"Ay, and she took a pickle out o' it," answered Brodie harshly. "Get away wi' ye! The sight o' your sour, graspin', avaricious face fair scunners me!" With whirling movements of his arms he herded them to the door. "Get away with ye a'; there's nothing for ye here. I'm sorry I let ye break bread in my house."
Mrs. Lumsden, almost in tears from rage and vexation, turned on the doorstep.
"We'll have the law on ye about it," she cried. "I'm not surprised that puir Margaret Lumsden withered out here. She was ower guid for ye, wi' your bold besoms. Ye've made a cryin' scandal out of the burial of the puir soul. Come awa' home, Weelum."
"That's right," shouted Brodie tauntingly, "take Weelum away hame to his bed. I'm not surprised he's so fond o' it, wi' such a tricksy ornament as yersel' below the blankets." He leered at her insultingly. "Ye're richt not to let him out it for a nicht, for if ye did ye might never get him back."
As she disappeared with the others, her head high, her colour flaming, he cried out after her:
"I'll not forget to send ye your flowers whenever ye require them."
But when he returned to the parlour his hard assumption of indifference had dropped from him and, wishing to be alone, in a different, quiet voice he bade them leave him. As they filed out he turned to Matthew and said to him meaningly:
"Away out and find work. I want no more of your useless, watery tear-bag nonsense. Get something to do. Ye'll not live off me much longer;" but as Nessie passed he patted her head and said gently:
"Don't greet any more, pettie; your father will take care of ye. Dry your eyes now, and run and take up a book or something. You needna worry. I'm goin' to look after you in future."
That, he considered, as he sat down again in the empty room, was the course towards which his life must immediately shape itself the vindication of himself through Nessie. She was his asset, clever yes, he told himself brilliant! He would nurse her, encourage her, thrust her forward to triumph after triumph until her name and his own should resound in the town. He saw in his colossal failure and in the recent misfortunes which had beset him only a temporary eclipse from which in time he must necessarily emerge. "Ye cannot keep a good man down," one of his frequently repeated maxims, occurred again to him comfortingly. He would be up again presently, more dominant than before, and in his own mind he considered it an almost masterly strategy to plan a return to his old, favoured position through Nessie. He heard in anticipation the name of Nessie Brodie upon every one's lips, became aware of himself sharing largely in the universal adulation. "There's been no holdin' him since his wife died," he heard them say; "she must have been a muckle hindrance to the man." How true that was! His main feeling, as he helped to lower the light coffin into its shallow trench, had been one of relief that he was at last free of a useless encumbrance, a drag upon both his patience and his purse. He remembered nothing in her favour, treasured nothing of her virtues, but dwelt only upon the weakness, the lack of physical attraction that she had manifested in her later years. No gentle sentiment, such as had faintly throbbed within him at her deathbed, no remembrance of the earlier days of their life together now stirred him; his memory was clouded like an overhung sky that refused to allow one single, relieving gleam to penetrate from the clearer air behind. He imagined that she had failed him in everything, in her companionship, in the oblation of her physical being, in the very geniture of her children. No credit was due to her for Nessie, whom he felt to be entirely of his substance, and such obituary as his consideration gave her was epitomised in the single word incompetent. As the irrevocable finality of her departure struck him with a sudden and forceful reality, a feeling of a strange emancipation came over him. The lightness of her restraint had been from its very feebleness galling to him. He was a young man yet, and virile, for whom many pleasures lay in store which might be tasted freely now that she was gone. His lower lip hung thickly forward as his thoughts dallied appreciatively upon Nancy, then roamed forward in anticipation amongst the lush, erotic pastures of his mind. Nancy must be always about him now she could remain in the house for good. There was nothing to prevent her being beside him, no possible objection to her serving him, cheering him and yes, a man must, after all, have a housekeeper!
Satisfied at this comforting decision, insensibly his meditations turned again upon his younger daughter. His mind, incapable of embracing any but one purpose at a time, pursued that purpose, when it had been adopted, with a relentless obstinacy; and now, he realised that in order to continue living in his house, to maintain Nessie and to educate her as he wished, he must quickly find some means of income. His lips tightened and he nodded his head profoundly, as he resolved to carry into effect, immediately, a plan which had for the last two days been maturing in his brain. He got up and entered the hall where he put on his hat, took his silk umbrella from the stand, and went slowly out of the house.
Outside it was cool and fresh, with a fine, impalpable rain soft and subtile as dew which misted his garments and touched his warm brow like a caress. As he filled his lungs with great draughts of the balmy, misty vapour, it felt good to him that he did not lie in a narrow, wooden box beneath four feet of dank earth, but walked in the air, invigorated, alive and free. Characteristically, in the constrained capacity of his intellect, the memory of his humiliation in business, even the final scene in the High Street when he had given that madly unrestrained exhibition, was now completely obliterated; his failure appeared to him in a different light; he was not crushed and beaten, but a gentlemanly victim of malicious circumstances. The ebullition of temper provoked by the Lumsdens had subsided and, his present mission filling him once more with a conscious dignity, he walked gravely through the streets, addressing no one, but
saluting seriously such of those he encountered as he felt to merit his recognition. He responded strongly to his own suggestion that, disencumbered of his wife, and with Nessie as the medium of his expression, a new and more important book of his life was beginning.
At the head of Church Street he turned at right angles and proceeded directly away from the High Street, towards the Newtown. Shops became infrequent; on his left lay a row of workmen's dwellings, mean houses which abutted, without gardens, directly upon the street, and upon his right a high stone wall ran continuously. Above this wall small, bristling forests of tall, branchless spars erected themselves, and from over its summit, carried on the salty breeze, a hundred graduations of noise reached his ears. Some few hundred yards along, he drew up opposite a block of buildings which, intersecting the smooth continuity of the lofty wall, fronted the street imposingly; there, opposite the main door, he paused. His appearance was that of one who studied carefully the inconspicuous brass plate before him the sign which said neatly above: Levenford Shipbuilding Yard and below: Latta & Co. but actually he was mustering all his forces to enter that doorway which confronted him. Now that he had arrived, an unusual vacillation possessed and weakened his purposeful determination; the sight, even, of the outer confines of the immense yard, the dim realisation of the immense wealth which it represented, impressed him, in his reduced financial situation, with a sensation of inferiority. Angrily he thrust this from him, assuring himself, in his own axiom, that it was the man, not the money that mattered, and, with a quick gesture, he swaggered his way through the imposing portals.
His precipitate entry carried him past the small, sliding window marked "Enquiries" without his observing it and immediately he became lost in a labyrinth of corridors. For some moments he moved about the corridors, blundering angrily like a trapped minotaur in a maze, until by chance he encountered a young man whom, front the short wooden pen that projected like a spit behind one ear, he correctly adjudged to be a clerk.
"I want to see Sir John Latta," he announced fiercely. He felt a fool in these corridors. "I want to see him at once."
The youth blenched at the august name. For him an impassable regiment of chief clerks, managers, heads of departments, and superintendents intervened upon his road of access to that supreme head.
"Have you an appointment?" he asked vaguely.
"No!" said Brodie, "I haven't."
"It's nothing to do with me, of course," replied the youth, disclaiming immediately all responsibility, "but you would have more chance if you had an appointment." He spoke the last word as though it were an emblem of high solemnity, like a key that was necessary to open a sacred door.
"Never mind your appointments. I must see him," cried Brodie, so fiercely that the young man felt compelled to offer another suggestion.
"I could see Mr. Sharp for you," he observed, mentioning his own particular demigod.
"Take me to him then," said Brodie impatiently, "and hurry up about it."
With surprising ease the youth threaded the corridors and, presenting him before Mr. Sharp with a few explanatory words, fled spontaneously, as though repudiating all consequences of his act.
Mr. Sharp was not sure, was, in fact, extremely doubtful of Sir John's ability to see any one to-day. The head of the firm was deeply engaged, had asked not to be disturbed, was shortly going out, and, in fact, unless the business was of the most important nature, Mr. Sharp was exceedingly distrustful of himself intruding upon Sir John with Mr. Brodie's name.
Brodie gazed at the other out of his small, angry eyes.
"Tell Sir John that James Brodie asks to see him," he exclaimed hotly. "He knows me well. He'll see me at once," Mr. Sharp departed in a huff but came back, after some time, to ask Mr. Brodie in a frigid tone to be seated and to say that Sir John would see him presently.
With a triumphant look at the other which said, "I told ye so, ye fool," Brodie sat down and waited, watching idly, as the moments passed, the hive of busy clerks that hummed around him, their activities controlled, apparently, by the waspish eye of Sharp. As the minutes dragged slowly on, whilst he cooled his heels, he reflected, in his suspense, that "presently" must mean a very considerable period, and the longer he waited the more his exultation faded, the more Mr. Sharp's obvious satisfaction increased; it was borne in on him that he could not enter Sir John's office in the easy fashion that Sir John entered his, that it was appreciably more difficult to interview the other here than it had been to accost him casually at the Cattle Show. A heavy depression settled upon him which was scarcely dispelled by the sudden, eventual summons to the office of the head of the firm.
Sir John Latta looked up quickly from his desk as Brodie was shown into the room and, silently indicating a chair, resumed his intent consideration of a plan that lay before him. Brodie lowered his ponderous bulk into the chair and glanced round the sumptuous room, observing the rich, teak panelling and softly tinted colours, the flowing marine paintings on the walls, the exquisite models
of ships upon their graceful pedestals; as his feet sank deeply into the many piles of the carpet and he viewed the buhl inlay of the desk and the gold cigar box upon it, his nostrils dilated slightly and his eye glistened with a deep sense of appreciation. "I like these things," his attitude seemed to say; "these are the manner of possessions that should be mine."
"Well, Brodie," said Sir John at last, but without looking up, "what is it?"
The other could scarcely have failed to observe the lack of warmth in the tone, but nevertheless he began eagerly:
"Sir John! I've come to ask ye for your advice. Ye're the one man in Levenford that I would approach like this. Ye understand me, and all that's to me, Sir John. I've felt that in the past, over and over again, and now I've come to ask your help."
Latta looked at him curiously.
"You are talking in riddles, Brodie," he retorted coldly, "and it is a form of speech that does not suit you. You are more suited to direct action than indirect speech;" then he added slowly: "and action does not apparently always become you."
"What do ye mean, Sir John?" blurted out Brodie. "Who has been speakin' of me behind my back?"
The other picked up a fine ivory ruler and, as he lightly tapped his desk with it, answered slowly:
"You are out of favour with me, Brodie. We cannot help but hear the news and bruit of the town at Levenford House and you have been making a fool of yourself or worse."
"Ye don't mean that nonsense about about skiting away the hats?"
Latta shook his head.
"That certainly was folly, but in you a comprehensible folly. There are other things you must know of. You have lost your wife and I believe you have lost your business. You have had dissappointments, so I- shall not say too much. Yet I hear bad reports of you. You know I never hit a man when he's down, but," he continued quietly, "I take interest in all our townspeople and I am sorry to hear ill things spoken even of the meanest labourer in my shipyards."
Brodie hung his head like a whipped schoolboy, wondering vaguely if it were Matthew's failure or the Winton Arms that lay in the background of Sir John's mind.
"You may have observed," continued Latta quietly, "that I have not patronised your establishment since the beginning of last year. That is because I heard then of an action of yours which I consider was both unjust and unmerciful. You behaved like a blackguard and a bully to your unfortunate daughter, Brodie, and though some might condone your act on grounds of outraged propriety, we can have nothing to do with you whilst you are under a stigma of this sort."
Brodie's hands clenched tightly and the frown deepened upon his pendent forehead. Latta, he thought bitterly, was the only person in Levenford who would have dared to address him like this, the only man, indeed, who could have uttered such words with impunity.
"I can do nothing," he said sulkily, restrained in his action only through a glimmering sense of his dependence upon the others good will. "It's all past and done with now."
"You can forgive her," replied Latta sternly. "You can promise me that she shall have refuge in your house if ever she might require it."
Brodie sat sullenly silent, his mind filled, not by Mary but, strangely, by the picture of Nessie. He must do something for her! It was, after all, easy for him to make an acquiescence of some description, and with his head still lowered and his eyes upon the carpet he blurted out,
"Very well, Sir John! It'll be as ye say."
Latta looked for a long time at the huge, lowering figure. He had at one time viewed Brodie, in the limited sphere of their mutual encounter, with the connoisseur's eye for the unusual; regarded him with appreciation as a magnificent mountain of manhood; smiled at his obvious conceit and tolerated, with a puzzled curiosity, his strange, bombastic and unfathomable allusions. He had observed him with the man of breeding's appreciation of a unique and eccentric specimen, but now he felt the other's presence strangely distasteful to him, thought him altered and debased, considered that some deeper explanation might exist of that bluff, yet pretentious assumption of dignity. Quickly he rejected the thought after all, the man had conceded his point.