Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  Hatter's Castle

  Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  HATTER'S CASTLE

  BY A. J. CRONIN

  BOOK I

  THE spring of 1879 was unusually forward and open. Over the Lowlands the green of early corn spread smoothly, the chestnut spears burst in April, and the hawthorn hedges flanking the white roads which laced the countryside blossomed a month before time. In the inland villages farmers exulted cautiously and children ran barefooted after watering carts; in the towns which flanked the wide river the clangour of the shipyards lost its insistence and, droning

  through the mild air, mounted to the foothills behind, where the hum of a precocious bee mingled with it and the exuberant bleating of lambs overcame it; in the city, clerks shed their coals for coolness and lolled in offices, execrating the sultry weather, the policy of Lord Beaconsfield, the news of the Zulu War, and the high cost of beer.

  Thus, over the whole estuary of the Clyde, from Glasgow to Portdoran, upon Overton, Darroch, Ardfillan those towns which, lying between the Winton and Doran hills, formed the three cardinal points of the fertile triangle upon the right bank of the firth over the ancient Borough of Levenford, which stood bisecting exactly the base line of this triangle at the point where Leven entered Clyde, over all lay the radiance of a dazzling sun and, lapped in this strange benignant heat, the people worked, idled, gossiped, grumbled, cheated, prayed, loved, and lived.

  Over Levenford, on this early day of May, thin wisps of cloud had hung languidly in the tired air, but now in the late afternoon these gossamer filaments moved slowly on to activity. A warm breeze sprang up and puffed them across the sky, when, having propelled them out of sight, it descended upon the town, touching first the high historic rock which marked the confluence of the tributary

  Leven with its parent stream, and which stood, a landmark, outlined clearly against the opal sky like the inert body of a gigantic elephant. The mild wind circled the rock, then passed quickly through the hot, mean streets of the adjoining Newtown and wandered amongst the tall stocks, swinging cranes and the ribbed framework of half-formed ships in the busy yards of Latta and Company along the river's mouth. Next it wafted slowly along Church Street, as befitted

  the passage of a thoroughfare dignified by the Borough Hall, the Borough Academy and the Parish Church, until, free of the sober street, it swirled jauntily in the advantageously open space of the Cross, moved speculatively between the rows of shops in the High Street, and entered the more elevated residential district of Knoxhill.

  But here it tired quickly of sporting along the weathered, red sand-stone terraces and rustling the ivy on the old stone houses, and seeking the countryside beyond, passed inland once more, straying amongst the prim villas of the select quarter of Wellhall, and fanning the little round plots of crimson-faced geraniums in each front garden. Then, as it drifted carelessly along the decorous thoroughfare which led from this genteel region to the adjacent open country, suddenly it chilled as it struck the last house in the road.

  This was a singular dwelling. In size it was small, of such dimensions that it could not have contained more than seven rooms; in its construction solid, with the hard stability of new grey stones; in its architecture unique.

  The base of the house had the shape of a narrow rectangle with the wider aspect directed towards the street, with walls which arose, not directly from the earth, but from a stone foundation a foot longer and wider than themselves, and upon which the whole structure seemed to sustain itself like an animal upon its deep-dug paws. The frontage arising from this supporting pedestal reared itself with a cold severity to terminate in one half of its extent in a steeply pitched

  gable and in the other in a low parapet which ran horizontally to join another gable, similarly shaped to that in front, which formed the coping of the side wall of the house. These gables were peculiar, each converging in a series of steep right-angled steps to a chamfered apex which bore with pompous dignity a large round ball of polished grey granite and, each in turn, merging into and becoming continuous with the parapet which, ridged and serrated regularly and deeply after the fashion of a battlement, fettered them together, forming thus a heavy stone-linked chain which embraced the body of the house like a manacle.

  At the angle of the side gable and the front wall, and shackled likewise by this encircling fillet of battlement, was a short round tower, ornamented in its middle by a deep-cut diamond-shaped recess, carved beneath into rounded, diminishing courses which fixed it to the angle of the wall, and rising upwards to crown itself in a turret which carried a thin, reedy flagstaff. The heaviness of its upper dimensions made the tower squat, deformed, and gave to it the

  appearance of a broad frowning forehead disfigured by a deep grooved stigma; while the two small embrasured windows which pierced it brooded from beneath the brow like secret, close-set eyes.

  Immediately below this tower stood the narrow doorway of the house, the lesser proportion of its width giving it a meagre, inhospitable look, like a thin repellent mouth, its sides ascending above the horizontal lintel in a steep ogee curve encompassing a shaped and gloomy filling of darkly stained glass and ending in a sharp lancet point. The windows of the dwelling, like the doorway, were narrow and unbevelled, having the significance merely of apertures stabbed

  through the thickness of the walls, grudgingly admitting light, yet sealing the interior from observation.

  The whole aspect of the house was veiled, forbidding, sinister; its purpose likewise hidden and obscure. From its very size it failed pitifully to achieve the boldness and magnificence of a baronial dwelling, if this, indeed, were the object of its pinnacle, its ramparts and the repetition of its sharp-pitched angles. And yet, in its coldness, hardness and strength, it could not be dismissed as seeking merely the smug attainment of pompous ostentation. Its battlements were formal but not ridiculous; its design extravagant but never ludicrous; its grandiose architecture contained some quality which restrained merriment, some deeper, lurking, more perverse motive, sensed upon intensive

  scrutiny, which lay about the house like a deformity and stood within its very structure like a violation of truth in stone.

  The people of Levenford never laughed at this house, at least never openly. Something, some intangible potency pervading the atmosphere around it, forbade them even to smile.

  No garden fronted the habitation but instead a gravelled courtyard, bare, parched, but immaculate, and containing in its centre the singular decoration of a small brass cannon, which, originally part of a frigate's broadside, had long since joined in its last salvo, and after years in the junk yard, now stood prim and polished between two attendant symmetrical heaps of balls, adding the last touch of incongruity to this fantastic domicile.

  At the back of the house was a square grassy patch furnished at its corners with four iron clothes poles and surrounded by a high stone wall, against which grew a few straggling currant bushes, sole vegetation of this travesty of a garden, except for a melancholy tree which never blossomed and which drooped against a window of the kitchen.

  Through this kitchen window, screened though it was by the lilac tree, it was possible to discern something of the interior. The room was plainly visible as commodious, comfortably though not agreeably furnished, with horsehair chairs and sofa, an ample table, with a bow-fronted chest of drawers against one wall and a large mahogany dresser flanking another. Polished wax-cloth covered the floor, yellow varnished paper the walls, and a heavy marble timepiece adorned

  the mantelpiece, indicating by a subtle air of superiority that this was

  not merely a place for cooking, which was, indeed, chiefly carried on in the adjacent scullery, but the common room, the li
ving room of the house where its inhabitants partook of meals, spent their leisure, and congregated in their family life.

  At present the hands of the ornate clock showed twenty minutes past five, and old Grandma Brodie sat in her corner chair by the range, making toast for tea. She was a large-boned, angular woman shrunken but not withered by her seventy-two years, shrivelled and knotted like the bole of a sapless tree, dried but still hard and resilient, toughened by age and the seasons she had seen. Her hands, especially, were gnarled, the joints nodular with arthritis. Her face had the colour of a withered leaf and was seamed and cracked with wrinkles;

  the features were large, masculine and firm; her hair, still black, was parted evenly in the middle, showing a straight white furrow of scalp, and drawn tight into a hard knob behind; some coarse short straggling hairs sprouted erratically like weeds from her chin and upper lip. She wore a black bodice and shawl, a small black mutch, a long trailing skirt of the same colour and elastic-sided boots which, although large, plainly showed the protuberance of her bunions and

  the flatness of her well-trodden feet.

  As she crouched over the fire, the mutch slightly askew from her exertions, supporting the toasting fork with both tremulous hands, she toasted two slices of bread with infinite care, thick pieces which she browned over gently, tenderly, leaving the inside soft, and when she had completed these to her satisfaction and placed them on that side of the plate where she might reach out quickly and remove them adroitly at once, whenever the family sat down to tea, she consummated the rest of her toasting negligently, without interest. While

  she toasted she brooded. The sign of her brooding was the clicking of her false teeth as she sucked her cheeks in and out. It was simply an iniquity, she reflected, that Mary had forgotten to bring home the cheese. That girl was getting more careless than ever and as undependable in such important matters as a half-witted ninny. What was tea to a woman without cheese? Fresh Dunlop cheese! The thought of it made her long upper lip twitch, sent a little river of saliva drooling from the corner of her mouth.

  As she ruminated, she kept darting quick recriminative glances from under her bent brows at her granddaughter, Mary, who sat in the opposite corner in the horsehair armchair, hallowed to her father's use, and by that token a forbidden seat.

  Mary, however, was not thinking of cheese, nor of the chair, nor of the crimes she committed by forgetting the one and reclining in the other. Her soft brown eyes gazed out of the window and were focused upon the far-off distance as if they saw something there, some scene which shaped itself enchantingly under her shining glance.

  Occasionally her sensitive mouth would shape itself to smile, then she would shake her head faintly, unconsciously, activating thus her pendant ringlets and setting little lustrous waves of light rippling across her hair. Her small hands, of which the skin wore the smooth soft texture of petals of magnolia, lay palm upwards in her lap, passive symbols of her contemplation. She sat as straight as a wand and she was beautiful with the dark serene beauty of a deep tranquil pool where waving wands might grow. Upon her was the unbroken bloom

  of youth, yet, although she was only seventeen years of age, there rested about her pale face and slender unformed figure a quality of repose and quiet fortitude.

  At last the old woman's growing resentment jarred her into speech. Dignity forbade a direct attack, and instead she said, with an added bitterness from repression:

  "You're sitting in your father's chair, Mary."

  There was no answer.

  "That chair you're sitting in is your father's chair, do you hear?"

  Still no answer came; and, trembling now with suppressed rage, the crone shouted:

  "Are you deaf and dumb as well as stupid, you careless hussy? What made you forget your messages this afternoon ? Every day this week you've done something foolish. Has the heat turned your head ?"

  Like a sleeper suddenly aroused, Mary looked up, recollected herself and smiled, so that the sun fell upon the sad still pool of her beauty.

  "Were you speaking, Grandma?" she said.

  "No!" cried the old woman coarsely. "I wasna speakin'. I was just openin' my mouth to catch flies. It's a graund way o' passin' the time if ye've nothing to do. I think ye must have been tryin' it when ye walked doun the toun this afternoon, but if ye shut your mouth and opened your een ye might mind things better."

  At that moment Margaret Brodie entered from the scullery, carrying a large Britannia metal teapot and walking quickly with a kind of shuffling gait, taking short flurried steps with her body inclined forward, so that, as this was indeed her habitual carriage, she appeared always to be in a hurry and fearful of being late. She had discarded the wrapper in which she did the housework of the day

  for a black satin blouse and skirt, but there were stains on the skirt and a loose tape hung untidily from her waist, whilst her hair straggled untidily about her face. Her head she carried perpetually to one side. Years before, this inclination had been affected to exhibit resignation and true Christian submission in periods of trial or tribulation, but time and the continual need for the expression of abnegation had rendered it permanent. Her nose seemed to follow this deviation from the vertical, sympathetically perhaps, but more probably as the result of a nervous tic she had developed in recent years of

  stroking the nose from right to left with a movement of the back of her hand. Her face was worn, tired and pathetic; her aspect bowed and drooping, yet with an air as if she continually flogged her jaded energies onwards. She looked ten years older than her forty-two years. This was Mary's mother, but now they seemed as alien and unrelated as an old sheep and a young fawn.

  A mistress from necessity of every variety of domestic situation^ Mamma, for so Mrs. Brodie was named by every member of the house, envisaged the old woman's rage and Mary's embarrassment at a glance.

  "Get up at once, Mary," she cried. "It's nearly half-past five and the tea not infused yet. Go and call your sister. Have you finished the toast yet, Grandma? Gracious! You have burned a piece. Give it here to me. I'll eat it. We can't have waste in this house." She took the burned toast and laid it ostentatiously on her plate, then she began needlessly to move everything on the tea table as if nothing had been done right and would, indeed, not be right until she had expiated the sin of the careless layer of the table by the resigned toil

  of her own exertions.

  "Whatna way to set the table!" she murmured disparagingly, as her daughter rose and went into the hall.

  "Nessie Nessie," Mary called. "Tea time tea time!"

  A small treble voice answered from upstairs, singing the words:

  "Coming down! Wait on me!"

  A moment later the two sisters entered the room, providing instantly and independent of their disparity in years for Nessie was twelve years old a striking contrast in character and features. Nessie differed diametrically from Mary in type. Her hair was flaxen, almost colourless, braided into two neat pigtails, and she had inherited from her mother those light, inoffensive eyes, misty with the delicate white-flecked blucncss of speedwells and wearing always that soft placating expression which gave her the appearance of endeavouring continually to please. Her face was narrow with a high delicate white forehead, pink waxen doll's cheeks, a thin pointed chin and a small mouth, parted perpetually by the drooping of her lower lip, all expressive, as was her present soft, void smile, of the same immature and ingenuous, but none the less innate weakness.

  "Are we not a bit early to-night, Mamma?" she asked idly as she presented herself before her mother for inspection.

  Mrs. Brodie, busy with the last details of her adjustments, waved away the question.

  "Have ye washed your hands?" she answered without looking at her. Then with a glance at the clock and without waiting for a reply, she commanded with an appropriate gesture, u Sit in!"

  The four people in the room seated themselves at table, Grandma Brodie being, as usual, first. They sat waiting, while Mrs. Brodie's han
d poised itself nervously upon the tea cosy; then into the silence of their expectation came the deep note of the grandfather's clock in the hall as it struck the half hour and at the same moment the front door clicked open and was firmly shut. A stick rattled into the stand; heavy footfalls measured themselves along the passage; the kitchen door opened and James Brodie came into the room. He strode to his waiting chair, sat down, stretched forward his hand to receive his own special large cup, brimming with hot tea, received from the oven a large plateful of ham and eggs, accepted the white bread especially cut and buttered for him, had hardly seated himself before he had begun to eat. This, then, was the reason of their punctual attendance, the explanation of their bated expectancy, for the ritual of immediate service for the master of the house, at meal times as in everything, was amongst the unwritten laws governing the conduct of this household.

  Brodie ate hungrily and with obvious enjoyment. He was an enormous man, over six feet in height and with the shoulders and neck of a bull. His head was massive, his grey eyes small and deep set, his jaw hard and so resolutely muscular that as he chewed, large firm knobs rose up and subsided rhythmically under the smooth brown jowl. The face itself was broad and strong and would have been

  noble but for the insufficient depth of the forehead and the narrow spacing of the eyes. A heavy brown moustache covered his upper lip, partly hiding the mouth; but beneath this glossy mask his lower lip protruded with a full and sullen arrogance.

  His hands were huge, and upon the backs of these and also of the thick spatulate fingers dark hairs grew profusely. The knife and fork gripped in that stupendous grasp seemed, in comparison, foolishly toyish and inept.

  Now that Brodie had commenced to eat it was permissible for the others to begin, although for them, of course, there was only a plain tea; and Grandma Brodie led the way by fastening avidly upon her soft toast. Sometimes, when her son was in a particularly amiable humour, he would boisterously help her to small titbits from his plate, but to-night she knew from his demeanour that this rare treat