"I'm not angry, woman," he said hoarsely. Then after a pause, with an effort, he added, "Ye maun lie still till we see what Doctor Lawrie can do for ye."
Immediately she flinched.
"Oh! No! No! Father," she cried, "It's not him I want. I like Doctor Renwick so much I feel he'll make me well. He's so kind and so clever. His medicine made me feel better at once."
He gritted his teeth impotently as her protests rang on endlessly. Previously he would have rammed his intention in her teeth and left her to swallow it as best she liked, but now, in the novelty of her condition, and indeed, of his, he knew not what to say. He resolved that she would have Lawrie, that he would send him in, but modifying his retort with an effort, he exclaimed:
"Well see then! Well see how ye get on."
Mrs. Brodie gazed at him doubtfully, feeling that if he took Renwick from her she would surely die. She had loved this doctor's serene assurance, had expanded under his unusual gentleness. Unconsciously she was drawn to him as the one who had attended her daughter, and he had already spoken to her of Mary in terms that paid tribute to the patience and fortitude of her child under the trials of an almost mortal illness. Now she sensed at once that her husband was antagonistic to her desire, but she knew better than to argue; hastily she sought to propitiate him.
"What are we goin' to do about you, James?" she ventured. "Ye must be looked after properly. You must have your comforts."
"Ill be all right," he managed to say. "The old lady will do her best."
"No! No!" she urged. "IVe been thinkin' out plans all morning. I must get up as soon as I'm able, but in the meantime, could we not get a girl in, some one who would get your meals as ye like them. I could tell her tell her just what to do how to make the broth as ye like it, and how to season your porridge, and the airin' o' your flannels and "
He interrupted her by a definite, intolerant shake of his head. Could she not realise that it cost money to keep a servant ? Did she think he was rolling in wealth? He wanted to say something crushing that would shut off her silly twaddle. "Does she think I'm a helpless wean, the way she's going on?" he asked himself. "Does she think the house couldna go on without her?" Yet he knew that if he opened his mouth to speak he would blunder into some blunt rejoinder the niceties of expression were beyond him so he closed his lips and maintained a chafing silence.
She looked at him closely, encouraged by his silence, wondering fearfully if she dared to venture the subject nearest her heart. His unaccustomed placidity made her brave and, with a sudden gasp, she exclaimed:
"James! To mind the house now could we not could we not have Mary back?"
He recoiled from her. His assumed serenity was not proof against this, and losing control of himself, he shouted:
"No! We will not. I warned ye not even to lift her name. She'll not come back here till she crawls on her bended knees. Me as’ her to come back! Never! Not even if ye lay on your deathbed."
The last word rang through the room like a trumpet call and slowly a frightened look came into Mamma's eyes.
"As you say, James," she trembled. "But please dinna mention that awfu' word. I'm not wantin' to die yet. I'm goin' to get better, ye ken. I'll be up soon."
Her optimism exasperated him. He did not realise that the habits of half a lifetime had ingrained in her the feeling that she must always exhibit in his presence this spurious cheerfulness, nor did he understand that the desire to get up arose from an ever pricking urge to fulfill the innumerable demands that harassed her.
"The doctor didna say much," she continued propitiatingly, "beyond that it was a kind of inflammation. When that goes down, I'm sure I'll get my strength up in no time. I cianna bear this lyin' in bed. I've got so many things to think of." She was worrying about the payment of her debt. "Just wee bits o' things that nobody would bother about but me," she added hastily, as if she feared he might read her mind.
He looked at her gloomily. The more she glossed over her illness the more he became convinced that she would not survive it; the more she spoke of the future the more futile she became in his eyes. Would she be as inept when confronted by death as she had been in the face of life? He tried desperately to find something to say; what could he say to this doomed but unconscious woman?
And now his manner began to puzzle her. At first she had assumed gratefully that his quiet had betokened a forbearance in the face of her sickness, a modification of the same feeling which made her move throughout the house on tiptoes when she had nursed him, on such rare occasions as he had been ill. But a curious quality in his regard now perturbed her, and suddenly she queried:
"The doctor didna say anything about me to you, did he? He didna tell you something that he keepit from me? He seemed a long time downstairs before I heard him drive away."
He looked at her stupidly. His mind seemed, from a long distance off, to consider her question slowly, detachedly, without succeeding in arriving at an appropriate answer.
"Tell me if he did, James," she cried apprehensively. "I would far rather know. Tell me." The whole of her appearance had altered, her demeanour, from being calm and sanguine, had become agitated, disturbed.
He had come into the room with no fixed motive as to how he should deal with her. He had no sympathy, no tact, and now no ingenuity to lie to her. He felt confused, trapped, like a blundering animal before the frail, raddled creature on the bed. His temper flared suddenly.
"What do I care what he thinks!" he found himself saying harshly. "A man like him would say ye were dyin' if ye had a toothache. He knows nothing less than nothing. Haven't I told ye I'm goin' to get Lawrie to ye!" His angry, ill-chosen words struck her like a thunderbolt. Instantly she knew, knew with a fearful conviction, that her illness was mortal. She shivered, and a film of fear clouded her eyes like a faint, shadowy harbinger of the last, opaque pellicle of dissolution.
"Did he say I was dying then?" she quavered.
He glared at her, furious at the position into which he had been forced. Angry words now poured from his mouth.
"Can ye not shut up about that runt?" he cried. "Ye wad think he was the Almighty to hear you. He doesna ken everything. If he canna cure ye, there's other doctors in Levenford! What's the use o' makin' such a fuss about it a'?"
"I see. I see now," she whispered. "I'll no' make any more fuss about it now." Quiescent upon the bed she gazed at him and behind him; her gaze seemed to transcend the limits of the narrow room and focus itself fearfully upon a remoteness beyond. After a long pause she said, as though to herself, "I'll not be muckle loss to you, James! I'm gey and worn out for you," Then she whispered faintly, "But, oh! Matt, my own son, how am I to leave you?"
Silently she turned to the wall and to the mystery of her thoughts, leaving him standing with a sullen, glouting brow, behind her. For a moment he looked lumpishly at her flaccid figure, then, without a word, he went heavily out of the room.
XII
A SUDDEN burst of vivid August sunshine, penetrating the diaphanous veil hung by the last drops of a passing shower, sprayed the High Street with a misty radiance, whilst the brisk breeze which had thrown the fleecy, wool-pack clouds from off the pathway of the sun, now moved the rain slowly onwards in a glow of golden haze.
"Sunny-shower! Sunny-shower!" chanted a group of boys, as they raced along the drying street on their way to bathe in the Leven.
"Look," cried one of them importantly, "a rainbow!" And he pointed upwards to a perfect arc which, like the thin beribboned handle of a lady's basket, spanned glitteringly the entire length of the street. Every one paused to look at the rainbow. They lifted their eyes above the drab level of the earth and gazed upwards towards the sky, nodded their heads, smiled cheerfully, exclaimed with delight, shouted to each other across the street.
"It's a braw sight!"
"Look at the bonnie colours!"
"It puts auld Couper's pole in the shade, richt enough."
The sudden, unexpected delight of the phenomenon cheered them, elevating their minds unconsciously to a plane that lay above the plodding commonplace of their existence, and, when they looked downwards again, the vision of that splendid, sparkling arch remained, inspiring them for the day before them.
Out of the Winton Arms into this bright sunshine came James Brodie. He saw no rainbow, but walked dourly, with his hat pulled forward, his head down, his hands deeply in his outside pockets, seeing nothing, and, though a dozen glances followed his progress, saluting no one. As he plodded massively, like a stallion, over, the crest of the street, he felt that "they" the peering inquisitive swine were looking at him with prying eyes; knew, though he ignored it, that he was the focus of their atention. For weeks past it had appeared to him that he and the moribund shop that he tenanted had been the nidus of a strange and unnatural attention in the Borough, that townspeople, some that he knew and some whom he had never seen before, strolled deliberately outside his business to stare openly, curiously, purposely, into the depths within. From the inner obscurity he imagined that these empty, prying glance mocked him; he had cried out to himself, "Let them look then, the glaikit swine! Let them gape at me for all they're worth. I'll give them something to glower about." Did they guess, he now asked himself bitterly, as he strode along, that he had been celebrating celebrating the last day in his business? Did they know that, with a
ferocious humour, he had just now swallowed a liberal toast to the wreck of his affairs? He smiled grimly to think that to-day he ceased to be a hatter, that shortly he would walk out of his office for the last time and bang the door behind him finally and irrevocably. Paxton, from across the road, whispered to his neighbour:
"Look, man, quick, there's Brodie." And together they stared at the strong figure on the opposite pavement. "Man! I'm sorry for him somehow," continued Paxton; "his comedown doesna fit him weel."
"Na!" agreed the other, "He's the wrang man to be ruined."
"For a' his strength and power," resumed Paxton, "there's something blunderin' and helpless about him. It's been a fearfu' blow to him. Do ye mark how his shoulders have bowed, as if he had a load on his back."
His neighbour shook his head.
"I canna see it like that! He's been workin 1 for this for a lang, kag time. What I canna stand about the man is his black, veecious pride that grows in spite o' a' things. It's like a disease that gets waur and waur, and the source o't is so downright senseless. If he could but see himself now, as others see him, it micht humble him a wee."
Paxton looked at the other peculiarly.
"I wouldna talk like that about him," he said slowly; "it's a chancy thing even to whisper like that about James Brodie, and at this time more than ordinar'. If he heard ye he would turn on ye and rend ye."
"He's not listenin' to us," replied the other, a trifle uncomfortably; then he added, "He has drink in him again, by the look o' him. Adversity micht bring some men to their senses but it's drivin' him the other way round."
They both turned again and glanced at the slowly retreating figure. After a pause Paxton said: