BY A. J. CRONIN 21 страница

During the past nine months her financial struggles had been desperate. Brodie had progressively cut her allowance until he had at length reduced it by half, yet he expected the same excellent food supplied, where he was concerned, in the same excessive quantities; and did she manifest the slightest indication of economy upon the table she became the object of a fierce sarcastic tirade, in which he vituperated her as an incompetent bungler who lacked the ability even to manage adequately the petty exchequer of the home. He taunted her with the superior ability of his old mother, producing specious evidence of the old woman's housewifely efficiency, relating in detail the delicious, inexpensive meals she had prepared for him before his marriage, threatening, despite his mother's age, to transfer the management of the house into her more competent hands. It had been useless for Mamma to protest weakly that he gave her insufficient money, that food prices were rising, that the growing Nessie required more clothes, new boots, more expensive school books, that Grandma Brodie would not relinquish one single item of the comforts and luxuries to which custom had habituated her. It would have been equally ineffective, had she attempted it, to convince him that she spent not one farthing upon her own personal expenses, that she had not bought herself a new garment for three years, that in consequence she was the epitome of bedraggled inelegance, exposing herself, by the very unselfishness of this economy, to his gibes and sneers. Seeing her thus, despite a few feeble, ineffective initial protests, accept the reducted amount and apparently manage with it, he concluded that he had been too lavish in the past and, as money was so tight with him that he exulted in the opportunity to economise at her expense, he had tightened his purse strings to the limit and ground her further under the pressure of his heel.

Although she struggled to make one shilling do the work of two by buying in the cheapest markets, by bargaining and wheedling until she had achieved a reputation for mean shrewishness, it could not continue. Bills had become overdue, tradesmen had become impatient and finally, in despair, she had chosen the path of least resistance and drawn upon Matthew's money. Immediately, matters became easier. Brodie's growls about the food became less frequent, the old woman's whining, senile recriminations abated, Nessie had a new coat, the school fees were paid, and the long-suffering butcher and grocer were appeased. She herself obtained nothing, no clothing, no trivial trinket, no indulgence of her fancy, nothing but a transient immunity from the reproaches of her husband and the worries of her debts. She had consoled herself for her action by telling herself that Matt had really meant the money for her, that he loved her so that he would desire her to take it; again, she had reasoned that she had not spent it upon herself, that she would undoubtedly save and collect it for him in better times and fairer financial weather.

Forty pounds! It was a ruinous sum! Although she had expended it so easily, the thought of obtaining it again was incredible. Under her former circumstances, and by the most penurious thrift, she might achieve this amount in, perhaps, the long term of a year; but the sum was required immediately. Her lips quivered as her heart quailed within her, but immediately she rallied herself, bracing herself to be brave for Matt's sake. She set her mouth firmly and looked up as Nessie returned to the room.

"Grandma was tidying up hei drawer," whispered Nessie to her mother, with the air of a conspirator. "She didn't hear the bell and she doesn't know a thing about it. I found out ever so carefully!"

"That's a good, clever girl," said Mamma. "Nobody's to know about that telegram, Nessie. You're not to open your mouth yourself, about it. That was for me and nobody else. I trust you now! And I'll give ye something nice if ye don't tell." Then she concluded vaguely, feeling that some form of explanation was expected of her, "It was just from an old friend in the country an old friend of Mamma's who is in some slight distress."

Nessie placed her left forefinger on her closed lips, delighted to share in a confidence of her mother's, implying by this precocious gesture that she was worthy to be trusted with the most private and mysterious secrets of the universe.

"That's right, now. Don't forget that you've given your word, Your father need know nothing about it," said Mrs. Brodie, as she got up. She desired to remain passively considering the situation, but it was nearly noon, and she had the dinner to prepare. No matter what anxiety affected her, the work of the house must go on, meak must appear upon the table with an inexorable punctuality, the master must be propitiated, fed adequately and succulently. As she began to peel a large potful of potatoes she tried to reach some decision as to what she should do.

At the outset she realised that she would obtain no help from her husband. She would have steeled herself to anything for Matt's sake, but it was an impossibility for her to face her husband and demand a sum of the absurd magnitude of forty pounds, realising with certainty, as she did, beforehand, that he would infallibly refuse to send the money. To bring the matter uselessly, in this manner, to his knowledge would be to reveal to him her own culpability, arouse his prodigious wrath, and yet obtain no tangible result. Even as she reasoned thus, she could visualise him sneering, "He's in Marseilles, is he? Well, let him walk or swim back. It'll do the poor dear a heap o' good."

She next considered the possibilities associated with Agnes Moir. There was no doubt but that Agnes, who, like Mamma, could refuse him nothing, would be instantly willing to send money to Matthew, despite the shameful coldness and neglect she had suffered from him during the last few months, but it was, unhappily, an equal certainty that she did not possess forty pounds. The Moirs, although respectable, were poor; privation lay very near to their door and it was unthinkable, even if they wished Agnes to have the money, that they could suddenly produce a large sum like this. Additionally, there had been a strong hint of reproach in Miss Moir's attitude to her lately which contained a justifiable suggestion of suffering and injured innocence. How could she then, in the face of such wounded purity of conscience, confess herself the thief of her own idolised son's money. The impeccable Miss Moir would condemn her immediately, would perhaps repudiate her before the eyes of the entire town.

She therefore abandoned Agnes, but whilst she mechanically performed the actions of cooking the dinner her mind continued to work furiously, racing against time. When Brodie came in she served the meal without once removing her fierce concentration from the problem that obsessed her, and with such unusual abstraction that she placed before Brodie, in mistake, Nessie's small plate.

"Are ye drunk, woman?" he roared at her, gazing at the diminutive portion. "Or am I expected to repeat the miracle o' the loaves and fishes?"

As she hastily changed the plates Mamma blushed guiltily at this outward manifestation of her secret cogitations; but how could she have said, in extenuation, "I was thinking of how I could raise forty pounds for Matt?"

''She'll have been takin' a wee sook at the bottle to keep her strength up," tittered Grandma Brodie maliciously. "That's how she'll have been passin' the time this mornin'."

"So that's where the money for the house goes," sneered Brodie, taking up his mother's lead; " in tipple! Well, we maun see what's to be done about that."

"Maybe that's what's gie'n her that red neb and watery een, I'm thinkin'," replied the old woman.

Nessie said nothing, but her too obvious side glances of fealty and cooperation towards Mamma were so pregnant with meaning that they almost defeated their object. Still, the crisis was not precipitated and, after dinner, when Brodie had departed and the old woman retreated upstairs, Mamma breathed more freely, and turning to Nessie, said:

"Will you clear up, dear? I've got to go out for a few messages. You're a great help to Mamma to-day, and if you've got the dishes washed when I come back, I'll bring you a pennyworth of sweeties."

In her awful dilemma she was capable even of subtle strategy in a small matter like this and, although the rain had ceased, Nessie consented willingly, lured by the bait of sweetmeats, charmed to be recognised by her mother as so supremely grown up.

Mrs. Brodie put on a hat and coat, the latter the very paletot she had worn when she escorted Matt to Glasgow on his departure, and hurried out of the house. She quickly crossed the Common and took the road which ran behind the station; then, at the junction of Railway Road and College Street, she paused outside a small, low- browed shop which bore above the crooked lintel of its doorway the disreputable insignia of three brass balls. Upon the window was a notice which stated in dirty white letters, and, through the defection of certain letters and the broken condition of others, with some uncertainty: Gold, Silver, Old False Teeth Bought, Money Lent; whilst behind this, chalked on a small, unprosperous-looking slate, was the terser and less prepossessing phrase: Rags Bought. With a

fearful misgiving Mrs. Brodie contemplated this, the only pawnshop in the respectable Borough of Lcvcnf ord. To enter these precincts was, she knew, the most abysmal humiliation to which a respectable person could descend; and the greater crime of being detected entering therein meant disgrace, dishonour and social annihilation. She realised all this, realised further her inability to cope with the hidden horrors within, yet she compressed her lips and glided bravely into the shop, as quickly and unsubstantially as a shadow. Only the loud, revealing tinkle of the bell attached to the door marked her entry, and surrounded by its mellifluous reiterations she found herself facing a counter in a small box-like compartment which appeared to be one of three. Here the number three had apparently a cabalistic significance both without and within, yet in the compartment she was more private than she could have hoped. Even in this debased society there were apparently instincts of delicacy! When the tinkle of the bell had ceased, her nostrils became gradually and oppressively aware of an odour, emerging permeatingly from some unseen point, of boiling fat tinctured with the aroma of onions. With a sudden faintness at the greasy, nauseating odour, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them a moment later, a short, squat man magically confronted her, having issued unseen, like a genie, from behind the heavy opaque cloud of vapour that filled the inner shop. He had a long, square beard, iron grey and slightly curling, bushy eyebrows of the same colour and texture, beneath which bright, beady eyes twinkled like a bird's; his hands and shoulders moved deferentially, but these black pellets of eyes never left Mrs. Brodie's face. He was a Polish Jew whose settlement in Levenford could be adduced only to his racial proclivity for courting adversity and who, failing to eke out an existence by usury in the hard soil of the Borough, was reduced to merely subsisting so so it seemed by the buying and selling of rags. Being mild and inoffensive, he did not resent the abusive epithets which greeted him as, shouting, "Any rag anybone! any-bottle to-day!", he drove his donkey care upon his rounds; and he made no complaints except to bewail, to such as would hear him, the absence of a synagogue in the town.

"Yeth?" he now lisped to Mrs. Brodie.

"You lend money," she gasped.

"Vot you vont to pawn?" he thrust at her. Although his voice was gentle, she was startled at such crudity of expression.

"I've nothing here now. I wanted to borrow forty pounds."

He glanced sideways at her, regarding her rusty, unfashionable clothing, her rough hands and broken nails, the tarnish on the thin, worn, gold band of her solitary ring, her ludicrous battered hat missing, with his glittering eyes, no item of her sad and worthless attire. He thought she must be mad. Caressing his fleshy, curved nose between his finger and thumb he said thoughtfully:

"Zat es a lot of monesh. Ve must ave security. You must bring gold or jewels if you vish to raise zat amount."

She should, of course, have had jewels! In her novels these were the touchstone of a lady's security, but, apart from her wedding ring, she had only her mother's silver watch which she might, with good fortune, have pledged for fifteen shillings and, realising something of the insufficiency of her position she faltered:

"You would not lend it on my furniture or or on note of hand. I saw in the papers some people do that, do they not?"

He continued to rub his nose, considering, beneath his benignly tallowed brow, that these Gentile women were all alike scraggy and worn and stupid. Did she not realise that his business was conducted on the basis of shillings, not of pounds? And that, though he could produce the sum she required, he would require security and interest which he had realised at his initial survey to be utterly beyond her? He shook his head, gently but finally, and said, without ceasing to be conciliatory, using indeed, to that end his deprecating hands:

"Ve don't do zat beesness. Try a bigger firm say en ze ceety. Oh, ye! Zey might do et. Zey have more monesh zan a poor man like me."

She regarded him with a palpitating heart in stunned, humiliated silence, having braved the danger and suffered the indignity of entering his wretched hovel without achieving her purpose. Yet she was obliged to accept his decision she had no appeal and she was out once more in the dirty street amongst the puddles, the littered tin cans and the garbage in the gutter, without having procured even one of the forty pounds she required. She was utterly abased and humiliated yet, as she walked quickly away, she appreciated with a growing anxiety that, though she had achieved nothing, Matt would at this very moment be waiting in immediate anticipation of the arrival of the money. Lowering her umbrella over her face to avoid detection, she hastened her steps feverishly towards home.

Nessie awaited her in a small imitation apron, triumphantly playing the housewife over her neat pile of clean crockery, preparing herself for her just reward of sweetmeats, but Mamma thrust her roughly aside.

"Another time, Nessie," she cried. "Don't bother me! I'll get you them another time." She entered the scullery and plunged her hand into the box where old copies of newspapers and periodicals, brought home by Brodie, were kept for household purposes, chiefly the kindling of fires. Removing a pile of these, she spread them out upon the stone floor and flung herself before them on her knees, as though she grovelled before some false god. She hurriedly ran her eye over several of these sheets until, with an inarticulate cry of relief, she found what she sought. What had that wretched Jew said? "Try a bigger firm," he had told her, in his indecently garbled English, and, accordingly, she chose the largest advertisement in the column, which informed her with many glowing embellishments that Adam McSevitch a genuine Scotsman lent 5 to 500, without security, on note of hand alone; that country clients would be attended promptly at their own homes, and, memorable feature, that the strictest and most inviolable secrecy would be preserved nay, insisted upon between the principal and his client.

Mrs. Brodie breathed more calmly as, without removing her hat or coat, she rose to her feet, hurried to the kitchen and sat down and composed a short, but carefully worded letter, asking Adam McSevitch to attend her at her home on Monday forenoon at eleven o'clock. She sealed the letter with the utmost precaution, then dragged her tired limbs out of the house and into the town once more. In her haste the constant pain in her side throbbed more intensely, but she did not allow it to interfere with her progress and by half-past three she succeeded in reaching the general post office, where she bought a stamp and carefully posted her letter. She then composed and dispatched a wire to "Brodie: Poste Restante: Marseilles", saying,

"Money arrives Monday sure. Love. Mamma." The cost of the message left her stricken, but though she might have reduced the cost by omitting the last two words, she could not force herself to do so. Matt must be made to understand, above everything, that it was she who, with her own hands, had sent the wire, and that she, his mother, loved him.

A sense of comfort assuaged her on her way home; the feeling that she had accomplished something and that on Monday she would assuredly obtain the money, reassured her, yet nevertheless, as the day dragged slowly to its end, she began to grow restless and impatient. The consolation obtained from her definite action gradually wore of! and left her sad, inert and helpless, obsessed by distressing doubts. She fluctuated between extremes of indecision and terror; felt that she would not obtain the money, then that she would be surely discovered; questioned her ability to carry through the undertaking; fled in her mind from the fact, as from an unreal and horrid nightmare, that she of all people should be attempting to deal with money-lenders.

Sunday dragged past her in an endless succession of interminable minutes, during the passage of which she glanced at the clock a hundred times, as if she might thus hasten the laboured transit of time and so terminate her own anxiety and the painful expectancy of her son. During the slow hours of the tardily passing day, she formed and reformed the simple plan she had made, trembled to think how

she would address Mr. McSevitch, was convinced that he would treat her as a lady, then felt certain that he would not, reread his advertisement secretly, was cheered by his comforting offer to lend ^500, then shocked by the amazing effrontery of it. When she retired eventually to rest, her head whirled with confusion, and she dreamed she was overwhelmed by an avalanche of golden pieces.

On Monday morning she could hardly maintain her normal demeanour, she shook so palpably with apprehension, but mercifully her anxiety was not detected and she sighed with relief when first Nessie, and then Brodie, disappeared through the front door. She now had only Grandma Brodie to dispose of, for from the moment she had written her letter she had fully appreciated the obvious danger of having the inquisitive, garrulous and hostile old woman about the house at the time fixed for the interview. The danger that she might stumble upon the entire situation was too great to be risked, and Mamma, with unthought-of cunning, prepared to attack her upon her weakest point. At half-past nine therefore, when she took up to the old woman her usual breakfast of porridge and milk, she did not, as was her custom, immediately leave the room, but instead sat down upon the bed and regarded its aged occupant with an assumed and exaggerated expression of concern.

"Grandma," she began, "you never seem to get out the house these days at all. You look real peaky to me the now. Why don't you take a bit stroll this morning?" The old dame poised the porridge spoon in her yellow claw and cast a suspicious eye upon Mamma from under her white, frilled nightcap.

"And where would I stroll to on a winter's day?" she asked distrustfully. "Do ye want me to get inflammation of the lungs so as you can get rid o' me?"

Mamma forced a bright laugh, an exhibition of gaiety which it tortured her heart to perform.

"It's a lovely day!" she cried. "And do ye know what I'm goin' to do with ye? I'm just going to give you a florin, to go and get yourself some Deesides and some oddfellows."

Grandma looked at the other with a dubious misgiving, sensing immediately a hidden motive but tempted by the extreme richness of the enticement. In her senile greediness she loved particularly the crisp biscuits known as "Deeside"; she doted upon those large, flat, round sweets so inappropriately named oddfellows; in her own room she endeavoured, always, to maintain a stock of each of these delicacies in two separate tins inside her top drawer; but now, as Mamma was well aware, her supplies were exhausted. It was a tempting offer!

"Where's the money?" she demanded craftily. Without speaking, Mamma revealed the shining florin in the middle of her palm.

The crone blinked her bleared eyes at it, thinking with rapid, calculating glances that there would be enough for the Deesides, the oddfellows, and maybe a wee dram over and above.

"I micht as weel take a dauner, then," she muttered slowly, with the semblance of a yawn to indicate indifference.

"That's right, Grandma I'll help ye," encouraged Mamma as, trembling with an exultation she feared to display, realising that so far victory was hers, she assisted the other out of bed. Before the old woman could have time to change her mind, she wrapped her in her voluminous clothing, tied a multitude of tapes, drew on the elastic-sided boots, brought her the jet-spangled bonnet, held out and enveloped her in the black, beaded cape. Then she presented her with her false teeth upon the charger of a cracked saucer, handed her the two-shilling piece and, having thus finally supplied her with the weapons and the sinews of the war about to be waged on the Deesides, she led the old woman down the stairs and saw her go tottering out along the road, before the clock showed half -past ten. Exercising the utmost dispatch, she now made all the beds, washed the dishes, tidied the house, made herself, in her own phrase, decent, and sat down

breathlessly at the parlour window to await her visitor.

As the hands of the marble timepiece on the parlour mantelpiece drew near to eleven, Mamma shook with trepidation, as though she expected a cab to dash up to the house and the front bell to ring, simultaneously with the first stroke of the hour. As the clock eventually struck eleven strokes and was silent, she wondered if Mr, McSevitch would bring the money in golden sovereigns in a bag, or present it to her in immaculate notes; then, as the hands indicated five minutes, ten minutes, then fifteen minutes past the appointed time and still no one came, she grew restless. If her visitor did not come at the hour she had specially indicated, all her carefully thought-out arrangements would go for nothing and she shuddered to think what would happen if he arrived during the dinner hour, when her husband would be in the house.

At twenty minutes to twelve she had almost abandoned hope when, suddenly, she observed two strange gentlemen appear opposite the house. They arrived on foot and carried no bag, but were dressed exactly alike, in a manner which Mrs. Brodie felt might represent the peak of elegance, the most dashing summit of contemporary male fashion. Their Derby hats, that curled till brim met crown, were tilted rakishly above glossy side whiskers; their very short jackets were tight to the waist, with long rolling lapels, so that the chest of each had the appearance of swelling forward like that of a pouter pigeon, whilst the curve of the lower part of the back swept protrudingly, but equally enticingly, in an obverse direction; their check trousers, maintaining an agreeable looseness in the upper portions, clung more sympathetically to the figure as they descended, and terminated finally with the tightness of spats around small, inconspicuous, but none the less shining, shoes. Each wore a large, heavy watch chain high up across his spotted, fancy waistcoat whilst, even at such a distance as that from which she viewed them, she noted upon their fingers a coruscation of jewelled rings which sparkled and flashed with every fluent movement. No strangers of such composed address or brilliant plumage had, in the memory of Mrs. Brodie, ever flitted down upon the town of Levenford and, with a beating heart and a fascinated eye, she realised instinctively although her anticipation had visualised a patriarchal gentleman in an Inverness cloak with a bluff manner and a benevolent shaggy beard that these men of the world were the emissaries of McSevitch genuine Scotsman.

From the middle of the roadway they looked knowingly at the house, as though their eyes, having embraced and criticised every architectural feature of its outer aspect, bored like gimlets through the hard stone walls, examining the inadequacies of its inner structure and contemptuously discovering a host of deficiencies hitherto concealed even from its occupants.

At length, after a prolonged, impassive stare, one of the two turned his head slowly and, out o the corner of his mouth, said something to his companion, who on his part pushed his hat farther back upon his head, veiled his protuberant eyeballs and laughed with an experienced air.

Like a sudden, startled victim of diplopia, Mrs. Brodie now saw them advance simultaneously, proceed through the gateway abreast, saw them glance in unison at every stone on the courtyard, and, as they paused before the cannon in front of the porch, she shrank teck behind the concealment of her curtain.

"Bit o' junk that, but solid stuff brass by the look on it," she heard one say, as he fingered his large, pearly tie-pin. The other flicked the gun barrel with his finger nail, as though he wished to see if it might ring true, but immediately he withdrew the finger and thrust it hastily into his mouth, "Ow! It's bloody hard, anyway," floated in through the half-open window towards Mamma's astounded ears.

The bell rang. Mechanically she went to answer it and, as she threw open the door, she was confronted by two identically competent smiles which met and returned her shrinking gaze with a dazzling exhibition of gold and ivory.

"Mrs. Brodie?" said one, extinguishing his smile.

"You wrote?" said the other, doing likewise.

"Are you from Mr. McSevitch?" she stammered.

"Sons," said the first easily.

"Partners," said the second gracefully.

Overcome by the ease of their manners, but none the less shaken by a faint misgiving, she hesitatingly took them into the parlour. Immediately their sharp gaze, which had beeu glued upon her, became detached and darted around every object in the room in abstracted yet eager estimation, until finally, as the orbits of their inspection intersected, their glances met significantly and one addressed the other in a tongue unknown to Mrs. Brodie. The language was strange, but the tone familiar and, even as she winced at its disparaging note, her cheeks coloured with a faint indignation, as she thought that such words as these were, at least, not genuine Scottish. Then, alternately, they began to bombard her.

"You want forty pounds, lady?"

"On the quiet without any one knowin' not evert the old man, lady."

"Been havin' a little flutter, perhaps?"

"What do you want it for, lady?"

Their well-informed glances devastated her as they moved their fingers, sparkling their rings affluently, demonstrating agreeably that they had the money, that she it was who desired it. She was at their mercy.

When they had drawn everything from her regarding the house, her husband, herself, and her family, they exchanged a nod and, as one man, arose. They toured the parlour, then tramped loudly and indifferently through the house, fingering, handling, stroking, twiddling and weighing everything in it, peering, poking and prying into every room with Mamma at their heels like a debased and submissive dog. When they had reviewed the most intimate details of the life of the household as manifested to them in the interior of cupboards, the inside of wardrobes, the contents of drawers, and made her blush painfully as, penetrating even to her bedroom, they regarded with a knowing air the space beneath her bed, they at last descended the stairs, looking everywhere but at her. She could see refusal in their faces.

"I'm afraid it's no good, lady. Your furniture's poor stuff, heavy, old-fashioned; won't sell!" said one at last, with an odious show of candour. "We might lend you two tens on it or say even twenty-four pounds. Yes, say twenty-five at the outside limit and on our own terms of interest," he continued, as he produced a quill tooth-pick from his waistcoat pocket and assisted his calculations by, its assiduous application. "What say?"

"Yes, lady," said the other; "times is bad these days and you're not what you might call a good loan. We're always polite to a lady funny the number of ladies we does business with but you haven't got the security."

"But my things are all good," quavered Mamma in a faint voice; "they've been handed down in the family."

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