Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  "Rich old ladies queuing up for you, you sly dog!" said Gibson quizzically. "What they see in that ugly face of yours I can't imagine!"

  Renwick laughed as he replied:

  "It's not beauty they want, or I'd refer them to you." He held out his hand. "You're a good sort, Gibson! I'll miss you more than any one when I leave here."

  "I wonder!" said the other as he pressed his friend's hand aflfectionately.

  Renwick left the room quickly, but as he went down the shallow, stone steps, worn through the years by an endless succession of careless footsteps, and passed between the two, grey Russian guns, setting his course along the road for his home, his pace insensibly diminished and his thoughts again grew heavy. "Poor Nessie!" He now saw the shrinking figure before him, enveloped by the soft, protecting arms of her sister who, shielding the child's drooping form by

  her own soft body, looked at him with brave, enduring eyes. As he passed along the street, the vision grew in intensity, oppressing him, rendering somehow unattractive the stimulating prospect which had lately filled his mind, dulling the glamour of his new work in Edinburgh, blotting out the freshness of Castle Gardens and the romantic fortress piled against the sky, blunting the ever keen savour of the wind as he felt it sweep to him from off the Calton Hill. It was with a sombre face that he entered his own house and set himself to work.

  VII

  THE mild April day had advanced for one hour beyond its noontide and, filled by the fresh odours and soft, stirring sounds of the budding spring, lay upon the town of Levenford like a benison. But to Brodie, as at his dinner hour he walked along the road towards his home, there was no blessing in the sweet burgeoning around him.

  Filled with bitterness, he did not feel the caress of the gentle air or recognise in each new shoot the running sap within the trees; the yellow clumps of nodding daffodils, the white, elusive snowdrops, the glowing, mingled globes of crocuses which ornamented the front gardens of the road were by him unseen; the faint cawing of rooks as they circled around their new-built nests amongst the tall trees at the bend of the road was a jangle on his irritated ears.

  Indeed, as he reached these trees and the sound came to him more loudly, he sent a venomous glance at the birds, muttering, "Damn their noise they ring the lugs off a man. I could take a gun to them," when suddenly, as if in answer to his threat, a low-flying crow swept over him and with a derisive "caw-caw" dropped its excrement upon his shoulder. His brow gathered like thunder as he considered that the very birds had turned against him and defiled him; for a moment he looked as though he could have felled each tree, torn apart the nests and destroyed every bird in the rookery; but with a wry twist of his lips he cleansed his coat with his handkerchief and, his mood set more bitterly, continued upon his homeward way.

  The better conditions of his living since the return of Mary had made little difference in his appearance, for although she sponged and pressed his clothing, washed and starched his linen, and brushed his boots to a fine polish, he had now abandoned himself utterly at nights to the bottle, with the result that his face had grown more veined, more sallow and sunken, and his neater dress hung upon his gaunt frame with the incongruity of a new suit upon a scarecrow.

  He looked, although he knew it not, a broken man, and since he had lost Nancy his disintegration had progressed at a more rapid pace. At first he had told himself fiercely that there were other fish in the sea as good as, and indeed, better than she, that he would quickly fill her place in his affections by another and a finer woman; but gradually, and with a cutting injury to his pride, he had been made to see that he was now too old and unattractive to compel the attention of women and, the lordly days of his overflowing purse being ended, that he had become too poor to buy their favour. He realised, too, after a short and resentful period of self-delusion, that it was his Nancy that he desired, that none other could replace her; she had wrapped herself around his flesh so seductively that in her absence he craved for her only and knew that no one else would do. He drank to forget her, but could not. The whisky soaked his brain, deadened his vivid appreciation of his loss, but still, and even when he was drunk, tormenting pictures floated before his numbed mind, haunting him with visions of Nancy and Matt as they would be together in their new life. As he saw them, they were always together, and, although he cursed himself for the thought, happy, forgetful of him and of his past bearing on their lives; Nancy's laugh, and it was the laugh of an Aphrodite, echoed in his ears, evoked, not by his, but by Matt's caresses, and as with an agonising lucidity he saw his son supplanting him in her affections, his eyes would close, his look become helpless and livid.

  At present, however, he was engrossed by another matter, not, let it be said, the offence of the crow, which had merely thrown another coal upon the fire of his resentment, but a greater and more personal affront; and his air was less apathetic than was usual in the public street, his manner more intent as he moved with an unusual rapidity towards his house.

  He had a grievance to air and, as Nessie was the only person whom he now addressed with any freedom, and as the affair in some manner concerned her, it was she whom he hastened to see. As he opened the front door and entered his home, his morose reticence was for the moment abandoned and he immediately called out:

  "Nessie! Nessie!" He was in the kitchen before she could reply, and sternly regarded the startled eye that looked back at him from her half-turned head as she sat at table, a spoonful of her broth arrested in mid-air, her whole attitude indicative of sudden apprehension.

  "Has that young whelp o' Grierson's said anything to you about the Latta?" he shot at her fiercely. She let the spoonful of soup splash back into her plate as, thinking that mercifully his question was not so bad as she had expected, she shook her head nervously, and replied:

  "No, Father. At least nothing much."

  "Think," he cried. "Think hard. What does nothing much mean?"

  "Well, Father," she quavered, "he's always saying something or another that's not nice about about us. He sometimes sneers about me and the Latta."

  "Did he ever tell you that you shouldna go in for it?" he demanded. "Answer me!"

  "Oh! He would like me not to try for it, Father," she replied, compressing her small lips. "I know that as well as anything. I suppose tie thinks it would give him some small chance of it not that hes got any."

  His discoloured teeth came together and he displayed them as his lips parted in a grin of wrath.

  "So that's it!" he exclaimed. "I was sure o't. Ay, I was right!” He seated himself at table and, ignoring the steaming bowl which Mary silently placed before him, thrust his face close to Nessie's. "Say that again," he muttered.

  "What, Father?"

  "About that pup o' Grierson's."

  "That he's got no chance of the Latta?" she queried timidly; then seeing that she was pleasing him, she harmonised her mood to his and sniffed indignantly. "No! I should think not. He hasn't a ghost of a chance. Even if I didn't go in for it, there's others have as good a chance as he has. But he'll never get it while I'm about."

  "You're the stumblin' block to him."

  "Yes, indeed, Father!"

  "That's fine! That's fine!" he muttered, looking at her with dilated eyes. "God! it does me good to hear that." He paused. "Do ye know what happened to me as I was coming home to-day, like any other respectable townsman?" His nostrils quivered at the memory and his voice rose as he cried, "Yes, comin' home quietly and decently, when that blasted swine came up to me Provost Grierson our braw

  new provost God! What they made a thing like him provost for beats me; he must have sneaked himself into the position it's it's a disgrace to the town. I suppose because he's the provost now, he thinks he can do anything, for he had the damned insolence to accost me in the open daylight and tell me not to put you in for the Latta."

  He looked at her as though he expected her to swell visibly with indignation, and feeling that some response was expected of her she replied feebly:
<
br />   "It was just jealousy, Father, that was all!"

  "Did I not tax him with that?" he cried. "I should think I did. I told him you had always beaten his measly pup and that you would do it again and again and again." He repeated the words in an exultant shout. "The damned cheek of the man to try and cadge the thing for his own son by askin' me to keep you back for another year. And when I flung that in his face, he had the impudence to turn round and mealy-mouth me with talk of the dignity of his position, and about him bein' the spokesman of the Borough, saying that he had been told ye werena lit to go up that you were not strong enough that he was speakin' in your interests and not in his. But I had him." He clenched his fist in something of his old manner, as he exclaimed, 4t l had him on all points. I threw Lawrie's own words at his slcckit head. I had the whip hand o' him at every turn!" He laughed exultantly, but after a moment his face darkened and he muttered, "By God! I'll make him pay for it ay, and for the other things he said to me as well. Why I didna level him to the street I canna think! But never mind you and me will make him pay for't in other ways. Will we not, Nessie?" He gazed at her wheedlingly. "You'll knock that brat o' his into a cocked hat will ye not, Nessie? And then well look at the grand, chawed look on his face. You'll do it won't ye, woman?"

  "Yes, Father," she replied obediently, "I’ll do it for ye."

  "That's fine. That's real fine," he murmured, rubbing his veined hands together in suppressed elation. Then suddenly, at some secret thought, his expression grew black, and again thrusting his face into hers, he exclaimed, "You better do it. By God! You better beat him. If you don't I'll I'll grip that thin neck o' yours, and fair strangle ye. You've got to win that Latta or it'll be the waur o' ye."

  “I’ll do it, Father! I'll do it!" she whimpered.

  "Yes, you'll do it or I'll know why," he cried wildly. "I tell you there's a conspiracy in this town against me. Every man's hand is turned against me. They hate me for what I am. They're jealous. They know that I'm away and above them that if I had my rights I would wipe my dirty boots on the smug faces o' the lot of them. But never mind," he nodded his head to himself in a wild burst of unreason, "I'll show them yet. I'll put the fear o' me into them! The Latta will be the start o' it. That'll put a spoke in the Lord High Provost's wheel then we'll begin in real earnest."

  At this point Mary, who had been standing in the background observing her father's paroxysm and his manner towards Nessie with an expression of acute anxiety, came forward and said coaxingly:

  "Will you not take your broth before it gets cold, Father? I took such pains with it. Let Nessie get hers too she must eat up if she's going to study as hard as she does."

  His exaltation was suddenly arrested at her words. His expression changed, as though something withdrew from it, retired quickly from open view into the hidden recesses of his mind, and he exclaimed angrily:

  "What do you want to interfere for? Can you not leave us alone? When we want your advice well ask for it." He picked up his spoon and sullenly began his soup; then, after a while, as though he had been brooding on her effrontery in speaking, he exclaimed, "Keep your remarks about Nessie to yourself. I'll manage her my own way.”

  The meal proceeded for some time in silence, but when they were partaking of the next simple course, Brodie again turned to his younger daughter, and staring at her sideways began, in the ingratiating tone which he invariably adopted for this rote of questions and which, from constant repetition and the manner of his address, now excited her almost to the point of hysteria.

  "And how did you get on to-day, Nessie?"

  "Quite well, Father!"

  "Did anybody praise my own lass to-day? Come on, now, somebody said something about you. It was your French to-day, was it not?"

  She answered him mechanically, at random, anyhow only to be rid of the nerve-racking necessity of formulating new and gratifying replies to his fatuous, yet pressing queries, of appeasing his insatiable demand for tangible evidence of her prowess, of the attention which his daughter was attracting at school. At length, when he had satisfied himself, although she on her part hardly knew what she had said, he lay back in his chair and, regarding her with a bland, proprietary eye, remarked:

  "Good enough! Good enough for the Brodies! That was high praise for them to give us. You're doin’ not so badly, woman! But ye maun do better. Better and better. Ye've got to make as sure o' that Latta as if it was lying on that plate in front o' ye. Guid sakes! Just think on it. Thirty guineas every year for three years that makes ninety guineas or near enough to a hundred, golden sovereigns. There's a hundred, golden sovereigns lying there on that plate o' yours waiting to be picked up. Ye havena got to scramble for them, or stoop for them; you've just got to gather them up! God! If ye don't put these wee hands o' yours out to lift them, I'll twist the heid off ye!" He looked at the empty plate before her, seeing it piled high with sovereigns, gleaming with the rich lustre of heaped gold, filled with a sum which, in his reduced circumstances, seemed to him enormous. "It's a rich, rich prize," he murmured, "and it's yours! I could see it makes the greedy eyes o' that snipe Grierson drop out o' their sockets to think on it comin' into this house. I'll learn him to affront me in the main street of the town!" He was moved by a short, silent laugh that was like a sneer, then, looking again at Nessie, he lifted his eyebrows and, with a resumption of his absurdly arch manner, said in a tone of high confidence,

  "I'll be home early to-night, Nessie! We'll make a bend the minute we've finished our tea. Not a minute will we waste! We'll be on with our lessons before we've swallowed the last bite." He looked at her slyly, as he remarked,

  "You can be at it in the parlour, and I'll bide in here to see that not a soul disturbs ye. Quiet! Quiet! That's what ye want, and I'll see that ye have it. Ye'll have the quiet o' the grave!"

  He seemed pleased with the force of this comparison and repeated the last words

  impressively and sonorously. Then in a harder tone he added; "Ye maun stick to it! Stick in hard. Put your back into it. What ye do, do well. Remember you're a Brodie and set your teeth to win through with it."

  His task of exhortation for the moment completed, filled, too, by a consciousness of worthy effort accomplished, he removed his eye from Nessie and allowed it to rest oppressively upon the face of his other daughter, daring her to interfere.

  "What are you glowerin' at?" he demanded, after a moment. "Have I not told ye to keep out of the way when me and Nessie are speakin' together? When we want you we'll ask for you. I told you when ye entered this house again that you were to keep your paws off her, so see that you do it. I'm not wantin' her spoiled like her namby-pamby mother spoiled the rest o' ye."

  She was about to leave the room, knowing this to be the most effectual manner of curtailing his resentment against her, when suddenly the front doorbell rang loudly and she paused at the unexpectedness of the occurrence. Such traffic as came to the house, chiefly from the tradesmen of the Borough, was to the back door, and for the front bell to ring thus was a rare event, so unusual now that Brodie looked sharply up, and exclaimed to her, after a moment:

  "See what it is!"

  She went to the door and opened it, revealing to her own gaze a messenger, who stood upon the steps of the porch bearing in his hand a medium-sized parcel, and who now touched his cap, saying interrogatively:

  "Miss Mary Brodie?"

  She nodded, her eyes fixed in some dismay upon the package which he was now apparently delivering into her hands and which, from the smooth brown paper and neat pink cord which enclosed it, she knew to be no ordinary parcel, no clumsily wrapped groceries from a local store, neither provisions nor anything which she had herself ordered, but a paragon of a parcel that she associated immediately in her mind with others bearing the same exclusive air, which had, at intervals, descended mysteriously upon her during the last month. But these other packages had invariably come in the middle of the forenoon, at a fixed hour when she was always alone in the house and now, with a sudd
en anxiety besetting her, she demanded of the messenger the strange question:

  "Are you not late?"

  He moved his feet uncomfortably, confirming the suspicion in her mind as he defended himself.

  "I've had a lot of deliveries," he said. "This came from Glasgow. I had to wait on it." He was glad apparently to see her accept the package without rebuking him and clattered off without further speech, leaving her supporting the light weight of the neatly corded box as though it pressed her down into an acute discomfiture. These consignments of delicacies which had regularly arrived for her enigmatically, yet so safely and opportunely and which she had lavished upon Nessie with an unquestioning delight was this another? With a beating heart she slowly closed the door and, her brain moving actively, she slipped into the parlour, secreted the parcel under the sofa, and again reentered the kitchen, hoping uneasily that her father would make no enquiry into the nature of the visitor. But she saw at once that this faint chance was impossible, that he was impatiently awaiting her return, even now lying back in his chair and fixing her with a large and curious eye.

  "Who was that at the door?" Then at her silence he demanded, "Come along! What are ye standing so glaikit for? Who was it?"

  "It was only a message boy, Father," she replied quietly, essaying to render her voice composed.

  "A message boy!" he repeated incredulously. "Coming to the front door of the house! Gad! What have we got to put up with next."

  Then, his anger rising at a sudden thought, he exclaimed, "I'm not going to sit down under that sort of insult. Who sent him ? Tell me and I'll go in about it myself. Who was he from?"

  "I don't know!" she faltered.

  "Ye don't know!"

  "No!" she answered and, still using every effort to conciliate him, hastily added, "Never mind, Father it'll not occur again. Don't upset yourself."

  He looked at her for a moment with a lowering eye, noting her suppressed air of embarrassment, faint, yet clearly to be perceived against the pervading candour of her expression.