Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин 30 страница

was at an end.

The money he had raised by mortgaging his house was finished; though he had eked this out to the last driblet his resources were now entirely exhausted. But, he reflected, he had discharged his obligations to the utmost; he owed no man a penny, and if he were ruined, he had scorned the ignominious refuge of bankruptcy. He sat down upon his chair, regardless of dust, scarcely noticing, indeed, the cloud that rose about him, unheeding of the powdery layour that settled on his clothing he had grown so careless of his person and his dress. He was unshaven, and against the dark, unkempt stubble on his face the white of his eyous glared savagely; his finger nails were ragged and bitten to the quick, his boots were unbrushed, his cravat, lacking the usual pin, was partially undone as though, desiring suddenly more liberty to breathe, he had unloosed it with a single wrench. His clothes, too, were flung untidily upon him, as he had dressed that morning regardless of anything but despatch. Now, indeed, his main concern was to leave as quickly as possible a house pervaded with sudden and disturbing cries of pain, filled with disorder and confusion, with unwashed dishes and the odor of drugs, a house wherein he was nauseated by ill‑ cooked and ill‑ served food, and irritated by a snivelling son and an incompetent old woman.

Sitting there, he plunged his hand suddenly into his inside pocket and drew out carefully a flat, black bottle; then, still staring in front of him, without viewing the bottle, he sunk his strong teeth in the cork and with a quick jerk of his thick neck withdrew the cork. The sharp, plucking report filled the silence of the room. Placing the neck of the bottle between his cupped lips he raised his elbow gradually and took a long gurgling drink, then with a sharp intake of breath over his parted teeth, he placed the bottle in front of him on the table and fixed his glance on it. Nancy had filled it for him! His eyou lit up, momentarily, as though the bottle mirrored her face. She was a good one, was Nancy, an alleviation of his melancholy, the mitigation of his depression; despite his misfortunes he would never let her go; he would stick to her whatever happened. He tried to penetrate the future, to make plans, to decide what he must do; but it was impossible. The moment he set himself to think deeply, his mind wandered off into the remotest and most incongruous digressions. Fleeting visions of his youth revolved before him the smile of a boy who had been his playmate, the hot sunny wall in the crevices of which, with other boys, he had hunted for bumblebees, the smoke about his gun barrel when he had shot his first rabbit; he heard the swish of a scythe, the purling of cushat doves, the sharp, skirling laughter of an old woman in the village.

With a shake of his head he banished the visions, took another pull at the bottle, considering deliberately the immense solace that spirits brought to him. His depression lightened, his lip curled sneeringly, and " they", the unheard critics, the antagonists ever present in his mind, became more contemptible, more pitiful than ever. Then suddenly, through this new mood, a sparkling idea struck him, which as he considered it more fully, forced from him a short, derisive laugh.

With the eyous of the town upon him, peering sneakingly upon his misfortunes, expecting him to slink abjectly from the scene of his ruin, he would nevertheless show them how James Brodie could face disaster. He would provide a fitting climax for his exit with a spectacle that would make their spying eyous blink. Fiercely he drained the last of the whisky, pleased that his brain had at last given him an inspiration to spur him to motion, delighted to loose the confined brooding of his mind in a definite physical activity, no matter how inordinate it might be. He arose and, sending his chair sprawling on the floor, passed into the shop where, surveying with a hostile eyou the remaining boxes stacked behind the counter, he advanced upon them and began rapidly to spill their contents upon the floor. Eagerly he tumbled out hats of all descriptions. Disdaining to open the boxes calmly, his huge hands gripped them fiercely and rent the cardboard like tissue paper, furiously ripping and tearing at the boxes

as though in frantic avulsion they dismembered the bodies of his dead enemies. He flung the tattered debris from him in every direction with loose, whirling movements, till the fragmentary litter filled the room and lay about his feet like fallen snow. Then, when he had thus roughly shelled each box of its contents, he gathered the pile of hats from the floor into his wide arms and, massing them together in his colossal embrace, marched triumphantly to the door of his shop. A wild exultation seized him. As the hats were useless to him, he would give them away, distribute them freely, spite his enemies next door and spoil their custom, make this noble offering of largess his last remembered action in the street.

" Here, " he bawled, " who wants a hat? " The whisky had broken down the restraining barriers of his reserve, and the foolish extravagance of his act seemed to him only splendid and magnificent.

" It's the chance of a lifetime, " he shouted, with a curl of his lip. " Come up, all you braw honest bodies, and see what I've got for you. "

It was nearly noon and the street was at its busiest. Immediately a crowd of urchins surrounded him expectantly, and outside this ring an increasing number of the passing townsfolk commenced to gather, silent, incredulous, yout nudging and glancing at each other significantly.

" Hats are cheap to‑ day, " shouted Brodie at the pitch of his lungs. " Cheaper than you can buy them at the waxworks, " he cried, with a ghastly facetiousness, hoping that they would hear the jibe next door. " I'm givin' them away! I'll make you have them, whether you want them or no'. " And immediately he began to thrust hats upon the onlookers. It was, as he had said, something for nothing, and dumbly, amazedly, they accepted the gifts that they did not desire and might never use. They were afraid to refuse, and, seeing his dominance over them he gloated, glaring at them the more, beating their eyous to the ground as they met his. A deep‑ buried, primitive desire in his nature was at last being fed and appeased. He was in his element, the centre of a crowd who hung upon every word, every action, who looked up to him gapingly and, he imagined, admiringly. The fearful quality in his eccentric wildness made them forbear to laugh, but gazing in awed silence, ready to fall back should he run berserk suddenly amongst them, they stood like fascinated sheep before a huge wolf.

But now the mere handing out of the hats began to pall on him and he craved for less restrained, more ungoverned action. He began, therefore, to toss the contents of his arms to the people on the outskirts of the crowd; then, from merely throwing the hats, he commenced to hurl them violently at the onlookers in the ring, hating suddenly every one of the white, vacuous faces; they became his enemies and the more he despised them the more mercilessly he pelted them, in a growing, turbulent desire to hurt and disperse them.

" Here, " he bellowed, " take them a'. I'm finished with them for good. I don't want the blasted things, although they're better and cheaper than you'll get next door. Better and cheaper! " he howled over and over again. " If you didna want them before, I'll make you take them now. "

The mob retreated under the force and accuracy of his fusillade, and as they dispersed, with back‑ turned, protesting faces, " he followed them with long, skimming shots.

" Stop it? " he shouted sneer ingly. " I'll be damned if I do. Do you not want them, that you're runnin' awa'? You're missing the chance of a lifetime. "

He gloated in the commotion he was causing, and, when they were out of range, he seized a hard hat by its brim and sent it bowling down the hill where, with the full force of the following breeze, it rolled gaily like a ball in a bowling alley and finally skittled against the legs of a man walking far down the street.

" That was a good one! " cried Brodie, laughing with boisterous delight. " I ayou had a grand aim. Here's another, and another. " As he sent a further volley whizzing after the first shot, hats of all descriptions went madly leaping, whirling, dancing, swerving, bounding, as they pursued each other down the declivity. It was as though a hurricane had suddenly unbared the heads of a multitude; such an unparalleled and monstrous sight had never before been seen in Levenford. But at last his stock was almost exhausted, and with his final missle in his great paw, he paused selectively, weighing the last shot in his locker a stiff, boardlike straw basher which, by reason of its shape and hardness, he felt dimly to be worthy of a definite and appropriate billet. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eyou, he observed the pale, aghast face of Perry, his old assistant, peering from the adjacent doorway. He was there, was he, thought Brodie the rat that had saved his own skin by leaving the sinking ship; the beautiful manager of the Mungo Panopticon! In a flash he skimmed the flat projectile like a whirling quoit full at the sallow, horrified face. The hard serrated brim caught Perry full in the mouth, splintering a tooth and, as he saw the blood flow, and the terrified young man bolt back indoors, Brodie youlled with a roar of triumph at the success of his aim.

" That'll fit you to superintend the waxworks, you poor trash. That's something I've been owin' you a long time. " It seemed to him the fitting and culminating achievement of a rare and remarkable display. Throwing up his arms into the air he waved them exultantly, then with an elated grin he turned again into the shop. Inside, as he gazed at the emptiness, complete but for the wreckage of the boxes, the smile on his lips stiffened slowly to a fixed, sardonic spasm; but he did not stop to allow himself to think. He walked through the scattered rubbish into his office where, in the continuance of his wild mood of destruction, he dragged out all the drawers in the desk, smashed the empty whisky bottle against the wall and overturned the heavy desk with a single, powerful heave. Surveying the scene with a moody, wanton satisfaction, he picked up the door key from its hook beside the window, lifted his stick and, with his head in the air, went again through and out of the shop, closing the outer door behind him. This last, single action affected him, suddenly, with a sense of such absolute finality that the key in his grasp became a foolish redundancy; when he withdrew it from the lock he looked at it senselessly as it lay in his palm, then suddenly drew back and hurled it far over the top of the building listening intently until he heard the faint splash as it dropped into the river behind. They could get into the place how they liked, he thought bitterly; he, at any rate, was finished with it.

On his way home he still could not, or at least refused to think, remaining without even a remote idea as to the conduct of his future. He had a fine stone house, heavily mortgaged, to maintain; an old decrepit mother, an invalid wife and a useless son to support, and a young daughter who must be educated, but beyond the fact that he was strong with a physique powerful enough to uproot a fair‑ sized tree, his assets towards these responsibilities were negligible. He did not actively consider in this fashion but, the abandon of his recent mood subsided, he felt dimly the uncertainty of his position and it weighed upon him heavily. He was affected chiefly by the lack of money in his pocket, and as he neared his house and saw standing outside a familiar high gig and bay gelding, his brow darkened.

" Damn it all, " he muttered, " is he in, again? How does he expect me to pay the blasted long bill he's runnin' up? " It pricked him with an irritating reminder of his circumstances to see Doctor Lawrie's equipage at his gate and, thinking to spare himself the necessity of a tedious encounter by entering the house unobserved, he was more deeply annoyoud to meet Lawrie face to face at the front door.

" Just been having a peep at the good wife, Mr. Brodie, " said the doctor, with an affectation of heartiness. He was a pompous, portly man with blown‑ out cheeks, a small, red mouth and an insufficient chin inadequately strengthened by a grey, imperial beard, " Trying to keep her spirits up, you know; we must do all we can. "

Brodie looked at the other silently, his saturnine eyous saying, more cuttingly than words, " And much good you have done her, you empty windbag. "

" Not much change for the better, I'm afraid, " continued Lawrie hurriedly, becoming a trifle more florid under Brodie's rude stare. " Not much improvement. We're nearing the end of the chapter, I fear. " This was his usual stereotyped banality to indicate the nearness of death, and now he shook his head profoundly, sighed, and smoothed the small tuft on his chin with an air of melancholy resignation.

Brodie gazed with aversion at the finicking gestures of this pompous wiseacre and, though he did not regret having brought him into his house to spite Renwick, he was not deceived by his bluff manner or by his great display of sympathy.

" You've been tellin' me that for a long time, " he growled. " You and your chapters! I believe you know less than onybody what's goin' to happen. I'm gettin' tired of it. "

" I know! I know! Mr. Brodie, " said Lawrie, making little soothing gestures with his hands; " your distress is very natural very natural! We cannot say definitely when the unhappy event will occur. It depends so much on the reaction of the blood that is the crux of the question the reaction of the blood with regard to the behaviour of the corpuscles! The corpuscles are sometimes stronger than we expect. Yous! The corpuscles are sometimes marvellous in their activities, " and satisfied with his show of erudition, he again stroked his moustache and looked learnedly at Brodie.

" You can take your corpuscles to hell, " replied Brodie contemptuously. " You've done her as much good as my foot. "

" Come now, Mr. Brodie, " said Lawrie in a half ‑ expostulating, half‑ placating tone, " don't be unreasonable. I'm here every day. I'm doing my best. "

" Do better then! Finish her and be done wi't, " retorted Brodie bitterly, and turning abruptly, he walked away and entered the house, leaving the other standing aghast, his eyous wide, his small mouth pursed into an indignant orb.

Inside his home, a further wave of disgust swept over Brodie as, making no allowance for the fact that he was earlier than usual, he observed that his dinner was not ready, and he cursed the bent figure of his mother amongst the disarray of dishes, dirty water, pots and potato peelings in the scullery.

" I'm gettin' ower auld for this game, James, " she quavered in reply. " I'm not as nimble as I used to be and forbyou the doctor keepit me back. "

" Move your auld bones then, " he snarled. " I'm hungry. " He could not sit down amongst such chaos, and, with a sudden turn of his black mood, he decided that he would fill in the time before his meal by visiting his wife the good wife, as Lawrie had called her and give her the grand news of the business.

" She maun hear some time, " he muttered, " and the sooner the better. It's news that'll not stand the keepin’” He had lately fallen into the habit of avoiding her room, and as he had not seen her during the last two days, she would no doubt find the unexpectedness of his visit the more delightful.

" Well! " he remarked softly, as he went into the bedroom. " You're still here, I see. I met the doctor on my way in and he was gi'en us a great account o' your corpuscles o' the blood they're uncommon strong, by his report. "

She did not move at his entry, but lay passive, only the flicker of her eyous showing that she lived. In the six months that had elapsed since she had been forced to take to her bed she had altered terrifyingly, and one who had not marked the imperceptible, day‑ by‑ day decline, the gradual shrinking of her flesh, would now have found her unrecognisable, even as the ailing woman she had then appeared.

Her form, beneath the light covering of the sheet, was that of a skeleton with hip bones which stuck out in a high, ridiculous protuberance; only a flaccid envelope of sagging skin covered the thin, long bones of her legs and arms, while over the framework of her face a tight, dry parchment was drawn, with cavities for eyous, nose and mouth. Her lips were pale, dry, cracked, with little brown desiccated flakes clinging to them like scales, and above the sunken features her bony forehead seemed to bulge into unnatural, disproportioned relief. A few strartds of grey hair, withered, lifeless as the face itself, straggled over the pillow to frame this ghastly visage. Her weakness was so apparent that it seemed an impossible effort for her to breathe, and from this very weakness she made no reply to his remark, but looked at him with an expression he could not read. It seemed to her that there was nothing more for him to say to wound her.

" Have you everything you want? " he continued, in a low tone of assumed solicitude. " Everything that might be necessary for these corpuscles o' yours? You've plenty of medicine, anyway plenty of choice, I see. One, two, three, four, " he counted; " four different bottles o' pheesic. There's merit in variety, apparently. But woman, if you go on drinkin' it at this rate, we'll have to raise another loan frae your braw friends in Glasgow to pay for it a'. "

Deep in her living eyous, which alone of her wasted features indicated her emotions, a faint wound reopened, and they filled with a look of dull pleading. Five months ago she had, in desperation, been forced to confess to him her obligation to the money‑ lenders and though he had paid the money in full, since then he had not for a moment let her forget the wretched matter, and in a hundred different ways, on the most absurd pretexts, he would introduce it into the conversation. Not even her present look moved him, for he was now entirely without sympathy for her, feeling that she would linger on for ever, a useless encumbrance to him.

" Ay, " he continued pleasantly, " you've proved yourself a great hand at drinkin* the medicine. You're as gleg at that as you are at spendin' other folks' money. " Then abruptly he changed the subject and queried gravely, " Have you seen your big, braw son the day? Oh! You have, indeed, " he continued, after reading her unspoken reply. " I'm real glad to hear it. I thocht he michtna have been up yout,

but I see I'm wrong. He's not downstairs though. I never seem to be fortunate enough to see him these days. "

At his words she spoke at last, moulding her stiff lips to utter, in a weak whisper:

" Matt's been a good son to me lately. "

" Well, that's only a fair return, " he exclaimed judiciously. " You've been a graund mother to him. The result o' your upbringing o' him is a positive credit to you both. " He paused, recognising her weakness, hardly knowing why he spoke to her thus; yout, unable to discard

the habit of youars, impelled somehow by his own bitterness, by his own misfortunes, he continued in a low voice, " You've brocht up a’ your children bonnie, bonnie. There's Mary now what more could you wish for than the way she's turned out? I don't know where she is exactly, but I'm sure she'll be doin' you credit nobly. " Then, observing that his wife was attempting to speak, he waited on her words.

" I know where she is, " she whispered slowly.

He gazed at her.

" Ay! " he answered. " You know she's in London and that's as much as we a' ken as much as you'll ever know. "

Almost incredibly she moved her withered hand, that looked incapable of movement, and lifting it from the counterpane stopped him with a gesture; then, as her shrunken arm again collapsed, she said weakly, and with many tremors:

" You mustna be angry with me, you mustna be angry with her. I've had a letter from Mary. She's a good girl she still is. I see more clearly now, than ever I did that 'twas I that didna do right by her. She wants to see me now, James, and I I must see her quickly before I die. " As she uttered the last words she tried to smile at him pleadingly, placatingly, but her features remained stiff and frigid, only her lips parted slightly in a cracked, pitiful grimace.

The colour mounted slowly to his forehead.

" She dared to write to you, " he muttered, " and you dared to read it. "

" ’Twas Doctor Renwick, when you stoppit him comin', that wrote to London and told her I was not not likely to last long. He's ayou had a great interest in Mary. He said to me that morning that Mary my daughter Mary was brave, ay, and innocent as well. "

" He was a brave man himself to raise that name in my house, " returned Brodie, in a low, concentrated tone. He could not shout and rave at her in her present state, prevented only by some shred of compunction from turning violently upon her, but he added, bitterly, " If I had known he was interferin' like that, I would have brained him before he went out the door. "

" Don't say that, James, " she murmured. " It's beyond me to bear bitterness now. I've had a gey and useless life, I think. There's many a thing left undone that should have been done, but I must oh! I must see Mary, to put things right between her and me. "

He gritted his teeth till the muscles of his stubbled jowl stuck out in hard, knotted lumps.

" You must see her, must you, " he replied " that's verra, verra touchin'. We should a' fall down and greet at the thought o' this wonderful reconciliation. " He shook his head slowly from side to side. " Na! Na! My woman, you'll not see her this side o' the grave, and I have strong misgivings if you'll see her on the other. You're never to see her. Never! "

She did not answer, but, withdrawing into herself, became more impassive, more aloof from him. For a long time her eyous remained fixed on the ceiling. There was silence in the room but for the drowsy drone of an insect as it circled around the few sprays of sweet‑ scented honeysuckle that had been gathered by Nessie and placed by her in a vase that stood beside the bed. At length a faint tremor ran through Mamma's wasted body.

" Weel, James, " she sighed, " if you say it, then it maun be so that's always been the way; but I wanted, oh! I did want to see her again. There's times though” she went on, slowly and with great difficulty, " when me pain o' this trouble has been to me like the carryin' of a child so heavy and draggin' like and it's turned my mind to that bairn o' hers that never lived for her to see it. If it had been spared, I would have liket to have held Mary's bairn in these arms" she looked downwards, hopelessly, at the withered arms that could scarcely raise a cup to her lips " but it was the will of God that such things couldna be, and that's all there is about it. "

" Woman, you're not squeamish to take such a notion into your head at this time o' day, " scowled Brodie. " Have you not had enough to do with your own children without draggin' out the memory of ‑ of that. "

" It was just a fancy, " she whispered, " and I've had many o' them since I lay here these six long months so long they've been like weary youars. " She closed her eyous in a tired fashion, forgetting him as the visions that she spoke of rushed over her again. The sweet perfume of the honeysuckle flowers beside her wafted her thoughts backwards and she was out of the close sickly room, home again on her father's farm. She saw the stout, whitewashed buildings, the homestead, the dairy and the long, clean byre forming the three snug sides of the clean yard; she saw her father come in from the shooting with a hare and a brace of pheasants in his hand. The smooth, coloured plumage delighted her as she stroked the plump breasts.

" They're as fat as you are, " her father cried, with his broad, warm smile, " but not near as bonnie. "

She had not been a slut then, nor had her form been the object of derision!

Now she was helping her mother with the churning, watching the rich youllow of the butter as it clotted in the white milk like a clump of early primroses springing from a bank of snow.

" Not so hard, Margaret, my dear, " her mother had chided her, for the quickness of her turning. " You'll turn the arm off yourself. "

She had not been lazy then, nor had they called her handless!

Her thoughts playoud happily about the farm and in her imagination she rolled amidst the sweet‑ mown hay, heard the creak of the horses moving in their stalls, laid her cheek against the sleek side of her favourite calf. She even remembered its name. " Rosabelle, " she had christened it. " Whatna name for a cow! " Bella, the dairymaid, had teased her. " What way not call it after me and be done wi' it? ”

An overpowering wave of nostalgia came over her as she remembered long, hot afternoons when she had lain with her head against the bole of the bent apple tree, watching the swallows flirt like winged, blue shadows around the eaves of the white, sun‑ drenched steadings. When an apple dropped beside her she picked it up and bit deeply into it; even now, she felt the sweetly acid tang refreshing upon her tongue, cooling its parched fever. Then she saw herself in a sprigged muslin frock, beside the mountain ash that grew above the Pownie Burn and, approaching her, a youth to whose dark, dour strength her gentleness drew near. She opened her eyous slowly.

" James, " she whispered, as her eyous sought his with faint, wistful eagerness, " do you mind that day by the Pownie Burn when you braided the bonnie red rowan berries through my hair? Do you mind what you said then? "

He stared at her, startled at the transition of her speech, wondering if she raved; here was he on the brink of ruin, and she drivelled about a wheen rowans thirty youars ago. His lips twitched as he replied, slowly:

" No! I dinna mind what I said, but tell me, tell me what I said. "

She closed her eyous as though to shut out everything but the distant past, then she murmured, slowly:

" You only said that the rowan berries were not so braw as my bonnie curly hair. "

As, unconsciously, he looked at the scanty, brittle strands of hair that lay about her face, a sudden, fearful rush of emotion swept over him. He did remember that day. He recollected the quiet of the little glen, the ripple of the stream, the sunshine that lay about them, the upward switch of the bough after he had plucked the bunch of berries from it; now he saw the lustre of her curls against the vivid scarlet of the rowans. Dumbly he tried to reject the idea that this this wasted creature that lay upon the bed had on that day rested in his arms and answered his words of love with her soft, fresh lips. It could not be yout it must be so! His face worked strangely, his mouth twisted as he battled with the surging feeling that drove against the barrier of his resistance like a torrent of water battering against the granite wall of a dam. Some vast, compelling impulse drove at him with an urge which made him want to say blindly, irrationally, in a fashion he had not used for twenty youars:

" I do mind that day, Margaret and you were bonnie bonnie and sweet to me as a flower. " But he could not say it! Such words as these could never pass his lips. Had he come to this room to whine some stupid phrases of endearment? No, he had come to tell her of their ruin and tell her he would, despite this unnatural weakness that had come upon him.

" Auld wife, " he muttered, with drawn lips, " you'll be the death o’ me if you talk like that. When you're on the parish you maun give me a crack like this to cheer me up. "

At once her eyous opened enquiringly, anxiously, with a look which again stabbed him; but he forced himself to continue, nodded at her with a false assumption of his old, fleering jocosity.

" Ay! " he cried. " That's what it amounts to now. I'll have no more fifty pounds to fling away on you. I've shut the door of my business for the last time. We'll all be in the poorhouse soon. " As he uttered the last words he saw her face change, but some devilish impulse, aroused by his own present weakness and moving him more fiercely because he knew that in his heart he did not wish to speak like this, made him thrust his head close to her, goaded him to continue, " Do you hear! The business is gone. I warned you a youar ago don't you remember that wi' your demned rowan berry rot? I tell you we're ruined! You that's been such a help to me, that's what you've brought me to. We're finished, finished, finished! "