Now it gave him a saturnine pleasure to see Nancy enter briskly with cake, biscuits and wine and hand them around. He was his own man again, and it appeared a delicious stroke of satire for him to have her enter his house the moment his wife's body had been carried out; the two women the dead and the quick had, so to speak, passed each other at the gate; his eyes met hers in a glow of hidden buffoonery.
"Go ahead, Matt," he jeered significantly at his son, as Nancy handed the latter wine, with a pertly conscious air. "Take up a glass. It'll do ye good after all your greetin'. You'll be quite safe. I'm here to see it doesna fly to your head." He watched his son's trembling hand with disgust. Matt had again disgraced him by breaking down abjectly at the graveside, snivelling and whimpering before these relations of Mamma's and grovelling hysterically on his knees as the first spadeful of earth clumped heavily upon the coffin.
"Nae wonder he's upset," said Janet Lumsden, in a kindly voice. She was a fat, comfortable woman with a high, amiable bosom protruding above the upper edge of her ill-fitting corsets. Now she looked around the assembly and added agreeably, " 'Twas a merciful release, though, I'm led to believe. She'll be happier where she is now, I'll warrant."
" 'Tis a pity the puir thing wasna allowed a wreath or two," said Mrs. William Lumsden, with a sniff and a toss of her head. Her lips were tight and her mouth downturned beneath her long, sharp, penetrating nose; as she helped herself from the tray she looked intently at Nancy, then looked away again with a slow and upward twist of her head. "A funeral is never the same without flowers," she added firmly.
"Ay, they're sort o' comfortin' like," said Janet Lumsden placatingly. "They big lilies are bonnie."
"I had never been to a burial before, without flowers," replied Mrs. Lumsden acrimoniously. "The last interment I attended there was a full, open carriage of flowers, forbye what covered the coffin."
Brodie looked at her steadily.
"Weel, ma'am," he said politely, "I hope yell have a' the blossoms ye require when ye go to yer ain last repose."
The other looked along her nose at him doubtfully, not knowing exactly whether to accept the remark as a compliment or an insult; then, in her uncertainty, she turned commandingly to her husband for support. He, a small wiry man, uncomfortable in his stiff, shiny black suit, his starched dickey and tight "made" tie, magnificent, yet none the less still smelling of the stable, interpreted the familiar look and dutifully began:
"Flowers gang well at a funeral it's a matter of opinion, no doubt, but I would say they were a consolation to the bereaved. But the strangest thing to my mind is that they should gang well with a weddin' too. It's a fair mystery to me how they should suit such opposite ceremonies." He cleared his throat and looked sociably at Brodie. "Ye ken I've been to many a funeral ay, and to many a weddin' too. Ance I went as far as forty miles away from hame, but would ye believe me, man," he concluded triumphantly, "for thirty- two years I havena slept a nicht out o' ma ain bed."
"Indeed," said Brodie curtly, "I'm not interested."
At this rudeness there was an uncomfortable pause, a silence punctuated only by a small residual sob from the red-eyed Nessie. The two groups looked at each other distrustfully, like strangers on opposite sides of a railway compartment.
"It's a gey appropriate day for a funeral, anyway," said Lumsden at last defiantly, looking out at the drizzling rain; and at his remark a low conversation amongst the three visitors, and confined exclusively to them, again recommenced and slowly gained impetus.
"Ay! It's miserable enough for onything here."
"Did ye mark how heavy the rain cam' on at the graveside whenever the cords were lowered?"
" Tis remarkable to me that the meenister wouldna come back to the house to gie us a few words."
"He'll have his reasons, I have nae doubt."
"What he did say at the grave's heid he said unco' weel, onyway. It's a pity she couldna have heard it hersel', puir body."
"What was't he said, 'a loyal wife and a devoted mother,' wasn't no'?"
They looked out of the corners of their eyes at Brodie as though expecting him to confirm decently this last tribute, but he seemed not to have heard them and now gazed broodingly away from them out of the window. And now, seeing Brodie's apparent inattention, they grew bolder.
"I wad like to have seen the puir thing again, but I had the surprise o' my life when I heard she had been screwed down before we arrived."
"She must have altered sadly wi' sicca trouble, ay and a' the worry she cam' through."
"She was a bricht, lively kimmer in her young days. She had a laugh like the song o' a mavis."
"She was a' that," said Janet at last, with a reproachful look at the figure by the window, implying by her words, "She was too good for you."
There was a moment's pause, then, with a guarded look at Nessie that encompassed her blue serge dress, Mrs. Lumsden murmured:
"It fair affronts me to see that puir child without the decent mournin's to her back. It's nothing short of shameful."
" 'Twas the sma', sma' funeral that surprised me," returned Janet. "Only the twa carriages and not a single body frae the town."
He heard them, actually he had listened to every word only the heedlessness of his embittered humour had allowed them to proceed but now he turned to them coarsely.
" Twas my express wish that the funeral should be private and as quiet as might be. Did ye wish the town band out for her, and free whisky and a bonfire?"
They were frankly shocked at such brutality, drew more closely together in their resentment, began to think of leaving.
"Weelum! Do ye know ony where in Levenford we're likely to be able to get our tea before the train goes?" said Mrs. Lumsden, as an indication of departure, in a trembling but rancorous tone. She had expected, instead of this thin, sour wine and bought seed cake, a lavish display of hot and cold cooked meats, baked pastries, scones, tea bread, and other appropriate delicacies; coming from a distant village in Ayrshire they knew nothing of Brodie's failure and thought him well able to provide a more worthy and substantial repast than that of which they were now partaking.
"Will ye no' have another biscuit then, if ye're hungry?" said old Grandma Brodie, with a slight titter "they're Deesides I can recommend them." The wine was like nectar to her unaccustomed palate and she had partaken freely of it, so that a faint flush marked the yellow, wrinkled skin over her high cheek bones; she was enjoying the occasion immensely, making high festival of the return to earth of the poor remains of Margaret Brodie. "Have a wee drap mair wine, will ye not?"
"Thank ye! No!" said Mrs. Lumsden, compressing her mouth superciliously into the smallest possible compass and issuing her vords disdainfully from the diminutive aperture. "I'll not indulge, if ye don't mind. I'm not addicted, and besides I couldna fancy that vhat you're drinkin'. Do ye know," she continued, drawing on her lack kid glove, "that's a bold-looking quean ye have about the house it a time like this. Have ye had her long?"
As Grandma Brodie made to answer, a polite hiccough disturbed her.
"I dinna ken her," she replied confusedly; "she's juist come in low. 'Twas James sent her in to gie me a haund."
Mrs. Lumsden exchanged a significant glance with her cousin by narriage. Each nodded her head with a slight downward gesture of disparagement, as though to say, "Just what we thought," and both turned ostentatiously compassionate eyes upon Nessie.
"What in the world will ye do without your mother, dearie?" renarked one.
"Ye maun come doun to us, child, for a spell," said the other. Ye would like to play about the farm, would ye not?"
"I can look after Nessie," inserted Brodie icily; "she needs neitheir our help nor your pity. When ye do hear o' her she'll be shapin' for something that you and yours could never attain."
As Nancy entered the room to collect the glasses, he continued:
"Here, Nancy! These two ladies have just remarked that you're brazen was it quean ye said, leddies ay, a brazen quean. In eturn for this good opinion, would ye mind showin' them out o' tie house and I suppose this bit gentleman they've brocht wi’ ‘hem better go too."
Nancy tossed her head pertly.
"If it was my house," she said, with a bold look at Brodie, "they yould never have been in it."
The two women, scandalised, stood up.
"The language and the behaviour! In front of the child too," gasped Janet, on her way to the door, "and at such a time as this."
Mrs. Lumsden, equally shocked, but less intimidated, drew herself ip to her tall, angular height and threw her head back defiantly.
"I've been insulted," she shrilled from between thin, compressed lips, "in a house where I came a long and expensive journey to bring comfort. I'm goin', oh! indeed yes, I'm goin'; nothing would stop me, but," she added emphatically, "before I leave, I want to know what has been left to our side o' the family by my puir cousin."
Brodie laughed shortly in her face.
"Indeed now! And what had she to leave, pray?"