"Soap! I was just thinkin' about soap."
"Indeed, now; ye were thinkin' about soap!" he mimicked. "That's very appropriate. Was it a wash that ye wer wantin'? For if that's the case, I can assure ye that it's high time ye had one."
"Na, na," she giggled, "it's no' that. It just flashed into my heid what the wives used to do in my young days, when they wanted a drop o' speerits without the guid-man knowin' about it. They they wad go to the village grocer's for their gill and get it marked to the book as soap. Soap!" She was quite overcome by her enjoyment of this delicious subtlety and again buried her face in her hands; but she looked up after a moment to add, "Not that I ever did a thing like that! No! I was aye respectable and could scrub the house without that kind of cleanser!"
"That's right! Blow your own trumpet," he sneered. "Let us know what a paragon o' virtue you were. I'm listenin'."
"Ay! I did weel in these days," she continued reminiscently, losing, in the present fatuity of her mind, all awe of her son, "and I had muckle to put up wi'. Your father was as like you are now as twa peas in a pod. The same grand way wi' him and as touchy as gunpowder. Many the night he would come in and let fly at me if things werna to his taste. But I stood up to him in a' his rages! I'm pleased to think on that." She paused, her look becoming distant. "I can see it like it was yesterday. Man, he was proud, proud as Lucifer."
"And had he not reason to be proud?" he exclaimed harshly, becoming aware that the drink was not taking her the way he had expected, that she was ceasing to amuse him. "Do ye not know the stock he came from?"
"Oh, ay, I kenned a' about that, lang syne," she tittered spitefully, filled by a heady, rancorous imprudence. "He had the airs o' a duke, wi' his hand me this and reach me that, and his fine clothes, and his talk o' his forbears and what his rights were if he but had them. Oh! He was aye splorin' about his far back connection wi' the Wintons. But I often wonder if he believed it hisself. There's a' kinds o' connections," she sniggered, "and 'tis my belief that the lang syne connection was on the wrang side o' the blanket."
He glared at her, unable to believe his ears, then finding his tongue, he shouted:
"Silence! Silence, ye auld bitch! Who are you to talk like that about the Brodies? Ye bear the name yerser now. How dare ye run it down before me," and he grasped the neck of the bottle as though to hurl it at her.
"Now, now, Jims," she drivelled, quite unperturbed, raising one uncertain, protesting hand, "ye mustna be unreasonable. I'm not the kind o' bird that files its ain nest this is a' atween the family, so to speak and ye surely know it was a' gone intill and found out that the whole trouble began lang, lang syne, wi' an under-the-sky affair atween Janet Dreghorn, that was the heid gardener's daughter, and young Robert Brodie that cam' to the title mony years after. Na! Na! They were never bound by ony tie o' wedlock."
"Shut your blatterin' mouth," he roared at her. "If ye don't, I'll tear the dirty tongue out o' it. You would sit there and miscall my name like that! What do you think ye are? Ye were lucky my father married you. You you " He stammered, his rage choking him, his face twitching as he looked at her senseless, shrunken features. She was now completely intoxicated, and unconscious equally of his rage and of Nessie's frightened stare, continued:
"Lucky!" she babbled, with a drunken smirk, "maybe I was and maybe I wasna, but if ye kenned the ins and outs o' it all, ye might think that ye were lucky yoursel'!" She broke into peals of shrill laughter, when suddenly her false teeth, never at any time secure and now dislodged from her palate by her moist exuberance, protruded from between her lips like the teeth of a neighing horse, and impelled by a last uncontrollable spasm of mirth, shot out of her mouth and shattered themselves upon the floor. It was, in a fashion, a fortunate diversion, for otherwise he must certainly have struck her, but now they both gazed at the detached and scattered dentures that lay between them like blanched and scattered almonds, she staring with collapsed grotesque cheeks and shrunken, unrecognisable visage, he with a muddled amazement.
"They're lyin' before ye like pearls before swine," he exclaimed at last. "It serves ye right for your blasted impudence."
"My guid false teeth!" she moaned, sobered by her loss, yet articulating with difficulty, "that I've had for forty years! They were that strong too, with the spring atween them. What will I do now? I canna eat. I can hardly speak."
"That'll be a good job, then," he snarled at her, "if it keeps you from gabblin' with your lyin' tongue. It serves you right."
"They'll not mend," she whined, "Ye maun get me a new set." Her forlorn eyes were still fixed upon the floor. "I canna just suck at my meat. Ye don't get the good out o' it that way. Say you'll get me another double set, James."
"Ye can whistle for that," he retorted. "What good would new teeth be to an auld deein' thing like you? You're not goin' to last that much longer. Just look on it as a judgment on ye."
At his words she began to whimper, wringing her bony hands together and mumbling incoherently, "What a to do! I'll never get ower it. What's to become o’ me that's had them so lang. It was a' the fault o' the speerits. I could aye manage them fine. It'll mean the end o' me."
He regarded her ludicrous, whining figure with a scowl, then, moving his glance, he suddenly observed the drawn face of Nessie, watching the scene with a frightened yet fixed attention.
"What are you playin' at next?" he growled at her, his mood changed by his mother's recent remarks. "Can ye not get on with your own work ? You'll get a bra w lot done with that glaikit look about you. What's the matter with ye?"
"I can't get on very well with the noise, Father," she replied timidly, lowering her eyes; "it distracts my attention. It's not easy for me to work when there's talking."
"So that's it!" he replied. "Well! There's plenty of room in the house now. If the kitchen isn't good enough for you, we'll put ye in the parlour. You'll not hear a sound there. Then ye'll have no excuse for idlin'." He got up and, before she could reply, advanced with a slight lurch to the table where he swept her books into one disordered heap; clutching this between his two enormous hands,
he turned and stalked off, crying, "Come on. Into the parlour with ye. The best room in the house for my Nessie. You'll work in peace there and work hard too. If ye can't study in the kitchen you'll gang into the parlour every night."
Obediently she arose and followed him into the cold, musty room where, after stumbling about in the darkness, he flung her books upon the table and at length succeeded in lighting the gas. The pale light gleamed from its frosted globe upon the chilly, uncovered mahogany table, the empty, unused fireplace, upon all the cold discomfort of the neglected, dust-shrouded chamber and lit up finally the overbearing figure of Brodie and the shrinking form of the child.
"There you are now," he cried largely, his good humour partially restored. "Everything's ready and to your hand. Draw up your chair and begin. Don't say that I havena helped ye." He put two fingers upon the pile of books and spread them widely over the surface of the table, disarranging them still more and losing all her places. "See! There's plenty o' room for a' your orders. Can ye not say thank ye?"
"Thank you. Father," she murmured submissively.
He watched her with a complacent eye whilst she sat down and bent her thin shoulders in a pretence of study, then he tiptoed with heavy, exaggerated caution from the room, protruding his head around the door as he went out to say:
"I'll be back in a minute to see how you're gettin' on." As he returned to the kitchen, he told himself that he had done the right thing by Nessie, that he was the one to make her get on, and in a mood of self-congratulation he sat down again in his chair and in reward poured himself out another glass of whiskey. Only then did he become aware of his mother, still sitting motionless, stupid, like a bereaved woman, with a hollow look, as if some power had sucked her empty.
"Are ye still here?'' he shot at her. "You're far too quiet for one that had such a glib tongue in her head a minute ago. When I didna hear ye, I thought ye would be away to sleep off your exertions. Go on get away now, then. Away ye go; I'm sick of the look o' ye." And, as she was slow in moving, he shouted, "Quick! out of my sight."
While he had been in the parlour she had collected the wreckage of her dentures from the floor, and now, clutching these fragments tightly in her hand, she faded soberly from the room, her bowed, dejected carriage contrasting sadly with the gay eagerness with which she had rushed for the tumbler towards her own undoing.
Alone and untrammelled in the kitchen, Brodie addressed himself more assiduously to the bottle, washing away the unpleasant memory of her presence and the bitter recollections occasioned by her remarks. He knew, well, that unhappy truth lay at the foundation of her senile yet disconcerting reminiscences but now, as always, he chose to blind himself to their accuracy a process never difficult to his obtuse and lumbering mind and one now rendered easier than ever by the liberality of his potations. Soon he had forgotten the entire incident, except for the ludicrous remembrance of her sudden and embarrassing edentation, and reclining at ease in his chair and toping steadily, he mounted into the higher altitudes of intoxication. With the gradual elevation of his spirits he began to regret his solitary condition and with an impatient, swinging foot and eager glances at the clock, he sought to anticipate the return of Nancy. But it was only nine o'clock; he knew that she would not arrive before ten, and, as the hands moved with a regular and monotonous slowness despite his efforts to expedite their progress, he got up and began to walk about the room. A wild idea of promenading the streets of the town, of bursting in upon the assembly at the club and disconcerting them with a few, lurid and well-chosen words presented itself to him, but although he played with the appealing notion, he finally rejected it on the grounds that his Nancy would not approve. He had now lost his morose and gloomy oppression and, striding clumsily within the confines of the kitchen, his hair ruffled, his wrinkled clothes hanging more awkwardly upon him, his hands dangling like inactive flails, he felt he wanted to express the exultation of his mood in some definite and appropriate action. His past was for the moment forgotten and his outlook bounded only by the compass of the next few hours; he was himself again, yet from time to time, when the sound of his steps rang too loudly in his ears, he would pause with a profound concern for his student next door and, admonishing himself with a shake of his head, resume his pacing more silently, with a greater and more exaggerated caution.
At length the limits of the room became inadequate, failed to contain him. Insensibly he passed out of the doorway and began to wander about the house. He ascended the stairs, moved across the top landing, opened the door of his mother's room and flung an objectionable remark at her, chuckled to himself, entered Matt's bedroom, where he viewed with disgust the array of toilet lotions and hair pomades, and, having lit every gas jet so that the house blazed with light, finally he stood within his own room. Here, drawn by a hidden force, he went slowly forward to the chest of drawers where Nancy kept her clothing and, a sly leer mingling with his shamed consciousness, he commenced to pull out and examine the fine embroidered garments which she had bought with the money he had given her. He handled the smooth lace-edged vestments, touched soft lawn, fingered thin cambric, held the long empty stockings in his ponderous grasp, and his mouth curved with an upward slant while he invested the fragrant garments with the person of their owner. His shot eye, fixed upon the whiteness before him, saw actually the alabaster of her body, always to him a source of wonder and delight, and to his mind the texture of the stuff he handled seemed to have absorbed its colour from contact with that milky skin. As he remained there, displaying with stretched arms and for his sole enjoyment these flimsy articles of finery, he looked like some old and uncouth satyr who, stumbling upon the shed raiment of a nymph, had seized upon it and now, by contemplation, whetted his worn fancy capriciously.
At length he closed the drawers by a pressure of his knee and glancing sideways as he walked, moved stealthily from the room, shutting the door silently behind him. Outside, it was as though he had accomplished successfully and without detection some secret enterprise, for his shamed slyness dropped from him, he rubbed his hands noisily together, puffed out his cheeks, and heavily descended
the stairs. In the hall he opened the parlour door and cried, with a facetious assumption of gravity:
"Can I come in, ma'am? Or are ye not at home?" Then without waiting for the reply, which indeed she did not utter, he entered the parlour, saying in the same manner, "I've been round my house to see that everything's in order, so there'll be no burglars to trouble ye to-night. Lights in all the windows! A fine splore o' illumination to show a' the rotten swine that we're gay and bricht in the Brodie house." She did not in the least understand whar he meant but watched him with her blue, placating eyes that now seemed to be enlarged, to stand out from her cold, stiff face. With arms crossed and shivering, her thin-stockinged legs curled under her for warmth, having lost all sensation but that of numbness in her feet and hand and, her impressionable mind stamped by the scene she had witnessed in the kitchen, having failed completely to make headway with her study, she now regarded him fearfully.
"How are ye gettin' on?" he continued, looking at her closely. "Have ye enough quietness here to suit you? What have ye done since ye came in?"
She started guiltily, knowing that she had done nothing, unable to conceal anything from him.
"I haven't got on very well, Father," she replied humbly. "It's so terribly cold in here."
"What! Ye havena got on well and me that's been keepin' as quiet, as quiet for ye. What are ye thinkin' of?"
"It's the cold room.' she repeated again. "I think it must be freezing outside."
"The room!" he cried, raising his brows with a tipsy gravity. "Did ye not beg and beseech me to bring ye in here? Did I not carry in your books in my own hands, and light the gas for ye, and set you down to it? Ye wanted in here and now you turn on me and complain!" Here his flushed face indicated an aggrieved and exaggerated disapproval. "Not got on well, forsooth! Ye better get a bend on and look sharp about it."
"If there had been a fire!" she ventured diffidently, observing now that he was not in his severe vein towards her. "I'm all goose flesh and shivering."
Her words penetrated, struck some responsive chord in his soaked brain, for he started and, with a complete change of manner, cried with profuse pathos:
"My Nessie shiverin'! Here am I as warm as toast and my own, wee lassie freezin' and wantin' a fire! And what for no? It's reasonable. It's more than reasonable. Ye shall have a fire this minute, if I've got to get it with my own hands. Sit still now and wait and see what your father'll do for ye." He held up an admonishing finger to bind her to her seat and, moving un wieldily out of the room and into the cellar that adjoined the scullery, he fumbled in the dark amidst the coal and finally secured what he sought a long, iron shovel. Then, brandishing this like a trophy, he advanced to the kitchen fire and knocked down the front bars of the grate; thrusting the shovel under the glowing coals, he secured a flaming heap of red-hot cinders which he bore triumphantly back to the parlour, leaving a smoky trail behind him. Flinging the burning embers into the cold fireplace he cried, in a knowing voice, "Wait a minute! Just wait a minute! Ye ha vena seen it a' yet", and again disappeared, to return immediately with a huge bundle of sticks in one hand and the shovel, replenished this time with coal, in the other. Kneeling down clumsily, he laid the sticks upon the cinders and lying flat on his stomach, blew them stertorously until they blazed to his satisfaction. With a grunt he now raised himself and sitting within the confines of the hearth like a playful bull within its stall, he fed the flames sedulously with coal so that he achieved, eventually, a high crackling pyramid of fire. With both hands and one full glowing cheek grimed by smoke and coal dust, and his knees somewhat soiled by soot, he nevertheless surveyed his masterpiece with supreme approval, and cried, "Look at that, now! What did I tell ye! There's a fire for ye fit to roast an ox. Ye couldna be cold at a blaze like that. On wi’ the work now that ye’ve got your fire. There's not many a man would take such a trouble for his daughter, so don't let a’ my bother be wasted. On ye go. Stick into the lessons."
Following his exhortation he seemed loath to get up and remained gazing at the leaping flames appreciatively, murmuring from time to time, "A beautiful fire; It's a bonnie blaze!" But eventually he heaved himself up, and kicking the shovel to one side, muttered, "I'll away and bring my dram in beside ye", and went out of the room. As he departed, Nessie who fully realised from the unnatural manner of his conduct that her father was once again drunk threw a quick glance, deeply charged with apprehension, at his retreating back. She had not done a stroke of work all evening and was now becoming thoroughly alarmed at her father's extraordinary behaviour. Although his treatment of her had lately been more peculiar acts of sudden and unaccountable indulgence interpolating his perpetual coercion of her to study she had never seen him so odd as he appeared to-night. At the sound of his step, when he returned with the remainder of the bottle of whisky, she sat rigid, pretending, with pale moving lips, to be engrossed in her work, although she could not see the page which she held so closely before her.
"That's right," he muttered. "I see you're at it. I've done my bit for ye now you do yours for me. That's another thing doun on my account for ye to settle when ye win the Latta." He subsided in a chair by the fireside and began again to drink. It seemed to him now that the evening had been long, as long even as a year, during which he had experienced a variety of profound and moving sensations, a period which had been a delightful prolongation of accomplishment and anticipation to be capped shortly by his reunion with Nancy. He became more joyful than ever. He wanted to sing! Fragments of tunes ran deliciously through his head, making him nod extravagantly and beat time with his foot and hand to this internal harmony. His small eyes seemed to protrude from his head as the) roamed the room, seeking some outlet for his culminating beatitude. Suddenly they lit upon the piano. Laud's sake! He told himself, what was the good of that if it wasn't to be used, that fine burr walnut instrument that had come from Murdoch's bought and paid for these twenty years! It was a scandal to see it lying idle there, when a man had spent money on music lessons for his daughter.
"Nessie," he shouted, making her jump with fright. "You've got a' that book off by heart now. Put it away. You're goin' to have your music lesson now and I'm the teacher." He guffawed, then corrected himself. "No! I'm not the teacher- I'm the vocalist." He threw out his arm with a sweeping gesture. "We'll have some guid Scotch songs. Away away over and give us 'O' a' the airts the wind can blaw' for a start."
Nessie slipped off her chair and looked at him doubtfully, knowing that he had forbidden the piano to be opened for months, feeling that she must obey, yet fearful of doing so; but as she stood indecisively he cried vehemently:
"Come on! Come on! What are ye waitin' for? 'O' a' the airts the wind can blaw.' I tell ye! I ha vena felt like this for months. I'm ripe for a sang!"