other side of the fireplace, or putting a skirt of yellow paper round the flower pot, and when he returned he always jumped back in wonder and exclaimed: "What an immense improvement ! " These two were so fond of one another that Tommy asked them the reason, and they gave it by pointing to the chair with the wheels, which seemed to him to be no reason at all. What was this young hus- band's trade Tommy never knew, but he was the only prettily dressed man in the house, and he could be heard roaring in his sleep, "And the next article?" The meanest looking man lived next door to him. Every morning this man put on a clean white shirt, which sounds like a splendid beginning, but his other clothes were of the seediest, and he came and went shivering, raising his shoulders to his ears and spread- ing his hands over his chest as if anxious to hide his shirt rather than to display it. He and the happy hus- band were nicknamed Before and After, they were so like the pictorial advertisement of Man before and after he has tried Someone's lozenges. But it is rash to judge by outsides ; Tommy and Shovel one day tracked Before to his place of business, and it proved to be a palatial eating-house, long, narrow, padded with red cushions ; through the door they saw the once despised, now in beautiful black clothes, the waistcoat a mere nothing, as if to give his shirt a chance at last, a towel over his arm, and to and fro he darted, saying ■ H i.i SENTIMENTAL TOMMY " Yessirquitesosir " to the toffs on the seats, shouting " Twovegonebeef — onebeeronetartinahiirry " to some- one invisible, and pocketing twopences all day long, just like a lord. On the same floor as Before and After lived the large family of little Pikes, who quarrelled at night for the middle place in the bed, and then chips of ceiling fell into the room below, tenant Jim Bicketts and parents, lodger the young woman we have been trying all these doors for. Her the police snapped up on a charge that made Tommy want to hide himself — child-desertion. Shovel was the person best worth listening to on the subject (observe him, the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the defence, being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the case against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The police had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing ones they pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended to go away. Soon the mother, who was watching hard by to see if it fell into kind hands, stole to her baby to comfort it, " and just as she were a kissing on it and blubbering, the perlice copped her." "The slut!" said disgusted Shovel, "what did she hang about for?" and in answer. to a trembling ques- tion from Tommy he replied, decisively, " Six months hard." "Next case" was probably called immediately, but THE END OP AN IDYLL 43 Tommy vanished, as if he had been sentenced and removed to the cells. Never again, unless he wanted six months hard, must he go near Keddy's home, and so he now frequently accompanied his mother to the place where she worked. The little room had a funny fireplace called a stove, on which his mother made tea and the girls roasted chest- nuts, and it had no other ordinary furniture except a long form. But the walls were mysterious. Three of them were covered with long white cloths, which went to the side when you tugged them, and then you could see on rails dozens of garments that looked like night- gowns. Beneath the form were scores of little shoes, most of them white or brown. In this house Tommy's mother spent eight hours daily, but not all of them in this room. When she arrived the first thing she did was to put Elspeth on the floor, because you cannot fall off a floor; then she went upstairs with a bucket and a broom to a large bare room, where she stayed so long that Tommy nearly forgot what she was like. While his mother was upstairs Tommy would give Elspeth two or three shoes to eat to keep her quiet, and then he played with the others, pretending to be able to count them, arranging them in designs, shooting them, swimming among them, saying "bow-wow" at them and then turning sharply to see who had said it. Soon Elspeth dropped her shoes and gazed in admira- tion at him, but more often than not she laughed in the SSSttiS&erBr- r mamt ■ lV ^utt' fWKtf'W WH M '^1 i I I ^h ^iwih ■■ / 44 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY wrong place, and then he said ironically: "Oh, in course I can't do nothin* ; jest let 's see you doing of it, then, cocky!" By the time the girls began to arrive, singly or in twos and threes, his mother was back in the little room, making tea for herself or sewing bits of them that had been torn as they stepped out of a cab, or helping them to put on the nightgowns, or pretending to listen pleasantly to their chatter and hating them all the time. There was every kind of them, gorgeous ones and shabby ones, old tired ones and dashing young ones, but whether they were the Honorable Mrs. Some- thing or only Jane Anything, they all came to that room for the same purpose: to get a little gown and a pair of shoes. Then they went upstairs and danced to a stout little lady, called the Sylph, who bobbed about like a ball at the end of a piece of elastic. What Tommy never forgot was that while they danced the Sylph kept saying, "One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four," which they did not seem to mind, but when she said "One, two, three, ioxiT, picture/" they all stopped and stood motionless, though it might be with one foot as high as their head and their arms stretched out toward the floor, as if they had suddenly seen a halfpenny there. In the waiting-room, how they joked and pirouetted and gossiped, and hugged and scorned each other, and what slang they spoke and how pretty they often looked THE END OP AN IDYLL 45 next moment, and how they denounced the one that had Just gone out as a cat with whom you could not get in a word edgeways, and oh, how prompt they were to give a slice of their earnings to any "cat" who was hard up! But still, they said, she had talent, but no genius. How they pitied people without genius. Have you ever tasted an encore or a reception ? Tommy never had his teeth in one, but he heard much about them in that room, and concluded that they were some sort of cake. It was not the girls who danced in groups, but those who danced alone, that spoke of their encores and receptions, and sometimes they had got" them last night, sometimes years ago. Two girls met in the room, one of whom had stolen the other's recep- tion, and — but it was too dreadful to write about. Most of them carried newspaper cuttings in their purses and read them aloud to the others, who would not listen. Tommy listened, however, and as it was all about how one house had risen at the girls and they had brought another down, he thought they led the most adventurous lives. Occasionally they sent him out to buy newspapers or chestnuts, and then he had to keep a sharp eye on the police lest they knew about Keddy. It was a point of honor with all the boys he knew to pretend that the policeman was after them. To gull the policeman into thinking all was well they blackened their faces and wore their jackets inside out; their occupation was a HttN 46 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY r constant state of readiness to fly from him, and when he tramped out of sight, unconscious of their existence, they emerged from dark places and spoke in exultant whispers. Tommy had been proud to join them, but he now resented their going on in this way; he felt that he alone had the right to fly from the law. And once at least while he was flying something happened to him that he was to remember better, far better, than his mother's face. What set him running on this occasion (he had been sent out to get one of the girls' shoes soled) was the grandest sight to be seen in London — an endless row of policemen walking in single file, all with the right leg in the air at the same time, then the left leg. See- ing at once that they were after him. Tommy ran, ran, ran until in turning a corner he found himself wedged between two legs. He was of just sufficient size to fill the aperture, but after a momentary lock he squeezed through, and they proved to be the gate into an enchanted land. The magic began at once. "Dagont, you sacketl" cried some wizard. A policeman's hand on his shoulder could not have taken the wind out of Tommy more quickly. In the dct of startinifi a-running again he brought down his hind foot with a thud and stood stock still. Can any one wonder ? It was the Thrums tongue, and this the first time he had heard it except from his mother. THE END OF AN IDYLL 47 It was a dull day, and all the walls were dripping wet, this being the part of London where the fogs are kept. Many men and women were passing to and fro, and Tommy, with a wild exultation in his breast, peered up at the face of this one and that; but no, they were only ordinary people, and he played rub-a-dub with his feet on the pavement, so furious was he with them for moving on as if nothing had happened. Draw up, ye carters ; pedestrians, stand still ; London, silence for a moment, and let Tommy Sandys listen I Being but a frail plant in the way of a flood. Tommy was rooted up and borne onward, but he did not feel the buffeting. In a passion of grief he dug his fists in his eyes, for the glory had been his for but a moment. It can be compared to nothing save the parcel (attached to a concealed string) which Shovel and he once placed on the stair for Billy Hankey to find, and then whipped away from him just as he had got it under his arm. But so near the crying, Tommy did not cry, for even while the tears were rushing to his aid he tripped on the step of a shop, and immediately, as if that had rung the magic bell again, a voice, a woman's voice this time, said shrilly, "Threepence ha'penny, and them jimply as big as a bantam's I Ka, na, but I'll gi'e you five bawbees." Tommy sat down flop on the step, feeling queer in the head. Was it — was it — was it Thrums ? He knew he had been running a long time. /^^ / MM 48 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY The woman, or fairy, or whatever you choose to call her, came out of the shop and had to push Tommy aside to get past. Oh, what a sweet foot to be kicked by. At the time, he thought she was dressed not unlike the women of his own stair, but this defect in his vision he mended afterward, as you may hear. Of course, he rose and trotted by her side like a dog, looking up at her as if she were a cathedral ; but she mistook his awe for impudence and sent him sprawling, with the words, " Tak' that, you glowering partan ! " Do you think Tommy resented this ? On the con- trary, he screamed from where he lay, "Say it again! say it again!" She was gone, however, but only, as it were, to let a window open, from which came the cry, "Davit, have you seen my man ? " A male fairy roared back from some invisible place, "He has gone yont to Petey's wi' the dambrod." "I'll dambrod him!" said the female fairy, and the window shut. Tommy was now staggering like one intoxicated, but he had still some sense left him, and he walked up and down in front of this house, as if to take care of it. In the middle of the street some boys were very busy at a game, carts and lorries passing over them occasionally. They came to the pavement to play marbles, and then Tommy noticed that one of them wore what was prob- ably a glengarry bonnet. Could he be a Thrums boy ? ■It I'-':' [I I THE END OF AN IDYLL 49 I the At first he played in the stupid London way, but by and by he had to make a new ring, and he did it by whirling round on one foot. Tommy knew from his mother that it is only done in this way in Thrums. Ohol Oho! By this time he was prancing round his discovery, saying, " I 'm one, too — so am I — dagont, does yer hear? dagont!" which so alarmed the boy that he picked up his marble and fled. Tommy, of course, after him. Alas! he must have been some mischievous sprite, for he lured his pursuer back into London and then vanished, and Tommy, searching in vain for the enchanted street, found his own door instead. His mother pooh-poohed his tale, though he described the street exactly as it struck him on reflection, and it bore a curious resemblance to the palace of Aladdin that Reddy had told him about, leaving his imagination to fill in the details, which it promptly did, with a square, a town-house, some outside stairs, and an auld licht kirk. There was no such street, however, his mother assured him; he had been dreaming. But if this were so, why was she so anxious to make him promise never 40 look for the place again ? He did go in search of it again, daily for a time, always keeping a look-out for bow-legs, and the moment he saw them, he dived recklessly between, hoping to come out into fairyland on the other side. For though he had lost the street, he knew that this was the way in. w 50 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ii Shovel had never heard of the street, nor had Bob. But Bob gave him something that almost made him forget it for a time. Bob was his favorite among the dancing girls, and she — or should it be he ? The odd thing about these girls was that a number of them were really boys — or at least were boys at Christmas-time, which seemed to Tommy to be even stranger than if they had been boys all the year round. A friend of Bob's remarked to her one day, " You are to be a girl next winter, ain't you. Bob ?" and Bob shook her head scornfully. " Do you see any green in my eye, my dear ? " she inquired. ' Her friend did not look, but Tommy looked, and there was none. He assured her of this so earnestly that Bob fell in love with him on the spot, and chucked him under the chin, first with her thumb and then with her toe, which feat was duly reported to Shovel, who could do it by the end of the week. Did Tommy, Bob wanted to know, still think her a mere woman ? No, he withdrew the charge, but — but — She was wearing her outdoor garments, and he pointed to them. " Why does yer wear them, then ? " he demanded. "For the matter of that," she replied, pointing at his frock, " why do you wear them ? " Whereupon Tommy began to cry. ., " I ain't not got no right ones," he blubbered. Harum- ■4 .■ # h '. she ' 'Al BOB FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM ON THE SPOT [■!' f THE END OF AN IDYLL 51 *> scarum Bob, who was a trump, had him in her motherly arms immediately, and the upshot of it was that a blue suit she had worn when she was Sam Some- thing changed owners. Mrs. Sandys "made it up," and that is how Tommy got into trousers. Many contingencies were considered in the making, but the suit would fit Tommy by and by if he grew, or it shrunk, and they did not pass each other in the night. When proud Tommy first put on his suit the most unexpected shyness overcame him, and having set off vaingloriously he stuck on the stair and wanted to hide. Shovel, who had been having an argument with his old girl, came, all boastful bumps, to him, and Tommy just stood still with a self-conscious simper on his face. And Shovel, who could have damped him considerably, behaved in the most honorable manner, initiating him gravely into the higher life, much as you show the new member round your club. It was very risky to go back to Reddy, whom he had not seen for many weeks; but in trousers I He could not help it. He only meant to walk up and down her street, so that she might see him from the window, and know that this splendid thing was he; but though he went several times into the street, Reddy never came to the window. The reason he had to wait in vain at Reddy's door was that she was dead ; she had been dead for quite a long time when Tommy came back to look for her. You mnnrni i 52 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY mothers who have lost your babies, I should be a sorry knave were I to ask you to cry now over the death of another woman's child. Keddy had been lent to two people for a very little while, just as your babies were, and when the time was up she blew a kiss to them and ran gleefully back to Cod, just as your Babies did. The gates of heaven are so easily found when we are little, and they are always standing open to let children wander in. But though Reddy was gone away forever, mamma still lived in that house, and on a day she opened the door to come out. Tommy was standing there — she saw him there waiting for Reddy. Dry-eyed this sorrowful woman had heard the sentence pronounced, dry-eyed she had followed the little coffin to its grave; tears had not come even when waking from illusive dreams she put out her hand in bed to a child who was not there; but when she saw Tommy waiting at the door for Reddy, who had been dead for a month, her bosom moved and she could cry again. Those tears were sweet to her husband, and it was he who took Tommy on his knee in the room where the books were, and told him that there was no Reddy now. When Tommy knew that Reddy was a deader he cried bitterly, and the man said, very gently, "I am glad you were so fond of her." >» "'T ain't that," Tommy answered with a knuckle in his eye, "'t ain't that as makes me cry." He looked THE END OP AN IDYLL 63 down at his trousers and in a fresh outburst of childish grief he wailed, " It 's them I " Papa did not understand, but the boy explained. "She can't not never see them now," he sobbed, "and I wants her to see them, and they has pockets ! " It had come to the man unexpectedly. He put Tommy down almost roughly, and raised his hand to his head as if ho felt a sudden pain there. But Tommy, you know, was only a little boy. \ 3fWM_w»;'»*fb(i!'a I r H V^ < u u ■a I ^1 f CHAPTER V THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS Elspeth at last did something to win Tommy's respect ; she fell ill of an ailment called in Thrums the croop. When Tommy first heard his mother call it croop, he thought she was merely humoring Elspeth, and that it was nothing more distinguished than London whooping-cough, but on learning that it was genuine croop, he began to survey the ambitious little creature with a new interest. This was well for Elspeth, as she had now to spend most of the day at home with him, their mother, whose health was failing through frequent attacks of bronchitis, being no longer able to carry her through the streets. Of course Elspeth took to repaying his attentions by loving him, and he soon suspected it, and then gloomily admitted it to himself, but never to Shovel. Being but an Englishman, Shovel saw no reason why relatives should conceal their affection for each other, but he played on this Scottish weakness of Tommy's with cruel enjoyment. "She's fond on yer! " he would say, severely, « You 's a liar." THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS 55 " Gar long! I believe as you 're fond on her I " "You jest take care, Shovel." " Ain't yer?" "Na-o!" " Will yer swear ? " "So I will swear." "Let's hear yer." "Dagont!" So for a time the truth was kept hidden, and Shovel retired, casting aspersions, and offering to eat all the hair on Elspeth's head for a penny. This hair was white at present, which made Tommy uneasy about her future, but on the whole he thought he might make something of her if she was only longer. Sometimes he stretched 'her on the floor, pulling her legs out straight, for she had a silly way of doubling them up, and then he measured her carefully with his mother's old boots. Her growth proved to be distress- ingly irregular, as one day she seemed to have grown an inch since last night, and then next day she had shrunk two inches. After her day's work Mrs. Sandys was now so list- less that, had not Tommy interfered, Elspeth would have been a backward child. Eeddy had been, able to walk from the first day, and so of course^'-had he, but this little slow-coach's legs wobbled at the joints, like the blade of a knife without a spring. The question of questions was How to keep her on end ? _J_^ i 56 \s ' SENTIMENTAL TOMMY Tommy sat on the fender revolving this problem, his head resting on his hand : that favorite position of mighty intellects when about to be photographed. Elspeth lay on her stomach on the floor, gazing earnestly at him, as if she knew she was in his thoughts for some stupendous purpose. Thus the apple may have looked at Newton before it fell. Hankey, the postman, compelled the flowers in his window to stand erect by tying them to sticks, so Tommy took two sticks from a bundle of firewood, and splicing Elspeth's legs to them, held her upright against the door with one hand. All he asked of her to-day was to remain in this position after he said "One, two, three, four, picture/" and withdrew his hand, but down she flopped every time, and he said, with scorn, "You ain*t got no genius: you has just talent." But he had her in bed with the scratches nicely covered up before his mother came home. He tried another plan with more success. Lost dogs, it may be remembered, had a habit of following Shovel's father, and he not only took the wanderers in, but taught them how to beg and shake hands and walk on two legs. Tommy had sometimes been present at these agreeable exercises, and being an inventive boy he — But as Elspeth was a nice girl, let it suffice to pause here and add shyly, that in time she could walk. Ho also taught her to speak, and if you need to be THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS 57 to be told with what luscious word he enticed her into language you are sentenced to re-read the lirst pages of his life. "Thrums," he would say persuasively, "Thrums, Thrums. You opens your mouth like this, and shuts it like this, and that's it." Yet when he had coaxed her thus for many days, what does she do but break her long silence with the word "Tommy!" The recoil knocked her over. Soon afterward she brought down a bigger bird. No Londoner can say "Auld licht," and Tommy had often crowed over Shovel's "01 likt." When the testing of Elspeth could be deferred no longer, he eyed her with the look a hen gives the green egg on which she has been sitting twenty days, but Elspeth triumphed, say- ing the words modestly even, as if nothing inside her told her she had that day done something which would have baffled Shakespeare, not to speak of most of the gentlemen who sit for Scotch constituencies. " Reddy could n't say it!" Tommy cried, exultantly, and from that great hour he had no more fears for Elspeth. Next the alphabet knocked for admission; and entered first M and P, which had prominence in the only poster visible from the window. Mrs. Sandys had taught Tommy his letters, but he had got into words by study- ing posters. Elspeth being able now to make the perilous descent h ~^^pm I w 58 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY of the stairs, Tommy guided her through the streets (letting go hurriedly if Shovel hove in sight), and here she bagged new letters daily. With Catlings some- thing, which is the best, she got into capital Cs; ys are found easily when you know where to look for them (they hang on behind); Xs are never found singly, but often three at a time ; Q is so aristocratic that even Tommy had only heard of it, doubtless it was there, but indistinguishable among the masses like a celebrity in a crowd; on the other hand, big A and little e were so dirt cheap, that these two scholars passed them with something very like a sneer. The printing-press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes for- gets which. Elspeth's faith in it was absolute, and as it only spoke to her from placards, here was her religion, at the age of four: "Pray without ceasing. Happy are they who needing know the Painless Porous Plaster." Of religion. Tommy had said many fine things to her, embellishments on the simple doctrine taught him by his mother before the miseries of this world made her indifEerent to the next. But the meaning of "Pray without ceasing," Elspeth, who was God'« child always, seemed to find out for herself, and it cured all her troubles. She prayed promptly for every one she saw THE GIRL "WITH TWO MOTHERS 59 ;reets here jome- /s are them ingly, b even there, ebrity e were n with iing or es for- and as 1,8 her B to her, dm by ide her "Pray ilways, Ihe saw doing wrong, including Shovel, who occasionally had words with Tommy on the subject, and she not only prayed for her mother, but proposed to Tommy that they should buy her a porous plaster. . Mrs. Sandys had been down with bronchitis again. Tommy raised the monetary difficulty. Elspeth knew where there was some money, and it was her very own. Tommy knew where there was money, and it was his very own. Elspeth would not tell how much she had, and it was twopence halfpenny. Neither would Tommy tell, and it was twopence. Tommy would get a surprise on his birthday. So would Elspeth get a surprise on her birthday. Elspeth would not tell what the surprise was to be, and it was to be a gun. Tommy also must remain mute, and it was to be a box of dominoes. Elspeth did not want dominoes. Tommy knew that, but he wanted them. Elspeth discovered that guns cost fourpence, and dominoes threepence halfpenny; it seemed to her, therefore, that Tommy was defrauding her of a half- penny. Tommy liked her cheek. You got the dominoes for threepence halfpenny, but the price on the box is five- pence, so that Elspeth would really owe him a penny. 60 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY 'i * I i ! i This led to an agonizing scene in which Elspeth wept while Tommy told her sternly about Eeddy. It had become his custom to tell the tale of Keddy when Elspeth was obstreperous. Then followed a scene in which Tommy called him- self a scoundrel for frightening his dear Elspeth, and swore that he loved none but her. Eesult : reconcilia- tion, and agreed, that instead of a gun and dominoes, they should buy a porous plaster. You know the shops where the plasters are to be obtained by great colored bottles in their windows, and, as it was advisable to find the very best shop, Tommy and Elspeth in their wanderings came under the influence of the bottles, red, yellow, green, and blue, and color entered into their lives, giving them many delicious thrills. These bottles are the first poem known to the London child, and you chemists who are beginning to do without them in your windows should be told that it is a shame. In the glamour, then, of the romantic bottles walked Tommy and Elspeth hand in hand, meeting so many novelties that they might have spared a tear for the unfortunate children who sit in nurseries surrounded by all they ask for, and if the adventures of these two frequently ended in the middle, they had probably begun another while the sailor-suit boy was still hold- ing up his leg to let the nurse put on his little sock. While they wandered, they drew near unwittingly to the enchanted street, to which the bottles are a colored THE GIRL WITH TWO MOTHERS 61 way, and at last they were in it, but Tommy recognized it not; he did not even feel that he was near it, for there were no outside stairs, no fairies strolling about, it was a short street as shabby as his own. But someone had shouted "Dinna haver, lassie; you're blethering!" Tommy whispered to Elspeth, "Be still; don't speak, " and he gripped her hand tighter and stared at the speaker. He was a boy of ten, dressed like a Londoner, and his companion had disappeared. Tommy never doubting but that he was the sprite of long ago, gripped him by the sleeve. All the savings of Elspeth and himself were in his pocket, and yielding to impulse, as was his way, he thrust the fivepence halfpenny into James Gloag's hand. The new millionaire gaped, but not at his patron, for the why and wherefore of this gift were trifles to James beside the tremendous fact that he had fivepence halfpenny. " Almichty me I " he cried and bolted. Presently he returned, having deposited his money in a safe place, and his first remark was perhaps the meanest on record. He held out his hand and said, greedily, "Have you ony mair ? " This, you feel certain, must have been the most important event of that evening, but strange to say, it was not. Before Tommy could answer James's ques- tion, a woman in a shawl had pounced upon him and hurried him and Elspeth out of the street. She had it I ■;' i I' I 62 M SENTIMENTAL TOMMY been standing at a corner looking wistfully at the window blinds behind which folk from Thrums passed to and fro, hiding her face from people in the street, but gazing eagerly after them. It was Tommy's mother, whose first free act on coming to London had been to find out that street, and many a time since then she had skulked through it or watched it from dark places, never daring to disclose herself, but sometimes recognizing familiar faces, sometimes hearing a few words in the old tongue that is harsh and ungracious to you, but was so sweet to her, and bearing them away with her beneath her shawl as if they were something warm to lay over her cold heart. For a time she upbraided Tommy passionately for not keeping away from this street, but soon her hunger for news of Thrums overcame her prudence, and she consented to let him go back if he promised never to tell that his mother came from Thrums. "And if ony- body wants to ken your name, say it's Tommy, but dinna let on that it's Tommy Sandys." "Elspeth," Tommy whispered that night, "I 'm near sure there 's something queer about my mother and me and you." But he did not trouble himself with won- dering what the something queer might be, so engrossed was he in the new and exciting life that had suddenly opened to him. ♦ ' '1 lie led let, y's had hen lark Lines few us to away thing Ly for unger d she \rer to E ony- y, but □a near tnd me won- rossed ddenly \ CHAPTER VI THE ENCHANTED STREET In Thrums Street, as it ought to have been called, herded at least one-half of the Thrums folk in London, and they formed a colony, of which the grocer at the corner sometimes said wrathfully that not a member would give sixpence for anything except Bibles or whiskey. In the streets one could only tell they were not Londoners by their walk, the flagstones having no grip for their feet, or, if they had come south late in life, by their backs, which they carried at the angle on which webs are most easily supported. When mixing with the world they talked the English tongue, which came out of them as broad as if it had been squeezed through a mangle, but when the day^s work was done, it was only a few of the giddier striplings that remained Londoners. For the majority there was no raking the streets after diversion, they spent the hour or two before bed-time in reproducing the life of Thrums. Few of them knew much of London except the nearest way between this street and their work, and their most interesting visitor was a Presbyterian minister, most of 64 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ^1 I ! ( I whose congregation lived in much more fashionable parts, but they were almost exclusively servant girls, and when descending area-steps to visit them he had been challenged often and jocularly by policemen, which perhaps was what gave him a subdued and furtive appearance. The rooms were furnished mainly with articles bought in London, but these became as like Thrums dressers and seats as their owners could make them, old Petey, for instance, cutting the back off a chair because he felt most at home on stools. Drawers were used as baking-boards, pails turned into salt-buckets, floors were sanded and hearthstones ca'med, and the popular supper consisted of porter, hot water, and soaked bread, after every spoonful of which they groaned pleasantly, and stretched their legs. Sometimes they played at the dambrod, but more often they pulled down the blinds on London and talked of Thrums in their mother tongue. Nevertheless few of them wanted to return to it, and their favorite joke was the case of James Gloag's father, who being home-sick flung up his situa- tion and took train for Thrums, but he was back in London in three weeks. Tommy soon had the entry to these homes, and his first news of the inmates was unexpected. It was that they were always sleeping. In broad daylight he had seen Thrums men asleep on beds, and he was somewhat ashamed of them until he heard the excuse. A number t THE ENCHANTED STREET 65 Ind his las that Ihe had lewhat Inuraber of the men from Thrums were bakers, the first emigrant of this trade having drawn others after him, and they slept great part of the day to be able to work all night in a cellar, making nice rolls for rich people. Baker Lumsden, who became a friend of Tommy, had got his place in the cellar when his brother died, and the brother had succeeded Matthew Croall when he died. They die very soon. Tommy learned from Lumsden, generally when they are eight and thirty. Lumsden was thirty-six, and when he died his nephew was to get the place. The wages are good. Then there were several masons, one of whom, like the first baker, had found work for all the others, and there were men who had drifted into trades strange to their birthplace, and there was usually one at least who had come to London to "better himself" and had not done it as yet. The family Tommy liked best was the Whamonds, and especially he liked old Petey and young Petey Whamond. They were a large family of women and men, all of whom earned their living in other streets, except the old man, who kept house and was a famous knitter of stockings, as probably his father had been before him. He was a great one, too, at telling what they would be doing at that moment in Thrums, every corner of which was as familiar to him as the ins and outs of the family hose. Young Petey got fourteen shillings a week from a hatter, and one of his duties was to carry as many as twenty band-boxes at a time 66 SENTI>rENTAL TOMMY through fashionable streets; it is a matter for elation that dukes and statesmen had often to take the curb- stone, because young Petey was coming. Nevertheless young Petey was not satisfied, and never would be (such is the Thrums nature) until he became a salesman in the shop to which he acted at present as fetch and carry, and he used to tell Tommy that this position would be his as soon as he could sneer sufficiently at the old hats. When gentlemen come into the shop and buy a new hat, he explained, they put it on, meaning to tell you to send the old one to their address, and the art of being a fashionable hatter lies in this : you must be able to curl your lips so contemptuously at the old hat that they tell you guiltily to keep it, as they have no further use for it. Then they retire ashamed of their want of moral courage and ^ou have made an extra half -guinea. "But I aye snort," young Petey admitted, "and it should be done without a sound." When he graduated, he was to marry Martha Spens, who was waiting for him at Tillyloss. There was a London seamstress whom he preferred, and she was willing^ but it is safest to stick to Thrums. When Tommy was among his new friends a Scotch word or phrase often escaped his lips, but old Petey and the others thought he had picked it up from them, and would have been content to accept him as a Loudon waif who lived somewhere round the corner. To trick 'I '' , u THE ENCHANTED STREET 67 on rb- ess be imn and tion y at I and ming dthe must le old ' have led of de an ind it luated, ig for istress safest people so simply, however, is not agreeable to an artist, and he told them his name was Tommy Shovel, and that his old girl walloped him, and his father found dogs, all which inventions Thrums Street accepted as true. What is much more noteworthy is that, as he gave them birth, Tommy half believed them also, being already the best kind of actor. Not all the talking was done by Tommy when he came home with news, for he seldom mentioned a Thrums name, of which his mother could not tell him something more. But sometimes she did not choose to tell, as when he announced that a certain Elspeth Lindsay, of the Marywellbrae, was dead. After this she ceased to listen, for old Elspeth had been her grandmother, and she had now no kin in Thrums. "Tell me about the Painted Lady," Tommy said to her. " Is it true she 's a witch ? " But Mrs. Sandys had never heard of any woman so called : the Painted Lady must have gone to Thrums after her time. "There ain't no witches now," said Elspeth, tremu- lously; ShovePs mother had told her so. "Not in London," replied Tommy, with contempt; and this is all that was said of the Painted Lady then. It is the first mention of her in these pages. The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and Jean Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he had heard of the Den, and he said first: ^I' ti: > i I ? I If i'i'l I fi SENTIMENTAL TOMMY "Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places in Thrums, and you ain't never told me about the Den." His motber heaved a quick breath. "It's the only place I hinna telled you o'," she said. " Had you forget it, mother ? " Forget the Den ! Ah, no, Tommy , your mother had not forgotten the Den. "And, listen, Elspeth, in the Den there's a bonny spring of water called the Cuttle Well. Had you for- got the Cuttle Well, mother?" No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still remember the Cuttle Well. Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to fathom her thoughts. They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well. Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue else- where of this stab with a bodkin let others speak ; in Thrums its commone&t effect is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken- winded. By and by, however, he is at his work — among the turnip-shoots, say — guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy meditation, and 'f. I: 4^ i THE ENCHANTED STREET o; m I ^1 there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the back- end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most easily said. The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the maid. If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well, which was the trysting place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his boots; if you are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see whether jeering blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your way onward and not be with her in half an hour. Old Petey had told Tommy that, on the whole, the greatest pleasure in life on a Saturday evening is to put your back against a stile that leads into the Den and rally the sweethearts as they go by. The lads. - r l! SENTIMENTAL TOMMY when they see you, want to go round by the other stile, but the lasses like it, and often the sport ends spiritedly with their giving you a clout on the head. Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its side is a pink path, dyed this pretty color, perhaps, by the blushes the ladies leave behind them. The burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands higher and just out of sight, leaps in vain to see who is making that cooing noise, and the well, taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, who cannot get up. Well is a name it must have given itself, for it is only a spring in the bottom of a basinful of water, where it makes about as much stir in the world as a minnow jumping at a fly. They say that if a boy, by making a bowl of his hands, should suddenly carry off all the water, a quick girl could thread her needle at the spring. But it is a spring that will not wait a moment. Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and feel the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and they may take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except the Cuttle Well ; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the memory of first love. You may walk from the well to the round ceme- tery in ten minutes. It is a common walk for those who go back. Firjt love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle THE ENCHANTED STREET 71 Well with a bird's egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long grass, and on the next it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks beneath the burden of a tear. And yet — I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many years, cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. "John was a good man to you," I said, for John had been her husband. " He was a leal man to me," she answered with wistful eyes, "ay, he was a leal man to me — but it wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so sair," she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was wrong. "It's because I canna mind his name," she said. So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of A.aron Latta and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink stone, called the Shoaging Stone, because it could be rocked like a cradle, and on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and Jean Myles sat together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a time when it bore these words, cut by Aaron Latta : Here lies the Manhood of Aaron Latta, A Fond Son, a Faithful Friend and a true Lover, Who Violated the Feelings of Sex on THIS Spot, And is now the Scunner of God and Man. (1 ^ 1 ' i ' ! M ' h V, m \l T2 M SENTIMENTAL TOISIMY Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having cut them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each line, as if someone had struck four blows at her. The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was now in Thrums Street. "Aaron Latta ain't a mason now," Tommy rattled on : " he is a warper, because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, * God behears, to think that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man ! ' and Baker Lumsden said, * Curse her!"' His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained: "It was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined Aaron Latta's life." " Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life ? " his mother cried, passionately. Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for young Petey had said: "If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in Aaron's face rather than marry him." Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this. 'ii THE ENCHANTED STREET 73 "They wouldna tell me what it were she did," Tommy went on ; " they said it was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her out of Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of Thrums I " "Noalane?" " There was a man with her, and his name was — it was " His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the name. " His name was Magerful Tam," he said at length. "Ay," said his mother, knitting her teeth, "that was his name." " I dinna mind any more," Tommy concluded. "Yes, I mind they aye called Aaron Latta ' Poor Aaron Latta.'" "Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said ' Poor Jean Myles ' ? " She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said "Poor Jean Myles" something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs. " How could they pity her when she were such a bad one ? " Tommy answered, briskly. " Is there none to pity bad ones ? " said his sorrowful mother. Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said, inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a babyish SENTIMENTAL TOMMY prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom it was addressed. " You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums ! " Tommy cried, jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his mother stayed his hand. "Let her alane," she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let her alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles." ■ i'i ?:?i^* ■.j t to le to ,bout land. outh pray u z 06 o < a. z < >- S. H UJ u z Of UJ B H u i1 :n 111' ii: I CHAPTER VII COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY " Jean Myles bides in London " was the next remark- able news brought by Tommy from Thrums Street. " And that ain't all, Magerf ul Tam is her man j and that ain't all, she has a laddie called Tommy ; and that ain't all, Petey and the rest has never seen her in London, but she writes letters to Thrums folks and they writes to Petey and tells him what she said. That ain't all neither, they canna find out what street she bides in, but it 's on the bonny side of London, and it 's grand, and she wears silk clothes, and her Tommy has velvei; trousers, and they have a servant as calls him * sir.' Oh, I would just like to kick him ! They often looks for her in the grand streets, but they 're angry at her getting on so well, and Martha Scryrageour said it were enough to make good women like her stop going reg'lar to the kirk." "Martha said that!" exclaimed his mother, highly pleased. "Heard you anything of a woman called Esther Auld? Her man does the orra work at the Tappit Hen public in Thrums." " He 's head man at the Tappit Hen public now," an- swered Tommy; "and she wishes she could find out t 76 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY where Jean Myles bides, so as she could write and tell her that she is grand too, and has six hair-bottomed chairs." " She '11 never get the satisfaction," said his mother, triumphantly. "Tell me more about her." " She has a laddie called Francie, and he has yellow curk, and she nearly greets because she cauna tell Jean Myles that he goes to a school for the children of gentle- men only. She is so mad when she gets a letter from Jean Myles that she takes to her bed." " Yea, yea ! " said Mrs. Sandys, cheerily. " But they think Jean Myles has been brought low at last," continued Tommy, *' because she hasna wrote for a long time to Thrums, and Esther Auld said that if she knowed for certain as Jean Myles had been brought low, she would put a threepenny bit in the kirk plate." " I 'm glad you 've telled me that, laddie," said Mrs. Sandys, and next day, unknown to her children, she wrote another letter, She knew she ran a risk of dis- covery, yet it was probable that Tommy would only hear lier referred to in Thrums Street by her maiden name, which he had never heard from her, and as for her hus- band he had been Magerful Tam to everyone. The risk was great, but the pleasure Unsuspicious Tommy soon had news of another letter from Jean Myles, which had sent Esther Auld to bed again. " Instead of being brought low," he announced, " Jean I (. COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY 77 Myles is grander than ever. Her Tommy has a gov- erness." " That would be a doush of water in Esther's face ? " his mother said, smiling. "She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour/' said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's children only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's letter about chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bot- tomed chairs to a poor woman and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't fashionable now. So Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs now, though she were windy of them till the letter went to Thrums." " Poor Esther ! " said Mrs. Sandys, gayly. " Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's- reason for not telling where she bides in London is that she 's so grand that she thinks if auld Petey and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and boast as they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard that, and Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'" "Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now." But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. " You can break it to Martha Scrym- geour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V. 1.0 I.I 11.25 US ^^ ^^* ut lii 12.2 2.0 III 1*0 IJi& U 1 1.6 Photographic SdraiGes CorpOTation V 33 WIST MAM STRMT wniTn,N.v. usio (7U)I73^M3 4^ k ^"^ ^ 6"^ k 78 SENTIMENTAL TOMMST Petey Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I have seen no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being for the like of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my son mix with their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar Thrums words and clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to dress your laddie in corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for mine. So no more at present, and we all join in compliments, and my little velvets says he wishes I would send some of his toys to your little corduroys. And so maybe I will, Esther, if you '11 tell Aaron Latta how rich and happy I am, and if you 're feared to say it to his face, tell it to the roaring farmer of Double Dykes, and he '11 pass it on," " Did you ever hear of such a woman ? " Tommy said, indignantly, when he had repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember. But it was information his mother wanted. " What said they to that bit ? " she asked. At first, it appears, they limited their comments to '^Losh, losh, keeps a', it cows, my certie, ay, ay, sal, tal, dagont " (the meaning of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath, and then Baker Lumsden said, wonderingly : ; "Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so weel ? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey 1" "Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I COMIC OVERTUEE TO A TRAGEDY T9 was there ; I was one o' them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I ^m no' likely to forget it." " I wasna there," said the baker, " but I was standing at the door, and I saw the hearse drive up." " What did they mean, mother ? " Tommy asked, but she shuddered and replied, evasively, "Did Martha Scrymgeour say anything?" " She said such a lot," he had to confess, " that I diuna mind none on it. But I mind what her father in Thrums wrote to her ; he wrote to her that if she saw a carriage go by, she was to keep her eyes on the ground, for likely as not Jean Myles would be in it, and she thought as they was all dirt beneath her feet. But Kirsty Ross — who is she ? " " She 's Martha's mother. What about her ? " " She wrote at the end of the letter that Martha was to hang on ahint the carriage and find out where Jean Myles bides." " Laddie, that was like Kirsty ! Heard you what the roaring farmer o' Double Dykes said ? " No, Tommy had not heard him mentioned. And in- deed the roaring farmer of Double Dykes had said nothing. He was already lying very quiet on the south side of the cemetery. Tommy's mother's next question cost her a painful effort. " Did you hear," she asked, " whether they telled Aaron Latta about the letter ? " "Yes, they telled him," Tommy replied, "and he said y \ 80 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY a queer thing ; he said, ' Jean Myles is dead, I was at her coffining/ That 's what he aye says when they tell him there's another letter. I wonder what he means, mother ? " " I wonder I " she echoed, faintly. The only pleasure left her was to raise the envy of those who had hooted her from Thrums, but she paid a price for it. Many a stab she had got from the unwitting Tommy as he re- peated the gossip of his new friends, and she only won their envy at the cost of their increased ill-will. They thought she was lording it in London, and so they were merciless ; had they known how poor she was and how ill, they would have forgotten everything save that she was a Thrummy like themselves, and there were few but would have shared their all with her. But she did not believe this, and therefore you may pity her, for the hour was drawing near, and she knew it, when she must appeal to some one for her children's sake, not for her own. No, not for her own. When Tommy was wandering the pretty parts of London with James Gloag and other boys from Thrums Street in search of Jean Myles, whom they were to know by her carriage and her silk dress and her son in blue velvet, his mother was in bed with bron- chitis in the wretched room we know of, or creeping to the dancing school, coughing all the way. Some of the fits of coughing were very near being her last, but she wrestled with her trouble, seeming at times COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY 81 to stifle it, and then for weeks she managed to go to her work, which was still hers, because Shovel's old girl did it for her when the bronchitis would not be defied. Shovel's old slattern gave this service unasked and with- out payment ; if she was thanked it was ungraciously, but she continued to do all she could when there was need ; she smelled of gin, but she continued to do all she could. The wardrobe had been put upon its back on the floor, and so converted into a bed for Tommy and Elspeth, who were sometimes wakened in the night by a loud noise, which alarmed them until they learned that it was only the man in the next room knocking angrily on the wall because their mother's cough kept him from sleeping. Tommy knew what death was now, and Elspeth knew its name, and both were vaguely aware that it was look- ing for their mother ; but if she could only hold out till Hogmanay, Tommy said, they would fleg it out of the house. Hogmanay is the mighty winter festival of Thrums, and when it came round these two were to give their mother a present that would make her strong. It was not to be a porous plaster. Tommy knew now of something better than that. ''And I knows tool" Elspeth gurgled, ''and I has threepence a'ready, I has." "Whisht I" said Tommy, in an agony of dread, "she hears you, and she '11 guess. We ain't speaking of noth- ing to give to you at Hogmanay," he said to his mother ms^mammmm u 82 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY with great cunning. Then he winked at Elspeth and said, with his hand over his mouth, " I hiuna twopence I " and Elspeth, about to cry in fright, " Have you spended it ? " saw the joke and crowed instead, " Nor yet has 1 threepence I " They smirked together, until Tommy saw a change come over Elspeth's face, which made him run her out- side the door. " You was a-going to pray 1 " he said, severely. " 'Cos it was a lie. Tommy. I does have threepence." " Well, you ain't a-going to get praying about it. She would hfc:ir yer." " I would do it low. Tommy." " She would see yer." " Oh, Tommy, let me. God is angry with me." Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. " I '11 let yer pray here," he whispered, " and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and do it standing." Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her children might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return to the room her eyes followed them wofully, and a shudder of apprehen- sion shook her torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant " I 'm sure there 's something queer about her." There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the strangest gallop. It began one day COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY 83 11 in it to her len- look )Ut Ihicli day with a series of morning calls from Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was stand- ing on the handle), roared "Eoastbeef I " in the manner of a railway porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew. He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle his secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not coming out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on the stair Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it : " S. R. J. C. — Supper Ticket ; " and writ- ten beneath, in a lady's hand : " Admit Joseph Salt.'' The letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the somethink of Juvenile Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of you when you came out of quod. Then if you was willing to repent they wrote down your name and the place what you lived at in a book, and one of them came to see yer and give yer a ticket for the blow- out night. This was blow-out night, and that were Shovel's ticket. He had bought it from Hump Salt for fourpence. What you get at the blow-out was roast- beef, plum-duff, and an orange ; but when Hump saw the fourpence he could not wait. A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your crimes, and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to the house, the chances were that he would flounder in his .84 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY answers and be ejected. Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the fourpence. Would Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say; reward, the orange. This was a proud moment for Tommy, as ShovePs knowledge of crime was much more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He became patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient. Then suppose, after he got into the hall. Shovel dropped his ticket out at the window ; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also. Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger : the ticket might be taken from Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing thing in the church he had attended with young Petey. So. help Shovel's davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior toffs, what trusted to your honor. Would Shovel swear to this ? He would. But would he swear dagont ? He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he could not object to Tommy's being the one who dropped the ticket out at the window ? Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY 85 until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutter- able design and again looking a little scared. In grow- ing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully : " It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me I That 's fine treatment I " Nevertheless, after his mother's return, just before he stole out to join Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously : " You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth, I 'm thinking as I '11 need it sore 1 " A.nd sore he needed it before the night was out. CHAPTER VIII THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS ''I LOVE my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids at 'ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help me bob. Amen," This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys made their way across the lamp- lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked him what it meant. <'My old gal learned me that; she's deep/' Shovel said, wiping the words oif his mouth with his 'sleeve. '' But you got no kids at 'ome I " remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in service.) Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother pro- tecting her young. " Don't you try for to knock none on it out," he cried, and again fell a-mumbling. Said Tommy, scornfully : ^^ If you says it all out at one bang you'll be done at the start." ' Shovel sighed. "And you should blubber when yer says it," added Tommy, who could laugh or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with less reason, THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 87 and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master. " You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said, airily. " Keep a grip on my hand, same as if yer was Elspeth." " But what was we copped for, Tommy ? " entreated humble Shovel. Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered, confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father's news-sheet. "Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, " there 's a room a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler." "It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel inter- posed, jealously. " How could you do it, Shovel ? " " With a knife, I tell yer ! " "Why, you didn't have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently. This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily : « Well, I bit him in the leg." " Not you," said selfish Tommy. " You forgets about repenting, and if I let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It 's safer without, Shovel." \ i 88 SBNTIMBNTAL TOMMY Perhaps it was. " How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy ? " "Fourteen days." " So did you ? " Shovel said, with quick anxiety. " I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly. Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall. Then, '< I 'm as game as you, and gamer," he whined. "But I'm better at repenting. I tell yer, 1*11 cry when I 'm repenting." Tommy's face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious look at it : "You — you ain't like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied, also in an awestruck voice : "I'm so queer. Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout myself I'm — I'm sometimes near feared." " What makes your face for to shine like that ? Is it thinking about the blow-out ? " No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He aud the saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking for each other. The splendor of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated in one of the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely populated quarter in London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part, tapping an invitation on Tommy's brain-pan and taking Shovel coquettishly in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to strip Tommy of the ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he stopped to THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 89 LO m tell a vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his dear mother, and all the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted forward and was immediately lost in the crowd surging round the steps of the hall. Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway, shouting: ^'Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass in." They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their society did much good, though it was not so well organ- ized as others that have followed in its steps ; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no mood to attend to them. He had but one thought : that the traitor Tommy was doubt- less at that moment boring his way toward them, under- ground, as it were, and " holding his ticket in his hand." Shovel dived into the rabble and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp- post, and was aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and saunter into the hall. The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air was thick with such cries as these : "I lorst my ticket, ain't I telling yer ? Gar on, guv'- nor, lemme in P' I 90 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY " Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor; he's a himposter.'' " I 'm the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker, ain't I to step up ? " " Tell yer, I 'm a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don't lemme in I'll have the lawr on you." ''Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country." ' " What air yer torking about ? War n't I in larst year, and the cuss as runs the show, he says to me, * AUers welcome,' he says. None on your sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs " *' Jest keeping on me out 'cos I ain't done nothin'. Ho, this is a encouragement to honesty, I don't think." Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an un- known knight, ever conspicuous ; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their blooming knees to him ; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted : ''If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard." A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 91 lie Len the parapet amid a shower of execrations. '^If you are the real Shovel/' the lady said to him, '^you can tell me how this proceeds, ^I love my dear father and my dear mother ' Goon." Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. ** And all the dear little kids at 'ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so h^lp me bob. Amen." << Charming ! " chirped the lady, and down pleasant- smelling aisles she led him, pausing to drop an observa- tion about Tommy to a clergyman : " So glad I came ; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called Tommy." The clergyman looked after her half in sad- ness, half sarcastically ; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also. At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively with gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good things. Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys, and not at all like Shovel's patroness, who had come for a sensation. Tommy falling into her hands, she got it. Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but sent the lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly: "Quick, Shovel, feel my pocket" (it bulged with two oranges), "now the Inside pocket" (plum-duff), "now my waistcoat pocket" (threepence) ; "look in my mouth" (chocolates). 92 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY When Shovel found speech he began, excitedly : " I love my dear father and my dear " " Gach I '* said Tommy, interrupting him contemptu- ously. " Eepenting ain't no go, Shovel. Look at them other coves j none of them has got no money, nor full pockets, and I tell you, it 's 'cos they has repented." " Gar on I " " It 's true, T tells you. That lady as is my one, she 's called her ladyship, and she don't care a cuss for boys as has repented," which of course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs penetrate for hav- ing knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor. "When I saw that," Tommy continued, brazenly, "I bragged 'stead of repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest ^ays, *■ You little monster,' and gives me another orange." "Then I'm done for," Shovel moaned, "fori rolled off that 'bout loving my dear father and my dear mother, blast 'em, soon as I seen her." He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it, but that it was all flam. Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave the torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. " I 'm full, at any rate," he said, struggling with his waistcoat. "Oh, Shovel, I am full I " Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their con- tract, but of the dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the record. Do you won- THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 93 der that her ladyship believed him ? On this point we must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed it for the moment also. When he described the eerie darkness of the butler's pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes once — ugh I — that was because he saw the blood spouting out of the butler. He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler's boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook him, saying: "Darn yer, does n't yer know as it 's all your eye ? " which brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk. " Sure 's death. Shovel," he whispered, in awe, " I was thinking 1 done it, every bit I " Had her ladyship come back she would have found him a different boy. He remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was praying for him ; he could see her on her knees, saying, "Oh, God, I'se praying for Tommy," and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him quietly out of the hall. Members of the society discussing him afterwards with bated breath said that never till they died could they forget her ladyship's face while he did it. ** But did \ \ d4 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY i' if i' you notice the boy*s own face ? It waa positively an- gelic." " Angelic, indeed ; the little horror was intoxi- cated." No, there was a doctor present, and according to him it was the meal that had gone to the boy's head ; he looked half starved. As for the clergyman, he only said : "We shall lose her subscription ; I am glad of it." Yes, Tommy was intoxicated, but with a beverage not recognized by the faculty. What happened was this : Supper being finished, the time had come for what Shovel called the jawing, and the boys were now mustered in the body of the hall. The limited audience had gone to the gallery, and unluckily all eyes except Shovel's were turned to the platform. Shovel was apprehensive about Tommy, who was not exactly sobbing now; but strange, uncontrollable sounds not unlike the winding up of a clock proceeded from his throat ; his face had flushed; there was a purposeful look in his usually unreadable eye ; his fingers were fidgeting on the board in front of him, and he seemed to keep his seat with difficulty. The personage who was to address the boys sat on the platform with clergymen, members of committee, and some ladies, one of them Tommy's patroness. Her lady- ship saw Tommy and smiled to him, but obtained no response. She had taken a front seat, a choice that she must have regretted presently. The chairman rose and in a reassuring manner an- nounced that the Be v. Mr. would open the pro- 1; THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 95 lad oeedings with prayer. The Rev. Mr. rose to pray in a loud voice for the waifs iu the body of the hall. At the same moment rose Tommy, and began to pray in a squeaky voice for the people on the platform. He had many Biblical phrases, mostly picked up in Thrums Street, and what he said was distinctly heard in the stillness, the clergyman being suddenly bereft of speech. " Oh," he cried, " look down on them ones there, for, oh, they are unworthy of Thy mercy, and, oh, the worst sinner is her ladyship, her sitting there so brazen in the black frock with yellow stripes, and the worse I said I were the better pleased were she. Oh, make her think shame for tempting of a poor boy, for getting suffer little children, oh, why cumbereth she the ground, oh " He was in full swing before any one could act. Shovel having failed to hold him in his seat, had done what was perhaps the next best thing, got be- neath it himself. The arm of the petrified clergyman was still extended, as if blessing his brother's remarks ; the chairman seemed to be trying to fling his right hand at the culprit; but her ladyship, after the first stab, never moved a muscle. Thus for nearly half a minute, when the officials woke up, and squeezing past many knees, seized Tommy by the neck and ran him out of the building. All down the aisle he prayed hysterically, and for some time afterwards, to Shovel, who had been cast forth along with him. m SENTIMENTAL TOMMY II At an hour of that night when their mother was asleep, and it is to be hoped they were the only two children awake in London, Tommy sat up softly in the wardrobe to discover whether Elspeth was still praying for him. He knew that she was on the floor in a night- gown some twelve sizes too large for her, but the room was as silent and black as the world he had just left by taking his fingers from his ears and the blankets off his face. '' I see you,'' he said, mendaciously, and in a guarded voice, so as not to waken his mother, from whom he had kept his escapade. This had not the desired effect of drawing a reply from Elspeth, and he tried bluster. ^* You needna think as I '11 repent, you brat, so there t What ? " I wish I hadna told you about it ! " Indeed, he had endeavored not to do so, but pride in his achievement had eventually conquered prudence. " Beddy would have laughed, she would, and said as I was a wonder. Beddy was the kind I like. What? ^'You ate up the oranges quick, and the plum-duff too, so you should pray for yourseP as well as for me. It 's easy to say as you didna know how I got them till after you eated them, but you should have found .out. What? " Do you think it was for my own self as I done it ? I jest done it to get the oranges and plum-duff to you, I did, and the threepence too. Eh ? Speak, you little besom. !*•»• THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS OT **I tell you as I did repent in the hall. I was greet- ing, and I never knowed I put up that prayer till Shovel told me on it. We was sitting in the street by that time." This was true. On leaving the hall Tommy had soon dropped to the cold ground and squatted there till he came to, when he remembered nothing of what had led to his expulsion. Like a stream that has run into a pond and only finds itself again when it gets out, he was but a continuation of the boy who when last con- scious of himself was in the corner crying remorsefully over his misdeed ; and in this humility he would have returned to Elspeth had no one told him of his prayer. Shovel, however, was at hand, not only to tell him all about it, but to applaud, and home strutted Tommy chuckling. "I am sleeping," he next said to Elspeth, "so you may as well come to your bed." He imitated the breathing of a sleeper, but it was the only sound to be heard in London, and he desisted fearfully. "Come away, Elspeth," he said, coaxingly, for he was very fond of her and could not sleep while she was cold and miserable. Still getting no response he pulled his body inch by inch out of the bedclothes, and holding his breath, found the floor with his feet stealthily, as if to cheat the wardrobe into thinking that he was still in it. But his reason was to discover whether Elspeth had fallen 7 98 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY u p li asleep on her knees without her learning that he cared to know. Almost noiselessly he worked himself along the floor, but when he stopped to bring his face nearer hers, there was such a creaking of his joints that if Elspeth did not hear it she — she must be dead I His knees played whack on the floor. Elspeth only gasped once, but he heard, and remained beside her for a minute, so that she might hug him if such was her desire; and she put out her hand in the darkness so that his should not have far to travel alone if it chanced to be on the way to her. Thus they sat on their knees, each aghast at the hard-heartedness of the other. Tommy put the blankets over the kneeling figure, and presently announced from the wardrobe that if he died of cold before repenting the blame of keeping him out of heaven would be Elspeth*s. But the last word was mufSed, for the blankets were tucked about him as he spoke, and two motherly little arms gave him the embrace they wanted to withhold. Foiled again, he kicked off the bedclothes and said: "I tell yer I wants to die!" This terrified both of them, and he added, quickly : "Oh, God, if I was sure I were to die to-night I would repent at once." It is the commonest prayer in all languages, but down on her knees slipped Elspeth again, and Tommy, who felt that it had done him good, said indignantly: " Surely that is religion. What?" I ]' ■f ■f THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS 99 cared along learer tiat if His aained him if in the L alone sat on of the figure, it if he ng him it word lut him tve him again, yer I He lay on his face until he was frightened by a noise louder than thunder in the daytime — the scraping of his eyelashes on the pillow. Then he sat up in the wardrobe and fired his three last shots. "Elspeth Sandys, I'm done with yer forever, I am. I '11 take care on yer, but I '11 never kiss yer no more. . " When yer boasts as I 'm your brother I '11 say you ain*t. I '11 tell ny mother about Reddy the morn, and syne she'll put you to the door smart. "When you are a grown woman I'll buy a house to yer, but you '11 have jest to bide in it by your lonely self, and I'll come once a year to speir how you are, but I won't come in, I won't — I'll jest cry up the stair." The effect of this was even greater than he had ex- pected, for now two were in tears instead of one, and Tommy's grief was the more heartrending, he was so much better at everything than Elspeth. He jumped out of the wardrobe and ran to her, calling her name, and he put his arms round her cold body, and the dear mite, for- getting how cruelly he had used her, cried, " Oh, tighter, Tommy, tighter ; you did n't not mean it, did yer ? Oh, you is terrible fond on me, ain't yer ? And you won't not tell my mother 'bout Reddy, will yer, and you is no done wi' me forever, is yer ? and you won't not put me in a house by myself, will yer ? Oh, Tommy, is that the tightest you can do ? " And Tommy made it tighter, vowing, «I never meant .ff^ s\ \: 100 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY I it ; I was a bad un to say it If Beddy were to come back wanting for to squeeze you out, I would send her packing quick, I would. I tell yer what, I '11 kiss you with folk looking on, I will, and no be ashamed to do it, and if Shovel is one of them what sees me, and he puts his finger to his nose, I'll blood the mouth of him, I will, dagonti" Then he prayed for forgiveness, and he could always pray more beautifully than Elspeth. Even she was sat- .ified with the way he did it, and so, alack, was he. " But you forgot to tell," she said fondly, when once more they were in the wardrobe together — "you forgot to tell as you filled your pockets wif things to me/' "I didn't forget," Tommy replied modestly. "I missed it out on purpose, I did, 'cos I was sure God knows on it without my telling him, and I thought he would be pleased if I did n't let on as I knowed it was . good of me." "Oh, Tommy," cried Elspeth, worshipping him, "I couldn't have doned that, I couldn't!" She was barely six, and easily taken in, but she would save him from himself if she could. 1 CHAPTER IX AULD LANG SYNE What to do with her ladyship's threepence ? Tommy finally decided to drop it into the charity -box that hail once contained his penny. They held it over the slit together, Elspeth almost in tears because it was such a large sum to give away, but Tommy looking noble he was so proud of himself ; and when he said " Three ! " they let go. There followed days of excitement centred round their money-box. Shovel introduced Tommy to a boy what said as after a bit you forget how much money was in your box, and then when you opened it, oh, Lor* ! there is more than you thought, so he and Elspeth gave this plan a week's trial, affecting not to know how much they had gathered, but when they unlocked it, the sum was still only eightpence; so then Tommy told the liar to come on, and they fought while the horrified Elspeth prayed, and Tommy licked him, a result due to one of the famous Thrums left-handers then on exhibition in that street for the first time, as taught the victor by Petey Whamond the younger, late of Tillyloss. \\ 102 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY The money did come in, once in spate (twopence from Bob in twenty-four hours), but usually so slowly that they saw it resting on the way, and then, when they listened intently, they could hear the thud of Hog- manay. The last halfpenny was a special aggravation, strolling about, just out of reach, with all the swagger of sixpence, but at last Elspeth had it, and after that, the sooner Hogmanay came the better. They concealed their excitement under too many wrappings, but their mother suspected nothing. When she was dressing on the morning of Hogmanay, her stockings happened to be at the other side of the room, and they were such a long way off that she rested on the way to them. At the meagre breakfast she said what a heavy teapot that was, and Tommy thought this funny, but the salt had gone from the joke when he remembered it afterwards. And when she was ready to go off to her work she hesitated at the door, looking at her bed and from it to her children as if in two minds, and then went quietly downstairs. The distance seems greater than ever to-day, poor woman , and you stop longer at the corners, where rude men jeer at you. Scarcely can you push open the door of the dancing-school or lift the pail; the fire has gone out, you must again go on your knees before it, and again the smoke makes you cough. Gaunt slattern, fighting to bring up the phlegm, was it really you for whom another woman gave her life, and thought it a AULD LANG SYNE 108 rich reward to get dressing you once in your long clothes, when she called you her beautiful, and smiled, and smiling, died? Well, well; but take courage, Jean Myles. The long road still lies straight up hill, but your climbing is near an end. Shrink from the rude men no more, they are soon to forget you , so soon ! It is a heavy door, but soon you will have pushed it open for the last time. The girls will babble still, but not to you, not of you. Cheer up, the work is nearly done. Her beautiful I Come, beautiful, strength for a few more days, and then you can leave the key of the leaden door behind you, and on your way home you may kiss your hand joyously to the weary streets, for you are going to die. Tommy and Elspeth had been to the foot of the stair many times to look for her before their mother came back that evening, yet when she re-entered her home, behold, they were sitting calmly on the fender as if this were a day like yesterday or to-morrow, as if Tommy had not been on a business visit to Thrums Street, as if the hump on the bed did not mean that a glorious some- thing ^was hidden under the coverlet. True, Elspeth would look at Tommy imploringly every few minutes, meaning that she could not keep it in much longer, and then Tommy would mutter the one word "Bell" to remind her that it was against the rules to begin before the Thrums eight-o'clock bell rang. They also wiled away the time of waiting by inviting each other to BHA i , : m 104 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY conferences at the window where these whispers passed — v "She ain't got a notion, Tommy." "Dinna look so often at the bed." " If I could jest get one more peep at it ! " "No, no; but you can put your hand on the top of it as you go by." The artfulness of Tommy lured his unsuspecting mother into telling how they would be holding Hog- manay in Thrums to-night, how cartloads of kebbock cheeses had been rolling into the town all the livelong day (" Do you hear them, Elspeth ? "), and in dark closes the children were already gathering, with smeared faces and in eccentric dress, to sally forth as guisers at the clap of eight, when the ringing of a bell lets Hogmanay loose. (" You see, Elspeth ? ") Inside the houses men and women were preparing (though not by fasting, which would have been such a good way that it is surprising no one ever thought of it) for a series of visits, at every one of which they would be offered a dram and kebbock and bannock, and in the grander houses "bridles," which are a sublime kind of pie. Tommy had the audacity to ask what bridles were like. And he could not dress up and be a guiser, could he, mother, for the guisers sang a song, and he did not know the words ? What a pity they could not get bridles to buy in London, and learn the song and sing AULD LANG SYNE 106 ispers p of it it. But ofcourfao they could not I ("Elspeth, if you tumble off the fender again, she '11 guess.") Such is a sample of Tommy, but Klspeth was sly also, if in a smaller way, and it was she who said: "There ain't nothin' in the bed, is there. Tommy!" This duplicity made her uneasy, and she added, behind her teeth, "Maybe there is," and then, *' O God, 1 knows as there is." But as the great moment drew near tliere were no more questions; two children were staring at the clock and listening intently for the peal of a bell nearly live hundred miles away. The clock struck. "Whisht! It's time, Elspeth! They 've begun ! Come on I " A few minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door, followed by the entrance of two mysterious iigures. The female wore a boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl, and to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his right hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began to recite, rather tremulously. Get up, good wife, and hinim Nwoir, And deal your bread to them that 'n here, ' For the time will come when yim '11 ho dead, And then you '11 need neither alo nor bread. Mrs. Sandys had started, and then turned piteously from them; but when they were done she tried to \ iUiiiiriiii ss^jj^s 106 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY smile, and said, with forced gayety, that she saw they were guisers, and it was a fine night, and would they take a chair. The male stranger did so at once, but the female said, rather anxiously : " You are sure as you don't know who we is ? " Their hostess shook her head, and then he of the poker offered her three guesses, a daring thing to do, but all went well, for her first guess was Shovel and his old girl; second guess, Before and After; third guess. Napoleon Buonaparte and the Auld Licht minister. At each guess the smaller of the intruders clapped her hands gleefully, but when, with the third, she was unmuzzled, she putted with her head at Mrs. Sandys and hugged her, Hcreaming, "It ain't none on them; it's jest me, mother, it 's Elspeth! " and even while their astounded hostess was asking could it be true, the male conspirator dropped his poker noisily (to draw attention to him- self) and stood revealed as Thomas Sandys. Wasn't it just like Thrums, was n't it just the very, very same ? Ah, it was wonderful, their mother said, but, alas, there was one thing wanting: she had no Hogmanay to give the guisers. Had sho not ? What a pity, Elspeth ! What a pity, Tommy ! What might that be in the bed, Elspeth V It could n't not be their Hogmanay, could it. Tommy ? If Tommy was his mother he would look and see. If Elspeth was her mother she would look and see. Her curiosity thus cunningly aroused, Mrs. Sandys •M 'f liil ATTLD LANG SYNE 107 hey hey mm the you her hree L' her k^fl uess, *^^^^| parte J the fully, , she J 1 her, b me, unded lirator s hi in- ■^1 very, ^ said, ad no ■■ I pity, ipeth ? mmy ? je. If e. Bandy 8 1 raised the coverlet of tlie bed and — there were three bridies, an oatmeal cake, and a hunk of kebbock. " And they comed from Thrums ! " cried Elspeth, while Tommy cried, "Petey and the others got a lot sent from Thrums, and I bought the bridies from them, and they gave me the bannock and the kebbock for nuthinM" Their mother did not utter the cry of rapture which Tommy expected so confidently that he could have done it for her; instead, she pulled her two hcildren toward her, and the great moment was like to be a tearful rather than an ecstatic one, for Elspeth had begun to whimper, and even Tommy — but by a supreme effort he shouldered reality to the door. " Is this my Hogmanay, guidwife ? " he asked in the nick of time, and the situation thus being saved, the luscious feast was partaken of, the guisers listening solemnly as each bite went down. They also took care to address their hostess as "guidwife" or "mistress," affecting not to have met her lately, and inquiring genially after the health of herself and family. " How many have you?" was Tommy's masterpiece, and she answered in the proper spirit, but all the time she was hiding great part of her bridie beneath her apron, Hogmanay having come too late for her. Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums Street, and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old Petey, who had rehearsed it several times before him, " Here 's a .■ i i i I -? is 1 I ,^ ■ it \ \ 108 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY toast," said Tommy, standing up and waving his arms, " here 's a toast that we '11 drink in silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o't to some of us, but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk green and ties us all thegither, like as it were wi' twine. It 's to all them, wherever they may be the night, wha' have sat as lads and lasses at the Guttle Well." To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint cry broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence looking at her. She had turned her face from them, but her arm was extended as if entreating Tommy to stop. "That was the end," he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation; "it's auld Petey's speech." "Are you sure," his mother asked wistfully, "that Petey was to say all them as have sat at the Cuttle Well ? He . made no exception, did he ? " Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters on it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were jocund — Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but n ^ AULD LANG SYNE 109 a bank from which we can only draw what we put in. So an hour or more passed, after which Tommy whis- pered to Elspeth : " Now 's the time ; they 're at it now,'' and each took a hand of their mother, and she woke from her reverie to find that they had pulled her from her chair and were jumping up and down, shout- ing, excitedly, "For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne, Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne." She tried to sing the words with her children, tried to dance round with them, tried to smile, but It was Tommy who dropped her hand first. " Mother," he cried, "your face is wet, you're greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way." "I mind it now, man, I mind it now," she said, standing helplessly in the middle of the room. Elspeth nestled against her, crying, " My mother was thinking about Thrums, was n't she, Tommy ? " " I was thinking about the part o't I 'm most awid to be in," the poor woman said, sinking back into her chair. " It 's the Den," Tommy told Elspeth. "It 's the Square," Elspeth told Tommy. "No, it 's Monypenny." "No, it 's the Commonty." But it was none of these places. " It 's the ceme- tery," the woman said, "it's the hamely, quiet ceme- tery on the hillside. Oh, there 's mony a bonny place in my nain bonny toon, but there 's uain so hamely like Ilf i i I I I \i i m \\ 110 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY as the cemetery." She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to say no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that made them shrink from her she cried: "I winna lie in London! tell Aaron Latta that ; I winna lie in London ! '' For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom left her bed. She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a doctor brought in by Shovel's mother warned her that her days were near an end. Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth standing by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in the intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles. ''And if I die and Aaron hasna come,'' she said, " you maun just gang to auld Petey and tell him wha you are." "But how can you be Jean Myles ?" asked astounded Tommy. " You ain't a grand lady and " His mother looked at Elspeth. "No' afore her," she besought him; but before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed the night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I '11 tell you all there is to tell about Jean Myles." " Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta ? " "It 's for him," she said, "but it 's no' to him. T 'm feared he might burn it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I 've wrote it to a friend of his wha will read it to him." AULD LANG SYNE 111 "And what's inside, mother?" the boy begged, inquisitively. " It must be queer things if they '11 bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums." "There's but little in it, man," she said, pressing her hand hard upon her chest. " It 's no muckle mair than ' Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang ?yne > » ^itr mmm I ! I • ■!! CHAPTER X THE FAVORITE OP THE LADIES ' That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap- tap, as of someone knocking for admittance, and steal- ing to his ipother's side, he cried, "Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door I" It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys took Tommy into bed with her, and while Elspeth slept, told him the story of her life. She •coughed feebly now, but the panting of the dying is a sound that no walls can cage, and the man continued to remonstrate at intervals. Tommy never recalled his mother's story without seeming, through the darkness in which it was told, to hear Elspeth's peaceful breath- ing and the angry tap-tap on the wall. "I 'm sweer to tell it to you," she began, "but tell I maun, for though it 's just a warning to you and Elspeth no' to be like them that brought you into the world, it 's all I have to leave you. Ay, and there 's another reason : you may soon be among folk wha ken but half the story and put a waur face on it than I deserve." She had spoken calmly, but her next words were passionate. !l>n iS^ THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 113 "They thought I was fond o' him," she cried; "oh, they were blind, blind! Frae the first I could never thole the sight o' him. "Maybe that^s no' true," she had to add. "I aye kent he was a black, but yet I couldna put him out o* my head; he took sudden grips o' me like an evil thought. I aye ran frae him, and yet I sair doubt that I went looking for him too." "Was it Aaron Latta ?" Tommy asked. "No, it was your father. The first I ever saw of him was at Cullew, four lang miles frae Thrums. There was a ball after the market, and Esther Auld and me went to it. We went in a cart, and I was wearing a pink print, wi' a white bonnet, and blue ribbons that tied aneath the chin. I had a shawl abune, no' to file them. There wasna a more innocent lassie in Thrums, man, no, nor a happier one ; for Aaron Latta — Aaron came half the way wi' us, and he was handing my hand aneath the shawl. He hadna speired me at that time, but I just kent. " It was an auld custom to choose a queen of beauty at the ball, but that night the men couldna 'gree wha should be judge, and in the tail-end they went out thegither to look for one, determined to mak' judge o' the first man they met, th©ugh they should have to tear him off a horse and bring him in by force. You wouldna believe to look at me now, man, that I could have had any thait o' being made queen, but I was fell bonny, 8 ^ \ 114 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY li ■ » and I was as keen as the rest. How simple we were, all pretending to one another that we didna want to be chosen! Esther Auld said she would hod ahint the tent till a queen was picked, and at the very time she said it, she was in a palsy, through no being able to decide whether she looked better in her shell necklace or wanting it. She put it* on in the end, and syne when we heard the tramp o' the men, her mind misgave her, and she cried : * For the love o' mercy, keep tliem out till I get it off again!' So we were a* laughing when they came in. " Laddie, it was your father and Elspeth's that they brought wi' them, and he was a stranger to us, though we kent something about him afore the night was out. He was finely put on, wi' a gold chain, and a free w'y of looking at women, and if you mind o' him ava, you ken that he was fair and buirdly, wi' a full face, and aye a laugh ahint it. I tell ye, man, that when our een met, and I saw that triumphing laugh ahint his face, I took a fear of him, as if I had guessed the end. " For years and years after that night I dreamed it ower again, and aye I heard myseP crying to God to keep that man awa' frae me. But I doubt I put up no sic prayer at the time; his masterful look fleid me, and yet it drew me against my will, and I was trembling wi' pride as well as fear when he made me queen. We danced thegither and fought thegither a' through the ball, and my will was no match for his, and the worst THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 115 o't was I had a kind o' secret pleasure in being mastered. " Man, he kissed me. Lads had kissed me afore that night, but never since first I went wi' Aaron Latta to the Cuttle Well. Aaron hadna done it, but I was never to let none do it again except him. So when your father did it I struck him, but ahint the redness that came ower his face, I saw his triumphing laugh, and he whispered that he liked me for the blow. He said, * I prefer the sweer anes, and the more you struggle, my beauty, the better pleased I'll be.' Almost his hinmost words to me was, * I 've been hearing of your Aaron, and that pleases me too ! ' I fired up at that and telled him what I thought of him, but he said, * If you canna abide me, what made you dance wi* me so often ? ' and, oh, laddie, that 's a question that has sung in ray head since syne. " I We telled you that we found out wha he was, and 'deed he made no secret of it. Up to the time he was twal year auld he had been a kent face in that part, for his mither was a Cullew woman called Mag Sandys, ay, and a single woman. She was a hard ane too, for when he was twelve year auld he flung out o' the house saying he would ne'er come back, and she said he shouldna run awa' wi' thae new boots on, so she took the boots off him and let him go. "He was a grown man when more was heard o' him, and syne stories came saying he was at Redlintie, play- I f i\ I I i i 116 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY ing queer games wi* his father. His father was gauger there, that 's exciseman, a Mr. Cray, wha got his wife out o* Thrums, and even when he was courting her (so they say) had the heart to be ower chief wi' this other woman. Weel, Magerf ul Tam, as he was called through being so masterful, cast up at Kedlintie frae none kent where, gey desperate for siller, but wi* a black coat on his back, and he said that all he wanted was to be owned as the ganger's son. Mr. Cray said there was no proof that he was his son, and syne the queer sport began. Your father had noticed he was like Mr. Cray, except in the beard, and so he had his beard clippit the same, and he got hand o' some weel -kent claethes o' the gauger's that had been presented to a poor body, and he learned up a' the gauger's tricks of speech and walking, especially a droll w'y he had o' taking snuff and syne flinging back his head. They were as like as buckies after that, and soon there was a town about it, for one day ladies would lind that they had been bowing to the son thinking he was the father, and the next they wouldna speak to the father, mistaking him for the son ; and a report spread to the head office o' the excise that the gauger of Redlintie spent his evenings at a public house, singing 'The De'il's awa' wi' the Exciseman.* Tam drank nows and nans, and it ga'e Mr. Cray a turn to see him come rolling yont the street, just as if it was himsel' in a looking-glass. He was a sedate-living man now, but chiefly because his wife kept him in good control, and THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 117 this sight brought back auld times so vive to him, that he a kind of mistook which ane he was, and took to drop- ping, forgetful-like, into public-houses again. It was high time Tarn should be got out of the place, and they did manage to bribe him into leaving, though no easily, for it had been fine sport to him, and to make a sensa- tion was what he valued above all things. We heaid that he went back to Kedlintie a curran years after, but both the ganger and his wife were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughtors. They were Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well ofE as was expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother's town, and started a school for the gentry there. I dinna doubt but what it 's the school that Esther Auld's laddie is at. "So after being long lost sight o' he turned up at Cullew, wi' what looked to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue stories about how he made it. He had come to make a show o' himsel* afore his mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye ready to give when he had, I '11 say that for him; but she had flitted to some unkent place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public. He caredna whether the folk praised or blamed him so long as they wondered at him, and queer stories about his doings was aye on the road to Thrums. One was that he gave wild suppers to whaever would come; another that he went to the kirk just for the glory of flinging a i \: I 118 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY J I ! h sovereign into the plate wi' a clatter; another that when he lay sleeping on twa chairs, gold and silver dribbled out o' his trouser pouches to the floor. "There was an ugly story too, about a lassie, that led to his leaving the place and coming to Thrums, after he had near killed the Cullew smith in a fight. The first I heard o' his being in Thrums was when Aaron Latta walked into my granny's house and said there was a strange man at the Tappit Hen public standing drink to any that would tak', and boasting that he had but to waggle his finger to make me give Aaron up. T went wi' Aaron and looked in at the window, but I kent wha it was afore I looked. If Aaron had just gone in and struck him! All decent women, laddie, has a horror of being fought about. I 'm no sure but what that 's just the difference atween guid ones and ill ones, but this man had a power ower me; and if Aaron had just struck him! Instead o' meddling he turned white, and I couldna help contrasting them, and thinking how masterful your father looked. Fine I kent he was a brute, and yet I couldna help admiring him for looking so magerful. "He bade on at the Tappit Hen, flinging his siller about in the way that made him a king at Cullew, but no molesting Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, which all but me thought was what he had come to Thrums to do. Aaron and me was cried for the first time the Sabbath after he came, and the next Sabbath for r s \\ THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 119 the second time, but afore that ho was aye getting in my road and speaking to me, but I ran frae him and hod frae him when I could, and ho said the reason I did that was because I kent nlo will was stronger than mine. He was aye saying things that made me think he saw down to the bottom o' my soul; what I didna understand was that in mastering other women he had been learning to master me. Ay, but though I thought ower muokle about him, never did T speak him fair. I loo'ed Aaron wi' all my heart, and your fathor kent it; and that, I doubt, was what made him ho keen, for, oh, but he was vain! ,, " And now we 've come to the night I 'in so sweer to speak about. She was a good happy lassie that went into the Den that moonlight night wi' Aaron's arm round her, but it was another woman that came out. We thought we had the Den to oursel's, and as we sat on the Shoaging Stane at thd Cuttlo Well, Aaron wrote wi' a stick on the ground * Jean .Latta,' and prigged wi' me to look at it, but I spread my hands ower my face, and he didna ken that I was kecking at it through my fingers all the time. We was so ta'on up with oursel's that we saw nobody coming, and all at once there was your father by the side o' usl ' You've written the wrong name, Aaron, ' he said, jeering and pointing with his foot at the letters; * it should be Jean Sandys.' "Aaron said not a word, but I had a presentiment of ill| and I cried, * Dinna let hiro change the name. X. t'^>i ■ B < 120 SENTIISIENTAL TOMMY Aaron!* Your father had been to change it himsel', but at that he had a new thait, and he said, * No, I '11 no' do it; your brave Aaron shall do it for me.* " Laddie, it doesna do for a man to be a coward afore a woman that 's fond o' him. A woman will thole a man's being anything except like hersel'. When I was sure Aaron was a coward I stood still as death, waiting to ken wha's I was to be. "Aaron did it. He was loath, but your father crushed him to the ground, and said do it he should, and warned him too that if he did it he would lose me, bantering him and cowing him and advising him no' to shame me, all in a breath. He kent so weel, you see, what was in my mind, and aye there was that triumph- ing laugh ahint his face. If Aaron had fought and been beaten, even if he had just lain there and let the man strike away, if he had done anything except what he was bidden, he would have won, for it would have broken your father's power ower me. But to write the word! It was like dishonoring me to save his ain skin, and your father took good care he should ken it. You 've heard me crying to Aaron in my sleep, but it wasna for him I cried, it was for his iireside. All the love I had for him, and it was muckle, was skailed forever that night at the Cuttle Well. Without a look ahint me away I went wi' my master, and I had no more will to resist him — and oh, man, man, when I oame to mysel' next morning I wished I had never been born! THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 121 lit. it Ihe led lok )re to " The men folk saw that Aaron had shamed them, and they werena quite so set agin me as the women, wha had guessed the truth, though they couldna be sure o't. Sair I pitied myseP, and sair I grat, but only when none was looking. The mair they miscalled me the higher I held my head, and I hung on your father's arm as if I adored him, and I boasted about his office and his clerk in Lon- don till they believed what I didna believe a word o' myself. " But though I put sic a brave face on 't, I was near demented in case he shouldna marry me, and he kent that and jokit me about it. Dinna think I was fond o' him ; T hated him now. And dinna think his masterful- ness had any more power ower me; his power was broken forever when I woke up that weary morning. But that was ower late, and to wait on by mysel* in Thrums for what might happen, and me a single wo- man — I daredna ! So I flattered at him, and flattered at him, till I got the fool side o' him, and he married me. " My granny let the marriage take place in her house, and he sent in so muckle meat and drink that some folk was willing to come. One came that wasna wanted. In the middle o' the marriage Aaron Latta, wha had refused to speak to anybody since that night, walked in wearing his blacks, wi' crape on them, as if it was a funeral, and all he said was that he had come to see Jean Myles coffined. He went away quietly as soon as we was mar- ried, but the crowd outside had fathomed his meaning. ft I il'" SENTIMENTAL TOMMY and abune the minister's words I could hear them cry- ing, ' Ay, it 's mair like a burial than a marriage ! ' " My heart was near breaking wi' woe, but, oh, I was awid they shouldna ken it, and the bravest thing I ever did was to sit through the supper that night, making muckle o' your father, looking fond-like at him, laughing at his coarse jokes, and secretly hating him down to my very marrow a' the time. The crowd got word o' the on- goings, and they took a cruel revenge. A carriage had been ordered for nine o'clock to take us to Tilliedrum, where we should get the train to London, and when we heard it, as we thought, drive up to the door, out we went, me on your father's arm laughing, but wi' my teeth set. But Aaron's words had put an idea into their heads, though he didna intend it, and they had got out the hearse. It was the hearse they had brought to the door instead of a carriage. " We got awa' in a carriage in the tailend, and the stanes hitting it was all the good luck flung after me. It had just one horse, and I mind how I cried to Esther Auld, wha had been the first to throw, that when I came back it would be in a carriage and pair. " Ay, I had pride ! In the carriage your father telled me as a joke that he had got away without paying the supper, and that about all the money he had now, forby what was to pay our tickets to London, was the half- sovereign on his watch-chain. But I was determined to have Thrums think I had married grand, and as I had three T THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 123 le le. \ev ine pound six on me, the savings o' all my days, I gave two pound of it to Malcolm Crabb, the driver, unbeknown to your father, but pretending it was frae him, and telled him to pay for the supper and the carriage with it. He said it was far ower muckle, but I just laughed, and said wealthy gentlemen like Mr. Sandys couldna be bothered to take back change, so Malcolm could keep what was ' ower. Malcolm was the man Esther Auld had just mar- ried, and I counted on this maddening her and on Mal- colm's spreading the story through the town. Laddie, I 've kent since syne what it is to be without bite or sup, but I've never grudged that siller." The poor woman had halted many times in her tale, and she was glad to make an end. " You 've forgotten what a life he led me in London," she said, "and it could do you no good to hear it, though it might be a lesson to thae lassies at the dancing-school wha think so much o* masterful men. It was by betting at horse- races that your father made a living, and whiles he was large o' siller, but that didna last, and I question whether he would have stuck to me if I hadna got work. Well, he 's gone, and the Thrums folk '11 soon ken the truth about Jean Myles now." She paused, and then cried, with extraordinary vehe- mence : " Oh, man, how I wish I could keep it frae them for ever and ever 1 " But presently she was calm again and she said: ** What I 've been telling you, you can understand little 124 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY M ■"Mi i Jiil Hi! o' the now, but some of it will come back to you when you 're a grown man, and if you 're magerful and have some lassie in your grip, maybe for the memory of her that bore you, you '11 let the poor thing awa'." And she asked him to add this to his nightly prayer : '' O God, keep me from being a magerful man I " and to teach this other prayer to Elspeth, " God, whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them that bow the knee to magerful men, and if I was born like that and canna help it, oh, take me up to heaven afore I 'm fil't." The wardrobe was invisible in the darkness, but they could still hear Elspeth's breathing as she slept, and the exhausted woman listened long to it, as if she would fain carry away with her to the other world the memory of that sweet sound. " If you gang to Thrums," she said at last, "you may hear my story frae some that winna spare me in the tell- ing ; but should Elspeth be wi' you at sic times, dinna answer back ; just slip quietly aw^ay wi' her. She 's so young that she '11 soon forget all about her life in Lon- don and all about me, and that'll be best for her. I would like her lassiehood to be bright and free frae cares, as if there had never been sic a woman as me. But laddie, oh, my laddie, dinna you forget me ; you and me had him to thole thegither, dinna you forget me! Watch ower your little sister by day and hap her by night, and when the time comes that a man wants her — if he be magerful, tell her my story at once. But gin THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES 125 she loves one that is her ain true love, dinna rub off the bloom, laddie, with a word about me. Let. her and him gang to the Cuttle Well, as Aaron and me went, kenning no guile and thinking none, and with their arms round one another's waists. But when her wedding-day comes round — )t Her words broke in a sob and she cried : " I see them, I see them standing up thegither afore the minister ! Oh ! you lad, you lad that 's to be married on my Elspeth, turn your face and let me see that you 're no' a magerful man ! " But the lad did not turn his face, and when she spoke next it was to Tommy. , ^ - , \ " In the bottom o' my kist there 's a little silver teapot. It 's no* real silver, but it 's fell bonny. I bought it for Elspeth twa or three months back when I saw I couldna last the winter. I bought it to her for a marriage pres- ent. She's no' to see it till her wedding-day comes round. Syne you're to give it to her, man, and say it's with her mother's love. Tell her all about me, for it canna harm her then. Tell her of the fool lies I sent to Thrums, but dinna forget what a bonny place I thought it all the time, nor how I stood on many a driech night at the corner of that street, looking so waeful at the lighted windows, and hungering for the wring of a Thrums hand or the sound of the Thrums word, and all the time the shrewd blasts cutting through my thin trails of claithes. Tell her, man, how you and me spent this nighty and how I fought to keep my hoast down so I. ■ 126 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY iff' w .111 ii as no' to waken her. Mind that whatever I have been, I was aye fond o' my bairns, and slaved for them till I dropped. She'll have long forgotten what I was like, and it's just as well, but yet — Look at me. Tommy, look long, long, so as you '11 be able to call up my face as it was on the far-back night when I telled you my mourn- ful story. Na, you canna see in the dark, but baud my hand, baud it tight, so that, when you tell Elspeth, you '11 mind how hot it was, and the skin loose on it ; and put your hand on my cheeks, man, and feel how wet they are wi' sorrowful tears, and lay it on my breast, so that you can tell her how I was shrunk awa'. And if she greets for her mother a whiley, let her greet." The sobbing boy hugged his mother. ♦* Do you think I 'm an auld woman ? " she said to him. " You 're gey auld, are you no' ? " he answered. " A}'," she said, " I 'm gey auld ; I 'm nine and twenty. I was seventeen on the day when Aaron Latta went half- road in the cart wi' me to CuUew, handing my hand aneath my shawl. He hadua spiered me, but I just kent." Tommy remained in his mother's bed for the rest of the night, and so many things were buzzing in his brain that not for an hour did he think it time to repe,at his new prayer. At last he said reverently : " God, keep me from being a magerful man ! " Then he opened his eyes to let God see that his prayer was ended, and added to himself : " But I think I would fell like it." i CHAPTER XI AARON LATTA The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the Monypenny smithy and trudged on. The smith having wiped his hand on his hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil the middle letter fell flat, and now the like- ness to Monypenny was absolute. Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink, kink of the smith's hammer. Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure, taking his pleasure on the dyke. Behind him was the flour-miller's field, and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible. He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron Latta's cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside of Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be h i;. I iri: i ite also shot a Wk ^uL ! 7 '^'''^' " «-V-hesaid,withL:rerS:"«-" — -a^-CmrreS^rr^rr'- was aye fond o' your joke, " ^' ^^^' ^^^^«' ^^^^ " What has that to do wV 't 9 » ^.^ , uncomfortably. ^ Wed out the smith, Dite shuddered. "Man " h^ j « - bring Bouble Byke^Lk' ^ vt '"" '^ - was to see him climbing the cem er;;;keT " and coming stepping down the fields Ll , ""' wa^tcoat wi' the pearl buttons-!-" " ""''''''''" f^'l f 9 .1 '»«• •etter, anyleUer he'likedbt^ "" ^^^''^""^ ^" ^ Then She prigged with ht ,177: '" '''''''' '*• ^" hands, for said she, Cir L ? '" ^"'^ <">« '» «^ery day." ft «„ ^ ' ^f ' I »sed to get one to Mysy Robbie; and Cv T °' ""^ '^''^'^ ''«» ^-^t he thought'there wSr "' T "'"^ -''»'^- I'ainted Lady hold her leC T ""^ '" '«'«"^ the you should have seen her d.l ^'"'^ " '° ^^'•' «»<» holding it to her b^eiT Jf " V'" """-"and "Is n't it sweet?" she ad VT'" "''"' ^ P'^^"- her she kissed it. She frr^ > '"'°" ''^ "-" ^'"P '"d «ade to open it and I ! '''' "" '^"^^ °^ hers' -y«« She du'rst not e JT'': ^«" -'-"""ling and whether the first word, J .. ^°" "''^*' ''°«w The envelope was Id ChZ 1"? "r ^°" ^«"'- ---hadaninn„;e:r-r.r::: II if vm ' 11 lliili i.il'ili i ! illi , i II ilji li II!' ^'^. 132 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY When he took the letter from her, though, she called him a low, vulgar fellow for presuming to address a lady. She worked herself into a fury, and said far worse than that; a perfect guller of clarty language came pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many a time without turning a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she just spoke it like a bairn that had been in ill company. The smith's wife, Suphy, who had joined the com- pany, thought that men were easily taken in, especially smiths. She offered, however, to convey the letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the Fainted Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted that she had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour bairn of the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down the blind. Unfortunate Suphy ! she could not try the window this time, as it was broad daylight, and the Painted Lady took the letter from her at the door. She returned crestfallen, and for an hour nothing happened. The mole-catcher went off to the square, saying, despond- ently, that nothing would happen until he was round the corner. No sooner had he rounded the corner than something did happen. A girl who had left Double Dykes with a letter was walking quickly toward Mony penny. She wore a white pinafore over a magenta frock, and no one could tell her AARON LATTA 133 was rhite her whether she was seven or eight, for she was only the Painted Lady's child. Some boys, her natural enemies, were behind; they had just emerged from the Den, and she heard them before they saw her, and at once her little heart jumped and ran oft' with her. But the halloo that told her she was discovered checked her running. Her teeth went into her underlip; now her head was erect. After her came the rabble with a rush, flinging stones that had no mark and epithets that hit. Grizel disdained to look over her shoulder. Little hunted child, where was succor to come from if she could not fight for herself? " Though under the torture she would not cry out. "What's a father?" was their favorite jeer, because she had once innocently asked this question of a false friend. One tried to snatch the letter from her, but she flashed him a look that sent him to the other side of the dyke, where, he said, did she think he was afraid of her ? Another strutted by her aide, mimicking her in such diverting manner that presently the others had to pick him out of the ditch. Thus Grizel moved onward defiantly until she reached Mony penny, where she tossed the letter in at the smithy door and imme- diately returned home. It was the letter that had been sent to her mother, now sent back, because it was meant for the dead farmer after all. The smith read Jean Myles's last letter, with a face of growing gravity. "Dear Double Dykes," it said, "I ti- msmm : m m\ I:, iiillli v\ 184 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY send you these few scrapes to say T am dying, and you and Aaron Latta was seldom sindry, so I charge you to go to him and say to him * Aaron Latta, it 's all lies Jean Myles wrote to Thrums about her grandeur, and her man died mony year back, and it was the only kindness he ever did her, and if she doesna die quick, her and her starving bairns will be flung out into the streets. ' If that doesna move him, say, ' Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie doos ? ' likewise, * Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at the Kaims of Airlie ? ' likewise, *' Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for you to lift ? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now. ' And syne says you solemnly three times, * Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land.' And if he 's sweer to come, just say, * Oh, Aaron, man, you micht; oh, Aaron, oh, Aaron, are you coming ? ' " The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word against her again. He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to Blinder and read it to him. " She doesna say, * Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well ? ' " was the blind man's first comment. "She was thinking about it," said Auchterlonie. "Ay, and he's thinking about it," said Blinder, AARON LATTA 136 "night and day, night and day. What a town there '11 be about that letter, smith ! " " There will. But I 'm to take it to Aaron afore the news spreads. He '11 never gang to London though." "I think he will, smith." ' ' "I ken him well." "Maybe I ken him better." "You canna see the ugly mark it left on his brow." " I can see the uglier marks it has left in his breast." " Well, I '11 take the letter; I can do no more." When the smith opened the door of Aaron's house he let out a draught of hot air that was glad to be gone from the warper's restless home. The usual hallan, or passage, divided the but from the ben, and in the ben a great revolving thing, the warping-mill, half filled the room. Between it and a pile of webs that obscured the light a little silent man was sitting on a box turning a handle. His shoulders were almost as high as his ears, as if he had been caught forever in a storm, and though he was barely five and thirty, he had the tattered, dis- honored beard of black and white that comes to none till the glory of life has gone. Suddenly the smith appeared round the webs. "Aaron," he said, awkwardly, "do you mind Jean Myles?" The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with pirns in it that was climbing up aud down the whirring mill, \? 136 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY l! ! I,:M "She's dead," he answered. "She 's dying," said the smith. A thread broke, and Aaron had to rise to mend it. "Stop the mill and listen," Auchterlonie begged him, but the warper returned to his seat and the mill again revolved. "This is her dying words to you," continued the > smith. " Did you speak ? " "I didna, but I wish you would take your arm off the haik." "She's loath to die without seeing you. Do you hear, man ? You shall listen to me, I tell you." "I am listening, smith," the warper replied, without rancour. " It 's but right that you should come here to take your pleasure on a shamed man." His calmness gave him a kind of dignity. " Did I ever say you was a shamed man, Aaron ? " "Am I not?" the warper asked quietly; and Auchterlonie hung his head. Aaron continued, still turning the handle, " You 're truthful, and you canna deny it. Nor will you deny that I shamed you. and every other mother's son that night. You try to hod it out o' pity, smith, but even as you look at me now, does the man in you no rise up against me ? " "If so," the smith answered reluctantly, "if so, it's against my will." "It is so," said Aaron, in the same measured voice, 1 AARON LATTA 187 ^'and it's right that it should be so. A man may thieve or debauch or murder, and yet no be so very different frae his fellow -men, but there 's one thing he shall not do without their wanting to spit him out o' their mouths, and that is, violate the feelings of sex." The strange words in which the warper described his fall had always an uncomfortable effect on those who heard him use them, and Auchterlonie could only answer in distress, "Maybe that's what it is." " That 's what it is. I have had twal lang years sitting on this box to think it out. I blame none but mysel'." "Then you'll have pity on Jean in her sair need," said the smith. He read slowly the first part of the letter, but Aaron made no comment, and the mill had not stopped for a moment. "She says," the smith proceeded, doggedly — "she says to say to you, ' Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie doos ? ' " Only the monotonous whirr of the mill replied. "She says, * Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for you to lift ? Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.' " Another thread broke and the warper rose with sudden fury. "Now that you 've eased your conscience, smith," he said, fiercely, "make your feet your friend." "I'll do so," Auchterlonie answered, laying the letter on the websi "but I leave this ahint me." I i-.^^^ \\ 138 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY I'l ^i " Wap it in the tire." " If that 's to be done, you do it yoursel*. Aaron, she treated you ill, but " "There's the door, smith." The smith walked away, and had only gone a few steps when he heard the whirr of the mill again. He went back to the door. " She 's dying, man ! " he cried. " Let her die! " answered Aaron. In an hour the sensational news was through half of Thrums, of which Monypenny may be regarded as a broken piece, left behind, like the dot of quicksilver in the tube, to show how high the town once rose. Some could only rejoice at first in the down-come of Jean Myles, but most blamed the smith (and himself among them) for not taking note of her address, so that Thrums Street could be informed of it and sent to her relief. For Blinder alone believed that Aaron would be softened. "It was twa threads the smith saw him break," the blind man said, "and Aaron 's good at his work. He '11 go to London, I tell you." "You forget, Blinders, that he was warping afore I was a dozen steps frae the door." " Ay, and that just proves he hadna burned the letter, for he hadna time. If he didna do it at the first impulse, he'll no do it now." Every little while the boys were sent along the road to look in at Aaron's end window and reportif v ►^ ^ of a 'U tev, irst )ad u w «/) AARON LATTA 139 At seven in the evening Aaron had not left his box, and the blind man's reputation for seeing farther than those with eyes was fallen low. "It's a good sign," he insisted, nevertheless. "It shows his mind 's troubled, for he usually louses at six. i> By eight the news was that Aaron had left his mill and was sitting staring at his kitchen fire. "He's thinking o' Inverquharity and tho cushie doos," said Blinder. "More likely," said Dite Deuchars, "he's thinking o' the Cuttle Well." Corp Shiach clattered along the road about nine to say that Aaron Latta was putting on his blacks as if for a journey. At once the blind man's reputation rose on stilts. It fell flat, however, before the ten-o'clock bell rang, when three of the Auchterlonie children, each pulling the others back that he might arrive first, announced that Aaron had put on his corduroys again, and was back at the mill. "That settles it," was everyone's good -night to Blinder, but he only answered thoughtfully, "There's a fierce fight going on, my billies." Next morning when his niece was shaving the blind man, the razor had to travel over a triumphant smirk which would not explain itself to womankind, Blinder being a man who could bide his time. The time came :i 140 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY Z\ U when the smith looked in to say, " Should I gang yont to Aaron's and see if he '11 give me the puir woman's address ? " "No, I wouldna advise that," answered Blinder, cleverly concealing his elation, " for Aarou Latta 's awa* to London." " What I How can you ken ? " "I heard him go by in the night." " It 's no possible ! " "Ikenthis foot." " You 're sure it was Aaron ? " Blinder did not consider the question worth answer- ing, his sharpness at recognizing friends by their tread being proved. Sometimes he may have carried his pretensions too far. Many granted that he could tell when a doctor went by, when a lawyer, when a thatcher, when a herd, and this is conceivable, for all callings have their walk. But he was regarded as uncanny when he claimed not only to know ministers in this way, but to be able to distinguish between the steps of the different denominations. He had made no mistake about the warper, however. Aaron was gone, and ten days elapsed before he was again seen in Thrums. • CHAPTER XII A child's tragedy No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent those ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him, also tried to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for them. Jean and Aaron did not meet again. Her first intimation that he had come she got from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man in black had been inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and down the street, like one waiting. She sent her children out to him, but he would not come up. He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth slipped her hand into his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her to tell Jean Myles that he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and bring up her bairns. Jean managed once to go to the window and look down at him, and by and by he looked up and saw her. They looked long at each other, and then he turned away his head and began to walk up and down again. At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to Monypenny, Aaron and the two 142 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY I r-J children sitting on the box-seat. Someone said, ** Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be in her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word," and the saying is still preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places have their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every text in it has cost a life. About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from the warper's house to the grave. Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but Aaron held her back, saying, quietly, "In this part, it's only men that go to burials, so you and me maun bide at hame," and then she cried, no one understood why, except Tommy. It was because he would see Thrums first; but he whispered to her, "I promise to keep my eyes shut and no look once," and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that the smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression that he was blind. But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny, whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from Blinder's niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her sobbing even like himself. Tommy could never bear to see A CHHiD's TRAGEDY 143 res to Ihe lat lee Elspeth crying, and he revealed his true self in his way of drying her tears. " It will be so cold in that hole," she sobbed. "No," he said, "it *s warm." "It will be dark." "No, it's clear." " She would like to get out." "No, she was terrible pleased to get in." It was characteristic of him that he soon had Elspeth happy b}'^ arguments not one of which he believed him- self; characteristic also that his own grief was soothed by the sound of them. Aaron, who was in the garret preparing their bed, had told the children that they must remain indoors to-day out of respect to their mother's memory (to-morrow morning they could ex- plore Thrums); but there were many things in that kitchen for them to look at and exult over. It had no commonplace ceiling, the couples, or rafters, being covered with the loose flooring of a romantic garret, and in the rafters were several great hooks, from one of which hung a ham, and Tommy remembered, with a thrill which he communicated to Elspeth, that it is the right of Thrums children to snip off the ham as much as they can remove with their finger-nails and roast it on the ribs of the fire. The chief pieces of furniture were a dresser, a corner cupboard with diamond panes, two tables, one of which stood beneath the other, but would have to come out if Aaron tried to r^ I- r! i: w % II iiiiiiiir 'ii«i« ' ■•,!! H 144 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY bake, and a bed with a door. These two did not know it, but the room was full of memories of Jean Myles. The corner cupboard had been bought by Aaron at a roup because she said she would like to have one; it was she who had chosen the six cups and saucers with the blue spots on them. A razor-strop, now hard as iron, hung on a nail on the wall ; it had not been used since the last time Aaron strutted through the Den with his sweetheart. One day later he had opened the door of the bird-cage, which still stood in the window, and let the yellow yite go. Many things were where no woman would have left them: clothes on the floor with the nail they had torn from the wall ; on a chair a tin basin, soapy water and a flannel rag in it; horn spoons with whistles at the end of them were anywhere — on the mantelpiece, beneath the bed; there were drawers that could not be opened because their handles were inside. Perhaps the windows were closed hope- lessly also, but this must be left doubtful ; no one had ever tried to open them. The garret where Tommy and Elspeth w6re to sleep was reached by a ladder from the hallan; when you were near the top of the ladder your head hit a trap- door and pushed it open. At one end of the garret was the bed, and at the other end were piled sticks for fire- wood and curious dark-colored slabs whose smell the children disliked until Tommy said, excitedly, "Peat I" and then they sniffed reverently. I '■ :$ A child's tuaqbdy 145 leep L'ap- Iwas ire- the tl M t v/ It was Tommy, too, who discovered the tree-tops of the Den, and Elspeth seeing him gazing in a transport out at the window cried, " What is it, Tommy ? Quick!!' "Promise no to scream," he replied, warningly. " Well, then, Elspeth Sandys, that ^ where the Den is!" Elspeth blinked with awe, and anon said, wistfully, " Tommy, do you see that there ? That 's where the Denis!" "It were me what told you," cried Tommy, jealously. " But let me tell you, Tommy ! " "Well, then, you can tell me." "That there is the Den, Tommy! " "Dagont!" Oh, that to-morrow were here! Oh, that Shovel could see these two to-morrow! Here is another splendid game, T. Sandys, inventor. The girl goes into the bed, the boy shuts the door on her, and imitates the sound of a train in motion. He opens the door and cries, "Tickets, please." The girl says, "What is the name of this place?" The boy replies, " It 's Thrums ! " There is more to follow, but the only two who have played the game always roared so joyously at this point that they could get no farther. "Oh, to-morrow, come quick, quick!" "Oh, poor Shovel!" To-morrow came, and with it two eager little figures 10 II ll!i!B| 146 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY rose and gulped their porridge, and set off to see Thrums. They were dressed in the black clothes Aaron Latta had bought for them in London, and they had agreed just to walk, but when they reached the door and saw the tree-tops of the Den they — they ran. Would you not like to hold them back ? It is a child's tragedy. They went first into the Den, and the rocks were dripping wet, all the trees, save the firs, were bare, and the mud round a tiny spring pulled off one of Elspeth's boots. "Tommy," she cried, quaking, "that narsty puddle can't not be the Cuttle Well, can it ? " "No, it ain't," said Tommy, quickly, but he feared it was. "It's c-c-colder here than London," Elspeth said, shivering, and Tommy was shivering too, but he answered, " I 'm — I 'm — I 'm warm." The Den was strangely small, and soon they were on a shabby brae where women in short gowns came to their doors and men in night-caps sat down on the shafts of their barrows to look at Jean Myles's bairns. " What does yer think ? " Elspeth whispered, very doubtfully. "They're beauties," Tommy answered, determinedly. Presently Elspeth cried, "Oh, Tommy, what a ugly stair! Where is the beauty stairs as is wore outside for show?" ^ I u nm-init-iiii A CHILD'S TEAGEDY 147 he ,ry fly de This was one of them and Tommy knew it. " Wait till you see the west town end," he said bravely; "it 's grand." But when they were in the west town end, and he had to admit it, " Wait till you see the square, " he said, and when they were in the square, "Wait," he said, huskily, "till you see the town-house." Alas, this was the town-house facing them, and when they knew it, he said hurriedly, "Wait till you see the Auld Licht Kirk." They stood long in front of the Auld Licht Kirk, which he had sworn was bigger and lovelier than St. Paul's, but — well, it is a different style of architecture, and had Elspeth not been there with tears in waiting. Tommy would have blubbered. "It's — it's littler than I thought," he said desperately, "but — the minister, oh, what a wonderful big man he is!" " Are you sure ? " Elspeth squeaked. "I swear he is." The church door opened and a gentleman came out, a little man, boyish in the back, with the eager face of those who live too quickly. But it was not at him that Tommy pointed reassuringly; it was at the monster church key, half of which protruded from his tail pocket and waggled like the hilt of a sword. Speaking like an old residenter. Tommy explained that he had brought his sister to see the church. "She 's ta'en aback," he said, picking out Scotch words carefully, " because it 's littler than the London kirks, 111 \V 148 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY m but I tolled her — I telled her that the preaching is better." This seemed to please the stranger, for he patted Tommy on the head while inquiring, "How do you know that the preaching is better ? " "Tell him, Elspeth," replied Tommy modestly. "There ain't nuthin' as Tommy don't know," El- speth explained. "He knows what the minister is like too." "He 's a noble sight," said Tommy. "He can get anything from God he likes," said Elspeth. "He 's a terrible big man," said Tommy. This seemed to please the little gentleman less. "Big!" he exclaimed, irritably; "why should he be big?" "He is big," Elspeth almost screamed, for the minister was her last hope. "Nonsense!" said the little gentleman. "He is — well, I am the minister." " You I" roared Tommy, wrathfully. "Oh, oh, oh!" sobbed Elspeth. For a moment the Rev. Mr. Dishart looked as if he would like to knock two little heads together, jsut he walked away without doing it. " Never mind," Tommy whispered hoarsely to Elspeth. "Never mind, Elspeth, you have me yet." This consolation seldom failed to gladden her, but /' A CHILD'S TRAGEDY 149 le he lie 3th. but her disappointment was so sharp to-day that she would not even look up. "Come away to the cemetery, it's grand," he said; but still she would not be comforted. " And I '11 let you hold my hand — as soon as we 're past the houses," he added. "I '11 let you hold it now," he said eventually, but even then Elspeth cried dismally, and her sobs were hurting him more than her. He knew all the ways of getting round Elspeth, and when next he spoke it was with a sorrowful dignity. "1 didna think," he said, "as yer wanted me never to be able to speak again; no, I didna think it, Elspeth." She took her hands from her face and looked at him inquiringly. "One of the stories mamma telled me and Reddy," he said, " were about a man what saw such a beauty thing that he was struck dumb with admiration. Struck dumb is never to be able to speak again, and I wish I had been struck dumb when you wanted it." "But I didn't want it I " Elspeth cried. " If Thrums had been one little bit beautier than it is," he went on solemnly, "it would have struck me dumb. It would have hurt me sore, but what about that, if it pleased you I" Then did Elspeth see what a wicked girl she had been, and when next the two were observed by the curious (it was on the cemetery road), they were once m:. 150 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY V'-i ':■ \l It mm imi ii 'i; more looking cheerful. At the smallest provocation they exchanged notes of admiration, such as, "Oh, Tommy, what a bonny barrel ! " or " Oh, Elspeth, I tell yer that's a dyke, and there 's just walls in London," but sometimes Elspeth would stoop hastily, pretending that she wanted to tie her bootlace, but really to brush away a tear, and there were moments when Tommy hung very limp. Each was trying to deceive the other for the other's sake, and one of them was never good at deception. They saw through each other, yet kept up the chilly game, because they could think of nothing better, and perhaps the game was worth playing, for love invented it. They sat down on their mother's grave. No stone was ever erected to the memory of Jean Myles, but it is enough for her that she lies at home. That comfort will last her to the Judgment Day. The man who had dug the grave sent them away, and they wandered to the hill, and thence down the Koods, where there were so many outside stairs not put there for show that it was well Elspeth remembered how susceptible Tommy was to being struck dumb. For her sake he said, "They're bonny," and for his sake she replied, "I'm glad they ain't bonnier." When within one turn of Monypenny they came sud- denly upon some boys playing at capey-dykey, a game with marbles that is only known in Thrums. There are thirty-five ways of playing marbles, but this is the I le re le A CHILD S TRAGEDY 151 best way, and Elspeth knew that Tommy was hunger- ing to look on, but without her, lest he should be accused of sweethearting. So she offered to remain in the background. Was she sure she should n't mind ? She said f alter ingly that of course she would mind a little, but Then Tommy was irritated, and said he knew she would mind, but if she just pretended she did n't mind, he could leave her without feeling that he was mean. So Elspeth affected not to mind, and then he deserted her, conscience at rest, which was his nature. But he should have remained with her. The players only gave him the side of their eye, and a horrid fear grew on him that they did not know he was a Thrums boy. "Dagont!" he cried to put them right on that point, but though they paused in their game, it was only to laugh at him uproariously. Let the historian use an oath for once; dagont. Tommy had said the swear in the wrong place I How fond he had been of that word ! Many a time he had fired it in the face of Londoners, and the flash had often blinded them and always him. Now he had brought it home, and Thrums would have none of it; it was as if these boys were jeering at their own flag. He tottered away from them until he came to a trance, or passage, where he put his face to the wall and forgot even Elspeth. U >n ■ \^ 162 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY He had not noticed a girl pass the mouth of the trance, trying not very successfully to conceal a brandy- bottle beneath her pinafore, but presently he heard shouts, and looking out he saw Grizel, the Painted Lady's child, in the hands of her tormentors. She was unknown to him, of course, but she hit back so cour- ageously that he watched her with interest, until — until suddenly he retreated farther into the trance. He had seen Elspeth go on her knees, obviously to ask God to stay the hands and tongues of these cruel boys. Elspeth had disgraced him, he felt. He was done with her forever. If they struck her, serve her right. Struck her! Struck little Elspeth I His imagination painted the picture with one sweep of its brush. Take care, you boys. Tommy is scudding back. They had not molested Elspeth as yet. When they saw and heard her praying, they had bent forward, agape, as if struck suddenly in the stomach. Then one of them, Francie Crabb, the golden-liaired son of Esther Auld, recovered and began to knead GrizePs back with his fists, less in viciousness than to show that the , prayer was futile. Into this scene sprang Tommy, and he thought that Elspeth was the kneaded one. Had he taken time to reflect he would probably have used the Thrums feint, and then in with a left-hander, which is not very efficacious in its own country; but being in a hurry he let out with ShovePs favorite, and down went Francie Crabb. ^ I A child's tragedy 163 "Would you!" said Tommy, threatening, when Francie attempted to rise. He saw now that Elspeth was untouched, that he had rescued an unknown girl, and it cannot be pretended of him that he was the boy to squire all ladies in distress. In ordinary circumstances he might have left Grizel to her fate, but having struck for her, he felt that he would like to go on striking. He had also the day's disappointments to avenge. It is startling to reflect that the little minister's height, for instance, put an extra kick in him. So he stood stridelegs over Francie, who whimpered, "I wouldna have struck this one if that one hadna prayed for me. It wasna likely I would stand that." "You shall stand it," replied Tommy, and turning to Elspeth, who had risen from her knees, he said : " Pray away, Elspeth." Elspeth refused, feeling that there would be some- thing wrong in praying from triumph, and Tommy, about to be very angry with her, had a glorious inspira- tion. "Pray for yourself," he said to Francie, "and do it out loud." The other boys saw that a novelty promised, and now Francie need expect no aid from them. At first he refused to pray, but he succumbed when Tommy had explained the consequences, and illustrated them. Tommy dictated: "Oh, God, I am a sinner. (Jo on." Francie not only said it, but looked it. l\mV li'i HI" 3, ii;- \^ 154 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY Iff!? i^ } ■•\ w I ' • "And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," continued Tommy. "And I pray to you to repent me, though I ain't worthy," growled Francie. (It was the arrival of ain't in Thrums.) Tommy considered, and then: "I thank Thee, God," he said, "for telling this girl — this lassie — to pray for me." Two gentle taps helped to knock this out of Francie. Being an artist. Tommy had kept his best for the end (and made it up first). "And lastly," he said, "I thank this boy for thrashing me — I mean this here laddie. Oh, may he alius be near to thrash me when I strike this other lassie again. Amen." When it was all over Tommy looked around trium- phantly, and though he liked the expression on several faces, Grizel's pleased him best. "It ain't no wonder you would like to be me, lassie ! " he said, in an ecstasy. "I don't want to be you, you conceited boy," retorted the Fainted Lady's child hotly, and her heat was the greater because the clever little wretch had read her thoughts aright. But it was her sweet voice that surprised him. " You 're English! " he cried. ' "So are you," broke in a boy offensively, and then ; Tommy said to Grizel loftily, "Run away; I '11 not let none on them touch you." ^ ' A child's tragedy 155 Ir It "I am not afraid of them," she rejoined, with scorn, "and I shall not let you help me, and I won't run." And run she did not; she walked off leisurely with her head in the air, and her dignity was beautiful, except once when she made the mistake of turning round to put out her tongue. But, alas ! in the end someone ran. If only they had not called him "English." In vain he fired a volley of Scotch ; they pretended not to understand it. Then he screamed that he and Shovel could fight the lot of them. Who was Shovel ? they asked derisively. He replied that Shovel was a bloke who could lick any two of them — and with one hand tied behind his back. No sooner had he made this proud boast than he went white, and soon two disgraceful tears rolled down his cheeks. The boys saw that for some reason unknown his courage was gone, and even Francie Crabb began to turn up his sleeves and spit upon his hands. Elspeth was as bewildered as the others, but she slipped her hand into his and away they ran ingloriously, the foe too much astounded to jeer. She sought to comfort him by saying (and it brought her a step nearer womanhood), "You wasn't feared for yourself, you wasn't; you was just feared they would hurt me." But Tommy sobbed in reply, "That ain't it. I bounced so much about the Thrums folk to Shovel, and now the first day I 'm here I heard myself bouncing about Shovel to Thrums folk, and it were that what : i-i 166 SENTIMENTAL TOMMY .V 'I fff ,'"» made me cry. Oh, Elspeth, it *s — it 's not the same what I thought it would be!" Kor was it the same to Elspeth, so they sat down by the roadside and cried with their arms round each other, and any passer-by could look who had the heart. But when night came, and they were in their garret bed, Tommy was once more seeking to comfort Elspeth with arguments he disbelieved, and again he succeeded. As usual, too, the make-believe made him happy also. "Have you forgot," he whispered, "that my mother said as she would come and see us every night in our bed? If yer cries, she '11 see as we 're terrible unhappy, and that will make her unhappy too." "Oh, Tommy, is she here now ?" " Whisht ! She 's here, but they don't like living ones to let on as they knows it." Elspeth kept closer to Tommy, and with their heads beneath the blankets, so as to stifle the sound, he explained to her how they could cheat their mother. When she understood, he took the blankets o£E their faces and said in the darkness in a loud voice: " It 's a grand place. Thrums I " Elspeth replied in a similar voice, "Ain't the town- house just big ! " . Said Tommy, almost chuckling, " Oh, the bonny, bonny AuldLichtKirk!'' Said Elspeth, " Oh, the beauty outside stairs ! " Said Tommy, "The minister is so long!" mm Aif' A ohjld's tbagedy 167 Said Elspeth, « The folk is so kind I " Said Tommy, " Especially the laddies! " " Oh, I is so happy ! " cried Elspeth. " Me too I " cried Tommy. " My mother would be so chirpy if she could jest see us ! " Elspeth said, quite archly. "But she cannal" replied Tommy, slyly pinching Elspeth in the rib. Then they dived beneath the blankets, and the whis- pering was resumed. " Did she hear, does yer think ? " asked Elspeth. "Every word," Tommy replied. "Elspeth, weVe done her ! " iiil^l;:' g ^e \ \ CHAPTER XIII '?/ SHOWS HOW TOMMY TOOK CARE OP ELSPETH \-.i ! f Thus the first day passed, and others followed in which women, who had known Jean Myles, did her chil- dren kindnesses, but could not do all they would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors thought her a back- ward girl ; they forgot, like most people, that service is not necessarily a handicraft. Tommy discovered what they were saying, and to shield Elspeth he took to house- wifery with the blind down ; but Aaron, entering the kitchen unexpectedly, took the besom from him, saying : " It 's an ill thing for men folk to ken ov/er muckle about women's work." , I "You do it yourseiy Tommy argued. "I said men folk," replied Aaron, quietly. The children knew that remarks of this sort had ref- erence to their mother, of whom he never spoke more «^jS«*i~*lJI I iiimpii ] I HOW TOMMY TOOK- /r. / ^. . '^''°" "^'« or EMPETH 159 / ''"""'y-' ««i««-ing the, saw 1^17'^''*"''^"^^'--^^ ;