Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  "Do you want the boy to wait for an answer?" continued Nessie curiously, observing but not fully comprehending her mother's strained immobility.

  "No answer," automatically replied Mamma.

  At Nessie's injunction the telegraph boy departed, still whistling loudly and unconcernedly, recognising his importance as the instrument of destiny, yet totally unmoved by the ravages of his missive of destruction.

  Nessic came back to the parlour and, regarding her mother, thought her appearance ever more strange, seemed with a more prolonged scrutiny hardly to recognize her.

  "What's the matter with you, Mamma? You look so white." She touched her mother's cheek lightly; felt it, under her warm fingers, to be cold and stiff as clay; then, with an uncanny intuition, she continued:

  "Was it something about Matt in the telegram?"

  At the name of her son Mrs. Brodie returned from her frigid rigidity into the conscious world. Had she been alone she would have melted into an abandoned flood of tears, but in Nessie's presence her weak spirit made a powerful effort to check the sobs rising in her throat and, struggling for control, she endeavoured to think with all the forces of her benumbed intellect. Urged by the strongest motive in nature to an effort of mind and will which would nominally

  have been far beyond her, she turned with a sudden movement to the child.

  "Nessie," she breathed, "go up and see what Grandma's doing. Don't mention this wire, but try and find out if she heard the bell. You'll do that for Mamma, won't you, dear?"

  With the quick perception that was the basis of her smartness Nessie understood exactly what her mother required of her, and embracing gleefully the task, which was that kind of confidential mission she adored to perform, she nodded her head twice, slowly, understandingly, and strolled casually out of the room.

  When her daughter had gone, Mrs. Brodie unrolled the ball into which the telegram had been crumpled within her contracted fingers, and although the message had seared itself upon her memory, unconsciously she gazed at it again, whilst her quivering lips slowly framed each individual word "Wire my forty pounds Poste Restante Marseilles immediately. Matt."

  He wanted his money! He wanted the savings that he had sent home to her, the forty pounds that she had invested for him in the Building Society! She saw immediately that he was exiled in Marseilles, in trouble in some desperate strait, and that the money was a vital and immediate necessity to remove him from the meshes of a dreadful and dangerous entanglement. Some one had stolen his purse, he had been sandbagged and robbed, the vessel had sailed and left him stranded, without any of his belongings, in Marseilles. Marseilles the very name unknown, foreign, sinister, chilled her blood and suggested to her every possible evil that might befall her beloved son, for, on the sole evidence of this cryptic and appalling demand, she conceived him to be, definitely, the innocent victim of deplorable and harrowing circumstances. Sifting the available facts to the uttermost, she observed that the wire had been handed in at Marseilles that morning how soon had travelled the unhappy tidings! which indicated to her that he had been in a fit state to dispatch the message, that he should be, at least, in no immediate physical danger. He had recovered, perhaps, from the effects of the vicious assault upon him, and now merely awaited patiently and anxiously the arrival of his own money. As her thoughts ran through these innumerable winding channels of her supposition, they converged inevitably, despite a dozen deviations in their courses, to the one common, relentless termination, to the conclusion that she must send this money. A pitiful shudder shook her at the very thought. She could not send it; she could send nothing. She had spent every penny of his forty pounds.

  During the past nine months her financial struggles had been desperate. Brodie had progressively cut her allowance until he had at length reduced it by half, yet he expected the same excellent food supplied, where he was concerned, in the same excessive quantities; and did she manifest the slightest indication of economy upon the table she became the object of a fierce sarcastic tirade, in which he vituperated her as an incompetent bungler who lacked the ability even to manage adequately the petty exchequer of the home. He taunted her with the superior ability of his old mother, producing specious evidence of the old woman's housewifely efficiency, relating in detail the delicious, inexpensive meals she had prepared for him before his marriage, threatening, despite his mother's age, to transfer the management of the house into her more competent hands. It had been useless for Mamma to protest weakly that he gave her insufficient money, that food prices were rising, that the growing Nessie required more clothes, new boots, more expensive school books, that Grandma Brodie would not relinquish one single item of the comforts and luxuries to which custom had habituated her. It would have been equally ineffective, had she attempted it, to convince him that she spent not one farthing upon her own personal expenses, that she had not bought herself a new garment for three years, that in consequence she was the epitome of bedraggled inelegance, exposing herself, by the very unselfishness of this economy, to his gibes and sneers. Seeing her thus, despite a few feeble, ineffective initial protests, accept the reducted amount and apparently manage with it, he concluded that he had been too lavish in the past and, as money was so tight with him that he exulted in the opportunity to economise at her expense, he had tightened his purse strings to the limit and ground her further under the pressure of his heel.

  Although she struggled to make one shilling do the work of two by buying in the cheapest markets, by bargaining and wheedling until she had achieved a reputation for mean shrewishness, it could not continue. Bills had become overdue, tradesmen had become impatient and finally, in despair, she had chosen the path of least resistance and drawn upon Matthew's money. Immediately, matters became easier. Brodie's growls about the food became less frequent, the old woman's whining, senile recriminations abated, Nessie had a new coat, the school fees were paid, and the long-suffering butcher and grocer were appeased. She herself obtained nothing, no clothing, no trivial trinket, no indulgence of her fancy, nothing but a transient immunity from the reproaches of her husband and the worries of her debts. She had consoled herself for her action by telling herself that Matt had really meant the money for her, that he loved her so that he would desire her to take it; again, she had reasoned that she had not spent it upon herself, that she would undoubtedly save and collect it for him in better times and fairer financial weather.

  Forty pounds! It was a ruinous sum! Although she had expended it so easily, the thought of obtaining it again was incredible. Under her former circumstances, and by the most penurious thrift, she might achieve this amount in, perhaps, the long term of a year; but the sum was required immediately. Her lips quivered as her heart quailed within her, but immediately she rallied herself, bracing herself to be brave for Matt's sake. She set her mouth firmly and looked up as Nessie returned to the room.

  "Grandma was tidying up hei drawer," whispered Nessie to her mother, with the air of a conspirator. "She didn't hear the bell and she doesn't know a thing about it. I found out ever so carefully!"

  "That's a good, clever girl," said Mamma. "Nobody's to know about that telegram, Nessie. You're not to open your mouth yourself, about it. That was for me and nobody else. I trust you now! And I'll give ye something nice if ye don't tell." Then she concluded vaguely, feeling that some form of explanation was expected of her, "It was just from an old friend in the country an old friend of Mamma's who is in some slight distress."

  Nessie placed her left forefinger on her closed lips, delighted to share in a confidence of her mother's, implying by this precocious gesture that she was worthy to be trusted with the most private and mysterious secrets of the universe.

  "That's right, now. Don't forget that you've given your word, Your father need know nothing about it," said Mrs. Brodie, as she got up. She desired to remain passively considering the situation, but it was nearly noon, and she had the dinner to prepare. No matter what anxiety affected her, the work of the house must go
on, meak must appear upon the table with an inexorable punctuality, the master must be propitiated, fed adequately and succulently. As she began to peel a large potful of potatoes she tried to reach some decision as to what she should do.

  At the outset she realised that she would obtain no help from her husband. She would have steeled herself to anything for Matt's sake, but it was an impossibility for her to face her husband and demand a sum of the absurd magnitude of forty pounds, realising with certainty, as she did, beforehand, that he would infallibly refuse to send the money. To bring the matter uselessly, in this manner, to his knowledge would be to reveal to him her own culpability, arouse his prodigious wrath, and yet obtain no tangible result. Even as she reasoned thus, she could visualise him sneering, "He's in Marseilles, is he ? Well, let him walk or swim back. It'll do the poor dear a heap o' good."

  She next considered the possibilities associated with Agnes Moir. There was no doubt but that Agnes, who, like Mamma, could refuse him nothing, would be instantly willing to send money to Matthew, despite the shameful coldness and neglect she had suffered from him during the last few months, but it was, unhappily, an equal certainty that she did not possess forty pounds. The Moirs, although respectable, were poor; privation lay very near to their door and it was unthinkable, even if they wished Agnes to have the money, that they could suddenly produce a large sum like this. Additionally, there had been a strong hint of reproach in Miss Moir's attitude to her lately which contained a justifiable suggestion of suffering and injured innocence. How could she then, in the face of such wounded purity of conscience, confess herself the thief of her own idolised son's money. The impeccable Miss Moir would condemn her immediately, would perhaps repudiate her before the eyes of the entire town.

  She therefore abandoned Agnes, but whilst she mechanically performed the actions of cooking the dinner her mind continued to work furiously, racing against time. When Brodie came in she served the meal without once removing her fierce concentration from the problem that obsessed her, and with such unusual abstraction that she placed before Brodie, in mistake, Nessie's small plate.

  "Are ye drunk, woman?" he roared at her, gazing at the diminutive portion. "Or am I expected to repeat the miracle o' the loaves and fishes?"

  As she hastily changed the plates Mamma blushed guiltily at this outward manifestation of her secret cogitations; but how could she have said, in extenuation, "I was thinking of how I could raise forty pounds for Matt?"

  ''She'll have been takin' a wee sook at the bottle to keep her strength up," tittered Grandma Brodie maliciously. "That's how she'll have been passin' the time this mornin'."

  "So that's where the money for the house goes," sneered Brodie, taking up his mother's lead; " in tipple! Well, we maun see what's to be done about that."

  "Maybe that's what's gie'n her that red neb and watery een, I'm thinkin'," replied the old woman.

  Nessie said nothing, but her too obvious side glances of fealty and cooperation towards Mamma were so pregnant with meaning that they almost defeated their object. Still, the crisis was not precipitated and, after dinner, when Brodie had departed and the old woman retreated upstairs, Mamma breathed more freely, and turning to Nessie, said:

  "Will you clear up, dear? I've got to go out for a few messages. You're a great help to Mamma to-day, and if you've got the dishes washed when I come back, I'll bring you a pennyworth of sweeties."

  In her awful dilemma she was capable even of subtle strategy in a small matter like this and, although the rain had ceased, Nessie consented willingly, lured by the bait of sweetmeats, charmed to be recognised by her mother as so supremely grown up.

  Mrs. Brodie put on a hat and coat, the latter the very paletot she had worn when she escorted Matt to Glasgow on his departure, and hurried out of the house. She quickly crossed the Common and took the road which ran behind the station; then, at the junction of Railway Road and College Street, she paused outside a small, low- browed shop which bore above the crooked lintel of its doorway the disreputable insignia of three brass balls. Upon the window was a notice which stated in dirty white letters, and, through the defection of certain letters and the broken condition of others, with some uncertainty: Gold, Silver, Old False Teeth Bought, Money Lent; whilst behind this, chalked on a small, unprosperous-looking slate, was the terser and less prepossessing phrase: Rags Bought. With a

  fearful misgiving Mrs. Brodie contemplated this, the only pawnshop in the respectable Borough of Lcvcnf ord. To enter these precincts was, she knew, the most abysmal humiliation to which a respectable person could descend; and the greater crime of being detected entering therein meant disgrace, dishonour and social annihilation. She realised all this, realised further her inability to cope with the hidden horrors within, yet she compressed her lips and glided bravely into the shop, as quickly and unsubstantially as a shadow. Only the loud, revealing tinkle of the bell attached to the door marked her entry, and surrounded by its mellifluous reiterations she found herself facing a counter in a small box-like compartment which appeared to be one of three. Here the number three had apparently a cabalistic significance both without and within, yet in the compartment she was more private than she could have hoped. Even in this debased society there were apparently instincts of delicacy! When the tinkle of the bell had ceased, her nostrils became gradually and oppressively aware of an odour, emerging permeatingly from some unseen point, of boiling fat tinctured with the aroma of onions. With a sudden faintness at the greasy, nauseating odour, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them a moment later, a short, squat man magically confronted her, having issued unseen, like a genie, from behind the heavy opaque cloud of vapour that filled the inner shop. He had a long, square beard, iron grey and slightly curling, bushy eyebrows of the same colour and texture, beneath which bright, beady eyes twinkled like a bird's; his hands and shoulders moved deferentially, but these black pellets of eyes never left Mrs. Brodie's face. He was a Polish Jew whose settlement in Levenford could be adduced only to his racial proclivity for courting adversity and who, failing to eke out an existence by usury in the hard soil of the Borough, was reduced to merely subsisting so so it seemed by the buying and selling of rags. Being mild and inoffensive, he did not resent the abusive epithets which greeted him as, shouting, "Any rag anybone! any-bottle to-day!", he drove his donkey care upon his rounds; and he made no complaints except to bewail, to such as would hear him, the absence of a synagogue in the town.

  "Yeth?" he now lisped to Mrs. Brodie.

  "You lend money," she gasped.

  "Vot you vont to pawn?" he thrust at her. Although his voice was gentle, she was startled at such crudity of expression.

  "I've nothing here now. I wanted to borrow forty pounds."

  He glanced sideways at her, regarding her rusty, unfashionable clothing, her rough hands and broken nails, the tarnish on the thin, worn, gold band of her solitary ring, her ludicrous battered hat missing, with his glittering eyes, no item of her sad and worthless attire. He thought she must be mad. Caressing his fleshy, curved nose between his finger and thumb he said thoughtfully:

  "Zat es a lot of monesh. Ve must ave security. You must bring gold or jewels if you vish to raise zat amount."

  She should, of course, have had jewels! In her novels these were the touchstone of a lady's security, but, apart from her wedding ring, she had only her mother's silver watch which she might, with good fortune, have pledged for fifteen shillings and, realising something of the insufficiency of her position she faltered:

  "You would not lend it on my furniture or or on note of hand. I saw in the papers some people do that, do they not?"

  He continued to rub his nose, considering, beneath his benignly tallowed brow, that these Gentile women were all alike scraggy and worn and stupid. Did she not realise that his business was conducted on the basis of shillings, not of pounds? And that, though he could produce the sum she required, he would require security and interest which he had realised at his initial survey to be utte
rly beyond her? He shook his head, gently but finally, and said, without ceasing to be conciliatory, using indeed, to that end his deprecating hands:

  "Ve don't do zat beesness. Try a bigger firm say en ze ceety. Oh, ye! Zey might do et. Zey have more monesh zan a poor man like me."

  She regarded him with a palpitating heart in stunned, humiliated silence, having braved the danger and suffered the indignity of entering his wretched hovel without achieving her purpose. Yet she was obliged to accept his decision she had no appeal and she was out once more in the dirty street amongst the puddles, the littered tin cans and the garbage in the gutter, without having procured even one of the forty pounds she required. She was utterly abased and humiliated yet, as she walked quickly away, she appreciated with a growing anxiety that, though she had achieved nothing, Matt would at this very moment be waiting in immediate anticipation of the arrival of the money. Lowering her umbrella over her face to avoid detection, she hastened her steps feverishly towards home.

  Nessie awaited her in a small imitation apron, triumphantly playing the housewife over her neat pile of clean crockery, preparing herself for her just reward of sweetmeats, but Mamma thrust her roughly aside.

  "Another time, Nessie," she cried. "Don't bother me! I'll get you them another time." She entered the scullery and plunged her hand into the box where old copies of newspapers and periodicals, brought home by Brodie, were kept for household purposes, chiefly the kindling of fires. Removing a pile of these, she spread them out upon the stone floor and flung herself before them on her knees, as though she grovelled before some false god. She hurriedly ran her eye over several of these sheets until, with an inarticulate cry of relief, she found what she sought. What had that wretched Jew said ? "Try a bigger firm," he had told her, in his indecently garbled English, and, accordingly, she chose the largest advertisement in the column, which informed her with many glowing embellishments that Adam McSevitch a genuine Scotsman lent 5 to 500, without security, on note of hand alone; that country clients would be attended promptly at their own homes, and, memorable feature, that the strictest and most inviolable secrecy would be preserved nay, insisted upon between the principal and his client.