Chapter 12: In Which a Comedian Challenges Tragedy to Bowls

When Grizel opened the door of Corp’s house she found husband and wife at home, the baby in his father’s arms; what is more, Gavinia was looking on smiling and saying, “You bonny litlin, you’re windy to have him dandling you; and no wonder, for he’s a father to be proud o’.” Corp was accepting it all with a complacent smirk. Oh, agreeable change since last we were in this house! oh, happy picture of domestic bliss! oh—but no, these are not the words; what we meant to say was, “Gavinia, you limmer, so you have got the better of that man of yours at last.”

How had she contrived it? We have seen her escorting the old lady to the Dovecot, Corp skulking behind. Our next peep at them shows Gavinia back at her house, Corp peering through the window and wondering whether he dare venture in. Gavinia was still bothered, for though she knew now the story of Tommy’s heroism, there was no glove in it, and it was the glove that maddened her.

“No, I ken nothing about a glove,” the old lady had assured her.

“Not a sylup was said about a glove,” maintained Christina, who had given her a highly coloured narrative of what took place in Mrs. McLean’s parlour.

“And yet there’s a glove in’t as sure as there’s a quirk in’t,” Gavinia kept muttering to herself. She rose to have another look at the hoddy-place in which she had concealed the glove from her husband, and as she did so she caught sight of him at the window. He bobbed at once, but she hastened to the door to scarify him. The clock had given only two ticks when she was upon him, but in that time she had completely changed her plan of action. She welcomed him with smiles of pride. Thus is the nimbleness of women’s wit measured once and for all. They need two seconds if they are to do the thing comfortably.

“Never to have telled me, and you behaved so grandly!” she cried, with adoring glances that were as a carpet on which he strode pompously into the house.

“It wasna me that did it; it was him,” said Corp, and even then he feared that he had told too much. “I kenna what you’re speaking about,” he added loyally.

“Corp,” she answered, “you needna be so canny, for the laddie is in the town, and Mr. Sandys has confessed all.”

“The whole o’t?”

“Every risson.”

“About the glove, too?”

“Glove and all,” said wicked Gavinia, and she continued to feast her eyes so admiringly on her deceived husband that he passed quickly from the gratified to the dictatorial.

“Let this be a lesson to you, woman,” he said sternly; and Gavinia intimated with humility that she hoped to profit by it.

“Having got the glove in so solemn a way,” he went on, “it would have been ill done of me to blab to you about it. Do you see that now, woman?”

She said it was as clear as day to her. “And a solemn way it was,” she added, and then waited eagerly.

“My opinion,” continued Corp, lowering his voice as if this were not matter for the child, “is that it’s a love-token frae some London woman.”

“Behear’s!” cried Gavinia.

“Else what,” he asked, “would make him hand it to me so solemn-like, and tell me to pass it on to her if he was drowned? I didna think o’ that at the time, but it has come to me, Gavinia; it has come.”

This was a mouthful indeed to Gavinia. So the glove was the property of Mr. Sandys, and he was in love with a London lady, and—no, this is too slow for Gavinia; she saw these things in passing, as one who jumps from the top of a house may have lightning glimpses through many windows on the way down. What she jumped to was the vital question, Who was the woman?

But she was too cunning to ask a leading question.

“Ay, she’s his lady-love,” she said, controlling herself, “but I forget her name. It was a very wise-like thing o’ you to speir the woman’s name.”

“But I didna.”

“You didna!”

“He was in the water in a klink.”

Had Gavinia been in Corp’s place she would have had the name out of Tommy, water or no water; but she did not tell her husband what she thought of him.

“Ay, of course,” she said pleasantly. “It was after you helped him out that he telled you her name.”

“Did he say he telled me her name?”

“He did.”

“Well, then, I’ve fair forgot it.”

Instead of boxing his ears she begged him to reflect. Result of reflection, that if the name had been mentioned to Corp, which he doubted, it began with M.

Was it Mary?

That was the name.

Or was it Martha?

It had a taste of Martha about it.

It was not Margaret?

It might have been Margaret.

Or Matilda?

It was fell like Matilda.

And so on. “But wi’ a’ your wheedling,” Corp reminded his wife, bantering her from aloft, “you couldna get a scraping out o’ me till I was free to speak.”

He thought it a good opportunity for showing Gavinia her place once and for all. “In small matters,” he said, “I gie you your ain way, for though you may be wrang, thinks I to mysel’, ‘She’s but a woman’; but in important things, Gavinia, if I humoured you I would spoil you, so let this be a telling to you that there’s no diddling a determined man”; to which she replied by informing the baby that he had a father to be proud of.

A father to be proud of! They were the words heard by Grizel as she entered. She also saw Gavinia looking admiringly at her man, and in that doleful moment she thought she understood all. It was Corp who had done it, and Tommy had been the looker-on. He had sought to keep the incident secret because, though he was in it, the glory had been won by another (oh, how base!), and now, profiting by the boy’s mistake, he was swaggering in that other’s clothes (oh, baser still!). Everything was revealed to her in a flash, and she stooped over the baby to hide a sudden tear. She did not want to hear any more.

The baby cried. Babies are aware that they can’t do very much; but all of them who knew Grizel were almost contemptuously confident of their power over her, and when this one saw (they are very sharp) that in his presence she could actually think of something else, he was so hurt that he cried.