Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  He jerked out of his seat impatiently and looked through the frosted window at the snow which was everywhere, on the ground, on the frozen Leven, on the house tops, in the air, falling relentlessly, as though it would never cease to fall. The drifting flakes appeared to Brodie each like an oppression in itself supportable, but becoming insufferable by weight of numbers. As he cogitated, a dormant molecule of thought began to swell within his mind. He felt in his dull brain the blind injustice of the veiled accusation that he had been consoling himself with drink. "That's it," he muttered. "I'm gettin' the blame and none of the comfort." The desolation of the scene again struck frigidly upon him. He shivered once more and continued to talk to himself. This propensity of articulate self-communion was entirely new, but now, as he spoke thus, the process of his ideas became more lucid and less entangled. "They say I'm takin' a dram, do they; it's the sort of thing the measly swine would say, without rhyme nor reason; but, by God! I will take them at their word. It's what I'm needin' anyway, to take the taste o' that braxy out o' my mouth the poor, knock-kneed cratur' that he is, wi' his 'wee droppies.' Him and his sleekit 'beg your pardons' and 'by your leaves', and his scrapin' and bowin' down in the dirt. Some day I'll kick him and keep him down in it. Ay, I maun have something to clean my mouth after this mornin's wark." His face grimaced dourly as he added ironically, still addressing the empty room, "But thank you all the same, Mister Grierson thank you for your verra acceptable suggestion."

  Then his features changed; suddenly he experienced a wild and reckless desire to drink. His body felt strong, so brutally powerful chat he wanted to crush iron bars, so eagerly alive, with such vast potentiality for enjoyment, that he felt he could empty huge reservoirs of liquor. "What good does it do me to live like a blasted stickit minister they talk about me just the same. I'll give them something to babble about, blast them!" he cried, as he pulled his hat down over

  his eyes and strode darkly out of the shop.

  A few doors off stood a small, quiet inn, "The Winton Arms", owned by an elderly, respectable matron named Phemie Douglas, famed for her liquor, her virtue, and her snug sitting room known as "Phemie's wee back parlour" to the choicer spirits amongst the better class of the townspeople, for whom it was a favourite resort.

  Brodie, however, on entering the tavern, avoided this social centre, as he now had no time for words; he wanted to drink, and the longer he waited the more he desired it. He entered the public bar, which was empty, and demanded from the barmaid a large whisky toddy.

  "Hurry up and bring it," he said, in a voice dry from the violence of his craving. Now that he had ordained that he would drink, nothing could stop him, nothing arrest the swelling urge which made his throat dry, caused his hands to clench and unclench restlessly, made his feet stamp chafingly upon the sawdust floor of the bar whilst he awaited the hot whisky. When she brought it, he drank the scalding liquid in one, long breath.

  "Another," he said impatiently.

  Altogether he had four, large whiskies, hot and potent as flame, which he consumed as rapidly as he obtained them, and which now worked within him like the activation of some fiery ferment. As he glowed, he began to feel lighter; the shadows of the last three months were lifting; they still swirled like smoke clouds about his brain, but nevertheless they lifted. A sardonic leer played about his mouth as a sense of his superiority and of his invulnerable personality impressed him, but this was the sole expression of the thoughts which rushed within him. His body remained quiet, his actions grew cautious, more restrained; he remained absolutely within himself, whilst his bruised pride healed itself in the roseate thoughts which coursed swiftly through his mind. The barmaid was young, attractive, and quite desirous of being talked to by this strange, huge man, but Brodie ignored her, did not even observe her, as, wrapped in the splendid emancipation from his hateful despondency and engrossed in the incoherent but dazzling consideration of his future plans and triumphs, he remained silent, staring blankly in front of him. Finally he asked for a bottle of whisky, paid for it, and went out.

  Back in his office he continued to drink. His brain clarified with each glass, grew more dominant, more compelling; his body responded more quickly and more perfectly to his movements; he now sanctioned with an intense approval all his recent actions.

  The empty bottle stood on the table before him, bearing on the label the words: "Mountain Dew", which struck his bemused fancy as notably appropriate; for now he felt as powerful as a mountain and as sparkling as dew.

  "Yes," he muttered, addressing himself to the bottle, "you mark my words; they can't down me. I'm more than a match for them. I can master them. Everything I did was right. I wouldna draw back a step o' the road I took wi' her. Just you wait and see how I'll go ahead now. Everything will be forgotten and nothing will stop me! I'll get the whip hand o' them."

  Actually he did not know whom he was indicting, but he included largely and indeterminately in that category all whom he imagined had opposed him, slighted him, or failed to recognise him as the man he was. He did not now think of the threatened opposition to his business, which became, in the swollen magnitude of his disdainful pride, too petty, too ridiculously ineffectual to affect him adversely.

  The opposition which he recognised was universal, intangible, yet crystallised in the feeling that any man's hand might be raised against his sacrosanct dignity; and now this obsession, always latent within him, strengthened and become more corrosive in his mind. And yet conversely, whilst the danger to his position loomed the more largely before him, his faith in his ability to conquer such a menace was augmented and exalted in such a manner as to render him almost omnipotent.

  At last he started, took out his watch and looked at it. The hands, which appeared larger and blacker than usual, showed ten minutes to one.

  "Time for dinner," he told himself agreeably. "Time to see that braw, tidy wife o' mine. It's a grand thing for a man to have such a bonnie wife to draw him hame." He got up impressively, but with a slight, almost imperceptible sway, and walking solidly out of his office, disregarding the awestruck, cringing Perry absolutely. He stalked through the shop and into the street, gained the middle of the street, and held it like a lord. Along the crown of the causeway he swaggered, head erect, shoulders thrown back, planting his feet in front of him with a magnificent sense of his own importance. The few people who were abroad gazed at him in amazement, and as, from the corner of his eye, he saw them glance, their astonishment fed his vanity, his intoxicated assurance battened on their wonder. "Take a good look," his attitude seemed to say. "It's Brodie you're lookin' at James Brodie, and, by God, he's a man!" He walked through the snow the whole way home as though he headed a triumphal procession, keeping so exactly in the centre of the road, and holding so undeviatingly to his course that such traffic as traversed the streets had perforce to go around him, leaving him the undisputed king of the causeway.

  Outside his house he paused. The white envelope of snow vested it with an unreal and delusive dignity, softening the harsh lines, relieving the squat and rigid contours, blending the incongruous elements with its clinging touch so that, before his fuddled eyes, it reared itself in massive grandeur, looming against the opaque, slate-coloured sky with an illusion of infinite dimensions. He had never liked it so well or admired it so much and a sense of elation that he should possess it held him as he marched to the front door and entered his home.

  In the hall he removed his hat and, with wide extravagant gestures, scattered in all directions the thick snow that had caked upon it, amusedly watching the mushy gobbets go slushing against the roof, the walls, the pictures, the chandelier; then, wildly, he stamped his heavy boots upon the floor, dislodging hard, pressed lumps of ice and snow. It would give that handless slut of his something to do to clean up his mess, he thought, as he walked into the kitchen with the air of a conqueror.

  Immediately, he sat down and delved into the huge steaming bowl of broth, sweet with the essence of beef and bones, and stiff wit
h the agglutination of barley, that stood on the table anticipating his arrival, the ignored reminder of his wife's devotion and forethought. Just the thing for a cold day, he thought, as he supped greedily with the zest of a ravenous animal, lifting huge, heaped spoonfuls rapidly to his mouth and working his jaws incessantly. The meat and small fragments of bone that floated through the pottage he rent and crushed between his hard teeth, revelling in the fact that for weeks his appetite had not been so keen or the taste of food so satisfying upon his tongue.

  "That was grand," he admitted to Mrs. Brodie, smacking his lips coarsely at her, "and a good thing for you. If ye had singed my broth on a day like this I would have flung it about your lugs." Then, as she paused at the unusual praise, he bellowed at her, "What are ye gawkin' at; is this all I've to get for my dinner?"

  At once she retreated, but, as she hastily brought in the boiled beef and platter of potatoes and cabbage, she wondered fearfully what had drawn him from out his perpetual, grim taciturnity to this roaring, devilish humour. He hacked off a lump of the fat beef and thrust it upon his plate; he then loaded it with potatoes and cabbage, and began to eat; with his mouth full, he regarded her derisively.

  "My, but you are the fine figure of a woman, my dear," he sneered, between champing mouthf uls. "You're about as straight as that lovely nose o* yours. No, don't run away." He raised his knife, with a broad, minatory gesture, to arrest her movement, whilst he finished masticating a chunk of beef. Then he went on, with a fine show of concern, "I must admit ye ha vena got bonnier lately; all this worry has raddled ye; in fact, you're more like an old cab horse than ever now. I see you are still wearin' that dish clout of a wrapper." He picked his teeth reflectively with a prong of his fork. "It suits you right well."

  Mamma stood there like a wilted reed, unable to sustain his derisive stare, keeping her eyes directed out of the window, as though this abstracted gaze enabled her better to endure his taunts. Her face was grey with an ill, vitreous translucency, her eyelids retracted with a dull, fixed despondency; her thin, work-ugly hands played nervously with a loose tape at her waist.

  Suddenly a thought struck Brodie. He looked at the clock. "Where's Nessie?" he shouted.

  "I gave her some lunch to school, to save her coming back in the snow."

  He grunted. "And my Mother," he demanded.

  "She wouldna get up to-day for fear of the cold," she whispered. A guffaw shook him. "That's the spirit you should have had, you fushionless creature. If ye'd had that kind o' gumption ye would have stood up better, and no' run down so quick." Then, after a pause, he continued, "So it's just you and me together. That's very touchin', is't not? Well! I've grand news for ye! A rich surprise!"

  Immediately her look left the window; she gazed at him with a numb expectation.

  "Don't excite yourself, though," he scoffed, "it's not about your fine, bawdy daughter. You'll never know where she is! It's business this time. You're always such a help and encouragement to a man that I must tell ye this." He paused importantly. "The Mungo Clothing Company have taken the shop next door to your husband ay next door to Brodie the Hatter." He laughed uproariously. "So maybe ye'll find yourself in the poorhouse soon!" He howled at his own humour.

  Mrs. Brodie restored her gaze into space. She suddenly felt weak and sat down; but as she did so his mocking eye darkened, his face, already flushed with hot food, flamed sullenly.

  "Did I tell ye to sit down, ye limmer! Stand up till I've done with ye."

  Like an obedient child, she rose.

  "Maybe the fact that these blasted swine are goin' to have the audacity to settle on my doorstep doesna mean much to you. You get your meat and drink too easy perhaps, while I've got to work for it. Does your weak mind not see it's going to be a fight to a finish to their finish?" He banged his fist on the table. His ranting gaiety was wearing off and giving place, instead, to a morose reactionary temper. "If ye canna think ye can serve. Go and get my pudding."

  She brought him some steamed apple dumpling and he began to attack it wolfishly, whilst she stood like some bedraggled flunkey at the other end of the table. The news he had given her caused her little concern. In the shadow of Brodie's dominant personality she did not fear pecuniary disaster; although he kept her household allowance parsimoniously tight, she understood, always, that money was free with him, and often she had seen him draw out from his pocket a shining handful of golden sovereigns. Her dejected spirit was grappling with another care. She had not received a lettr from Matthew for six weeks, and, before that, his communications to her had been growing steadily briefer, and so irregular as to cause her the deepest vexation and misgiving. Mary she had now abandoned as

  irrevocably lost to her; she did not even know her whereabouts, except that it had been rumoured that the Foyles had found her a situation of some sort in London, but of what nature she did not know; now it was Matthew upon whom she built her entire hopes and affection. Nessie was so absolutely Brodie's exclusive favourite that only Matt was now left to Mamma. But, apart from this, she had, indeed, always loved him best and, now that he was neglecting to write to her, she imagined that ill health or misfortune had surely befallen him. Suddenly she started.

  "Give me some sugar. What are you moping and moonin' about?" Brodie was shouting at her. "This dumplin' tastes like sorrel. You've got as much hand for a dumplin' as my foot." The more the effect of the liquor left him the more surly he became. He snatched the sugar basin from her, sweetened the pudding to his liking, then consumed it with every indication of dissatisfaction.

  Finally he rose, shaking himself in an effort to dispel the heavy lethargy which was beginning to affect him. Going to the door he turned to his wife and said cuttingly, "Ye'll get sitting down now! I've no doubt the moment my back's turned you'll be crouching at the fire wi' your trashy books, while I'm away working for you. Don't tell me you're not lazy; don't tell me you're not a slut. If I say so, then ye are and that's the end o't. I know ye for what you are you lazy besom." In his own increasing ill-temper he sought sullenly for some new means of wounding her and, as an idea of a parting shot of extreme subtlety struck him, his eyes gleamed maliciously, with the humour of using Dron's news of this morning, speciously, as a pretext for her discomfiture.

  "Now that we've got opposition in the business," he continued slowly, pausing at the door, "we must economise. There'll have to be less wastin' and throwin' out in this house, and for a start I've made up my mind to cut down your allowance for the house. Yell get ten shillings a week less from now on and don't forget I want no savin' on my food. Ye maun just cut out what ye waste and give me the same as usual. Do ye hear me. Ten shillings a week less for ye! Think over that when ye're at your novelettes." Then he turned and left the room.

  II

  WHEN her husband had gone Mrs. Brodie did, indeed, sit down, feeling that if, by his departure, she had not been permitted to rest her tired body, she would have fallen at his feet upon the floor from sheer weariness and from a gnawing pain within her side. This pain was peculiar, like a slow, harassing stitch which, though she was so inured to it as almost to ignore it, continually dragged upon her strength and rendered her, when she remained standing for any length of time, unduly and incomprehensibly fatigued. But, as she sat there, it was apparent from her features, which had aged considerably in the last three months and which now bore the look of remote concentration, that she was not occupied by the consideration of her own physical disabilities, but was influenced by a deeper and more moving cause for sorrow.

  Brodie's last threat had not yet greatly affected her; she was, at the moment, too crushed to realise its portent and, although she vaguely understood that his conduct had been unusual and his manner exceptional, she had no suspicion of the cause. Nor was she greatly perturbed at his abuse. On this especial side of her nature she was so calloused to the lash of his tongue that she now hardly noticed a variation in the mode of her chastisement, and against any of his sneering charges it never occurred to her to a
ttempt to defend herself; she could not have uttered the mildest or most logical assertion in her favour contrary to his will. Long ago she had realised, with a crushing finality, that she was chained to a man of domineering injustice, that her sole defence would be to develop a supine indifference to every irrational imputation with which he vilified her. She had not entirely succeeded and he had broken her, but she had at least evolved the faculty of inhibiting him from her meditation in his absence from the home. Therefore, the moment he went out, she directed her thoughts away from him and automatically they returned to the object of her recent solicitude her son.

  At first, Matt's letters had reached her with a satisfying and affectionate regularity, and with these initial letters he had every month sent her the sum of five pounds to invest for him in the Levenford Building Society. She had loved the tone of these early letters; they had been to her so engrossingly interesting, of such an elevated sentiment, and so filled with strongly expressed moral rectitude. Then, gradually, a slow transition had occurred, and his letters, though still appearing regularly with each mail, had dwindled in volume and altered in principle, so that, though she had devoured the few husks of scanty and frequently disturbing news within them, her maternal craving had not been satisfied; nor had the half-hearted, stereotyped expression of regard, with which they had iavariably concluded, stifled her vague misgivings. When he had thus cut down his epistles to the shortest and most meagre limits, she had begun to write to him reprovingly, but alas, ineffectually, and his acknowledgment of her first letter in this spirit had been to ignore it completely and to miss the mail for the first time since he had left her. His omissions subsequently had grown more frequent, more disturbing, and now she had not heard from him for nearly six weeks.