Tommy and Grizel | Page 6

the artist in him was stirred, great problems presented themselves;
for instance, in certain circumstances was "darling" or "little one" the
better phrase? "Darling" in solitary grandeur is more pregnant of

meaning than "little one," but "little" has a flavour of the patronizing
which "darling" perhaps lacks. He wasted many sheets over such
questions; but they were in his pocket when Pym or Elspeth opened the
door. It is wonderful how much you can conceal between the touch on
the handle and the opening of the door, if your heart is in it.
Despite this fine practice, however, he was the shyest of mankind in the
presence of women, and this shyness grew upon him with the years.
Was it because he never tried to uncork himself? Oh, no! It was about
this time that he, one day, put his arm round Clara, the servant--not
passionately, but with deliberation, as if he were making an experiment
with machinery. He then listened, as if to hear Clara ticking. He wrote
an admirable love-letter--warm, dignified, sincere--to nobody in
particular, and carried it about in his pocket in readiness. But in
love-making, as in the other arts, those do it best who cannot tell how it
is done; and he was always stricken with a palsy when about to present
that letter. It seemed that he was only able to speak to ladies when they
were not there. Well, if he could not speak, he thought the more; he
thought so profoundly that in time the heroines of Pym ceased to thrill
him.
This was because he had found out that they were not flesh and blood.
But he did not delight in his discovery: it horrified him; for what he
wanted was the old thrill. To make them human so that they could be
his little friends again--nothing less was called for. This meant
slaughter here and there of the great Pym's brain-work, and Tommy
tried to keep his hands off; but his heart was in it. In Pym's pages the
ladies were the most virtuous and proper of their sex (though dreadfully
persecuted), but he merely told you so at the beginning, and now and
again afterwards to fill up, and then allowed them to act with what may
be called rashness, so that the story did not really suffer. Before
Tommy was nineteen he changed all that. Out went this because she
would not have done it, and that because she could not have done it.
Fathers might now have taken a lesson from T. Sandys in the
upbringing of their daughters. He even sternly struck out the
diminutives. With a pen in his hand and woman in his head, he had
such noble thoughts that his tears of exaltation damped the pages as he

wrote, and the ladies must have been astounded as well as proud to see
what they were turning into.
That was Tommy with a pen in his hand and a handkerchief hard by;
but it was another Tommy who, when the finest bursts were over, sat
back in his chair and mused. The lady was consistent now, and he
would think about her, and think and think, until concentration, which
is a pair of blazing eyes, seemed to draw her out of the pages to his side,
and then he and she sported in a way forbidden in the tale. While he sat
there with eyes riveted, he had her to dinner at a restaurant, and took
her up the river, and called her "little woman"; and when she held up
her mouth he said tantalizingly that she must wait until he had finished
his cigar. This queer delight enjoyed, back he popped her into the story,
where she was again the vehicle for such glorious sentiments that
Elspeth, to whom he read the best of them, feared he was becoming too
good to live.
In the meantime the great penny public were slowly growing restive,
and at last the two little round men called on Pym to complain that he
was falling off; and Pym turned them out of doors, and then sat down
heroically to do what he had not done for two decades--to read his
latest work.
"Elspeth, go upstairs to your room," whispered Tommy, and then he
folded his arms proudly. He should have been in a tremble, but latterly
he had often felt that he must burst if he did not soon read some of his
bits to Pym, more especially the passages about the hereafter; also the
opening of
Chapter Seventeen.
At first Pym's only comment was, "It is the same old drivel as before;
what more can they want?"
But presently he looked up, puzzled. "Is this chapter yours or mine?" he
demanded.
"It is about half and half," said