by A. J. Cronin
Three days ago, when Denis had seen the train take Mary away from him, an avalanche of remorse had fallen upon him and had immediately swept over and engulfed him. He considered that he had acted towards Mary with a cold and cowardly selfishness. The sudden blow to his self-esteem had taken him so completely unawares, that he had, for the moment, forgotten how much he really cared for her. But he did love her; indeed, he realised more maturely, and in her absence, that he craved for her. The burden of her condition lent her, in his more complete consideration, a pathetic appeal which he had previously resisted. If his situation was unpleasant, hers was unbearable, and he had offered nothing in alleviation but a few weak and mawkish condolences. He had writhed inwardly to contemplate what she must now think of his abject and unresourceful timidity, and the realisation that he had no certain access to her to tell her all that he now experienced, to express his contrition and adoration with the utmost fervency, filled him with despair.
For two days he endured these steadily growing feelings, when, suddenly, a definite and extraordinary line of action presented itself to him. He thought it bold, strong, and daring. In reality it was the reflex of the battery of self-reproaches upon his taut nerves, and although it was merely rash, presumptuous, and foolish, it represented an outlet for his constrained feelings, and he saw in it the opportunity to vindicate himself in his own and in Mary’s eyes.
Essentially, it was this urge to justify himself which now moved him, as he stood before Brodie, saying:
‘I came like this, Mr Brodie, because I thought you mightn’t agree to see me otherwise – I’m Denis Foyle of Darroch.’
Brodie was astounded at the unexpectedness of this entry and at the audacity it betokened, but he made no sign. Instead he settled himself more deeply in his chair; his head seemed to sink right into the magnitude of his shoulders like a rock sunk on the summit of a hill.
‘Son of the pub keeper?’ he sneered.
‘Exactly,’ replied Denis politely.
‘Well, Mister Denis Foyle’ – he emphasised the mister ironically – ‘ what do want here?’ He began to hope to goad Foyle into an assault, so that he might have the pleasure of thrashing him.
Denis looked straight at Brodie and, disregarding the other’s manner, proceeded according to his plan.
‘You may be surprised at my visit, but I felt I must come to you, Mr Brodie. I have not seen your daughter, Miss Mary Brodie, for over three months. She has consistently avoided me. I wish to tell you frankly that I have an attachment for your daughter, and have come to ask your permission to allow me to see her.’
Brodie gazed upwards at the young man with a heavy mask-like face which permitted nothing to penetrate of the tide of rising amazed anger he felt at the other’s demand. After a moment’s lowering stare at Foyle, he said, slowly: ‘I am glad to hear from your own lips I have been obeyed! My daughter has refused to see you because I forbade her to look at ye! Do ye hear me. I forbade her, and now that I’ve seen what ye are I still forbid her.’
‘Why, Mr Brodie, may I ask?’
‘Must I explain my actions to you? The fact that I order it is enough for my daughter. I do not explain to her, I command.’
‘Mr Brodie, I should be glad to know your objection to me. I should do my best to meet you in any way you desired.’ With all his power Foyle tried to propitiate the other. ‘I’m very anxious to please you! Let me know what to do and I’ll do it’
Brodie leered at him:
‘I want ye to take your smooth face out o’ my office and never show it in Levenford again; and the quicker ye do’t the better ye’ll please me.’
With a deprecating smile Foyle replied:
‘Then it’s only my face you object to, Mr Brodie.’ He felt he must win the other round somehow!
Brodie was beginning to become enraged; the fact that he could not beat down this young sprig’s eyes, nor yet provoke him to temper, annoyed him. With an effort he controlled himself and said, sneeringly:
‘I’m not in the habit of exchanging confidences with your kind, but as I have a moment to spare, I will tell you what I object to Mary Brodie is a lady, she has blood in her veins of which a duchess might be proud, and she is my daughter. You are a lowdown Irish scum, a nothing out of nothing. Your, father sells cheap drink, and I’ve no doubt your forebears ate potato peelings out o’ the pot.’
Denis still met his eyes unflinchingly, although the insults quivered inside him. Desperately he forced himself to be calm. ‘The fact that I am Irish surely does not condemn me,’ he replied in a level voice. ‘I don’t drink – not a drop. In fact I’m in a totally different line of business, one which I feel will one day bring a great return.’
‘I’ve heard about your business, my pretty tatie-picker. Long trips over the countryside, then back to loaf about for days. I know your kind. If ye think that you can make money by hawkin’ tea round Scotland then you’re stupid, and if ye think ye can make up for your rotten family by takin’ up a trashy job like that, then you’re mad.’
‘I wish you would let me explain to you, Mr Brodie.’
Brodie contemplated him savagely.
‘Explain to me! You talk like that to me, you damned commercial traveller. Do you know who you’re speakin’ to? Look!’ he roared, flourishing the paper and thrusting it in front of the other. ‘See this, if you can read! These are the people I associate with –’ He inflated his chest and shouted: ‘I would as soon think of letting my daughter consort with you as I would let her mix with swine.’
With a considerable effort Foyle controlled his temper.
‘Mr Brodie,’ he pleaded. ‘ I wish you would listen to me. Surely you must admit that a man is what he makes himself – that he himself controls his own destiny irrespective of what his parents may be. I am not ashamed of my ancestry, but if that is what you object to, surely it does not damn me.’
Brodie looked at the other frowningly.
‘Ye dare to talk that damned new-fangled socialism to me!’ he roared angrily. ‘One man is as good as another, I suppose! What are we comin’ to next. You fool! I’ll have none of ye. Get out!’
Denis did not move. He saw clearly that this man was not amenable to reason; that he might batter his head against a stone wall with more avail; he saw that, with such a father, Mary’s life must be a procession of terrifying catastrophes. But, because of her, he determined to maintain his control, and, quite quietly, he said: ‘I am sorry for you, Mr Brodie. You belong to an age that is passing; you do not understand progress. And you don’t understand what it is to make friends; you must only make enemies. It is not I who am mad!’
Brodie got up, lowering, his rage like that of an angry bull. ‘ Will you get out, you young swine?’ he said thickly, ‘ or will I smash you?’ He advanced towards the other, heavily. In a second Denis could have been out of the office, but a hidden antagonism had been roused in him by Brodie’s insults and, although he knew he ought to go for Mary’s sake, nevertheless he remained. Confident that he could take care of himself, he was not afraid of the other’s lumbering strength and he realised, too, that if he went now. Brodie would think he had driven him out like a beaten dog. In a voice suffused by resentment he exclaimed:
‘Don’t touch me! I’ve suffered your insults, but don’t go any further!’
At these words Brodie’s anger swelled within him until it almost choked him.
‘Will I not, though,’ he cried, his breath coming in quick noisy gusts. ‘I’ve got ye like a rat in a trap, and I’ll smash ye like a rat’
With a heavy ferocious stealth he advanced slowly towards the other, carefully manoeuvred his towering bulk near to him; then, when he was within a yard of Denis, so near that he knew it was impossible for him to escape, his lips drew back balefully upon his gums, and suddenly he raised his mammoth fist and hurled it with crushing force full at young Foyle’s head. A sharp, hard, brittle crack split the air. There had been no head for him to hit; quicker than a lightning flash, Fo
yle had slipped to one side, and Brodie’s hand struck the stone wall with all the power of a sledge-hammer. His right arm dropped inertly to his side; his wrist was broken. Denis, looking at him with his hand on the door knob, said quietly:
‘I’m sorry, Mr Brodie. You see that after all there are some things you do not understand. I warned you not to try anything like that.’ Then he was gone, and not a moment too soon. The heavy, mahogany, revolving chair, thrown across the room by Brodie’s left arm, like a shot from a catapult, crashed against the light door and shivered the glass and framework to atoms.
Brodie stood, with heaving nostrils and dangling arm, staring stupidly at the wreckage. He felt conscious of no pain in his injured arm, only an inability to move it, but his swelling breast was like to burst with defeated fury. The fact that this young pup above everyone had bearded him, and gotten away with it, made him writhe with wounded pride; the physical hurt was nothing, but the damage to his pride was deadly.
The fingers of his left hand clenched convulsively. Another minute, he was certain, he would have cornered him and broken him. But to have been outdone without so much as a blow having been struck against him! Only a faint remnant of self-control and a glimmering of sense prevented him from running blindly into the street after Foyle, in an effort to overtake and crush him. It was the first time in his life that anyone had dared to take the upper hand of him, and he ground his teeth to think that he had been outfaced and out-witted by the effrontery of such a lowborn upstart.
‘By God!’ he shouted to the empty room, ‘I’ll make him pay for it.’
Then he looked down at his useless hand and forearm which had already become blue, swollen, and oedematous. He realised that he must have the condition seen to and also that he must invent some story to explain it – some balderdash about having slipped on the stairs, he thought. Sullenly he went out of the shop, banged shut the front door, locked it, and went off.
Meanwhile it had dawned upon Denis, since his departure, that by his rash action he had done incalculable harm to Mary and himself. Before the interview he had imagined that he might ingratiate himself with her father, and so obtain his consent to see her. This, he had assumed, would make it easy for them to arrange the events towards a definite plan of escape. Indeed, he had fondly estimated that Brodie might view him with less disapproval, might even conceive some slight regard for him. To have succeeded in this project would undoubtedly have expedited the course of such sudden steps as they might later be obliged to take, would also have tempered the shock of the subsequent and inevitable disclosure.
He had not then known Brodie. He had frequently considered Mary’s delineation of him, but had imagined that her account was perhaps tinged with filial awe, or that her sensitive nature magnified the stature of his odious propensities. Now he fully understood her terror of Brodie, felt her remarks to have erred on the side of leniency towards him. He had a few moments ago seen him in a condition of such unbalanced animosity that he began to fear for Mary’s safety; he cursed himself repeatedly for his recent imprudent action.
He was completely at a loss as to what step to take next, when, suddenly, as he passed a stationer’s shop in the High Street, it occurred to him that he might write her a letter, asking her to meet him on the following day. He entered the shop and bought a sheet of notepaper and an envelope. Despite his anxiety his power of blandishment remained, and he wheedled the old lady behind the counter to sell him a stamp, and to lend him pen and ink. This she did willingly, with a maternal smile, and whilst he wrote a short note to Mary, she watched him solicitiously, out of the corner of her eye. When he had finished he thanked her gracefully and, outside, was about to drop the letter in the pillar-box when a thought struck him, and he withdrew his hand, as if it had been stung. He turned slowly round to the kerb and then, after a moment, at the confirmation of his thought, he tore the letter into small pieces and scattered them in the gutter. He had suddenly realised that if, by chance, this communication were intercepted, Brodie would immediately apprehend that he had wilfully deceived him, that Mary had been meeting him continually and clandestinely. He had made one serious mistake that day and he was determined not to commit another. Buttoning up his jacket tightly, he plunged his hands in his pockets and, with his chin thrust pugnaciously forwards, he walked quickly away. He had decided to reconnoitre the neighbourhood of the Brodie’s house.
Unfamiliar with the locality, he became slightly out of his reckoning in the outskirts of the town, but, by means of his general sense of direction, he made a series of detours and at length arrived within sight of Mary’s home. Actually he had never seen this house before, and now, as he surveyed it, a feeling of consternation invaded him. It seemed to him more fitted for a prison than a home, and as inappropriate for the housing of Mary’s soft gentleness as a dark, confined vault might be for a dove. The squat, grey walls seemed to enclose her with an irrevocable clasp, the steep-angled ramparts implied her subjection, the deep, embrasured windows proclaimed her detention under a constrained duress.
As he surveyed the house, he murmured to himself: ‘I’ll be glad to take her away from there, and she’ll be glad to come. That man’s not right! His mind is twisted somewhere. That house is like him, somehow!’
With his mind still clouded by apprehension, he wormed himself into a hollow in the hedgerow behind him, sat down on the bank, lit a cigarette, and began to turn over certain projects in his mind. Faced with the imperative necessity of seeing Mary, he began to review mentally a series of impossible plans and incautious designs of achieving the object. He was afraid of making another imprudent blunder, and yet he felt that he must see her at once, or the opportunity would be for ever lost. His cigarette was almost burned out when, suddenly, the stem look vanished from his face, and he smiled audaciously at the obvious simplicity of the excellent expedient which had struck him. Nothing was to prevent him, now, in open daylight, from advancing boldly, and knocking upon the front door. Mary would almost assuredly open the door herself, whereupon, he would signify immediately for silence and, after delivering a note into her own hands, leave as urbanely and openly as he had come. He knew enough of the household to understand that, with Brodie at business and little Nessie at school, the only other person who might answer the door would be Mrs Brodie. If this latter contingency occurred, she did not know him, Brodie would not yet have warned her against him, and he would merely enquire for some fictitious name, and make a speedy and apologetic departure.
Rapidly he tore a leaf out of his pocket-book and scribbled on it, in pencil, a short message, telling her that he loved her and asking her to meet him outside the Public Library on the following evening. He would, for preference, have selected a more secluded meeting-place, but he feared that the only pretext she might advance for leaving the house would be to visit the Library. When he had finished he rolled the paper into a small, neat square, pressed it tight in his palm, and flicking the dust from his clothing, sprang up. He turned his head briskly towards his objective and had assumed all the ingenuous artlessness of a simple visitor, when all at once his face fell, his brow darkened, and he flung himself violently back into his hiding-place. Coming along the pavement, and approaching the house from the lower end of the road, was Brodie himself, his wrist bandaged, his arm supported by a sling.
Denis bit his lip. Nothing, apparently, went right with him! It was impossible for him to approach the house now, and he realised bitterly that Brodie, in his resentment, would almost certainly caution the household against him, and so jeopardise the chances of utilising his scheme successfully upon another occasion. With a heavy heart he considered, also, that Brodie’s anger might react upon Mary, although he had so carefully protected her during his unhappy interview at the shop. He watched Brodie draw nearer, detected with concern that the injured wrist was encased in plaster, observed the thunder blackness of his face, saw him crash open the gate and finally let himself into the house. Denis experienced a strong sense of misgiving.
So long as Mary lived beside that monstrous man, and in that monstrous house, he realised that he would never be at rest. Straining his ears for some sound, some cry, some call for help, he waited outside interminably. But there was only silence – silence from behind the cold, grey walls of that eccentric dwelling. Then, finally, he got up and walked dejectedly away.
Chapter Nine
Mary Brodie sat knitting a sock for her father. She leaned slightly forward, her face pale and shadowed, her eyes directed towards the long steel needles which flashed automatically under her moving fingers. Click-click went the needles! Nowadays she seemed to hear nothing but that sound, for in every moment of her leisure she knitted. Mamma had decreed sententiously that, as the devil found work more readily for idle hands, Mary must keep hers employed, even in her spare moments, and she had been set the task of completing one pair of socks each week. She was now finishing her sixth pair!
Old Grandma Brodie sat watching, with her lips pursed up as if they had been stitched together. She sat with her withered legs crossed, the pendent foot beating time to the clinking music, saying nothing, but keeping her eyes perpetually fixed upon Mary, inscrutable, seeming to think all manner of things that no one, least of all Mary, could know of. Sometimes, Mary imagined that those bleared, opaque eyes were penetrating her with a knowing, vindictive suspicion, and when her own eyes met them, a spark of antagonism was struck from the stony pupils. She had, of late, felt as if the eyes of the old sibyl were binding some spell upon her which would compel her to move her tired fingers ceaselessly, unwillingly, in the effort to utilise an unending skein of wool.
It was an agreeable diversion for the crone to watch the young girl, but, in addition, it was her duty, the task assigned to her six weeks ago. Her head shook slightly as she recollected that incredible afternoon when her son had come in, with his arm bandaged and his face black as night, remembered the solemn conclave between Brodie and his wife behind the locked door of the parlour. There had been none of the usual bluster, no roaring through the house, only a dour grinding silence! What it had been about she had been unable to guess, but certainly some grave disaster had been in the air. Her daughter-in-law’s face had been drawn with fright for days afterwards; her lips had twitched while she had enrolled her as an auxiliary in the watching of Mary, saying only: ‘Mary’s not allowed out of the house. Not a step beyond the front gate. It’s an order.’ Mary was a prisoner, that was all, and she, in effect, the gaoler. Behind the mask of her face she revelled in the thought of it, of this disgrace for Mary. She had never liked the girl, and her occupation now afforded her the deepest gratification and delight.