"What can a man do in this half-dead town?" he cried. "Can't you squeeze out some excitement here?" This was not the society he had moved in before leaving for India and no one recognized him; as, indeed, they did not know him to be a son of the ancient Borough, he preferred them to regard him as a stranger, a dashing cosmopolitan.
They could think of nothing worthy of him and were silent until finally some one suggested:
"What about billiards?"
"Ah! a game of pills," said Matt thoughtfully; "that's something in my line."
"Billiards!" roared the seaman. "I'm true blue, I am! I'll play anybody alive for for anything you like to what I " His voice deteriorated into a drunken dribble of sound. Matthew considered hirn dispassionately.
"You're the champion, are you? Good enough. I'll play you fifty up for a pound a side," he challenged.
"Right," shouted the other. He surveyed Matthew with lowered lids and an oscillating head, indicating, in incoherent yet unmistakable picturesque language, that he would be soused for a son of a sea cook if he would go back on his word. "Where's your money?" he asked solemnly, in conclusion.
Each produced his stake, which the onlooker who had first suggested the game had the honour of holding, and, as no one had ever played in the place for such an unheard-of sum, the crowd, simmering with excitement, surged into the billiard room behind them amidst considerable commotion, and the game commenced.
Matthew, looking dashingly proficient in his shirt sleeves, began. He was, he fully understood, a good player, having practised assiduously in Calcutta, often indeed during the daytime when he should have been perched upon his office stool, and he realised with an inward complacency that the other, in his present condition, could be no match for him. Professionally, he ran his eye along his cue, halked it and, feeling that he was the focus of the combined admiration of the gathering, broke the balls, but failed to leave the red in baulk. His opponent, swaying slightly upon his feet, slapped his ball on the table, took a rapid sight at it and slammed hard with his cue. His ball struck the red with terrific violence and, pursuing it eagerly all around the table through a baffling intricacy of acute and obtuse angles, finally bolted after it into the bottom right-hand pocket. The crowd voiced its appreciation of the prodigious fluke. He turned and, supporting himself against the table, bowed gravely, then exclaimed triumphantly to Matthew:
"Whadeye think of that, cocky? Who's topsy-boozy now? Didn't I say I was true blue? Wasn't that a shot? I'll play you with cannon balls next time." He wanted to stop the game for a profound dissertation upon the merits of his marvellous stroke and a lengthy explanation of how he had performed it, but, after some persuasion, he was prevailed upon to continue. Though he readdressed himself to the ame with the air of a conqueror, his next shot was hardly so successful, for his ball struck hard on the bottom, bounced skittishly across the cloth, hurdled the edge of the table in its stride, and landed with a thud on the wooden floor amidst even louder and more prolonged applause than had greeted his previous effort.
"Wha' do I get for that?" he enquired owlishly, of the assembly at large.
"A kick on the arse!" shouted somebody at the back. The seaman shook his head sadly, but they all laughed, even the fat barmaid, who was craning her neck to see the fun and who tittered involuntarily, but recovering herself with a start, quickly merged her merriment into a more modest cough.
It was now Matthew's turn to play, and though the balls were favourably placed, he began with great caution, making three easy cannons and then going in off the red. Next, he began to play a series of red losing hazards into the right middle pocket, so accurately that at every stroke the object ball returned with slow, unerring exactitude to the required position below the middle of the table. The crowd held its breath with profound and respectful attention whilst he continued
his break. Under the bright lights his white, fleshy hands swam over the smooth baize like pale amoebae in a green pool; his touch upon the cue was as delicate and as gentle as a woman's; the spirits in him steadied him like a rock. This was the greatest joy that life could offer him, not merely to show off his perfect poise and masterly ability before this throng, but to draw upon himself this combined admiration and envy. His empty vanity fed itself greedily upon their adulation.
When he had made thirty-nine he paused significantly, rechalked his cue, and neglecting, obviously an easy ball which lay over the pocket, he addressed himself ostentatiously to a long and difficult cushion cannon. He achieved it, and with three, further quick shots ran out with his unfinished break of fifty. A storm of cheering filled the room.
"Go on, sir! Don't stop! Show us what you can do!"
"Who is he? The man's a marvel!"
"Stand us a pint, mister. It's worth that, anyway!"
But with a lordly assumption of indolence he refused to continue, pocketed his winnings and flung his cue into the rack; now that he had made his reputation, he was afraid to mar it. They surrounded him, clapping him on the back, pushing and shoving each other, trying to shake hands with him, whilst he gloried in his popularity, laughing, talking, gesticulating with the rest. His opponent, having been with difficulty convinced that the game was over, manifested no regrets, but flung his arm tipsily around Matthew's shoulder.
"Did you see that shot of mine, cocky?" he kept repeating. "It was worth a pound worth five pounds. It was a a regular nor'easter a pickled ripsnorter. I'm true blue, I am," and he glared defiantly around, seeking for any one who might dispute it.
They all went back to the bar, where the whole assembly had beer at Matthew's expense. He was their hero; they toasted him, then dispersed into small groups throughout the room, discussing, stroke by stroke, the memorable achievement of the victor.
Matt swaggered about the room, lording it over them. He had no false reticence, no mock modesty, but visited each group, saying to this one, "Did you see that cannon of mine off the cushion? Pretty neat, wasn't it? Judged to a hair's breadth!" To another, "Dash it all, I've made a break of two hundred on my day more than two hundred!" And to a third, "The poor barnacle, what chance had he
against the likes of me? I could have beat him with my walking stick." He lauded himself to the skies and the more he drank the more his silly vanity ballooned itself, until the room seemed to him to become filled with a babble of voices all lifted up to him in honeyed, fulsome flattery. His own tongue joined in the paean, the light gleamed about him like a thousand candles lighted in his honour, his heart swelled with gratification and delight. He had never had a triumph like this before; he considered himself the finest billiards player in Levenford, in Scotland, in the Kingdom; it was something to be able to make a break of fifty like that; why did they want to degrade him by shoving him into an office when he could play billiards in such a marvellous fashion?
Suddenly, at the height of his jubilation, the fickle favour of the crowd waned; a heated argument had developed between two newcomers an Irish navvy and a bricklayer and the general attention left him and fixed itself upon the protagonists, whilst the mob goaded on each in turn in the hopes of provoking a fight. After all, he had only bought them beer the price of popularity was higher than that and almost at once he found himself alone, in a corner, friendless and forgotten. He almost blubbered with dismay at the sudden change in his condition, reflecting that it was always the same, that he could never maintain the centre of the stage for a sufficient length of time but was shoved, before he wished it, into the background. He wanted to run after them and recapture their errant favour, to shout, "Look! I'm the man that made the break of fifty! Don't forget about me. I'm the great billiards player. Gather around me again! You'll not see a player like me every day!" His vexation deepened, merged insensibly into resentment, and in his disgust he swallowed two large whiskies, then, with a last indignant look which swept scowlingly over them all, he then went out of the bar. No one noticed him go.
Outside, the pavements tilted slightly as he walked, moving like the deck
of a liner in a mild swell; yet, cunningly, he adapted his balance to this gentle, regular roll so that his body swayed slightly from side to side but nevertheless maintained its upright poise. The exhilaration of the movement charmed him and soothed his wounded conceit. As he traversed the High Street he became aware that, in manoeuvring so skilfully amongst the intricate difficulties of this perpetually alternating plane, he was accomplishing a noted feat, one ranking equally, perhaps, with his remarkable achievement at billiards.
He felt that it was not late and with great difficulty he attempted to make out the time from the lighted dial of the town clock; with his legs wide apart and his head thrown back, he struggled with the abstruse dimensions of time and space. The steeple oscillated gently and wavered in harmony with the earth, the hands were indistinct, but he thought that it was just ten o'clock and his satisfaction at his cleverness was unbounded when, a moment later, the clock struck ten. He counted the chiming notes with sage, explanatory beats of his arm as though he himself were tolling the bell.
Even for a dead and alive town like Levenford it was too early for him to go home. A man like Matthew Brodie to return home at the childish hour of ten o'clock? Impossible! He rammed his hand into his trousers pocket and feeling the reassuring crackle of a pound note and the clinking touch of silver coins, he thrust his hat more firmly on his head and once more set off down the street. Disappointingly few people were about. In a real city he would have known what to do; it was the easiest thing in the world to fling himself into a cab and, with a knowing wink, tell the driver to take him to the bona robas; he had only to lie back luxuriously and smoke his cigar whilst the spavined horseflesh dragged him happily to his destination. But here there were no cabs, no excitement, no women. The one girl whom he discovered and addressed gallantly ran from him fear-stricken, as though he had struck her, and he damned the town for its blatant, bourgeois piety, cursed the female population in its enfefrefy
for the reputable habit of retiring early, for the unhappy integrity of its virtue. He was like a hunter after game who, the more it evaded him, became the more desperate in his pursuit and he swayed up the High Street and down again, fruitlessly essaying to find some means of combating the melancholy of drunken despondency which began slowly to settle upon him. At last, when he felt that he must enter another tavern to drown the sorrow of his failure, all at once he remembered! He paused abruptly, slapped his thigh extravagantly at his unaccountable lapse ot memory, and allowed a slow smile to expand his features as he recollected that house in College Street which, in his youth, he had always hurried past with averted eyes and bated breath. Rumours regarding this tall, dark, narrow house, sandwiched between the Clyde Dress Agency and the mean pawn- shop at the foot of the Vennel, had spread from time to time like tiny ripples on the flat, impeccable surface of Levenford's respectability, giving the house a mysterious but tacitly acknowledged reputation amongst the knowing youth of the town. Its curtains were always drawn and no one entered by day, but at night lights diy erectly appeared, footsteps came and went, sometimes music was heard. Such an iniquity, however veiled, must long ago have been expunged from so ancient and reputable a Borough, but a controlling hand of protection seemed to lie over the house, not perhaps sanctioning but rather concealing its inoffensively immoral existence; it was even hinted by malicious individuals that certain baillies and prominent citizens found a not infrequent occasion upon which to make use of this rendezvous, in, of course, an eminently sedate and genteel manner.
"That's the hidey-holc for you, Matt. You'll sec if ye were right or wrong. You've often wondered what's inside and now you're going to find out," he muttered to himself delightedly, as he lurched towards College Street, bent upon investigating the horrors at which his immature experience had shuddered. It struck him suddenly as the most ludicrous jest imaginable that he should be on his way to a bawdy house in Levenford and he burst into peals of laughter so that he was obliged to stop and roll helplessly against the side of a wall, whilst inane guffaws shook him and tears of mirth coursed down his face. When he was able to proceed, his despondency of a few short moments ago was gone and he felt with a delicious, inward appreciation that he was enjoying himself infinitely more than he had expected. The alcohol he had absorbed had not yet reached the zenith of its stimulation and, with every floundering step he took, he became more stupidly heedless and more sublimely hilarious.
He entered the Vennel. The narrow street seemed more full of life than all the wide main streets of the town together; it teemed with an unseen activity. From the pens and closes and from behind even the thin walls of the houses came an endless variety of sounds voices, laughter, the howl of a dog, the music of a melodeon, singing.
He perceived that they did not retire early here, felt that he was in his element, and outside a lighted window, from which emerged a roistering chorus, he stood rooted, then suddenly, like a provoked dog, he threw back his head and lifted his loud, inebriate voice in unison with the harmony within. The music ceased immediately and, after a pause, the window was thrown up and a stream of slops descended in a curving arch towards him. It missed him, however, by a foot, merely splashing slightly about his legs, and he retired down the street gaily, with the full honours of the encounter.
Halfway down, his nostrils dilated to the succulent odour of frying ham arising from the cooking of some belated supper in a house which he was passing, and reaching him through the night in a spicy, savoury vapour. Immediately he felt hungry and, looking around, discerned over the way a small shop still open, a nondescript eating- house devoted to the sale of such delicacies as pies, puddings, potted head, and tripe and onions. Moved by a sudden impulse, he strode across the street and muttering to himself drunkenly, "Ladies can wait. Matt needs little nourishment. Must keep strength up, m'boy," he entered the place magnificently. Inside, however, his whisky- hunger overcame his style and he shouted, "Throw us a meat pie quick, and swill in plenty of gravy."
"Penny or twopenny?" queried the greasy youth behind the counter.
"Sixpenny! you soor" replied Matthew, amiably. "Do you think I want any of your small trash, your bobachee? Pick me the biggest in the bunch and push it over here, jilde!" He slapped the coin down, took up the newspaper-wrapped package offered in return and, disdaining to consume the pie upon the premises, walked out. Down the street he went, tearing off the paper wrapping and stuffing handfuls of the delicacy into his mouth, eating voraciously, leaving behind him a track which became at once the joy and contention of all the starveling cats of the alley.
When he had finished, he breathed a sigh of content and, recollecting his manners, sucked his fingers and wiped them fastidiously upon his handkerchief. Then he hurried more urgently forward, full of meat and drink, ready now for the subtler and more piquant enchantments of the dessert. He came eventually to the house, found it indeed, without difficulty, for it was not easy to forget one's way in Levenford, and for a moment he stood outside, contemplating the narrow veiled illumination of the windows. As he remained there, momentarily a faint return of his adolescent awe touched him strangely, made him hesitate, but urged by the wild thought of the pleasure that lay therein for him, he seized the knocker and hammered loudly at the door. The clangour thundered up and down the street with a rude insistence, and, when he desisted, echoed to and fro across the narrow canyon of the lane, leaving, after the final reverberation had ceased, a startled silence which seemed to fall upon the outside, to grip even the inside of the house. There was a long pause, during which he stood swaying upon the doorstep and, when he had almost made up his mind to knock again, the door was opened slowly and for a small way only. Still, he was not dismayed by the inhospitable meagreness of this narrow aperture but, wise in his experience, immediately thrust his foot into the opening.
"Good evening, dear lady," he simpered. "Are you at home?"
"What do you want?" said a hard, low-toned, female voice from the interior darkness.
"The sight of your pretty
face, my deah," he replied, in his best manner. "Come along now. Don't be so cruel and heartless. Give me a look at your bright eyes or your neat ankles."
"Who are you?" repeated the other harshly. "Who told you to come here?"
"I'm an old inhabitant, sweet creature, lately returned from abroad and not without the wherewithal." He jingled the money in his pocket enticingly and laughed with a short, empty laugh.
There was a pause, then the voice said firmly:
"Go away! You've made a mistake. This is a respectable house. We'll have nothing to do with you whatever," and she made as though to close the door in his face. In the ordinary way he would have been deterred by this rebuff and would undoubtedly have slunk off, but now his foot prevented the door from closing and he replied, with some show of bluster:
"Not so fast, ma'am. Don't be so high and mighty! You're dealing with a tough customer here. Let me in or I'll make such a hullabaloo you'll have the whole street at your door. Yes, I'll bring the town down about your ears."
"Go away at once or I'll get the police on you," said the other in a less firm tone, after a momentary silence that seemed fraught with indecision.
He winked triumphantly at the darkness, feeling that he was winning, realising proudly that he could always bluff the women.
"No, you won't," he replied craftily; "you don't want any police down here. I know that better than you do. I'm the gentleman you want to-night just wait till you see."
SiHe made no answer and, her silence encouraging him, her reticence serving to excite his lust, he muttered:
Hatter's Castle Page 39