"O' a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly lo'e the west.
It's there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best."
"Louder! Louder !" he shouted. "Hit it harder! I'm singin' about my Nancy. We maun give it pith! 'By day and nicht my fancy's flicht is ever with my Jean!' " he roared at the pitch of his voice. "By God! That was good. If we call her Jean ye're none the wiser. Come on. Give us the second verse again and sing yourself. Sing! Sing! Are ye ready! One, two, three!
"I see her in the dewy flower."
She had never seen him like this before and in a panic of shame and fear she joined her quavering voice to his bellow so that together they sang the song.
"That was graund!" he cried, when they had finished. "I hope they heard us at the Cross! Now we'll have, 'My Love is like a Red, Red Rose', although mind ye she's more like a bonnie white rose. Have ye not found it yet? You're awfu' slow and clumsy the nicht. I'm as light as a feather though. I could sing till dawn."
She struck painfully into the song, which he made her play and sing twice, and after that she was forced through "The Banks and Braes", "O Rowan Tree", and "Annie Laurie", until, with her hands so cramped and her head so giddy that she felt she must fall from the stool, she turned imploringly and with tears in her eyes, cried:
"Let me go, Father. Let me go to my bed. I'm tired."
He frowned upon her heavily, her interruption cutting in rudely upon his blissful state. "So ye can't even play for your father," he exclaimed, "and after he's taken all the trouble to go and put on a fire for ye too. The minute it's on ye want away to your bed. That's gratitude for you. Well, if ye'll not do it for right, you'll do it for might. Play! Play till I tell ye to stop, or I'll take the strap to ye. Play my first song over again!"
She turned again to the piano and wearily, with eyes blinded by tears, began again, "O' a' the airts the wind can blaw," while he sang, emphasising every discord which her agitation led her to produce by a black look directed towards her bowed and inoffensive back.
They had proceeded halfway through the song when suddenly the parlour door opened and Nancy her eyes sparkling, the cream of her cheek tinted by a faint colour from the cold, her hair crisping under her attractive toque, the neat fur tippet setting off her firm bust to perfection Nancy his Nancy, stood before him. With mouth wide open and pipe poised in mid-air he stopped singing, regarding her stupidly, realising that he had failed to hear the opening of the
front door, and he continued to stare thus while the unconscious Nessie, as though accompanying his silent astonishment and admiration, played through the song to its end, when silence descended upon the room.
At length Brodie laughed, a trifle uncomfortably. "We were just singin' a wee song to ye, Nancy; and troth, ye deserve it, for you're lookin' as bonnie as a picture."
Her eyes sparkled more frostily and her lips tightened as she replied:
"The noise comin' up the road was enough to draw a crowd around the house and lights blazin' out o' every window. And you've been at your soakin' again and then ye've the impertinence to make me the grounds for it a'! You're a disgrace! Look at your hands and your face. You're like an auld coal-heaver. What a thing for me to come home to, after an elevatin' evenin' like I've had."
He looked at her humbly, yet drinking in, even at its coldest, the freshness of her young beauty, and in an attempt to change the subject, he murmured heavily:
"Did ye have a nice time at your aunt's? I've missed you, Nancy. It's like a year since I saw ye last. Ye were a long time comin' to me."
"And I wish I had made it longer," she exclaimed, with a hard glance at him. "When I want music I know where to get it. Don't bawl at me and don't drink to me ye black-faced drunkard."
At these terrible words Nessie, sitting petrified upon the piano stool, shrank back, expecting her father to rise and fling himself upon the madwoman who had uttered them; but to her amazement he remained passive, drooping his lip at Nancy and muttering:
"I tell ye I've been missin' you, Nancy. Don't turn on a man that's so fond o' ye."
Disregarding his daughter's presence entirely, he continued blatantly, with an almost maudlin' sentiment, "You're my white, white rose, Nancy. You're the breath in my body. I had to pass the time somehow! Away up and take off your things and dinna be cross wi' me. I'll I'll be up mysel' in a minute."
"Oh! you will!" she cried, with a toss of her head. "You're drinkin' like a fish, you rough, big bully. Go up any time ye like for all I care. It make no odds to me as you'll soon see," and she flounced up the stairs out of his sight.
With lowered head he sat quite still, filled by the melancholy thought that she was angry with him, that when he went upstairs he would have to appease her, pacify her, before she manifested her kindness towards him. In the midst of his dejected meditations he suddenly realised his daughter's presence and, considering moodily that he had betrayed himself to her, he muttered thickly, without locking up:
"Away up to your bed, you! What are ye sittin' there for?" And when she had slipped like a shadow from the room, he continued to sit by the rapidly dying embers of the fire until he adjudged that Nancy might be in bed and more amenable to his advances. Then, blind to the complete reversal of his position in the house since the days when he had left his wife to brood by the dismal remnants of a dead fire, anxious only to be beside his Nancy, he got -up and, having turned out the gas, passed slowly and as lightly as he could up the stairs. He was consumed by eagerness, eaten by desire, as he entered his lighted bedroom.
It was empty!
With unbelieving eyes he gazed around until it slowly dawned upon him that this night she had kept her word and forsaken him; then, after a moment, he turned and, moving silently across the dark landing, tried the handle of the door of that small room to which his wife had retired the room, indeed, where she had died. This, as he expected, was locked. For one instant a torrent of resentment surged within him and he gathered himself together to hurl himself against and through the door, to batter it down by the strength of his powerful and desirous body. But immediately came the realisation that such a course would not benefit him, that inside the room he would still find her bitter, more bitter and unyielding than before, more icy, more determined to oppose his wish. She had enslaved him, insidiously yet completely, and for that reason was now stronger than he. His sudden fury died, his hand dropped from the door and slowly he reentered his own room and shut himself within it. For a long time he remained in sullen silence, then impelled by an irresistible impulse he went to the drawer he had opened earlier in the evening, slowly pulled it out once more, and with a heavy brow stood staring inscrutably at the contents within.
Ill
MATTHEW BRODIE came out of Levenford Station, leaving the platform, splashed with its pale yellow lamplight, behind him and entered the cold, exhilarating darkness of the frosty February night with a lively feeling of elation. His steps upon the hard ground rang out quick and clear; his face, blurred in the surrounding obscurity, radiated nevertheless a faint excited gleam; the fingers of his unquiet hands twitched continually from the suppression of his pervading
exultation. He walked rapidly along Railway Road, through the tenuous low-lying haze above which the tops of trees and houses loomed like darkly smudged shadows against the lighter background of the sky. Towards his expanded nostrils came from across the open space of the Common, the faint aromatic odour of a distant wood fire and, as he sniffed it, filling his lungs deliciously with the tingling
savour of the air, he was permeated by a vivid sense of the zest of living. Despite the forward thrust of his mood, memories rushed across him at that acrid, yet spicy breath, and he became enveloped in a balmy dusk that was filled with strange quiescent sounds, fragrant subtle scents, and the white and liquid shimmer of a tropic moon.
His drab and evasive existence of the last six months fell away from his recollection, while he considered the glamour of his life abroad, and as if to answer the appeal of such a free and enchanting land, he further accelerated his pace and swung along the road with impetuous eagerness in the direction of his home. This haste in one who, when approaching the house in the evenings, displayed usually a flagging step, indicative of his disinclination to encounter his father, seemed to betoken an important change in the current of Matt's life. He was indeed, at this moment, bursting with the news of that change, and as he rushed up the steps, opened the front door of the house and entered the kitchen, he actually trembled with his excitement.
The room was empty except for Nancy, who slowly and tardily clearing the tea table of its dishes, looked up at his sudden appearance with an expression of surprise, mingled also with an unguarded and engaging familiarity which at once indicated to him that his father was not at hand.
"Where is he, Nancy?" he exclaimed immediately. She rattled a dish contemptuously upon the tray as she replied:
"Out for the usual, I suppose. There's only one thing takes him out at this hour and that's to get the black bottle filled up again."
Then she added slyly, "But if you're wantin' to see him, he'll be back soon-"
"I'm wantin' to see him, all right," he blustered, looking at her, significantly. "I'm not feared to meet him. I've got news for him that'll make him sit up and take notice."
She glanced at him quickly, noting now his slightly hurried breathing, the glitter in his eye, the general concealed importance of his bearing.
"Have ye news, then, Matt?" she said slowly.
"I should think I have!" he declared. "The best that I've had for nine months. I'm just this minute off the train. I've only had word o' the thing an hour ago and I couldna get back quick enough to tell it to fling it in that auld devil's face."
She left the dishes entirely and advanced deliberately towards him, saying ingratiatingly:
"Was it only your father ye wanted to tell, Matt ? Am I not to know first? I’m gey interested to hear."
A broad smile spread over his features.
"Of course you're to know! Ye ought to understand that by this time."
"What is it then, Matt?" she whispered.
As he saw her eagerness, he swelled the more and, determining to edge her curiosity, he suppressed his own excitement, moved to his favourite spot by the dresser, and reclining in his particular manner, surveyed her with a boasting eye.
"Come, come, now. Can ye not guess? Surely a clever wee body like yourself can guess? You haven't got that trig head on your shoulders for nothing."
She knew positively now what the purport of his tidings must be, but seeing that he was pleased to exhibit his air of consequence, it suited her to pretend ignorance, and with a charming assumption of simplicity, she shook her head and replied: