Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  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 someone 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’re 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 of 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 Renwick, 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 given 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 to the vision of her as he had first seen her, with her eyes closed, inanimate, blanched, his 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 re-entered 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.

  They were nearly at her gate now, and drawing up a short distance away, he said, in an odd voice:

  ‘Well! here we are back again! It’s been very short, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Very short,’ she echoed as she arose from the seat and descended to the ground.

  ‘We should have had longer at Markinch,’ he said stiffly, then, after a pause: ‘I may not see you again. I suppose I better say good-bye.’ They looked at each other a long time and, from beneath him, her eyes shone with a faintly suppliant light; then he drew off his glove and extended his hand to her, saying in a strained tone: ‘Good-bye.’

  Mechanically she took his hand and as she felt within her grasp the firm cool strength of his fingers, that she had so often admired, that had once soothed her tortured body but would never again do so, these fingers she loved devotedly, her feelings suddenly overcame her and, with a sob, she pressed her warm lips fervently against his hand and kissed it, then fled from him down the road and entered her house.

  For a moment he looked at his hand incredulously, then raised his head, and, regarding her vanishing figure, made as though to leap out of the trap and follow her, but he did not, and after a long stillness, during which he again gazed at his hand, a strange look entered his eyes, he shook his head sadly, and drawing on his glove he drove slowly down the road.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Bring in some more porridge for your sister!’ cried out Brodie to Mary in a loud voice. ‘You could put this in your eye what you’ve given her. How do you expect her to work on an empty stomach, and to-day of all days?’

  ‘But, father,’ protested Nessie weakly, ‘ I asked Mary not to give me so much. I’m to have a switched egg. The thought of more porridge sickens me this morning.’

  ‘Tuts, woman! You don’t know what’s good for ye,’ replied Brodie. ‘It’s a good job you’ve got your fath
er to look after ye and see that ye take what’s wholesome. Stick into that porridge, now! That’s the stuff to lie against your ribs and fit ye for what’s before ye.’ And he leant back largely in his chair, surveying with a self-satisfied eye the figure of his younger daughter as, with a faintly trembling spoon, she endeavoured to thrust a few further spoonfuls of porridge between her nervous unwilling lips. He did not consider that it nauseated her to eat this morning, or that in her anxiety she might have been happier to be left alone, but, in high fettle at the thought that this was the great day, the day of competition for the Latta, he had not departed for the office at his usual hour but remained to sustain and encourage her with his presence. He would, he thought, be a fine one if he could not see his daughter off to take the Latta. Gad! that was not the style of him, though! He had stuck to his task through all these weary months, ay, and seen that she had stuck to hers, with such perfect thoroughness that now he was not the man to spoil the broth for a half-pennyworth of salt No! he would not go into the office this morning, would not, indeed, go in all day. He would take a whole holiday for the occasion. It was a festival; he had worked for it, and by God! he would enjoy it. A faint grin marked his features at this consideration and, still surveying her with satisfaction, he cried:

  ‘That’s right, woman! Take it steady. There’s no need for hurry. Your father’s behind ye.’

  ‘Has she not taken enough now, father?’ ventured Mary, her eyes pleading towards him from out her fine-drawn face. ‘She’s maybe too anxious to eat, this morning. I’ve a beaten egg for her here.’

  ‘Take it up, Ness – take it up,’ drawled Brodie, ignoring completely the interruption. ‘We know what puts pith into a body. Ye might be downright starved if it wasna for me. I’m not the one to let ye sit through a three hours examination with nothing inside of ye to stand up to it.’ He was in his element, repeating the fruits of his labour with her, his vicissitudes forgotten, the stabbing memory of Nancy for the present eased, and, opening his mouth in a broader and more derisive smile, he exclaimed: ‘Gad! it’s just occurred to me that maybe that snipe o’ a Grierson is sittin’ at the table, watchin’ that whelp o’ his stap down his breakfast, and wonderin’ what’n all the world he’s goin’ to make o’ himself the day. Ay, it’s a rich thought for me.’ His smile dried up, became bitter. ‘The Provost o’ the Borough, forsooth – the fine, easy spokesman o’ the town. God! he’s lookin’ gey small and mean and anxious this mornin’, I’ll wager.’ He paused for a moment then, observing that Nessie, who had succeeded in finishing the porridge, was sipping her egg and milk, he cried roughly, as though the bitterness of the thought of Grierson had not quite left him: ‘ Here! take a scone and butter to that slush if ye will drink it.’ He glowered, too, at Mary, adding: ‘Some folks would make a jaw box o’ that stomach of yours!’ then, returning his glance to Nessie, he continued, in an admonishing tone: ‘Don’t flicker your een like that, woman; you would think that it was a frichtsome business that you were goin’ up for to-day, instead o’ an easy osey piece of writin’ that you’ve got to do. It’s all in your head waitin’ to come out. All that’s to do is to take up your pen and write it down. Is that anything to upset ye so that you take a scunner at the good, wholesome porridge?’ He reviewed the profound wisdom of his logic blandly, then, as though the absurdity of her nervousness suddenly irritated him, he shot at her questioningly: ‘What the de’il is it you’re feared of? Are ye not my daughter? What is there in this and about it all to make ye grue like that?’

  She thought of the lofty examination hall, filled by the scratching of a score of fiercely competitive pens, she saw the silent, black-gowned figure of the examiner upon his rostrum sitting severe and omnipotent like a judge, she saw her own small bowed insignificant figure writing feverishly, but, veiling her gaze, she replied, hurriedly:

  ‘There’s nothing I’m afraid of, father! It’s maybe the thought of the journey that’s upsetting me a bit. I’m not thinkin’ of the Latta at all. They might have posted the result already for all the good it’ll do the others to go up.’

  He smiled at her again, broadly, exclaiming:

  ‘That’s more like the spirit! That’s more like my daughter! We havena put ye through your paces for nothing. Now that I’m showin’you, ye maun step high when you’re in the ring.’ He paused, pleased by his comparison, which, combined with his present elation and the excitement of her departure, reminded him vaguely of those days when he had set out for the Cattle Show, and he cried: ‘ You’re on show the day, Nessie, and I’m proud of ye. I know before ye go up who’ll come back with the red ticket round her neck. My daughter, Nessie Brodie – that’s the name that’ll be on everybody’s lips. We’re goin’ to startle the town between us. By God! they’ll look the other way along their noses when they meet me now. We’ll show them!’ He considered her fondly, almost admiringly, remarking, after a moment: ‘Gad! it fair beats me, when I look at that wee head o’ yours and think on all that’s in it Latin and French and mathematics, and heaven knows a’ what. And yet it’s no bigger than my fist. Ay! it’s a true word that good gear gangs in small bulk. It’s the quality that counts. It’s downright gratifyin’ for a man to see his own brains comin’ out in his daughter, ay, and to be able to give her the opportunity. When I was your age I never had a chance like you.’ He sighed, commiseratingly. ‘ No! I would have gone far had I been given the chance, but I had to get out into the world and make my own way. There were no Lattas in those days or I would have lifted the whole jing bang o’ them.’ He lifted his eyes to her and exclaimed in an altered, excited tone: ‘But it’ll be different with you, Nessie. You’ll have your chance. I’ll see to that. You’ll see what I’ll do for ye when you’ve won the Latta. I’ll – I’ll – I’ll push ye on the highest ye can go.’ He banged his fist upon the table and considered her triumphantly, adding: ‘Are ye not pleased with what I’m doin’ for ye?’

  ‘Yes, father,’ she murmured, ‘I’m – I’m real pleased at it all.’

  ‘And I should think so!’ he cried. ‘There’s not a man in Levenford would have done what I’ve done for ye. See that ye don’t forget it! When ye come back with that Latta don’t let it fly to your head. Remember who has done it for you!’

  She glanced at him timidly, as she remarked in a low voice:

  ‘You’re not expecting me to bring it home to-night, father? It’ll be a good while before the result comes out – a fortnight anyway!’

  As though she had suddenly baulked him of the keen zest of his enjoyment, his look took on a sudden displeasure.

  ‘Are ye off again on that tack? What’s all this goin’ on about results? Do you think I expect ye to bring the money back in a bag? I know it’ll come in good time. I know it’s for your studies. I’m not just gaspin’ for’t. But I seem to feel that you’re gettin’ anxious as to whether you’ll get your fingers on it or not.’

  ‘Oh! no, father,’ she said hastily, ‘I’m not thinking about that at all. I was just afraid ye might think I would know for sure tonight.’

  ‘For sure,’ he repeated slowly; ‘are ye not “for sure” already?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ she cried. ‘ I’m sure. I’m dead positive about it. I hardly know what I’m saying I’m so excited at going up to the University.’

  ‘Don’t let all this grand excitement run awa’ with you,’ he replied, warningly. ‘Remember you’re sixteen years old now, and if that’s not old enough for you to have some control then you’ll never have it. Don’t lose your heid, that’s all I say! Have ye got a’ things that you need – your pen and your nibs and you rubber and what not?’

  ‘I get everything I want up there,’ she answered meekly. ‘ Everything like that is supplied to us.’

  ‘I see! Well, in that case ye canna very well say ye had forgotten your pen.’ He paused and looked at the clock. ‘It’s gettin’ near time for your train. Have ye eaten your fill of everything?’

  She felt her stomach turn uneasily as she whisp
ered:

  ‘Yes, father.’

  He arose and went over to his pipe rack, remarking complacently:

  ‘Well, I’ve done my bit of the business anyway.’

  As he turned his back Mary moved nearer to her sister, saying in a low tone, close to Nessie’s ear:

  ‘I’ll go down to the station with you, Nessie, just to keep you company and see that you get away all right. I’ll not worry you by speaking.’

  ‘What’s that?’ cried Brodie, turning like a flash. He had, unfortunately, heard something of her words. ‘You’ll go down to the station, will ye?’ he sneered. ‘Indeed now! That is verra considerate of ye. You’ll do this and you’ll do that with your interferin’, the same sleekit way that your mother used to have. Is Nessie not capable of walkin’ a few yards by herself that you must tie a bit of string round her neck and lead her along?’ His sneer became a snarl. ‘Have I not told ye to leave my Nessie alone? You’ll go to no station. You’ll do nothing for her. She’ll go down by herself.’ He turned to Nessie. ‘You don’t want her botherin’ you, do you, hinny?’

  Her eyes fell as she faltered, in a faint voice: ‘No, father, not if you say it.’

  Brodie returned his glance to Mary with a dark insolence.

  ‘You see!’ he cried, ‘ she doesna want ye! Keep out of what doesna concern ye. I’ll do all that’s wanted. I’ll get her things for her myself this morning. Here! Nessie! Where’s your hat and coat? I’m goin’ to see you to the door.’ He swelled at the thought of the honour he was conferring upon her as she dumbly indicated the sofa where, brushed, sponged, and pressed, lay the worn, blue serge jacket of her everyday wear – the only one she now possessed – and her straw hat which now bravely flaunted a new satin band bought by her sister and stitched in place by her devoted fingers. He lifted the coat and hat, handed them to her, assisted her even in the fullness of his service, to assume the coat so that she now stood, a small, indescribably pathetic figure, clothed and ready for her journey. He patted her upon the shoulder with an extravagant flourish, exclaiming, as though he had dressed her fully with his own hands: ‘There now! you’re all set up for the road. Do ye not think it’s a great honour for you that I’ve taken the day off to see you out like this? Come on and I’ll take you to the door.’