Thyrza. George Gissing
a thing on no account to be risked.
'Lyddy has Mary Bower to tea,' she said on her arrival this evening. 'They're going to chapel. You don't mind me coming alone, Mrs. Grail?'
'You're never anything but welcome, my dear,' murmured the old lady, pressing the little hand in both her own.
Tea was soon ready. Mrs. Grail talked with pleasant continuousness, as usual. She had fallen upon reminiscences, and spoke of Lambeth as she had known it when a girl; it was her birthplace, and through life she had never strayed far away. She regarded the growth of population, the crowding of mean houses where open spaces used to be, the whole change of times in fact, as deplorable. One would have fancied from her descriptions that the Lambeth of sixty years ago was a delightful rustic village.
After tea Thyrza resumed the low chair and folded her hands, full of contentment. Mrs. Grail took the tea-things from the room and was absent about a quarter of an hour. Thyrza, left alone with the man who for her embodied so many mysteries, let her eyes stray over the bookshelves. She felt it very unlikely that any book there would be within the compass of her understanding; doubtless they dealt with the secrets of learning—the strange, high things for which her awed imagination had no name. Gilbert had seated himself in a shadowed corner; his face was bent downwards. Just when Thyrza was about to put some timid question with regard to the books, he looked at her and said:
'Do you ever go to Westminster Abbey?'
The intellectual hunger of his face was softened; he did not smile, but kept a mild gravity of expression which showed that he had a pleasure in the girl's proximity. When he had spoken he stroked his forehead with the tips of his fingers, a nervous action.
'I've never been inside,' Thyrza made answer. 'What is there to see?'
'It's the place, you know, where great men have been buried for hundreds of years. I should like, if I could, to spend a little time there every day.'
'Can you see the graves?' Thyrza asked.
'Yes, many. And on the stones you read who they were that lie there. There are the graves of kings, and of men much greater than kings.'
'Greater than kings! Who were they, Mr. Grail?'
She had rested her elbow on the arm of the chair, and her fingers just touched her chin. She regarded him with a gaze of deep curiosity.
'Men who wrote books,' he answered, with a slight smile.
Thyrza dropped her eyes. In her thought of books it had never occurred to her that any special interest could attach to the people who wrote them; indeed, she had perhaps never asked herself how printed matter came into existence. Even among the crowd of average readers we know how commonly a book will be run through without a glance at its title-page.
Gilbert continued:
'I always come away from the Abbey with fresh courage. If I'm tired and out of spirits, I go there, and it makes me feel as if I daren't waste a minute of the time when I'm free to try and learn something.'
It was a strange impulse that made him speak in this way to an untaught child. With those who were far more likely to understand him he was the most reticent of men.
'But you know a great deal, Mr. Grail,' Thyrza said with surprise, looking again at the bookshelves.
'You mustn't think that. I had very little teaching when I was a lad, and ever since I've had very little either of time or means to teach myself. If I only knew those few books well, it would be something, but there are some of them I've never got to yet.'
'Those few books!' Thyrza exclaimed. 'But I never thought anybody had so many, before I came into this room.'
'I should like you to see the library at the British Museum. Every book that is published in England is sent there. There's a large room where people sit and study any book they like, all day long, and day after day. Think what a life that must be!'
'Those are rich people, I suppose,' Thyrza remarked. 'They haven't to work for their living.'
'Not rich, all of them. But they haven't to work with their hands.'
He became silent. In his last words there was a little bitterness. Thyrza glanced at him; he seemed to have forgotten her presence, and his face had the wonted look of trouble kept under.
Then Mrs. Grail returned. She sat down near Thyrza, and, after a little more of her pleasant talk, said, turning to her son:
'Could you find something to read us. Gilbert?'
He thought for a moment, then reached down a book of biographies, writing of a popular colour, not above Thyrza's understanding. It contained a life of Sir Thomas More, or rather a pleasant story founded upon his life, with much about his daughter Margaret.
'Yes, that'll do nicely,' was Mrs. Grail's opinion.
He began with a word or two of explanation to Thyrza, then entered upon the narrative. As soon as the proposal was made, Thyrza's face had lighted up with pleasure; she listened intently, leaning a little forward in her chair, her hands folded together. Gilbert, if he raised his eyes from the page, did not look at her. Mrs. Grail interrupted once or twice with a question or a comment. The reading was good; Gilbert's voice gave life to description and conversation, and supplied an interest even where the writer was in danger of growing dull.
When the end was reached, Thyrza recovered herself with the sigh which follows strained attention. But she was not in a mood to begin conversation again; her mind had got something to work upon, it would keep her awake far into the night with a succession of half-realised pictures. What a world was that of which a glimpse had been given her! Here, indeed, was something remote from her tedious life. Her brain was full of vague glories, of the figures of kings and queens, of courtiers and fair ladies, of things nobly said and done; and her heart throbbed with indignation at wrongs greater than any she had ever imagined. When it had all happened she knew not; surely very long ago! But the names she knew, Chelsea, Lambeth, the Tower—these gave a curiously fantastic reality to the fairy tale. And one thing she saw with uttermost distinctness: that boat going down the stream of Thames, and the dear, dreadful head dropped into it from the arch above. She would go and stand on the bridge and think of it.
Ah, she must tell Lyddy all that! Better still, she must read it to her. She found courage to say:
'Could you spare that book, Mr. Grail? Could you lend it me for a day or two? I'd be very careful with it.'
'I shall be very glad to lend it you,' Gilbert answered. His voice changed somehow from that in which he usually spoke.
She received it from him and held it on her lap with both hands. She would not look into it till alone in her room; and, having secured it, she did not wish to stay longer.
'Going already?' Mrs. Grail said, seeing her rise.
'Lyddy 'll be back very soon,' was the reply. 'I think I'd better go now.'
She shook hands with both of them, and they heard her run up the thin-carpeted stairs.
Mother and son sat in silence for some minutes. Gilbert had taken another book, and seemed to be absorbed in it; Mrs. Grail had a face of meditation. Occasionally she looked upwards, as though on the track of some memory which she strove to make clear.
'Gilbert,' she began at length, suggestively.
He raised his eyes and regarded her in an absent way.
'I've been trying for a long time to remember what that child's face reminded me of. Every time I see her, I make sure I've seen someone like her before, and now I think I've got it.'
Gilbert was used to a stream of amusing fancifulness in his mother; analysis and resemblances were dear to her; possibly the Biblical theories which she had imbibed were in some degree answerable for the characteristic.
'And who does she remind you of?' he asked.
'Of somebody whose name I can't think of. You remember the school in Lambeth Road where Lizzie used to go?'
She referred to a time five-and-twenty years gone by, when Gilbert's sister was a child. He nodded.
'It was Mrs. Green's