Grizel saw she was not helping him at all. If he would not fight, why should she? Oh, let her fall and fall, it would not take her farther from him! These were the thoughts that sent her into solitude, to meet with worse ones. She could not face the morrow. "What shall I do to-morrow?" She never shrank from to-day--it had its duties; it could be got through: but to-morrow was a never-ending road. Oh, how could she get through to-morrow?
Her great friend at this time was Corp; because he still retained his faith in Tommy. She could always talk of Tommy to Corp.
How loyal Corp was! He still referred to Tommy as "him." Gavinia, much distressed, read aloud to Corp a newspaper attack on the political article, and all he said was, "He'll find a wy."
"He's found it," he went upstairs to announce to Grizel, when the praises of the "little masterpiece" arrived.
"Yes, I know, Corp," she answered quietly. She was sitting by the window where the plant was. Tommy had asked her to take care of it, without telling her why.
Something in her appearance troubled the hulking, blundering man. He could not have told what it was. I think it was simply this--that Grizel no longer sat erect in her chair.
"I'm nain easy in my mind about Grizel," he said that evening to Gavinia. "There's something queery about her, though I canna bottom 't."
"Yea?" said Gavinia, with mild contempt.
He continued pulling at his pipe, grunting as if in pleasant pain, which was the way Corp smoked.
"I could see she's no pleased, though he has found a wy," he said.
"What pleasure should she be able to sook out o' his keeping ding-ding-danging on about that woman?" retorted Gavinia.
"What woman?"
"The London besom that gae him the go-by."
"Was there sic a woman!" Corp cried.
"Of course there was, and it's her that he's aye writing about."
"Havers, Gavinia! It's Grizel he's aye writing about, and it was Grizel that gae him the go-by. It's town talk."
But whatever the town might say, Gavinia stuck to her opinion. "Grizel's no near so neat in her dressing as she was," she informed Corp, "and her hair is no aye tidy, and that bonnet she was in yesterday didna set her."
"I've noticed it," cried Corp. "I've noticed it this while back, though I didna ken I had noticed it, Gavinia. I wonder what can be the reason?"
"It's because nobody cares," Gavinia replied sadly. Trust one woman to know another!
"We a' care," said Corp, stoutly.
"We're a' as nothing, Corp, when he doesna care. She's fond o' him, man."
"Of course she is, in a wy. Whaur's the woman that could help it?"
"There's many a woman that could help it," said Gavinia, tartly, for the honour of her sex, "but she's no are o' them." To be candid, Gavinia was not one of them herself. "I'm thinking she's terrible fond o' him," she said, "and I'm nain sure that he has treated her weel."
"Woman, take care; say a word agin him and I'll mittle you!" Corp thundered, and she desisted in fear.
But he made her re-read the little essay to him in instalments, and at the end he said victoriously, "You blethering crittur, there's no sic woman. It's just another o' his ploys!"
He marched upstairs to Grizel with the news, and she listened kindly. "I am sure you are right," she said; "you understand him better than any of them, Corp," and it was true.
He thought he had settled the whole matter. He was burning to be downstairs to tell Gavinia that these things needed only a man. "And so you'll be yoursel' again, Grizel," he said, with great relief.
She had not seen that he was aiming at her until now, and it touched her. "Am I so different, Corp?"
Not at all, he assured her delicately, but she was maybe no quite so neatly dressed as she used to be, and her hair wasna braided back so smooth, and he didna think that bonnet quite set her.
"Gavinia has been saying that to you!"
"I noticed it mysel', Grizel; I'm a terrible noticher."
"Perhaps you are right," she said, reflecting, after looking at herself for the first time for some days.