Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  "I haven't been able to tell you about Nessie. I haven't seen you for a long time."

  "Far too long," he cried; "and it's been of your own seeking. I haven't seen you about for weeks. I thought you had flown again from Levenford without bidding me good-bye."

  "I'm here for good now," she replied slowly. "It's you that will be saying good-bye to Levenford soon."

  His face clouded slightly.

  "Yes! It's only another fortnight now. How time flies like an arrow in its flight." He sighed. "It's curious, but as the day draws near, I'm losing interest in the prospect. I was glad to think of going at first, but this old town has its grip on me after all."

  "You've so many friends now, I suppose."

  "That's it! I've got friends."

  He played idly with his whip, his eyes fixed unseeingly upon the twitching ears of the horse, then he looked at her seriously and said,

  "Arc you free to come for a drive with me, Miss Brodie? I may not see you again and I rather wished to talk to you about one or two matters. Do come if you would care to!"

  Of course she would care to come and, thinking of her father resting until five, she realised that no more propitious hour could have been chosen; still, she hesitated and replied:

  "I'm I'm not dressed for driving and I should have to be back at five, and "

  "And in that case you're coming," he answered, with a smile, stretching out his hand. "We've got a good hour and a half. As for your dress, it's too good for this old trap of mine."

  She was up beside him almost before she knew how, seated close to him on the red velvet cushion, and he had tucked the light, dust cover around her, touched up the horse and she was off with him, gliding forward in an easy yet exhilarating movement. The breeze of their progress through the still air fanned her cheek, the sky lost its glare and became halcyon, the dust was nothing merely a soft powder to ease the horse's stepping gait and after the tedium and fatigue of walking, she was content to sit silent, happy, watching the vivid countryside flit gently past her. But though she was too conscious of his nearness to look upon him, out of the corner of her gaze she observed the smooth, soft leather of his hand-sewn driving gloves, the silver-plated harness, the monogrammed dust

  cover, the smart appointments of what he had designated his "old trap", and again, as in his house, she was seized by a feeling of the difference between his life and hers. Now, whatever his early struggles might have been, the manner of his life did not comprise the weighing of every farthing before it was spent, the wearing of clothes until they disintegrated, the stifling of every pleasurable impulse outwith the sphere of a most rigid economy. But she suppressed this rising sense of her inferiority, stifled her thoughts of future sadness and, telling herself that she would not mar her solitary hour of this unusual luxury, abandoned herself to the unfamiliar delight of enjoying herself.

  Renwick, on his part, observed her clear profile, the faint colour stirring in her soft cheek, her unwonted animation, with a strange satisfaction, a sense of pleasure more acute than that with which she viewed the countryside. A sudden pressing whim took him to make her turn to him so that he might see into her eyes, and he broke the silence, saying:

  "You are not sorry you came."

  But still she did not look at him, although her lips curved in a faint smile as she answered:

  "I'm glad I came. It's all so wonderful to me. I'm not used to this and I'll be able to look back on it."

  "We'll have time to drive up to the Loch shore," he replied pleasantly, "and, if Tim steps out, time for tea there as well."

  She was enchanted by the prospect which he proposed and, considering Tim's smoothly groomed back, hoped that he would hasten sufficiently for tea without going so fast as to hurry her home before time.

  "Tim," she remarked idly; "what a good name for a horse."

  "And a good horse he is too," he replied, calling out in a louder tone, "aren't you, Timmy?"

  Tim pricked up his ears at the words and, as though he appreciated them, put a little more mettle into his measured jog trot.

  "You see?" Ren wick continued, watching with approval her smile. "He knows that I'm talking about him and is trying not to blush the wretched hypocrite. He'll be lazier than ever in Edinburgh. Too many oats and not enough exercise!"

  "You're taking him with you then?" she queried.

  "Yes. I couldn't sell Timmy. I'm like that somehow." He paused, then continued meditatively, "It's a ridiculous trait in me, but when I've become fond of a thing I can't let it go pictures, books, a horse it's the same in every case. When I like a thing I like it. I'm obstinate. I accept no standard of judgment but my own. A critic may tell me a dozen times that such a picture is good, but if I don't like it I won't have it. I take a picture that I do like; then, when it's grown upon me, I can't bear to part with it."

  She looked straight in front of her and remarked:

  "That was an exquisite picture in your dining room."

  "Yes," he replied authoritatively, "that is a fine thing I'm glad you liked it. It's company to me, that picture. I bought it at the Institute." Then he added slyly, "It's not exclusively my taste though the critics liked it too."

  The memory of the picture brought before her mind the purpose of her first visit to him and, anticipating his interrogation regarding Nessie, she said:

  "I'm grateful for all that you've done about Nessie. You have been more than kind to us both." She had never told him about the tragedy of the grapes, and his favours, these fortunately undiscovered, had continued.

  "I wanted to help you," he replied. "How is she getting along under all the work?"

  "She seems better in her health," she answered, with a trace of anxiety in her voice, "but she varies so much. At times she is quite peculiar to me. She's worrying about the nearness of her examination. It's on Saturday. I've done everything I can for her."

  "I know you have everything," he said reassuringly. "Now that she's gone so far without breaking down, she ought to be all right! I hope she gets the thing, for her own sake." Then, after a considerable silence, he remarked in a serious tone, "I should keep near to her when the results come to hand; and if you want me, call on me at once."

  She was aware that he would be gone when the result was announced, but, feeling that already he had done enough for her, she made no comment and remained silent, engrossed by her thoughts. As he had said, Nessie would be all right! She would see to that. She would be with her watch her, protect her, safeguard her, should she be unsuccessful, from any sudden action of her father.

  She was aroused from her meditation, from this strengthening of her resolution, by his voice.

  "They've widened the road here. We can get through quite easily and it's cooler than the other way." Looking up, she was overcome to see that t unconscious of its significance for her, he had branched off the main road and taken that very passage through the fir wood where she had lost herself upon the night of the storm. With a set, startled face she gazed at the wood as it again enclosed her, not now rocking and surging to the passion of the gale nor crashing with the thunder of uprooting trees, but quiet, appeased, passive with a serene tranquillity. The bright sunbeams stole amongst the sombre foliage of the dark trees, softening them, encrusting their rough branches with gold, and tracing upon their straight, dry trunks a gaily fretted pattern of shimmering, light and shadow. As she passed, in her present comfort and security, through the wood, she was stricken by the incredible memory of her own tortured figure, filled then with her living child, rushing blindly through the darkness, staggering, falling, transfixing her hand upon the sharp spear of the branch, beset by mad voices, unseen, unheard.

  A tear trembled upon the brink of her humid eye but, clenching her fingers tightly over the long cicatrix upon her palm as though to fortify herself with the remembrance of her endurance then, she refused to let it fall and instead turned her gaze, as they emerged from the wood, down into the distant valley. Yes! There was the croft where she
had lain in her extremity! It stood against the smooth green of the lush meadow land, adjoined by the small shed which had contained her anguished body, its white walls rising squarely to its yellow thatched roof, the smoke rising straight from its single chimney like a long, blue ribbon lifting itself tenuously to the sky.

  With a wrench she withdrew her eyes and, holding her body tense in the effort to control her emotion, looked straight ahead, whilst Tim's ears blurred and wavered before her swimming gaze. Renwick, perceiving, perhaps instinctively, that some sudden sadness had induced her silence, did not speak for a long time, but as they swept over the crest of Markinch Hill and the placid, smoothly shining sheet of the Loch was revealed stretching below them, he remarked quietly:

  "There's beauty and serenity for you."

  It was an exquisite sight. The water, bearing the deep, brilliant blue of the unclouded sky, lay cool and unruffled as a sheet of virgin ice from whose edges the steep and richly wooded slopes of the hills reached back and upwards to the sharp, ridged mountains beyond. Breaking the surface of this still expanse were a series of small islands lying upon the bosom of the Loch like a chain of precious emeralds, green and wooded like the banks, and each mirrored with such perfection that it was impossible for the eyys to distinguish between the islet and its reflection. Upon the shore nearest to them stood a small hamlet, its aggregation of cottages showing whitely against the vivid background of blue and green, and now Ren wick pointed to it significantly.

  "There's Markinch which means tea for you, Mary! Don't let the grandeur of nature spoil your appetite."

  Her face, that was serene and beautiful as the surface of the lake, responded to his words, and she smiled with a faint, returning glow of happiness. He had called her Mary!

  They descended the winding hill to Markinch where, disdaining the small, somewhat ineffectual inn which stood at the head of the village, Renwick drove on to the last cottage of the row that fringed the shore of the Loch, and with a wise look towards Mary, jumped out and knocked upon the door. The cottage was in perfect harmony with the surrounding beauty, its white walls splashed by the rich yellows of nasturtiums, its green porch embowered by red rambler roses, its garden fragrant with the poignant scent of mignonette such a cottage, indeed, as she had once visioned for herself in Garshake; and to the door of this small house came a small, bent body of a woman who now lifted her hands and cried delightedly:

  "Doctor! Doctor! It's not yourself? Guidsakes alive! Is it you, yourself?"

  "Indeed it is, Janet," cried Renwick, in her own tone. "It is I myself, and a young lady herself. And the two of us, ourselves, are fair famished from our drive. If we don't get one of your lovely teas, with your own scones and jam and butter and heaven knows a' what, then we'll just sadly fade awa' and never come back."

  "Ye'd no' do that, though," cried Janet vigorously. "Na, na! Ye'll have the finest tea in Markinch inside five minutes."

  "Can we have it in the garden, Janet?"

  "Of course ye can, Doctor! Ye can have it on the roof o' my cottage, gin ye say the word."

  "The garden will do, Janet," replied Renwick with a smile. "And Janet! Let the wee lad look after Tim. And give us a call when you're ready. We'll go along the shore a bit."

  "Right! Right, Doctor! Ye've only to say the word," answered Janet eagerly, and as she departed to do his bidding, he turned and came back to Mary.

  "Shall we go a little way along?" he asked; and at her assent he assisted her from her seat to the ground, saying:

  "Janet won't keep us waiting five minutes, but you may as well stretch your legs. You must be cramped from sitting."

  How delighted the old woman had been to see him, thought Mary, and like all who were in contact with him, how eager to rush to serve him! Thinking of this, as they proceeded along the fine firm shingle of the shore, she remarked:

  "Janet's an old friend of yours! Her eye actually leaped when she saw you."

  "I did something for a son of hers in Levenford once," he replied lightly. "She's a sweet, old soul with a tongue like an energetic magpie," here he looked at her across his nose, adding "but better than that, she makes delicious scones. You must eat exactly seven of them."

  "Why seven?" she queried.

  "It's a lucky number," he answered, "and just the right amount of scone food for a healthy, hungry young lady." He looked at her critically. "I wish I had the dieting of you, Miss Mary. There's a sad loveliness in that faint hollow of your cheek, but it means that you've been neglecting your butter and milk. I'll wager you gave all those things I sent you to that wee Nessie of yours."

  She blushed.

  "No! I didn't really! It was good of you to send them to us.”

  He shook his head compassionately.

  "Will you ever think of yourself, Mary Brodie ? It hurts me to think what will come of you when I'm away. You want some one to keep a severe and stern eye upon you, to make you look after yourself. Will you write to me and tell me how you Ye behaving?"

  "Yes," she said slowly, as though a faint coldness had risen to her from the still water beside them, "I'll write when you've gone!"

  "That's right," he cried cheerfully. "I'll regard that as a definite promise on your part."

  Now they stood looking out upon the sublime tranquillity of the view before them, that seemed to her so remote from the troubled existence within her home, so exalted above the ordinary level of her life. She was overcome by its appeal and, released by the perception of this beauty, all her suppressed feeling for this man by her side swept over her. She was drawn to him with a deeper and more moving emotion than that which had once stirred her; she wished blindly to show her devotion, visibly to demonstrate her homage to him; but she could not and was compelled to remain quiet by his side, torn by the beating qf her straining heart. The faint murmur of the Loch, as it scarcely lapped its shore, swept across the quietude of the scene, whispering to her who and what she was, that she was Mary Brodie, the mother of an illegitimate child, and echoing in her ears in endless repetition that word with which her father had condemned her when he hurled her from the house upon the night of the storm.

  "I hear Janet's cracked cow bell," he said at length. "Are you ready for the scones?"

  She nodded her head, her throat too full for speech, and as he lightly took her arm to assist her across the shingled beach she was conscious of his touch upon her as more unbearable than any pain which she had ever felt.

  "All ready! All ready!" cried Janet, rushing about like a fury. "Table and chairs and everything in the garden for ye, like ye ordered. And the scones are fresh this mornin's bakin'."

  "That's fine!" remarked Ren wick, as he seated Mary in her chair and then took his own.

  Although his tone had dismissed the old woman, she lingered, and after a full, admiring glance at Mary, moistened her lips and was about to speak when, suddenly observing the look upon Renwick's face, she arrested, with a prodigious effort, the garrulous speech which trembled upon her tongue and turned towards the house.

  As she departed, shaking her head and muttering to herself, a slight constraint settled upon Mary and Renwick; although the tea was excellent and the cool of the garden, spiced by the fragrance of the mignonette, delicious, neither appeared quite at ease.

  "Janet's an old footer," he said, with an attempt at lightness. "That's a good Scotch word which just suits her. If I'd give her an opening, she'd have deafened us." But after this remark, he fell into an awkward silence which impelled Mary's mind back to that only other occasion in her life when she had sat at table alone with a man, when she had eaten an ice cream in the gaudy atmosphere of Bertorelli's Saloon, when Denis had pressed her foot with his and

  charmed her with his gay and sparkling tongue.

  How different were her surroundings here, in this cool freshness of the cottage garden filled with the exhaled perfume of a hundred blossoms; how different, too, was her companion, who neither chattered of alluring trips abroad, nor yet, alas, caressed her
foot with his. Now, however, he was shaking his head at her.

  "You've only eaten two after all," he murmured, looking at her tragically, adding slowly, "and I said seven."

  "They're so large," she protested.

  "And you're so small but you would be bigger if you did as you were told."

  "I always did as you told me in the hospital!"

  "Yes," he replied after a pause, "you did, indeed." A heaviness again seemed to settle upon him while his thoughts flew back 'o the vision of her as he had first seen her, with her eyes closed, inanimate, blanched, a broken, uprooted lily. At last he looked at his watch,

  then looked at her with a sombre face. "Time's getting along, I'm afraid. Shall we get back?"

  "Yes," she whispered, "if you think it is time."

  They arose and went out of the sweet seclusion of the garden which might have been made for the enclosure of two ardent lovers without further speech, and when he had helped her into the trap, he returned and paid old Janet.

  "I'm not wantin' your siller, Doctor," she skirled. "It's a pleasure to do it for you and the bonnie leddie."

  "Here, Janet," he cried, "take it now or I'll be cross with you."

  She sensed the faint difference in his mood and, as she took the money, whispered in a humble tone:

  "Have I put my foot in't? I'm gey and sorry if I've done that. Or was it the scones that werna to your taste?"

  "Everything was all right, Janet splendid." he rejoined, as he mounted into his place. "Good-bye to you."

  She waved them a faintly uncomprehending good-bye and, as they disappeared around the bend of the hill, she again shook her head, muttered to herself and reentered her cottage.

  They spoke little on the way home, and when he had asked her if she were comfortable, or if she wished the covering of a rug whether she had enjoyed the trip if he should set Tim to a faster pace he relapsed into a silence which grew more oppressive the nearer they approached to Levenford.

  The tentacles of her home were opening again to receive her, and when they had enclosed her, Brodie, swollen-eyed and with a parched tongue, would awake morosely from his sleep to demand her immediate attention to his tea; Nessie would require her sympathy and consolation; she would be confronted at once by the innumerable tasks which it was her duty to perform. This brief and unexpected departure from the sadness of her life was nearly over and, though she had enjoyed it exquisitely, an exquisitely painful sorrow now filled her heart as she realised dully that this was probably almost certainly the last time that she would see him.