Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  He was imprisoned in the train, which advanced inexorably, winding in its own glare like a dark, red serpent twisting sinuously forward. It had traversed one mile of the bridge and had now reached the middle span, where a mesh of steel girders formed a hollow tube through which it must pass. The train entered this tunnel. It entered slowly, fearfully, reluctantly, shuddering in every bolt and rivet of its frame as the hurricane assaulted and sought to destroy the greater resistance now offered to it. The wheels clanked with the ceaseless insistence of the tolling of a passing bell, still protesting, endlessly: "God help us! God help us! God help us!"

  Then, abruptly, when the whole train lay enwrapped within the iron lamellae of the middle link of the bridge, the wind elevated itself with a culminating, exultant roar to the orgasm of its power and passion.

  The bridge broke. Steel girders snapped like twigs, cement crumbled like sand, iron pillars bent like willow wands. The middle span melted like wax. Its wreckage clung around the tortured train, which gyrated madly for an instant in space. Immediately, a shattering rush of broken glass and wood descended upon Denis, cutting and bruising him with mangling violence. He felt the wrenching torsion of metal and the grating of falling masonry. The inexpressible desolation of a hundred human voices, united in a sudden, short anguished cry of

  mingled agony and terror, fell upon his ears hideously, with the deathly fatality of a coronach. The walls of his compartment whirled about him and upon him, like a winding sheet, the floor rushed over his head. As he spun around, with a loud cry he too shouted, "God help us!" then, faintly, the name "Mary!"

  Then the train with incredible speed, curving like a rocket, arched the darkness in a glittering parabola of light and plunged soundlessly into the black hell of water below, where, like a rocket, it was instantly extinguished forever obliterated! For the infinity of a second, as he hurtled through the air, Denis knew what had happened. He knew everything; then instantly he ceased to know. At the same instant as the first faint cry of his child ascended feebly in the byre at Levenford, his mutilated body hit the dark, raging water and lay dead, deep down upon the bed of the firth.

  BOOK II

  THE cutting cold of a March morning lay upon the High Street of Levenford. Large, dry snowflakes, floating as gently and softly as butterflies, insistently filled the air and lay deeply upon the frosted ground. The hard, delayed winter had been late of coming and was now tardy of passing, thought Brodie, as he stood in the doorway of his shop, looking up and down the quiet, empty street. Strangely, the quietness of the street consoled him, its emptiness gave him freer space to breathe. During the last three months it had been hard for him to face his fellow townsmen and the lack of stir about him came as a respite to his suffering, but unbroken pride. He could, for a moment, relax his inflexible front and admire his own indomitable will. Yes, his task had been difficult for the last three months but, by God, he had done it! The arrows they had launched at him had been many and had sunk deeply, but never by a word, never by a gesture had he betrayed the quivering of his wounded and outraged pride.

  He had conquered. He pushed the square hat farther back upon his head, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and, with his blunt nostrils doggedly sniffing the keen air, gazed aggressively down the silent thoroughfare. In spite of the biting cold he wore no overcoat or scarf; his intense satisfaction in the hardihood of his physique was such that he disdained this sign of weakness. What would I do with a coat, with MY constitution? was his contemptuous attitude, despite the fact that this morning he had been obliged to

  break a thin skin of ice upon the cold water in his ewer before he could sluice himself. The frigid weather suited his disposition. He revelled in the iron frost, filled his chest invigoratingly with the chilled air, whilst the suction of his breath drew the white, sailing snowflakes on to his tongue, where they lay like melting hosts, filling him with a new refreshing force.

  Suddenly he saw a man approaching. Only Brodie's stimulated pride kept him at his door, for he recognised the figure as that of the glibbest, smoothest gossip in the Borough. "Damn his sleekit tongue," he muttered, as he heard the slow, muffled steps approach and saw the other deliberately cross the roadway. "I would like to rive it from his mouth. Ay! he's comin' over. I thought he would."

  Up came Grierson, wrapped to his blue ears. As Brodie had anticipated, he stopped.

  "Good morning to you, Mr. Brodie," he began, stressing the "you" with a nicety of accent that might have been interpreted as deferential, or merely as ironic.

  "Morning," said Brodie shortly. He had suffered acutely from the hidden venom of that tongue in the past and he distrusted it profoundly.

  "The frost still holds firm, I fear," continued the other. "It's been a hard, hard winter, but, man, it doesna seem to affect you a bit. I believe you're made o' steel; you can thole anything."

  "The weather suits me weel enough," growled Brodie, eyeing the other's blue nose contemptuously.

  "The trouble is, though," replied Grierson smoothly, "that a' these hard frosts maun break some time. The ice has got to crack one day. There maun be a thaw, and the harder the frost the softer the thaw. There'll be a big change in the conditions here some day." He raised a guileless glance towards the other.

  Brodie fully understood the double significance of the words, but he was not clever enough to reply in kind.

  "Is that so?" he said heavily, with a sneer. "Man, you're clever, clever."

  "Na, na, Mr. Brodie. It's juist fair intuition! What the Romans ca'ed takin' the omens frae the weather."

  "Indeed! Ye're the scholar as weel, I see."

  "Man!" went on Grierson, unperturbed, "this morning a wee robin redbreast flew into my house it was so perished like." He shook his head. "It must be awfu' weather for the birds and onybody that hasna got a home to go to." Then, before Brodie could speak he added, "How are all the family?"

  Brodie forced himself to reply calmly, "Quite well, thank ye.

  Nessie's gettin' on grandly at school, as no doubt ye've heard. She'll be runnin' awa' with all the prizes again this year." That's one for you, thought Brodie, with your big, stupid son that's always done out of first place by my clever lass.

  "I hadna heard! But it's fine all the same." Grierson paused, then in a soft voice, remarked, "Have ye had ony word from the other daughter lately Mary, I mean?"

  Brodie gritted his teeth, but he controlled himself and said slowly,

  "I'll thank you not to mention that name again in my hearing."

  Grierson manifested a great show of concern.

  " 'Deed, I'm sorry if I've upset you, Mr. Brodie, but I had aye a bit regard for that lass o' yours. I was gey upset at her lang illness, but I had heard tell the other day that she had gotten a post away in London, and I was wonderin' if it was through these folks in Darroch the Foyles, I mean. Still, I've nae doubt ye ken as little as me."

  He screwed up his eyes and glanced sideways at the other, as he continued:

  "Ay, I took great notice o' the affair. In a human sort o' way, ye ken. I was real touched when the wee, bit bairn died in the hospital."

  Brodie eyed him stonily, but the torture continued.

  "They say it was a real bonny wean and the doctor was much upset when it slipped through his fingers. He took a great interest in the mother's case. I'm no' surprised either; it was so unusual, with the complications o' pneumonia and all." He shook his head mournfully.

  "Man! What a calamity, though, that the father wasna' spared to make an honest woman o' ahem, ahem! Forgive me, Mr. Brodie! I clean forgot! I was just lettin' my silly tongue run away wi' me."

  Grierson was abjectly apologetic. He had rubbed Brodie on the raw, made him wince, and was clever enough to know when to withdraw.

  Brodie looked right through the other. Inwardly he writhed, but in a low, strained Toice he said,

  "Let your mealy-mouthed tongue run on like the Wellhall burn; it makes no odds to me."

  It was a mistak
en attitude, for it immediately offered an opportunity to renew the baiting which Grierson was not slow to seize.

  He laughed, with a soft, unctuous titter.

  "That's richt, that's richt! That's the spirit that never flinches! I can't but admire ye, Mr. Brodie," he went on, "at the firm stand ye've taken amongst the disgrace o' it all. A man that had such an important standin' in the Borough might easily have been broken richt to bits by such a comedown, for there's no doubt that for months the whole town has been ringin' wi' it."

  "The gabble of the Cross is of no moment to me," retorted Brodie, with a heaving breast. He could have killed the other with his glance, but he could, with dignity, use no other weapons, and his pride forbade him to retreat.

  "Ay, ay," replied Grierson speculatively, "but it might shake up another man to be the butt o' a' these dirty divots, and the laughin' stock o' the place. Man!" he added, in a low tone, almost as an afterthought, "it would be enough to drive an ordinary man to the drink for consolation."

  Brodie lowered at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows. Had they been calumniating him on that score, too? "Nothing like a wee droppie to cheer up a man, especially in this weather," drawled Grierson, in an insinuating tone.

  "Well, I maun be off. It's cold work standin' bletherin'. Good day to you, Mr. Brodie." Grierson passed quickly out of range with meek, bowed head, without giving the other time to reply. Although he shivered from his stand in the freezing air, inwardly he warmed himself at a fire of delicious self-appreciation. He glowed at the thought of the quiver in Brodie's fierce eye as his delicately pointed barbs had sunk home, and feasted his recollection on the great, heaving sigh that the cumulation of their poison had finally produced. He

  chuckled at the richness of the jest to relate at the club this evening; they would laugh till they burst at the story as he would tell it. He tee-heed to himself in anticipation. And why shouldn't he have lowered the stuck-up runt? What did he think he was, with his insolent, haughty airs? Besides, what man would have turned his own child out, like a dog, on such a night? It had been the death of the bairn. Ay, he had nearly killed Mary by it too, if reports were to be believed! Pneumonia, and child-birth fever, and God only knows what she

  had suffered. It was scandalous, yes, even if she was a precious. He went on and out of sight, still hugging his reflection closely.

  Brodie watched him down the road, his lips drawn into a thin, crooked line. That was the way of them, he thought. They would try to stone him, to kick him, to batter him to bits now that he was down. But, at the very idea, he drew himself up proudly. He was not down! Let them that suggested it wait and see. The whole, damnable business would have blown over, would be only dimly remembered, in another month or two. His real friends, the gentry, the big people of the district, must feel for him only sympathy and regret. But, at the memory of what he had endured, his tense lips quivered slightly.

  All those weeks whilst Mary had lain between life and death at the Cottage Hospital, he had stood with the hard, craggy indifference of a rock, immovable in his determination to outcast his daughter. By her own act she had outlawed herself and he had proclaimed openly that he would let her rot beyond the bounds of decent society. Under the wordless wilting of his wife, under the loud-tongued gossip and hotly fluctuating opinion of the town, under the pressure of a biting, private interview with Doctor Ren wick, under the contumely of public affronts and reproaches, he had remained immutable and unyielding. He had not looked near her and the consideration of his inflexible resolution now soothed his ruffled spirit. But they did not know what he had suffered; the blow to his pride had been almost mortal. With a grim relief he diverted his thoughts to the solace which had comforted him through these bitter months, and he allowed his mind to dwell gloatingly upon the Tay Bridge disaster! He did not consider with any satisfaction the death of the bastard infant he had from the first disowned it but the thought of Foyle's broken body the pitiful remains of which had been recovered and now lay putrif ying in Darroch soil had rarely been out of his thoughts. It was the salve for his wounded arrogance. His imagination had riotously indulged itself amongst a host of vivid, morbid details. He did not care that a hundred others had perished; the loss of the entire train was but the instrument of a just vengeance. This one man had wronged him, had dared to oppose him, and now he was dead. It was a sweet consolation!

  He was turning to go into his shop when he was again accosted. A little man, with all the restless timidity of a rabbit, had bolted out from next door to speak to him. It was Dron. Contempt marked Brodie's drawn features as he gazed at the jerky agitation of the other, and his self-assurance, restored always by an appreciation of the terror he could inspire in others, returned, whilst he surmised disdainfully the object of the little man's visit. Would he be going to tell him about the arrival of his brat? he wondered, as he noted the peculiar, suppressed look that marked him.

  Dron's aspect was certainly remarkable, as, trembling with a repressed excitement, rubbing his hands rapidly together with a rustling sound, his pale eyelashes blinking ceaselessly, his legs shaking as though with tetanus, he essayed, stammeringly, to speak.

  "Out with it, then," sneered Brodie, "and don't keep me on my own doorstep any longer. What species o' animal is it ye've been blessed wi' this time?"

  "It's no exactly that," said Dron hurriedly, with a fresh spasm of fidgets. Then he added slowly, like one who has rehearsed it carefully, "I was just wonderin' if you were quite sure you didna want these premises o' mine I offered you last back end." He jerked his head in the direction of the empty shop. "You may have forgotten that you threw me out on the pavement that day, but I ha vena! I ha vena forgotten that ye flung me out on the broad o' my back." His voice rose in a shrill crescendo at the last words.

  "Ye fell down, my little mannie, that was all. If ye chose to sit on your backside outside my place o' business I canna blame ye; but if it's no' as pleasant a position as ye might find, then talk to your wife about it. It's no affair o' mine," said Brodie calmly. Yet the other's eye fascinated him, pervaded as it was by two antagonistic emotions warring for supremacy, filled by such a look as might occupy the half- terrified, half-exultant eye of a rabbit that views an enemy caught in its own snare.

  "I was askin' ye if ye were sure," Dron palpitated, without heeding the interruption; then he hurried on:

  "I say are ye quite sure ye dinna want these premises o' mine? Because if ye did want the shop, ye canna have it. I ha vena let it! I ha vena let it! I've sold it! I've sold it to the Mungo Hat and Hosiery Company." He shouted out the last words in triumph, then he rushed on. "I've gotten more than my price for they have unlimited capital. They're going to fit up a grand, big emporium with everything, and a special window and a special department for hats and caps. I knew ye would like to hear the news, so I couldna wait. The minute I had signed the contract I came round." His voice rose gloatingly, almost to hysteria. "Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you gurly, big bully!" he yelled. "Smoke it till it sickens ye. That'll learn ye to mishandle folks weaker than yoursel'." Then, as if in fear that Brodie would attack him, he whirled around and scuttled off to his burrow.

  Brodie stood perfectly still. Dron's pusillanimous ebullition disturbed him not at all, but his news was catastrophic. Would misfortune never desert him? The Mungo Company, originating in and at first confined solely to Glasgow, had for some time past been reaching out tentacles into the adjacent countryside; like pioneers, realising the advantage of the principle of multiple shops, they had invaded most of the townships in Lanarkshire and now they were stretching slowly

  down the Clyde. This incursion, Brodie knew, had meant disaster for many a local shopkeeper; for not only did the Company indulge in such flashing pyrotechnics as bargain sales and glittering window displays, wherein their articles were marked, not in plain honest shillings, but in deceptive figures ending cunningly in iiV^d., and were actually adorned by trumpery cards which tempted the fancy seductively under such terms as,
"The Thing for the Bairns", or "Real Value", or even "Exquisite", but they cut prices ruthlessly in the face of competition. They were in Darroch and Ardfillan, that he knew, but, although they were not exclusively hatters, he had often flattered himself into thinking that they would leave Levenford alone because of his old-established, deeply rooted business. He had told himself disdainfully that they wouldn't sell a hat a year. And now they were coming! He was aware that it would be a fight, and he would make it a bitter fight, in which he would let them try what they could do to James Brodie, then take the consequences. A sudden realisation took him of the proximity they would occupy to him and a bitter surge of black resentment made him shake a menacing fist at the empty shop as he turned and went into his own.

  To Perry, meekly ubiquitous as always, he threw out: "What are ye glumping at there, you dough-faced sheep? Do some work for a change. That empty look of yours fair scunners me."

  "What would you like me to do, sir? I'm not serving."

  "I can see you're not serving. Do you mean to infer that I have no customers, me that's got the best and most solid business in the town. It's the snow that's keeping folks away, you fool. Clear up the place a bit, or take a bar of soap and go out and wash your feet," shouted Brodie, as he banged into his office.

  He sat down. Now that he was alone and his bold front to the world slightly lowered, the almost imperceptible change in him became faintly discernible in the tincture of hollowness which touched the smooth, firm line of his cheek, in the tenuous line of bitterness that ran downwards from the angle of his mouth. On his desk the Herald lay unopened he had not looked at a paper for months, an omission supremely significant and now, with a gesture of negligent distaste, he slashed it off his desk and on to the floor with a fierce swap of his open palm. Immediately his hand sought his pocket, and he drew out, with familiar unconsciousness, his pipe and tobacco pouch, looked at them suddenly as if he wondered how they had come into his hands, then laid them on the desk before him, with a grimace of aversion. He did not wish to smoke on this morning which had been so consistently miserable for him. Although there was a bright coal fire in the room, despite his vaunted indifference to the inclemency of the weather, he suddenly felt chilly: whilst a shiver ran through him he reflected on what Grierson had said. "There's nothing to keep out the cold, or cheer a man up, like a wee droppie." A wee droppie! What an expression for a grown man to use, thought Brodie; but it was like Grierson to talk like that, with his soft, pussy voice and his creeping, sneaking ways. The obvious construction of the remark which rose to his mind was that, at the Cross, they had him a drunkard already, he who hadn't touched drink for months.