Tommy and Grizel | Page 5

The
whole question, in Pym's words, resolves itself into how the solemn
little devil got to know so much about women. It made the world
marvel when they learned his age, but no one was quite so staggered as
Pym, who had seen him daily for all those years, and been damning
him for his indifference to the sex during the greater part of them.
It began while he was still no more than an amanuensis, sitting with his
feet in the waste-paper basket, Pym dictating from the sofa, and
swearing when the words would not come unless he was perpendicular.
Among the duties of this amanuensis was to remember the name of the
heroine, her appearance, and other personal details; for Pym constantly

forgot them in the night, and he had to go searching back through his
pages for them, cursing her so horribly that Tommy signed to Elspeth
to retire to her tiny bedroom at the top of the house. He was always
most careful of Elspeth, and with the first pound he earned he insured
his life, leaving all to her, but told her nothing about it, lest she should
think it meant his early death. As she grew older he also got good dull
books for her from a library, and gave her a piano on the hire system,
and taught her many things about life, very carefully selected from his
own discoveries.
Elspeth out of the way, he could give Pym all the information wanted.
"Her name is Felicity," he would say at the right moment; "she has
curly brown hair in which the sun strays, and a blushing neck, and her
eyes are like blue lakes."
"Height!" roared Pym. "Have I mentioned it?"
"No; but she is about five feet six."
"How the ---- could you know that?"
"You tell Percy's height in his stocking-soles, and when she reached to
his mouth and kissed him she had to stand on her tiptoes so to do."
Tommy said this in a most businesslike tone, but could not help
smacking his lips. He smacked them again when he had to write: "Have
no fear, little woman; I am by your side." Or, "What a sweet child you
are!"
Pym had probably fallen into the way of making the Percys revel in
such epithets because he could not remember the girl's name; but this
delicious use of the diminutive, as addressed to full-grown ladies, went
to Tommy's head. His solemn face kept his secret, but he had some
narrow escapes; as once, when saying good-night to Elspeth, he kissed
her on mouth, eyes, nose, and ears, and said: "Shall I tuck you in, little
woman?" He came to himself with a start.
"I forgot," he said hurriedly, and got out of the room without telling her

what he had forgotten.
Pym's publishers knew their man, and their arrangement with him was
that he was paid on completion of the tale. But always before he
reached the middle he struck for what they called his honorarium; and
this troubled them, for the tale was appearing week by week as it was
written. If they were obdurate, he suddenly concluded his story in such
words as these:
"Several years have passed since these events took place, and the scene
changes to a lovely garden by the bank of old Father Thames. A young
man sits by the soft-flowing stream, and he is calm as the scene itself;
for the storm has passed away, and Percy (for it is no other) has found
an anchorage. As he sits musing over the past, Felicity steals out by the
French window and puts her soft arms around his neck. 'My little wife!'
he murmurs. _The End--unless you pay up by messenger._"
This last line, which was not meant for the world (but little would Pym
have cared though it had been printed), usually brought his employers
to their knees; and then, as Tommy advanced in experience, came the
pickings--for Pym, with money in his pockets, had important
engagements round the corner, and risked intrusting his amanuensis
with the writing of the next instalment, "all except the bang at the end."
Smaller people, in Tommy's state of mind, would have hurried straight
to the love-passages; but he saw the danger, and forced his Pegasus
away from them. "Do your day's toil first," he may be conceived saying
to that animal, "and at evenfall I shall let you out to browse." So, with
this reward in front, he devoted many pages to the dreary adventures of
pretentious males, and even found a certain pleasure in keeping the
lady waiting. But as soon as he reached her he lost his head again.
"Oh, you beauty! oh, you small pet!" he said to himself, with solemn
transport.
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