"She told a wicked untruth then. Your brother resigned his position like a gentleman."
"When will he be back, Mamma ? Will he bring me anything, do you think? Will he bring me a monkey and a parrot? I would like a parrot better than a monkey. A monkey would scratch me but a parrot would talk to me and say, 'Pretty Polly', and that's more than a canary can do, isn't it?" She paused meditatively, then resumed,
"No; I'll not have that. I would have to clean its cage. I think I would like a pair of honky-tonky, Morocco slippers or or a bonnie, wee string o' coral beads. Will ye tell him, Mamma?"
"Be quiet, girl! How can I write to him when he's on his way home? Besides, Matt has more to think of than beads for you. You'll see him soon enough."
"Will he be here soon, then?"
"You'll know all in good time, Nessie." Then, voicing her own hopes, she added, "It might be in about ten days, if he left soon after his letter."
"Ten days! That's fine," Nessie chanted, and began to skip about with a more lively air. "I'll maybe have some fun when Matt comes back, forbye the wee string o' beads. It's been terrible since "
She stopped abruptly against the blank, forbidding wall of a subject absolutely interdicted, looked timidly at her mother, paused for a moment in confusion, then, as she saw that she was not to be reprimanded, began again, by a childish association of ideas, "What does it mean to be in deep water, Mamma?"
"What are ye talkin' about now, Nessie. Ye run on like a spoutin' waterfall. Can ye not let me get my work done!"
"One of the girls in the class asked if my father could swim, because she heard her father sayin' that James Brodie was gettin' into deep water."
"Will you stop tormentin' me with your silly nonsense, Nessie," cried Mamma. "Your father can look after himself without your help. It's an impertinence for his name to be lifted like that." Nevertheless, the childish question touched her with a sharp, sudden misgiving, and, as she picked up a duster and went out of the kitchen, she wondered vaguely if there was any intrinsic reason for the
exacerbation of Brodie's meanness with her, for the whittling and paring of her house-keeping allowance which had for months past made it impossible for her to make ends meet.
"Oh! It's not me, Mamma," replied Nessie, narrowing her small mouth virtuously and following her mother into the parlour. "It's what the other girls in the class say. You would think there was something funny about us the way they go on. Ym better than them, amn't I, Mamma? My father could beat all theirs tied together."
"Your father's a man in a million." It cost Mrs. Brodie an effort to say these words, but she uttered them heroically, unconscious of the ambiguous nature of her phrase, striving only to maintain the best traditions of the house. "Ye must never listen to a thing against him. Folks say bitter things when they're jealous o' a man."
"They're just a lot of cheeky, big things. I'm going to tell the teacher if they say another word about us," concluded Nessie, pressing her nose against the window like a small blob of putty. "It's still raining, coming down heavy as heavy hang it!"
"Nessie! Don't say hang it! It's not right. You're not to use bad words," reprimanded Mamma, interrupting her polishing of the brass candlesticks on the walnut front of the piano. She would take no chances with Nessie! The first sign of error must be corrected!
"Remember, now, or I'll tell your father," she threatened, addressing her heated face again towards the piano which, open for the nonce, smiled at her in fatuous agreement, its exposed keys grinning towards her like an enormous set of false teeth.
"I wanted to go out and play that was all," came the plaint from the window, "but there's puddles everywhere, even if it does go off. I've got to work so hard at these old lessons through the week, it's a shame if a girl can't get a little bit of playtime on a Saturday."
Disconsolately, she continued to view the dismal prospect of the wet December landscape, the wet roadway, the rain-drenched fields, the still, dripping branches of the birches opposite, the melancholy lack of movement save for the steady fall of water. But her facile prattle did not cease for long and, despite the depressing scene, in a moment she had recommenced:
"There's a sparrow sittin' on our cannon. Oh! There's another that's two wee sparrows cowriein' down in the rain on our brass cannon. What do we keep a cannon like that for? It doesn't shoot and it always needs cleanin'. I've never noticed how funny it looked till the now. Mamma!" she pestered insistently. "What is it there for? Tell me."
"A kind of ornament to set off the house, I suppose that was your father's idea," came the harassed voice from the back of the piano.
"It would have been better to have had a plot of pansies, or a wee monkey-puzzle tree like Jenny Paxton has in front o' her house," replied Nessie; then, continuing slowly, voicing her idle thoughts aloud, she chattered on: "There's not a breath in these trees across the fields. They're standin' like statues in the rain. 'Rain, rain, go to Spain! Never more come back again!' That'll not put it away, though. That's only a story like Santa Claus. He's got a white beard. What is a Spaniard like, I wonder. Has he a black face ? The capital of Spain is Madrid. Correct. Up to the top of the class, Nessie Brodie. Good for you! That'll please Father. What a day for a Saturday holiday. Here am I doin' geography on it. Not a body on the street. No! I'm wrong, I believe there's a man. He's comin' up the road.
It's not a man, it's a telegraph boy!" It was a rich and unusual discovery in the dull, uninteresting prospect, and she fastened upon it delightedly. "Mamma! Mamma! somebody's going to get a telegram.
I see the boy in the road. He's comin' right up here. Oh! Look, look!" she called out in a rapturous effervescence of expectation and excitement. "He's comin' into our house!"
Mrs. Brodie dropped her duster and flew to the window, through which she saw the boy coming up the steps, and immediately she heard the door-bell peal with such violence that it sounded in her startled ears like a sound of alarm. She stood quite still. She feared telegrams with a dreadful intensity as the harbingers of swift, unexpected calamity; they spoke not to her of happy births or joyous weddings but of the sudden, unconceived disaster of death. As she stood motionless a second, ominous ring of the bell fell upon her ears, and, as though the powerful pull tugged at the cords of her memory, reminded her of that previous solitary occasion in her life when she had received a telegram, the message which had announced the death of her mother. Without looking at Nessie she said, hoarsely,
"Go to the door and see what it is."
Yet when Nessie, bubbling with anticipation, had run out of the room, she sought to calm herself; she reflected that perhaps the messenger had come only to collect information regarding an unknown name or an indecipherable address, as, living in the last house in the road, such inquiries were not infrequently addressed to them.
She strained her hearing to the utmost, essaying to catch some hopeful sounds that might indicate a colloquy at the door, but vainly, for immediately Nessie was back, waving an orange slip with all the triumph of her own personal discovery.
"It's for you, Mamma," she announced breathlessly; "and is there an answer?"
Mamma took the telegram into her hand as though she touched a poisonous viper and, turning it over fearfully, inspected it with the profound horror with which she might have viewed this dangerous reptile. "I can't FZC without my glasses," she murmured, afraid to open the telegram and trying feebly to gain time.
In a flash Nessie had gone and in a flash returned, bearing the steel-rimmed spectacles. "Here you are, Mamma! Now you'll manage to read it. Open it."
Mrs. Brodie slowly put on her glasses, again looked timorously at the dreadful thing in her hand and, turning to Nessie in a panic of indecision and fear, faltered:
"Perhaps I better leave it to your father. It mightna be my place to open a thing like this. It's a job for your father, is't not, dear?"
"Oh, come on, Mamma, open it," urged Nessie impatiently. "It's addressed to you and the boy's waiting for the answer."
Mrs. Brodie opened the envelope with stiff, ungainly fingers, tremblingly extracted the inner slip, unfolded it, and looked at it. For a long time she looked at it, as though it had contained, not nine words, but a message so lengthy and complicated that it passed her comprehension. As she gazed, gradually her face became dead, like grey ashes, and seemed to shrink into a smaller and more scanty compass; her features became pinched and drawn, as though some sudden icy blast had extinguished the feeble glow which animated them and frozen them into a strange, unnatural immobility.
"What is it, Mamma?" asked Nessie, on her tiptoes with curiosity.
"Nothing," repeated Mrs. Brodie in a dull, mechanical voice. She sat down limply upon the sofa with the rustling slip of paper fluttering between her shaking fingers.
Outside in the porch, the waiting boy, who had for some moments been moving impatiently, now began to whistle restlessly and to kick his toes noisily against the step, thus informing them in his own fashion that it was no part of his duty to wait upon this doorstep for the duration of an entire day.
"Do you want the boy to wait for an answer?" continued Nessie curiously, observing but not fully comprehending her mother's strained immobility.
"No answer," automatically replied Mamma.
At Nessie's injunction the telegraph boy departed, still whistling loudly and unconcernedly, recognising his importance as the instrument of destiny, yet totally unmoved by the ravages of his missive of destruction.
Nessic came back to the parlour and, regarding her mother, thought her appearance ever more strange, seemed with a more prolonged scrutiny hardly to recognize her.
"What's the matter with you, Mamma? You look so white." She touched her mother's cheek lightly; felt it, under her warm fingers, to be cold and stiff as clay; then, with an uncanny intuition, she continued:
"Was it something about Matt in the telegram?"
At the name of her son Mrs. Brodie returned from her frigid rigidity into the conscious world. Had she been alone she would have melted into an abandoned flood of tears, but in Nessie's presence her weak spirit made a powerful effort to check the sobs rising in her throat and, struggling for control, she endeavoured to think with all the forces of her benumbed intellect. Urged by the strongest motive in nature to an effort of mind and will which would nominally
have been far beyond her, she turned with a sudden movement to the child.
"Nessie," she breathed, "go up and see what Grandma's doing. Don't mention this wire, but try and find out if she heard the bell. You'll do that for Mamma, won't you, dear?"
With the quick perception that was the basis of her smartness Nessie understood exactly what her mother required of her, and embracing gleefully the task, which was that kind of confidential mission she adored to perform, she nodded her head twice, slowly, understandingly, and strolled casually out of the room.
When her daughter had gone, Mrs. Brodie unrolled the ball into which the telegram had been crumpled within her contracted fingers, and although the message had seared itself upon her memory, unconsciously she gazed at it again, whilst her quivering lips slowly framed each individual word "Wire my forty pounds Poste Restante Marseilles immediately. Matt."