BY A. J. CRONIN 35 страница

"Did I say I hadn't got it?" he leered at her.

"Have ye, though? Tell us quick, Matt. I'm that excited about it I can hardly stand still!"

"Yes!" he cried, unable to restrain himself longer. "I have got it. The job's signed, sealed and delivered into my hands. It's me for South America passage paid free livin' and plenty of money in my pocket. To hell with this rotten town, and this blasted house and the drunken auld bully that owns it. It'll be something for him to smoke in his pipe when he hears."

"He'll be pleased enough, Matt," she replied, again advancing to him as he leaned against the dresser.

"Ay, glad to be rid of me, I suppose," he answered sulkily. "But I'm glad enough to go. And I’ll be even with him yet. He'll maybe get something he doesn't like before long."

"Never mind about him. He's just an auld fool. I'm as sick o' him as you are. I canna think what I ever saw in him." She paused, then added ingenuously, pathetically, "I'm real pleased too, that ye've got the job, Matt, although although "

"Although what," he replied largely, looking down at her soft, appealing eyes. "Surely I've waited long enough for it."

"Ay it was just nothing," she answered with a sigh, stroking his hand absently, almost unconsciously, with her soft finger tip. "It's a wonderful opportunity for ye. It must be grand for you to gang abroad like that. I can see the big boat drivin' through the blue sea, wi' the sun on it. I can just fancy the lovely place that you're goin' to Rio what was it ye called it again?"

"Rio de Janeiro," he replied grandly. "I'll only be a couple of miles out of it. It's a wonderful city and a beautiful climate. There's a chance for a man out there, a hundred times better than in India."

"I'm sure yell do well," she murmured, now holding his hard entirely in her soft clasp. "But I'll be that lonely without ye. I don't know whatever I'll do. It's hard for a young lass like me to be tied up here!"

He gazed at her as though his suppressed feeling had not entirely left him; as though, escaping only in part, it had left still an effervescence behind.

"You're not wantin' me to go," he remarked slyly. "I can see that!"

"Of course I am, you wicked man! I wouldn't for the world stop you. It's a grand chance." She gave his hand an admonitory squeeze and added, "And you said it was such good money too?"

"Yes! it's a handsome salary," he assented impressively, "and they've flung in a bungalow with it as well. I couldn't wish for more. My experience out East has done me a good turn after all."

She was silent, gazing with an appealing candour at his face, but seeing instead a strange mysterious city, shadowed by exotic trees, with cafes in its streets, a band in the square, with herself there smiling, dashing along gaily in a carriage, veiled in a lace mantilla, drinking red wine, happy, free. Her thoughts were so poignant, so touching, that without difficulty she pressed a tear from her swimming eyes and allowed it to steal slowly, entrancingly down the smooth curve of her cheek as, with a gentle movement, she leant against him and whispered:

"Oh! Matt dear, it'll be hard to do without ye! You're goin' to leave me just when I'm beginnin' to "

A strange exultation possessed him as she pressed against him and, seizing her downcast face between his palms, he made her look at him.

"Don't say you're beginning say you do love me."

She did not speak but more potent than any words veiled her soft eyes as though she feared to let him see the intensity of her passion for him.

"Ye do!" he cried. "I can see that ye do!" His lips twitched, his nostrils dilated as a fierce delight filled him, not from the touch of her form alone, but from the understanding that he had ousted his father, that fate had delivered into his hands a powerful weapon of revenge.

"I know I'm a bad girl, Matt," she whispered, "but I mean to do well. I'm goin' to leave him. I went to the front room by myself all last night. That that's finished. I would never look at another man unless I married him and then I would stick to my man through thick and thin."

He continued to look at her fixedly, whilst she continued, with great feeling:

"I'think I could make a man happy if I tried. There's wee things about me that he might like, one way and another. I would do my best to give him a' that he wanted!" She sighed and drooped her head against his shoulder.

His thoughts twisted incoherently amongst the conflict of his emotions, but through the warm mists in his brain he saw that this was doubly desirous to him not only to strike his father but additionally for his own gratification. Nancy was a woman in a thousand, lovely, entrancing, ardent, not with the strong and clumsy vehemence of Agnes Moir, but with a subtler, a more delicate and alluring flame which pervaded her pale white body like an essence and drew him towards its clear heat. Her beauty, too, surpassed by far the merely tolerable comeliness of the unfortunate Agnes; her figure was not sturdy, but elegant; no umber shadow menaced the exquisite curve of her soft upper lip; not only was she beautiful, but she was, he was convinced, enamoured of him to the point of passionately abandoning his father because of her feeling for him. Filled by these thoughts, he was confirmed in his resolution and, in a choked voice, he exclaimed:

"Nancy! There's something Fve got to tell you something else that you don't know. Something that might interest you. Would you like to hear it?"

She looked at him languishingly, throwing her head back so that the inclination of her poise invited his embrace, and was about to murmur "Yes", when suddenly the front door of the house clicked open and was heavily shut and the sound of footsteps was heard along the hall. Like a flash Nancy recovered herself from the apparent profundity of her feeling and, pushing Matt to the fireplace she cried, in a sharp whisper:

"Bide there and don't let on. He'll never know," Then in the same instant her hands had flown to her hair and, moving as lightly as quick fluttering birds, had adjusted, patted smooth such small disorder as might have existed. She was back at the table immediately, clattering the dishes, when Brodie entered the room.

For a moment Brodie paused in the doorway, an unwrapped bottle swinging in his hand, surveying first his son, whom he so rarely saw, with a black lowering disgust, allowing his glance to travel questioningly to Nancy, then returning restlessly to the uneasy figure by the fireplace. His dull understanding appreciated nothing of the undercurrent of the events he had disturbed, but his moody eye perceived the faint flush upon Man's sallow cheek, the downcast look, the nervous agitation of his attitude, and instinctively his memory rushed back to that scene in the house in the Vennel, when he had surprised his son with Nancy struggling in his arms. He knew nothing, suspected nothing, but he was none the less tormented by this vision of his memory, felt instinctively that some secret activity had been in process at his entry; his glance became black and darting, impaling Matt, who moved more uneasily and hung his head with greater embarrassment the longer that silent stare continued.

Nancy, at the table, her inveterate hardihood rendering her composed, perfect mistress of her features, inwardly furious at the flustered ineptitude of the hero to whom she had so passionately avowed her devotion, attempted to rescue him by remarking tartly to the elder man:

"What are ye standin' there for, Brodie like a big bear? Come in and sit down and don't swing that bottle as though ye wanted to brain us. Ye look downright uncanny. Come awa' in." But Brodie did not seem to hear her and, allowing her remark to pass unheeded, still continued to view his son from the vantage point of the door, still swinging the bottle like a clubj until at length he spoke, saying with a snarl:

"What's the honour o' this visit due to? We're not usually so fortunate when we come in at this time no! Your home's not good enough for you in the evenings now. You're one o' these late birds we never seem to see at all."

Matt opened his dry lips to speak, but before he could reply Brodie continued fiercely:

"Have ye been sayin' anything to Nancy here that ye might like to repeat to me? If ye have, I'm listenin' and waitin'."

Here Nancy broke in, flinging her hands upon her hips, squaring her neat shoulders, and tossing her head indignantly.

"Are ye mad, Brodie, that ye go on like that? What are ye talkin' jbout at all, at all? If you're goin' to rave in that fashion, I'll be tnuckle obliged if ye'll kindly keep my name out o' it."

He turned slowly and surveyed her. His drawn brows relaxed.

"I know, woman! I know it's all right! I would never doubt ye and I know he's too feared of me to dare it, but somehow the sight o' the glaikit, fushionless loon aye embitters me. He looks as if butter wouldna melt in his mouth and yet I can never forget that he tried to shoot me." He swung around again to Matt, who had paled at these last words, and exclaimed bitterly, "I should have given ye over to the police for that you that tried to shoot your father. Ye got off too

easy that night. But I'm no' so good humoured as I used to be, so don't try any more tricks on me or by God! I'll lay your skull open wi' this very bottle. Now will ye tell me what you're doin' here."

"He was tellin' me about some job or other," cried Nancy shrilly, "but I didna ken what it was a' about." Would he never speak? she thought, the stupid fool that was standing there as white and flabby as a soft lump of putty, giving the whole affair away by his lack of gumption.

"What job?" said Brodie. "Speak for yourself, sir!"

At last Matthew found his tongue, he who on the homeward journey had visualised his superior attitude during the interview and traced the manner in which he would gradually lead up to it, who had just told Nancy how he would throw his new position in this old devil's teeth.

"I've got a position in America, Father," he stammered. Brodie's face did not change but after a pause he sneered:

"So you're goin' to do some work at last. Weel! Weel! Wonders will never cease. The heir to the house o' Brodie is goin' to work! It's a good thing too, for though ye've kept out of my way right well, now that I've seen ye again I feel I would soon have flung ye out." He paused. "What is this grand position? Tell us all about the marvels of it."

"It's just my own work," stammered Matt, "store-keeping. I've had my name down for months with two or three firms, but it's not often a chance like this crops up."

"And how did a thing like you get hold o' the chance? Was it a blind man that engaged ye?"

"It was an emergency," replied Matt apologetically. "The man that had the job died suddenly. He was flung off his horse and they wanted somebody in a hurry. I'll have to leave at once within a week to fill the place as soon as ever I can. Maybe ye've heard o' the firm. They're…" Here a cup fell clattering from the tray and smashed with a sudden, ringing cadence upon the floor.

"Guidsakes," cried Nancy in a great commotion, "that's what comes o' standin' haverin' like auld wives. It's always the way if ye take your mind off what you're doin' you're sure to go and break something or other." She bent down to pick up the fragments and as she stooped she flashed a glance at Matthew, quick, covert, but full of suppressed and significant warning. "I'm sorry if I interrupted you," she murmured to Brodie as she got up.

Matthew had observed the glance, interpreted its meaning and though his embarrassment grew, swollen from another source, with a feeble attempt at strategy he lowered his eyes and murmured:

"They're they're in the wool business. It's to do with sheep."

"By God! They've got the right man," cried his father, "for a bigger sheep than yourself never went bleatin' about this earth. Take care they don't crop ye, by mistake, at the shearin' time. Look up, ye saft sheep! Can ye not hold your head up like a man and look at me? A' this flash and dash that's come on ye since ye went to India doesna deceive me. I thought it might make a man o' ye to go out there, but I see through the rotten gloss that it's gie'n ye and you're but the same great, blubberin' sapsy that used to greet and run to your mother whenever I put my een on ye."

He stood looking at his son, filled by a profound and final repugnance which sickened him even of the thought of baiting Matt, who, he considered disgustedly, was not worth even the lash of his tongue. Thank God he was going away to quit his home, to abandon this sneaking, sponging existence, to be irrevocably out of his sight, out of the country, forgotten.

Suddenly he felt tired, realised dimly that he was not the man he had been and, with a quick rushing desire for the nepenthe of forgetfulness, he wanted to be alone with Nancy, wanted to drink. To his son he said slowly:

"You and me are finished, Matt. When ye've gone, yell never come back into this house. I never want to see ye again," then, turning to Nancy and regarding her with a fond and altered glance, he added:

"Bring me a glass, Nancy. He doesna deserve it, but I'm goin' to give him a toast," As she silently departed to obey, he followed her with the same glance, feeling that she was warming to him again, that with his son out of the house, they would be more private, more unrestrainedly together than before. "Thank ye, Nancy," he said mildly, as she returned and handed him the glass. "Ye're an obleegin' lass. I don't know how I ever got on without ye." Then he continued reassuringly, "I'm not goin' to take ower much to-night. No! No! This bottle will do me for a week. I know fine ye don't like me to take too much and I'm not goin' to do it. But we must pledge this big maunderin' sheep before he goes out to join the flock. Will ye have just a wee taste yer'self, Nancy? It'll do ye no harm. Come along now," he added, with a clumsy ingratiating manner, waving his arm at her, "away and get yourself a glass and I'll give ye just enough to warm ye."

She shook her head, still without speaking, her eyes half-veiled, her lips smoothly parted, her expression neither hostile nor friendly but shaded by a vague reticence which gave to her an air of enigmatic subtlety that encouraged him, drew him towards her by its very mystery. Actually, behind the mask of her face, lay a bitter contempt of him, activated the more fiercely as she saw that in choosing thus to humiliate Matt before her he was intimidating his son, making it more difficult for her to achieve the purpose she had set herself.

"No?” he said affably. "Well! I winna drive ye, woman. You're a mare that needs gentle guidin' as I've proved to my cost. Ye maun be humoured not driven." A short laugh broke from him as he uncorked the bottle, and holding the glass to the level of his eye, which glittered at the first sight of the trickling liquor, he slowly poured out a large measure, raised the bottle, paused, moistened his lips with his tongue, then quickly added a further quantity of the spirit. "I may as well take a decent glass to begin with. It saves goin' back and back. And I can stand it, onyway," he muttered, keeping his head down and away from her, as he placed the bottle upon the dresser and transferred the glass of whisky to his right hand. Then, stretching out his arm, he cried:

"Here's a toast to the heir to the house o' Brodie the last I'll ever drink to him. May he go to his grand job and may he stay there! Let him get out o' my sight and keep out o' it. Let him go how he likes and where he likes, but let him never come back, and if ever he tries to get on to that horse he was speakin' about, may he fall off and break his useless neck like the man that had the place before him!"

He threw back his head and, with a tilt of his wrist, drained the glass at a gulp; then, surveying Matthew with a sardonic grin, he added, "That's my last good-bye to ye. I don't know where ye're goin' I don't even want to know. Whatever happens to ye makes no odds now, for it'll never reach my ears!" And with these words he ceased to regard his son, ignored him utterly. Now that he had swallowed the whisky he felt more vigorous. Lifting his eye again to the bottle on the dresser, he considered it speculatively for a moment, cleared his throat, straightened himself up and, his head averted from Nancy, remarked solemnly, "But I canna drink a toast to a thing like him and pass over a braw lass like my Nancy." He shook his head at the injustice of the thought as, with the empty tumbler still in his hand, he approached the table.

"No! that would not be fair!" he continued, pouring himself out another portion. "I couldna do that in all conscience we must give the girl her due. There's nothing I wouldna do for her, she means so much to me. Here, Nancy!" he cried, wheedlingly, turning to her, "This is a wee salute to the bonniest lass in Levenford."

She had controlled her temper so long that now it seemed impossible for her to contain herself further and her veiled eyes sparkled and a faint colour ran into her cheeks as though she might immediately stamp her foot and assail him furiously with her tongue. But instead, she stifled the words she wished to utter behind her tight lips and, turning on her heel, marched into the scullery where she began noisily to wash the dishes. With a chastened expression Brodie stood, his head slightly on one side, listening to the clatter of china; he heard in it some suggestion of her exasperation, but soon, returning his eyes again to the glass in his hand, he slowly raised it to his lips and slowly drained it; then, advancing to his chair, he lowered himself heavily into it.

Matt, who had remained at the place by the fireplace where he had been thrust by Nancy, a silent and dismayed spectator of his father's recent actions, now moved uneasily upon his feet, subdued more abjectly by the closer proximity of the other as he sat brooding in his chair. He looked restlessly around the room, bit his pale lips, rubbed his soft, damp hands together, wishing fervently to leave the room but, thinking his father's eye to be upon him, was afraid to stir. At length, emboldened by the continued silence in the room, he widened the scope of the sweeping circles of his eye and allowed his flickering glance to touch for a swift second upon the face of the other beside him. Immediately he saw that Brodie was not, as he had feared, contemplating him but instead gazing earnestly towards the open doorway of the scullery and, reassured by the other's abstraction, he ventured one tentative foot in front of him, was not observed, and, continuing his stealthy progress slid quietly out of the kitchen.

His intention had been to escape from the house as quickly as possible, resigning himself to an interminable wait in the streets outside until his father had gone to bed, but he was arrested, in the dimness of the hall, by a segment of light striking out from the parlour. As he paused, suddenly it occurred to him that since Nessie was within, he might spend a few moments more comfortably with her before departing into the frosty night outside. He felt too, unconsciously, the pressing need for the opportunity to declaim upon the merit of the attainment of his new post and the desire for some approving tribute to restore the damage inflicted upon his self-esteem. Consequently he opened the door and looked into the room.

Nessie, seated at the table, surrounded by the inevitable accompaniment of her books, did not look up at his entry but remained with folded arms, hunched shoulders and bent head. But when he spoke, with a sudden quick start she flinched as though the unexpected waves of speech had struck her across the stillness of the room.

"I'm coming in a minute," was all that he had said.

"Oh, Matt!" she cried, pressing her small closed hand into her left side. "What a start you gave me! I didn't hear you come in. I seem to jump at anything these days."

As he observed her present attitude, the inclination of her head, the mild and limpid eyes, filled with a mute apology for her weakness, a striking memory presented itself to him, making him for the moment forget his own concerns.

"My goodness, Nessie," he exclaimed, staring at her. "You're getting as like Mamma as life. I can almost see her looking out of your face the now!"

"Do you think so, Matt," she replied, flattered in some degree to be the object of his interest. "What makes you say that?"

He seemed to consider,

"I think it's your eyes; there's the same look about them as though you thought something was going to happen to you and were looking ahead for it."

At his words she was hurt and immediately lowered these betraying eyes, keeping them fixed upon the table as he continued: "What's come over you lately? You don't seem the same to me at all. Is there anything wrong with you that's making you like that?"

"Everything's wrong," she answered slowly. "Since Mamma died I've been as miserable as could be and I haven't had a soul to speak to about it. I can't suffer to be near to to Nancy. She doesn't like me. She's always at me for something. Everything is different. The house has been so different that it's not like the same place Father's different too."

"You've nothing to be feared of from him. You were always his pet," he retorted. "He's always sucking around you in some way."

"I wish he would leave me alone," she replied dully. "He's just driving me on all the time with this work. I can't stand it. I don't feel well in myself."

"Tuts! Nessie," he exclaimed reprovingly. "That's Mamma all over again. Ye should pull yourself together. What's the matter with you?"

"I've always got a headache! I wake up with it in the morning and it never leaves me all day. It makes me so stupid that I don't know what I'm doing. Besides, I can't eat the food we get now and I'm always tired. I'm tired at this very minute."

"You'll be all right when you've got this exam over. You'll win the Latta all right."

"I'll win it all right," she exclaimed wildly. "But what's going to become of me then? What is he going to do with me after? Tell me that! Am I to be shoved on like this all the time and never know what's going to come of it? He'll never say when I ask him. He doesn't know himself."

"You'll be a teacher that's the thing for you."

She shook her head.

"No! That wouldn't be good enough for him. I wanted to do that myself to put down my name to go on to the Normal, but he wouldn't allow it. Oh, Matt!" she cried, "I wish I had somebody to put in a word for me. I'm so downright wretched about it and about everything else I wish sometimes I had never been born!"

He shifted his gaze uncomfortably from her appealing face which, stamped by a forlorn wistf ulness, seemed to implore him to help her.

"You should get out the house and play with the other girls," he advanced, somewhat uncertainly. "That would take your mind off things a bit."

"How can I?" she exclaimed frantically. "Ever since I was a wee thing I've been kept in at these lessons, and now I'm flung in here every night, and will be, too, for the whole of the next six months. And if I dared to go out, he would leather me. You wouldn't believe it, Matt, but I sometimes think I'll go out of my mind the way I'm kept grindin' at it."

"I go out," he exclaimed valiantly. "He didn't stop me goin' out."

"You're different," she replied sadly, her puny outburst subsiding and leaving her more dejected than before. "And even if I did go out, what good would it do? None of the other girls would play with me. They'll hardly speak to me as it is. One of them said the other day that her father said she was to have nothing to do with any one that came out of this house. Oh! I do wish you could help me, Matt!"

"How can I help you?" he replied roughly, irritated at her entreaties. "Don't you know I'm goin' away next week?"

She gazed at him with a slight wrinkling of her brow and repeated, without apparently comprehending:

"Going away next week?"

"To South America," he replied grandly; "to a splendid new position I've got out there. Miles and miles away from this sink of a town."

Then she understood, and in the sudden perception that he was leaving immediately for a far distant land, that she, of all the Brodie children, would be left in a solitary, unprotected state to face the dreadful unhappiness of her present existence in the home, she paled. Matt had never helped her much, and during these latter months had, indeed, comforted her still less, but he was her brother, a companion in her distress, and she had only a moment ago appealed to him for assistance. Her lips quivered, her eyes became blurred, she burst into tears.

"Don't go, Matt," she sobbed. "I'll be left all alone if ye go. I’ll have nobody at all in this terrible house."

"What are ye talking about," he retorted savagely. "You can't know what you're saying. Am I going to give up the chance of a lifetime money and freedom and and everything for the likes of you? You're mad!"

"I'll be mad if you go," she cried. "What chance will I have here all by myself? Mary away, and you away, and only me left! What'll become of me?"

"Stop your howling," he shot at her, with a quick glance towards the door. "Do you want everybody to hear you with that bawling? He'll be in at us in a minute if you're not careful. I've got to go and that's all about it."

"Could ye not take me with you then, Matt," she gulped, stifling her sobs with difficulty. "I know I'm young but I could keep the house for ye. That's always the sort of thing I've wanted to do and not these miserable lessons. I would do everything for you, Matt."

Her attitude apprised him that she would serve him like a slave, her eyes implored him not to leave her desolate and forsaken.

"They would never hear of ye going out. The sooner you get it out of your head the better. Can you not look pleased at your brother getting a fine job like this instead of moaning and groaning about it?"

"I am pleased for your sake, Matt," she sniffed, wiping her eyes with her saturated handkerchief. "I… I was just thinking about myself."

"That's it," he shot out. "You can't think of anybody else. Try to have some consideration for other people. Don't be so selfish!"

"All right, Matt," she said, with a last convulsive sigh. "I'll try. Anyway, I'm sorry."

"That's better," he replied largely, in a more affable tone; but even as he spoke he shivered, and, changing his tone to one of complaint, he cried, "Gosh; It's cold in here! How do you expect a man to stand talking to you if you haven't got a fire? If your circulation can stand this, mine can't. I'll need to put my coat on and away out to walk up my circulation." He stamped his feet then turned abruptly, calling to her, "I'm away out then, Nessie."

When he had gone she remained rigid, the small, wet ball of the handkerchief clutched tightly in her hand, her red-lidded eyes fixed upon the door which had closed upon her like the door of a prison. The avenue of the future down which she gazed was gloomy and amidst the dark, forbidding shadows she saw the figure of Nessie Brodie pass fearfully and alone. No one could now come between her and her father, no one interpose between her frailty and the strength of his unknown purpose. Matthew would go as Mary had gone. Mary! She had thought so much of her lately that she longed now for the comfort of her sister's arm around her, for the solace of her quiet smile, the sustaining courage that lay within her steady

eyes. She needed someone to whom she might unburden her weary mind, in whom she could confide her sorrows, and the thought of her sister's tranquil fortitude drew her. "Mary!" she whispered, like an entreaty. "Mary dear! I didn't love you as you deserved when you were here, but oh! I wish I had you near me now!"

Дата добавления: 2015-08-20