BY A. J. CRONIN 37 страница

When he returned, punctual to the hour, at two o'clock he was altered, as though some mysterious, benign influence had been at work upon him, potently dispersing his melancholy, smoothing the harsh outlines of his face, injecting into his veins a fluid gaiety which now coursed through him joyously and emanated radiantly from his being.

"I'm here first, lads, ye see," he cried with a heavy facctiousness, as the two other clerks appeared together shortly after he had arrived, "and on the stroke of the clock too! But what do you mean by comin' in late? It's abominable. If you don't improve your blunderin' irregularity I’ll report you to your superior that pasty pie-face that was in here this morninY' He laughed boisterously and

continued, "Can you not take your example from me that's held up to you as such a paragon o virtue?"

"You're in fettle now, Mr. Brodie," doubtfully replied one of the youngsters.

"And what for no'," he exclaimed. "I wouldna let a thing like what happened this forenoon put me down. Not on your life, my mannie. It was just the thought of other considerations that forbade me to wring the puir creature's stiff neck for him. You know," he continued confidentially, "he's aye been jealous o' the way I got into this office under his very nose, but I had the influence and he couldna

prevent it." He drew his pipe from his pocket, rapped it noisily against the desk and began to fill it.

"You're not goin' to smoke, Mr. Brodie," cried the first clerk, looking up from his ledger in some concern. "You know it's strictly forbidden."

Brodie glowered at him, swinging a little on his stool, as he answered:

"And who would stop me? I'll do as I like in here. A man like me shouldna have to beg and pray for permission to light his pipe."

He effected this action now, defiantly, sucking noisily and flinging the spent match disdainfully upon the floor. Then, with a profound movement of his head, between puffs he resumed, "No! and I'm not agoin' to do it. Gad! If I had my rights, I wouldna be sittin' in this rotten office. I'm far above this kind o' work, far above any kind o' work. That's true as death, but it just canna be proved, and I've got to thole things as best I can. But it doesna alter me. No! By God, no! There's many a man in this Borough would be glad to have the blood

that runs in my veins." He looked around for approval but, observing that his listeners, tired of the stale recitation of his pretentions, had bowed their heads in a feigned indifference, he was displeased; none the less he turned their defection to account by producing a small, flat bottle from his hip, quickly applying it to his lips, and stealthily returning it to his pocket. Thus refreshed, he continued, as though unconscious of their lack of attention, "Blood will tell! There's nothing truer than that. I'll come up again. It's nothing but a lot of rotten jealousy that's put me here; but it'll not be for long. Ye can't keep a good man down. I'll soon be back again where folks'll recognise me again for what I am, back at the Cattle Show, rubbin’ shoulders with the Lord Lieutenant o' the County and on the best o' terms equal terms, mind ye" he emphasised this to the air by a jerk o' his pipe "ay, on equal terms with the finest blood in the county and with my name standin' out brawly in the paper amongst them all." As he viewed the future by regarding the glory of the past, his eye moistened, his lower lip drooped childishly, his breast heaved and he muttered, "God! That's a grand thing to happen to a man."

"Come on now, Mr. Brodie," entreated the other clerk, breaking in upon his meditation, "put away your pipe now you've had a smoke. I don't want to see you getting into trouble."

Brodie glowered at him for an instant then suddenly guffawed:

"Man, you're awfu' feared. True enough, it's as you say. I've had a smoke, but I'm goin' to have another and more than that I'm goin' to have a dram as well!" He slyly produced the bottle again and, whilst they watched him with startled eyes, partook of a long pull.

Instead of returning the flask to his pocket, he stood it before him on top of his desk, remarking, "Yell be handier for me there, hinny, and I can look at ye as well and watch ye goin' down inch by inch.”

Then, flattered to find himself the focus of their anxious stares, he continued, "Speakin’ of trouble there's one thing that little runt said to me this mornin' that was so ridiculous it's stuck in my head." He frowned prodigiously at the very memory. "I think I mind of him sayin' 'the look o' ye is a slur on the whole place' ay, that was it these were his very words. Now tell me, lads what the devil was he talkin' about? Is there anything wrong with my appearance?"

He glared at them with a bellicose mien whilst they shook their heads from side to side doubtfully. "I'm a fine-lookin' man, am I not?" he shot at them, watching their silent assent with a large and exaggerated approval. "I knew it," he cried, "It was just his measly spite. Ay! I was always a grand upstandin' figure of a man, well set up, with a skin on me as clear as a bairn's. Besides," he continued, looking at them sideways, craftily, as he stroked the coarse stubble on his sallow chin with a rustling sound, "there's another reason why I know he's wrong. Ye're maybe ower young to hear but it's no harm to tell ye that a certain lass ay, the bonniest in Levenford, puts me first abune everybody else. Odd, I maun have a drink at the very thought of her."

He drank a toast with decorous solemnity in honour of the loveliest lady in Levenford and was for some time silent whilst he considered her happily. He wanted to talk about her, to boast proudly of her attractions, but a shadow of restraint held him back and, searching with contracted brows amongst the recesses of his mind for the reason of his reserve, a sudden illumination shone upon him. He became aware that he could not speak more freely about her because she was not his wife. At this startling realisation of his mused brain he silently reviled himself for his negligence. "Losh," he muttered to himself, "ye havena acted fair, man. Ye should have thought on this before." He shook his head deprecatingly, took another swig of spirits to assist his meditations, and a profound pathos for the plight of Nancy seized him as he whispered in a maudlin tone, "I believe I'll do it. By God! I will do it for her." He almost shook hands with himself at the nobility of the sudden resolution he had formed to make an honest woman of her. True, she was not of much consequence in the social scale, but what of it; his name would cover her, cover them both, and if he married her he would, in one magnificent gesture, keep her more securely in the house, put himself right in the eyes of the town and still for ever these sad, questioning glances which he had observed from time to time on Nessie's face. He banged his fist on the desk, crying out, "I'll do it! I'll mention it this very night," then, grinning at the strained faces before him he remarked, with an assumption of lofty rectitude, "Don't be alarmed, lads. I've just been planning out things and I've just decided to do something for my wee Nessie. She's well worth it." Then, lowering his elevated tone, he leered at them cunningly and added, "A little matter of domestic policy that you're sure to hear of sooner or later." He was about to enlighten them more lucidly when one of the clerks, perceiving perhaps in advance the drift of the revelations that might follow, hurriedly sought to deflect his attention by exclaiming:

"And how is Nessie getting on, Mr. Brodie?"

He blinked for a moment at the questioner before replying:

"Fine! Ye know she's gettin' on fine. Dinna ask stupid questions, man. She's got the Latta in her pocket already."

Then, launching out on this fresh subject that now presented itself to his muddled mind he continued, "She's a great comfort to me, is that lass. To see her puttin' a spoke in that young Grierson's wheel time after time is a rich treat to me. She always beats him, ye know and every time she does it, it must be gall and wormwood to that smooth sneakin' father o' his. Ay! Gall and wormwood it must be!"

He sniggered at the very reflection of it and, with a more acute tilt of the bottle to his mouth, was emptying it completely of its contents when, failing in the attempt to laugh and drink simultaneously, he choked and burst into a prolonged fit of hoarse coughing. "Pat my back, damn ye," he gasped with congested face and running eyes as he bent forward, heaving like a sick and emaciated elephant. "Harder! Harder!" he cried as one of the others, leaping from his stool, began to thump his bowed back.

"That's a nasty cough," said the young fellow when the paroxysm had finally abated. "That's what comes of sitting in damp clothes."

"Bah! It wasna a hoast at all that," replied Brodie, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I've never wore a coat yet and I never will. I've lost my umbrella somewhere, but it doesna matter; the rain aye seems to do me good. I'm strong as a Clydesdale stallion," and he extended his gaunt structure to show them the manner of man he was.

"Nessie doesn't take after you, Mr. Brodie," remarked the first speaker. "She doesna look too strong!"

Brodie glowered at him, exclaiming angrily:

"She's as sound as a bell. Are you another o' these safties that are aye trying to make our folks to be ill. She's as right as the mail, I tell you. She had a wee bit turn last month, but it was nothing. I had her at Lawrie and he said she had a heid on her in a thousand ay, in a million, I would say!" He glanced around triumphantly, looked to the bottle to express his elation, but, observing that it was empty, seized it and with a fortunate aim hurled it into the waste-paper basket in the corner whence it was later retrieved and cast into the Leven through the charity of one of his long-suffering colleagues.

"That's an aim for ye," he cried gaily. 'Tve got an eye in my head! I could bring down a running rabbit at fifty paces without a blink. A rabbit! Damnation! If I was where I should be, I would be at the butts bringing down the grouse and the pheasants like droppin' hailstones." He was about to embark once more on the nobility of his estate when suddenly his eyes fell upon the clock. "Gad! Would ye believe it. It's nearly five o'clock. I'm the man to pass the hours away." He cocked his eye facetiously, snickered and resumed, "Time passes quick when you're workin' hard, as that stickit whelp Blair would say. But I'm afraid I must leave ye, lads. Ye're fine fellows and I'm gey an' fond o' ye, but I've something more important to attend to now." He rubbed his hands together in a delightful anticipation and added, with a leer, "If the fancy man comes in before five just tell him his accounts are in order and say I've gone to buy him a rattle." He got off his stool ponderously, slowly assumed his hat, adjusting it twice before the tilt of its dusty brim pleased him, picked up his heavy stick and stood with a gravity now definitely drunken, framing the doorway with his swaying bulk.

"Lads!" he cried, apostrophising them with his stick, "if ye knew where I was goin' now, the eyes would drop out your heads for pure jealousy. You couldna come, though. No! No! There's only one man in this Borough could gang this bonnie, bonnie gait." Surveying them impressively he added, with great dramatic gusto, "And that's me!" swept their forbearing but disconcerted faces with a final glare and swung slowly out of the room.

His star was in the ascendant, for as he strode noisily along the passages, bumping from side to side in his erratic career, he met no one and, at five minutes to five, shot through the main swing doors into the open and set his course for home.

The rain had now ceased and the air came fresh and cool in the darkness through which the newly lighted lamps shimmered upon the wet streets, like an endless succession of topaz moons upon the surface of black, still water. The regular repetition of these reflections, each one of which seemed to float insidiously towards him as he walked, amused Brodie monstrously, and he grinned as he told himself he would assuredly inform Nancy of his experience with this strangely inverted celestial phenomenon. Nancy! He chuckled aloud at the consideration of all they had to talk of to-night, from the composition of a real stinger of a letter for that one in London to the delicious proposition which he had determined to put before her. She would, of course, be perturbed to see him return with perhaps and he admitted this magnanimously to the darkness a heavier

dram in him than usual, but the sudden delight at his offer of matrimony would dispel all her annoyance. He knew she had always wanted an established position, the randy, such as a fine man like him could give her, and now he heard her overwhelmed voice exclaiming,

"Do ye mean it, Brodie! Losh! Man, ye've fair sweepit' me away. Marry ye? Ye know I would jump at the chance like a cock at a groset. Come till I give ye a grand, big hug." Yes! she would be kinder to him than ever after this sublime concession on his part and his eyes flickered at the thought of the especial manifestations of her favour which this should elicit from her to-night. As he advanced, warmly conscious that each staggering step took him nearer to her,- he could find no comparison strong enough to adequately describe her charm, her possessing hold upon him. "She's she's bonnie!" he muttered inarticulately; "the flesh o' her is as white and firm as the breist of a fine chicken. I could almost make a meal o' her." His thoughts grew more compelling, served to intensify his longing, to add to his excitement, and with a final rapid struggle he launched himself up the steps of his house, fumbled impatiently at the lock with his key, opened the door, and burst into the obscurity of the hall. "Nancy," he cried loudly, "Nancy! Here I am back for ye!"

He stood for a moment in the darkness, awaiting her answering cry, but, as she did not reply, he smiled fatuously to think that she should be hiding, waiting for him to go to her, and taking a box of matches from his pocket, he lit the lobby gas, planted his stick firmly in the stand, hung up his hat and went eagerly into the kitchen. This, too, was in darkness.

"Nancy," he shouted, in astonishment not unmixed with annoyance, "what are ye playin' at? I don't want a game o' blind man's buff. I want none o' these fancy tricks, woman! I want you. Come out from wherever ye be." Still there was no response, and, advancing awkwardly to the gas bracket above the mantlepiece he lit this gas, turned to survey the room, and to his amazement observed that the table was not laid, that no preparation for tea had been begun. For a moment he remained quite still, fixing the bare table with an astounded gaze, compressing his lips angrily, until suddenly a light seemed to break in upon him and he muttered slowly, with a loosening of his frown: "She's awa' to the station with that aunt of hers. Has not she the nerve, though? She's the only body that would

dare to do it. Sends me out for my dinner and then keeps me waitin' for my tea."

A faint thrill of amusement ran through him, deepening to a roar of laughter as he contemplated, almost proudly, her hardihood. Gad, but she was a fit mate for him! Yet when his mirth had subsided he did not quite know what to do, presumed eventually that he must await the pleasure of her return and, standing with his back to the fireplace, he allowed his gaze to wander idly around the room. To him, the very atmosphere breathed of her presence; he saw her flitting airily about, sitting nonchalantly in his armchair, smiling, talking, even flighting him. Yes! the very hatpin sticking into the dresser was an indication of her own saucy, impudent, inimitable indifference.

But something else lay upon the dresser, held in place by that pin, a letter that presumptuous communication which he had received at breakfast time from his daughter and moving forward he took it up disdainfully in his hands. Suddenly his expression changed, as he observed that it was not the same envelope but another, addressed to him in his son's sloping clerkly hand, a penmanship so like Matt's own smooth plausibility that it had always irritated him. Another letter! And from Matthew! Was the sly, sneaking coward soafraid of him now that he must write his messages instead of delivering them face to face like a man? Filled by a profound contempt he gazed at the neat writing on the envelope which, however, became modified, as, tilting his head to one side he considered incon sequently how well his own name looked almost as well as in print in these precise characters now before him. James Brodie, Esquire! It was a name to be proud of, that one! Smiling a little, a large and lordly appreciation swept over him, restoring him again to complacency and, in the excess of his own satisfaction, he carelessly tore open the letter and pulled out the single sheet within.

"Dear Father," he read, 'Tou were too high and mighty to hear about my new post or you would have learned that it was a position for a married man. Don't expect Nancy back. She's come to see that I don't fall off my horse! Your loving and obedient son, Matt."

Seized by a vast stupefaction, he read over the scanty words twice, looked up unseeingly, as he muttered incredulously:

"What does he mean? What has Nancy got to do with the fool's horse? Your loving and obedient son the man must be mad!"

Then suddenly, blindingly, he felt that he too was mad, as the purport of the note penetrated his dull, fuddled brain, as he observed upon the back of the paper, scrawled in Nancy's childish, illiterate hand these words: "Matt and me are off to be married and have a high old time. You were too fond of your bottle to marry me so you can take it to bed with you the night. You auld fool!”

A great cry burst from his lips. At last he understood that she had left him. The letter faded from his sight, the room swung round and away from him, he was alone in a vast immensity of blackness. Out of his distorted face his wounded eyes gazed dumbly from below his brow, now corroded by the full knowledge of his loss. Matt, his own son, had taken Nancy from him! In the shock of his despair he felt it would have been better far had he been killed outright by that pistol bullet in the house in the Vennel, that this blow his son had delivered was more frightful, more agonising than death! His weakling and despised son had triumphed over him. Complete understanding of the deception to which he had been subjected in the past week flashed upon him Nancy's indifference, followed by her assumed yet restrained affection, the locking of her door, the fictitious relation at Overton, the complete obliteration of Matthew from the house he understood all; remembered, too, the scene where he had surprised them in the kitchen, when she had broken the cup at the very moment that he questioned his son about the post. God! What a fool he had been. "An auld fool!" that was what she called him, and how she must have laughed at him; how they must both be mocking him now. He knew nothing, neither how they had gone nor where they had gone. He was powerless, knowing only that they were together, powerless except to stand and think of them in an inconceivable intimacy which made him writhe with anguish.

He was recalled from his dark oblivion, like an insensible man to whom consciousness momentarily returns, by the voice of Nessie who, entering the kitchen, gazed fearfully at him and murmured timidly:

"Will I make some tea for you, Father? I've not had any tea or any dinner either."

He lifted his tortured face, looked at her stupidly, then cried thickly:

"Go away! Go to the parlour. Go to your lessons. Go anywhere, but let me alone!"

She fled from him and he sank again into the torment of his thoughts, filled by a profound self-pity as he realised that there was now no one to look after him or Nessie but his dotard and incapable mother. She would have to come back Mary, his daughter!

He would have to allow her to return and keep the house, if only for Nessie's sake. Mary must now come back! The full significance of his discussion of this matter with Nancy struck him like a fresh blow as he recollected how he had coaxed her to write the letter of refusal. And she had known all the time that she was leaving him. He had been too late with his offer of marriage; and now, how would he ever do without her? A piercing anguish took him as he thought of her, even now, in his son's arms, opening her lips to his kisses, offering her firm, white body gladly to his embrace. As though vainly to obliterate the torture of the vision, he raised his hand and pressed it upon his throbbing eyes, whilst his lips twisted painfully and a hard, convulsive sob burst from his swelling breast and echoed through the quiet of the room.

THE three-twenty train from Glasgow to Ardfillan, the first half of the journey accomplished successfully, had left Overton behind, and traversing the low, dripping, smoke-filled arches of Kilmaheu Tunnel, emerged into the breezy March afternoon with a short, triumphant whistle that sent a streamer of steam swirling behind the engine like a pennant, and presently began to coast gently down the

flight incline of the track which marked the approach to Levenford Station. The train was lightly laden, having many of its carriages empty and several with but one passenger in each and, as though conscious of having achieved the sharp ascent of Poindfauld and traversed the dark, grimed caverns of Kilmaheu, it now proceeded at an easier and more leisured pace through the soft, dun countryside

across which the railway track advanced like a long, narrowing furrow.

Within the train, alone in a compartment, in a corner facing the - engine, and with the small portmanteau that constituted her entire luggage beside her, sat a girl. Dressed in a plain, grey costume of serviceable, inexpensive serge, shaped to a neat yet unfashionable cut, and wearing upon her dark, close-coiled hair a grey velvet hat relieved only by a thin, pink ribbon gathered at one side into a simple bow, she remained upright yet relaxed, directing her gaze out of the window, viewing eagerly, yet wistfully, each feature of the fleeting landscape. Her face was thin, the nose straight and fine, the nostrils delicate, the lips sensitive and mobile, the smooth, pale sweep of the brow accentuated by the dark, appealing beauty of her eyes; and upon the entire countenance lay a melancholy sweetness, a pure and clarified sadness, as though some potent, sorrowful experience had stamped upon every lineament the subtle yet ineradicable mark of suffering. This faint, sombre shadow which lightly touched, accentuating even, the dark beauty of the face, made her seera more mature than her actual age of twenty-two years and gave to her an appearance of arresting delicacy, of refined sincerity which was intensified by the severe simplicity of her apparel. Like the face, but in a different sense, her hands, too, immediately engaged attention, as, denuded of gloves, which lay upon her knee, they rested lightly, palm upwards, passive upon her lap. The face was that of a Madonna but the hands, red, conspicuous, coarse-grained and slightly swollen, were the hands of a servant; and if it was suffering which had sublimated the face to a more exquisite beauty, the hands spoke eloquently of bitter toil that had blemished them into this pathetic, contrasting ugliness.

As she gazed intently out of the window she remained quiescent, passive as her own work-worn hands, yet across her sensitive features a faint excitement quivered which betokened the inner agitation of her turbulently beating heart. There, she thought, was the Mains farm, its brown, furrowed fields lapped by the wind-beaten, crested waters of the Estuary, its stack yard a square, yellow patch against the iow, white- washed huddle of the homestead; there, too, was the weathered pile of the Linten Lighthouse, and, equally unchanged, the blue, massive outlines of the Rock itself; there, against the sky, the long, skeleton tracery of the Latta shipyards, and now, swinging into view, the sharp, stippled steeple of the Borough Hall. Affected by the touching familiarity of all that she saw, she considered how unaltered everything was, how permanent, secure and solid. It was she, Mary Brodie, who had changed, and she now longed wistfully to be as she had been when she had lived in these surroundings, before the branding iron of circumstance had set its seal upon her. As she meditated thus, with a sudden, wrenching pang like the tearing open of a wound, she observed the Levenford Cottage Hospital where for two months she had lain facing death, where, too, her infant child had died; and, at the sudden poignant reminder, the serenity of her countenance broke and though no tears flowed they had all been shed before her lips quivered painfully. She marked the window through which her fixed eyes had ceaselessly sought the sky, the gravel walk flanked by laurel bushes along which she had directed the first, flagging steps of her convalescence, the very gatepost to which she had then clung, fluttering and exhausted from the feebleness of her state. She willed the train to stop that she might linger with her memories, but it bore her quickly away from this sad reminder of the past and, circling the last bend, gave to her spasmodic, transient glimpses of Church Street, a line of shops, the Public Library, the Cross, then swept her into the station itself.

How small the platform seemed, with its diminutive waiting rooms and insignificant wooden ticket office, yet when she had once stood in this same station to take the train for Darroch she had, in the agitation of her adventure, trembled at its very magnitude; and, indeed, she trembled now as she realised that she must leave the solitary seclusion of her compartment and venture forth into the public gaze. She stood up firmly, gripping her portmanteau, and although a faint colour tinged her cheeks, she set her soft lips into the mould of fortitude and stepped bravely out upon the platform. She was back again in Levenford after four years!

To the porter who approached, she surrendered her bag with instructions that it should be delivered to her at the next round of the station van and, having given up her ticket, she descended the short flight of steps to the street and set out with a throbbing bosom for her home. If she had been beset by memories in the train, now they rushed in upon her with an overpowering force, and it seemed to her as if each step she took brought before her some fresh remembrance to further strain her already bursting heart. There was the Common, fringed in the distance by the Leven; here was the school she had attended as a child; and, as she passed the portals of the Public Library, still guarded by the same swing doors, she became aware that it was here, on this very spot, that she had first met Denis. The thought of Denis brought no pang, no bitterness, but now merely a sad regret, as though she felt herself no longer his beloved nor yet the victim of his love, but only the helpless puppet of an irresistible destiny.

While she proceeded along Railway Road she observed coming towards her a woman whom she had known in the days before her banishment and she settled herself for the wound of a sharp, contemptuous glance; but no glance came, no sharp wound, for the other drew near and passed her with the placid countenance of complete unrecognition. How much I must have changed, thought Mary sadly, as she entered Wellhall Road and, coming upon Doctor Renwick's house, she wondered with a curious detachment if he too might find her changed, should she ever encounter him. He had been so good to her, that even to pass this dwelling moved her strangely. While she did not consider the fact that he had saved her life, as though this were of slight importance, she remembered vividly the letters he had written her first when she had gone to London and later to inform her of her mother's illness and subsequently of her death all filled with a kind and unmistakable sympathy. She might never have returned to Levenford but for these letters, for, had she not received the second, she would not have written home and Nessie would never have known her address to send her that frantic appeal. Poor, frightened Nessie! Thoughts of her sister and of her father now invaded her, and as she drew near to her home, with the memory of the night on which she had left it stamped like an indelible background upon her mind, she became outwardly agitated; the calm, long-set tranquillity of her appearance was at last melted by the warm, surging currents set racing by the unwonted action of her fast beating heart.

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