dreamed-of toll, which she could not escape, and she had now, in all her unpreparedness, unconsciously begun to solve the dreadful mystery of the nativity of her child.
By this time she felt that it was impossible for her to go downstairs for tea, and, in despair, she loosened her corset and began again to pace up and down the narrow confines of her room. Between these pacings she stopped, supporting her body between her open palms. She discovered that it was easier for her to meet the paroxysms in a stooping posture and, from time to time, she stood crouching
against the end of her bed, her forehead pressed downwards against the cold metal of the rails.
As she remained heedlessly like this, in one of these spasms, suddenly the door opened and her mother entered the room. Mrs. Brodie had come to satisfy herself that Mary had suffered no ill effects from the storm and to reprimand her for not taking greater precautions, for Nessie had run to her with the story that lightning was striking into the room. She was herself terrified by the tempest and her overstrung nerves were quiveringly set for an outburst of recrimination.
But now, as she stood, unobserved, regarding her daughter, the rebuke that lay half-formed upon her lips remained unuttered. Her jaw dropped slowly, she gasped, whilst the room, rocked by the fury of the wind, seemed to oscillate about her. Mary's abandonment, her relaxed attitude, the profile of her unrestrained figure, plucked at the instrument of the mother's memory and touched a hidden chord in her mind, bringing back suddenly the unforgettable remembrance of her own travail. An illuminating flash, more terrible than any lightning stroke, pierced her understanding. All the latent, the unthought-of and unthinkable misgivings which had been dormant within her, bounded before her in one devastating conviction. The pupils of her eyes dilated into pools of horror and, clutching her shrunken bosom with her left hand, she raised her right drunkenly and pointed her finger at Mary.
"Look look at me!" she stammered.
With a start Mary turned and, her brow dewed with perspiration, looked at her mother dumbly. Immediately the mother knew, knew inexorably, and Mary saw that she was discovered. Instantly a shriek burst from Mrs. Brodie like the cry of an outraged animal. Higher and more piercing than the wind it shrilled inside the room and echoed screechingly through the house. Again and again she shrieked,
lost in the grasp of hysteria. Blindly Mary clutched at her mother's dress.
"I didn't know, Mamma," she sobbed. "Forgive me. I didn't know what I was doing."
With short, stabbing blows Mrs. Brodie thrust Mary from her. She could not speak; her breath came stertorously from her in panting spasms.
"Mamma! Dear Mamma! I understood nothing! I didn't know I was wicked. Something's hurting me now. Help me!" she begged her.
The mother found her tongue with difficulty.
"The disgrace! Your father!" she moaned. "Oh! It's a nightmare. I'm not awake."
She screeched again madly. Mary was terrified; this outcry imprisoned her in a cell of iniquity; she heard in each scream the wide broadcast of her disgrace.
"Oh! Please, Mamma, don't call out like that," implored Mary, her head hanging abjectly; "only stop and I'll tell you everything."
"No! No!" shrieked Mamma. "I'll hear nothing! Ye’ll have to face your father. I'll be party to nothing. I'm not responsible. It's only yourself to blame."
Mary's limbs trembled violently. "Dear Mamma! Is there no excuse for me?" she whispered. "I was so ignorant."
"Your father will kill ye for this," screamed Mrs. Brodie. "It's your fault."
"I implore you, Mamma," pleaded Mary feverishly, "not to tell father. Help me for two days more only two days" she cried desperately, trying to bury her head on her mother's breast "dear, kind Mamma. Keep it between us till then. Only two days more! Please Oh! Please!"
But again her mother, terrified beyond reason, thrust her off and cried out wildly:
"You must tell him at once. I'm no' to blame. Oh! The wickedness of ye to get us into such trouble. Oh! The wickedness, the wickedness!"
Then, with a bitter finality, Mary realised that it was hopeless to entreat her mother further. A great fear descended on her and, with it, the rushing desire to escape. She felt that if she left her, Mamma might recover her control. She desired urgently to get out of the room, and pushing past her mother, she began hastily to descend the stairs. But when she was halfway down, suddenly she raised her head and saw at the foot of the staircase, standing in the hall, the heavy figure of her father.
Brodie had the custom, every Sunday afternoon after dinner, of resting. He went with the regularity of clockwork into the parlour, closed the door, drew the curtains, removed his frock coat and laid his ponderous bulk down upon the sofa, where he slept heavily for two or three hours. But to-day he had been disturbed by the storm, and he had slept only in snatches, which was worse than not sleeping at all. The loss of his sleep had aggravated him, rendering his temper
sour, and, in addition, he took it as a matter of great annoyance to his sense of order that his time-honoured ritual should have been deranged in such an outrageous fashion. The culmination of his vexation had been achieved when he had been aroused from a snatch of sleep by the fall of the flagstaff from his house. He was in a flaming rage and, as he stood in his shirt sleeves, looking at Mary, his upturned face reflected the bitter resentment of his mood.
"Have we not enough noise outside that you must start that infernal din upstairs?" he shouted. "How can a man sleep with such a fiendish blattering in his ears? Who was making that noise? Was it you?" He glared at her.
Mamma had followed Mary and now stood swaying upon the top landing, rocking herself to and fro, with her arms clasped upon her breast. Brodie turned his inflamed eye upon her.
"This is a braw house for a man to rest in," he flared. "Do I not work hard enough for ye through the week ? What is this day made for, will ye tell me ? What's the use of all that godly snivellin' talk of yours if ye must go and ring our ears like this. Can I not lay down for a minute without this damned wind howlin', and you howlin' like a hyena too?"
Mrs. Brodie did not reply but still swayed hysterically at the top of the stairs.
"What are you going on about? Are you gone silly?" bawled Brodie. "Has the thunder turned your reason to make ye stand like a drunken fishwife?"
Still she was silent, and it then dawned upon him, from her manner, that some disaster had occurred.
"What is it?" he shouted roughly, "Is it Nessie? Has the lightning
hit her? Is she hurt?"
Mamma shook her whole body in a frantic negation the catas-
trophe was worse than that!
"No! No!" she gasped. "It's her her!" She raised her hand accusingly against Mary. Not even the most shadowy instinct of protection was in her. Her terror of Brodie in this awful calamity was so unbounded that her only impulse was to disclaim all responsibility, all knowledge of the crime. She must at all costs defend herself from any charge of liability in the matter.
"For the last time," raged Brodie, "I ask ye what it is. Tell me, or by God I'll come up to ye both."
"It wasn't my fault," cringed Mrs. Brodie, still shielding herself from the undelivered charge, "I've brought her up always like a Christian girl. It's her own natural badness." Then, realising that she must tell or be beaten, she strained her body to the utmost, threw her head back and, as if each word cost her an unbearable effort of ejaculation, sobbed:
"If you must know. She's going she's going to have a child."
Mary stiffened, whilst the blood drained from her face. Her mother, like Judas, had betrayed her. She was lost trapped her father below, her mother above.
Brodie's great frame seemed to shrink imperceptibly; his bellicose eyes became faintly bemused and, in a muddled fashion, he looked at Mary.
"What wha' " he muttered. He raised his eyes uncomprehendingly to Mamma, saw her frantic plight, and again lowered his gaze upon Mary. He paused, whilst his mind grappled with the inconceivable, unfathomable n
ews. Suddenly he shouted,
"Come here!"
Mary obeyed. Each step she took seemed to lower her into her own tomb. Brodie seized her roughly by the arm and looked her up and down. A sickening feeling went through him.
"My God!" he repeated to himself, in a low tone. "My God! I believe it's true. Is it?" he cried thickly. Her tongue lay mutely in her mouth from shame. Still holding her arm, he shook her unmercifully, then, releasing her suddenly, allowed her to recoil heavily upon the floor.
"Are you with child ? Tell me quickly or I'll brain you," he shouted.
As she told him, she thought he would surely kill her. He stood there looking at her as if she were a viper that had stung him. He raised his arm as if to strike her, to crush her skull with one blow of his hammer fist, to wipe out with one blow her obliquity and his dishonour. He wanted to strike her, to trample on her, grind her under the heels of his boots into a mangled, bloody pulp. A vast
brutal passion seethed in him. She had dragged his name into the mire. The name of Brodie! She had lowered his heritage into the slime of ill fame. The whole place would reek of it. He would see the smirks, the sneers, the significant nods as he strode down the High Street; at the Cross he would hear the stray word of mockery and the half -muffled laugh of derision. The niche he had cut and was still carving for himself would be shattered; the name, the reputation
he had made for himself would be ruined and he himself cast down-wards in contumely through this thing that lay weeping at his feet. But he did not strike her. The intensity of his feeling burned suddenly into a heat which turned his gross rage into a subtle and more dangerous channel. In a different manner he would show her! He saw sharply a means of vindicating his honour. Yes, by God! He would show them in the Borough how he dealt with this sort of thing. They would see the stand that he was taking. She was now no daughter of his. He would cast her from him as unclean.
Then, suddenly, a second, loathsome suspicion came into his mind, a suspicion which gathered in aversion, becoming more certain the longer he contemplated it. He touched Mary with his huge, heavy boot.
"Who was the man?" he hissed at her. "Was it Foyle?" He saw from her look that he was right. For the second time that hateful young upstart had dealt him a crushing blow, this time more deadly than before. He would rather it had been any one, the basest and most beggarly scoundrel in the town, any one but Foyle! But it was he, the smooth-faced, blarneying, young corner boy who had possessed the body of Mary Brodie; and she, his child, had suffered him to do so. A lucid mental picture, revolting in its libidinous detail, rose up and tortured him. His face worked, the skin around his nostrils twitched, a thick, throbbing vessel corded itself upon his temple. His features, which had at first been suffused with a high angry flush, now became white and hard as chiselled granite. His jaw set ruthlessly like a trap, his narrow forehead lowered with an inhuman barbarity. A cold ferocity, more terrifying than the loud-mouthed abuse which he usually displayed, tempered his rage like an axe blade. He kicked Mary viciously. The hard sole of his boot sank into her soft side.
"Get up, you bitch!" he hissed, as he again spurned her brutally with his foot. "Do you hear me? Get up."
From the staircase the broken voice of Mamma senselessly repeated,
"I'm not to blame! I'm not to blame!" Over and over came the words, "I'm not to blame. Don't blame me." She stood there abjectly, cringingly, protesting ceaselessly in a muttering voice her inculpability, whilst behind her the terrified figures of Nessie and the old woman were dimly outlined. Brodie gave no heed to the interruption. He had not heard it.
"Get up," he repeated, "or I'll help ye up"; and, as she rose, he lifted
her to her feet with a final jerk of his foot.
Mary staggered up. Why, she thought, did he not kill her and be done with it? Her side, where he had kicked her, stabbed with a piercing hurt. She was too terrified to look at him. She felt that he was torturing her only to destroy her in the end.
"Now," he ground out slowly from between his clenched teeth, with words that bit into her like vitriol, "you'll listen to me."
As she stood there, bent and drooping, he moved his head slightly and thrust forward his hard, relentless face into hers. His eyes gleamed closely, with a concentrated, icy glitter that seared her with its chill.
"You'll listen to me, I say. You'll listen to me for the last time. You are not my daughter any longer. I am going to cast you out like a leper! Like a leper you filthy slut! That's what I'm going to do to you and your unborn bastard. I'm going to settle with your fancy man in my own time, but you you're going out to-night."
He repeated the last words slowly, whilst he pierced her with his cold eyes. Then, as though reluctant to abandon the satisfaction of her abasement under his glare, he turned slowly, walked heavily to the door and flung it open. Immediately a terrific inrush of wind and rain filled the hall, clattering the pictures on the walls, billowing the hanging coats on the stand, and rushing upwards with the force of a battering-ram towards the clinging group upon the stairs.
"It's a beautiful night for a stroll," snarled Brodie, with drawn lips. "It's dark enough for you to-night! You can walk the streets to your heart's content to-night, you strumpet!"
With a sudden thrust of his arm he caught her by the neck and compressed it within his huge, prehensile grasp. No sound but the
howling of the wind filled the hall. Of the three terrorised onlookers,
the uncomprehending child, the mother, and the half -fearful, half-
gloating old woman, not one spoke. They stood paralysed to silence.
The feel of her soft yet resistant throat fascinated him ; he wanted to
squeeze it like a pipestem until it snapped, and, for an instant, he stood
thus, fighting the impulse; but he started violently and, with a sudden
tug, dragged her to the door.
"Now," he shouted, "you're going out and you'll never come back not until you crawl back and grovel down to lick these boots that have kicked you."
At that, something within Mary spoke. "I will never do that," she whispered from her pale lips.
"No!" yelled Brodie. "You will never come back, you harlot!"
He pushed her, with a violent, final thrust, from him. She disappeared into the raging blackness beyond. As she vanished completely to sight and sound, as though she had stepped over a precipice, he stood there in an ecstasy of passion, his fists clenched, filling his lungs with the wet, saline air, shouting at the pitch of his voice, "Don't come back, you whore! you whore!" He shouted the last word again, and again, as if its repetition afforded him, in its coarse vituperation, a satisfaction, an alleviation of his fury. Then he turned upon his heel and shut her out into the night.
XI
MARY rested where she had fallen. She felt stunned, for Brodie's final, brutal thrust had thrown her heavily, flat upon her face, into the rough, gravel courtyard. The rain, driven in straight, parallel spears, impinged painfully upon her lightly covered body and spattered the surface of the puddle in which she lay. Already she was soaked to the skin, but the wetness of her rain-saturated clothing brought, at that moment, only a refreshing coolness to the fever that burned within her. She had felt under her father's terrible eyes that
he would surely murder her and now, although her bruised and aching body still burned, a sense of escape filled her mind and transfigured its terror to lightness and relief. She had been cast out shamefully, but she was alive; she had left for ever a home which had become lately a hated prison; and now she plucked together her shattered forces and bravely fixed her mind upon the future.
Denis, she became aware amongst the fearful confusion of her thoughts, was perhaps sixty miles away; she was enveloped in a storm of unprecedented magnitude; she had no coat, no hat, insufficient clothing and no money; but now she had courage. Firmly she compressed her wet lips as she desperately endeavoured to examine her position. Two courses lay open to her: the one to attempt to reach the c
ottage at Garshake, the other to go to Denis' mother at Darroch.
It was twelve miles to Garshake and, beyond the fact that she knew that it was named Rosebank, she had no knowledge of where the cottage stood; besides, even if she succeeded in getting inside, she would be alone, penniless and without food; and now she realised
that she needed succour of some kind. She therefore abandoned all thought of reaching Rosebank and turned, inevitably, to the alter- native idea. She must go to Denis' mother! At least she would receive shelter from her, shelter until Denis returned. His mother would not refuse her that; and she hearteningly recollected that once Denis had said to her, "If the worst happened, you could come to my mother."
She would do that! She must do that. To get to Darroch she would be obliged to walk. She was not aware of any train which left Levenford for Darroch on Sunday
night; and if one did run she did not know its time of departure, nor had she the cost of her ticket. Two routes therefore offered themselves for her choice. The first was the main artery of communication between the two places, a broad main thoroughfare nearly five miles long, the other, a narrow, unfrequented road running directly across the open countryside, narrowing here to a lane and there to a mere track, but avoiding the circuitous windings of the outskirts of both towns, and shorter than the former by almost two miles. Her strength was now so insufficient, and her sufferings so great, that she decided to take the latter route because it was the lesser distance. She thought she could walk three miles.
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