Sentimental Tommy | Page 6

from.
In a word, to be diddled by a girl when one flatters himself he is
diddling! S'death, a dashing fellow finds it hard to bear. Nevertheless,
he has to bear it, for oh, Tommy, Tommy, 'tis 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 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 by her
accent only, but when she and Tommy were together in that room, with
the door shut, she 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 there before us."
"The little besom!" he cried helplessly.
His mother saw that mischievous boys had been mounting him on his
horse, which needed only one slap to make it go a mile; but she was a
spiritless woman, and replied indifferently, "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!" 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 limmer!"
"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