Matthew had observed the glance, interpreted its meaning and though his embarrassment grew, swollen from another source, with a feeble attempt at strategy he lowered his eyes and murmured:
"They're they're in the wool business. It's to do with sheep."
"By God! They've got the right man," cried his father, "for a bigger sheep than yourself never went bleatin' about this earth. Take care they don't crop ye, by mistake, at the shearin' time. Look up, ye saft sheep! Can ye not hold your head up like a man and look at me? A' this flash and dash that's come on ye since ye went to India doesna deceive me. I thought it might make a man o' ye to go out there, but I see through the rotten gloss that it's gie'n ye and you're but the same great, blubberin' sapsy that used to greet and run to your mother whenever I put my een on ye."
He stood looking at his son, filled by a profound and final repugnance which sickened him even of the thought of baiting Matt, who, he considered disgustedly, was not worth even the lash of his tongue. Thank God he was going away to quit his home, to abandon this sneaking, sponging existence, to be irrevocably out of his sight, out of the country, forgotten.
Suddenly he felt tired, realised dimly that he was not the man he had been and, with a quick rushing desire for the nepenthe of forgetfulness, he wanted to be alone with Nancy, wanted to drink. To his son he said slowly:
"You and me are finished, Matt. When ye've gone, yell never come back into this house. I never want to see ye again," then, turning to Nancy and regarding her with a fond and altered glance, he added:
"Bring me a glass, Nancy. He doesna deserve it, but I'm goin' to give him a toast," As she silently departed to obey, he followed her with the same glance, feeling that she was warming to him again, that with his son out of the house, they would be more private, more unrestrainedly together than before. "Thank ye, Nancy," he said mildly, as she returned and handed him the glass. "Ye're an obleegin' lass. I don't know how I ever got on without ye." Then he continued reassuringly, "I'm not goin' to take ower much to-night. No! No! This bottle will do me for a week. I know fine ye don't like me to take too much and I'm not goin' to do it. But we must pledge this big maunderin' sheep before he goes out to join the flock. Will ye have just a wee taste yer'self, Nancy? It'll do ye no harm. Come along now," he added, with a clumsy ingratiating manner, waving his arm at her, "away and get yourself a glass and I'll give ye just enough to warm ye."
She shook her head, still without speaking, her eyes half-veiled, her lips smoothly parted, her expression neither hostile nor friendly but shaded by a vague reticence which gave to her an air of enigmatic subtlety that encouraged him, drew him towards her by its very mystery. Actually, behind the mask of her face, lay a bitter contempt of him, activated the more fiercely as she saw that in choosing thus to humiliate Matt before her he was intimidating his son, making it more difficult for her to achieve the purpose she had set herself.
"No?” he said affably. "Well! I winna drive ye, woman. You're a mare that needs gentle guidin' as I've proved to my cost. Ye maun be humoured not driven." A short laugh broke from him as he uncorked the bottle, and holding the glass to the level of his eye, which glittered at the first sight of the trickling liquor, he slowly poured out a large measure, raised the bottle, paused, moistened his lips with his tongue, then quickly added a further quantity of the spirit. "I may as well take a decent glass to begin with. It saves goin' back and back. And I can stand it, onyway," he muttered, keeping his head down and away from her, as he placed the bottle upon the dresser and transferred the glass of whisky to his right hand. Then, stretching out his arm, he cried:
"Here's a toast to the heir to the house o' Brodie the last I'll ever drink to him. May he go to his grand job and may he stay there! Let him get out o' my sight and keep out o' it. Let him go how he likes and where he likes, but let him never come back, and if ever he tries to get on to that horse he was speakin' about, may he fall off and break his useless neck like the man that had the place before him!"
He threw back his head and, with a tilt of his wrist, drained the glass at a gulp; then, surveying Matthew with a sardonic grin, he added, "That's my last good-bye to ye. I don't know where ye're goin' I don't even want to know. Whatever happens to ye makes no odds now, for it'll never reach my ears!" And with these words he ceased to regard his son, ignored him utterly. Now that he had swallowed the whisky he felt more vigorous. Lifting his eye again to the bottle on the dresser, he considered it speculatively for a moment, cleared his throat, straightened himself up and, his head averted from Nancy, remarked solemnly, "But I canna drink a toast to a thing like him and pass over a braw lass like my Nancy." He shook his head at the injustice of the thought as, with the empty tumbler still in his hand, he approached the table.
"No! that would not be fair!" he continued, pouring himself out another portion. "I couldna do that in all conscience we must give the girl her due. There's nothing I wouldna do for her, she means so much to me. Here, Nancy!" he cried, wheedlingly, turning to her, "This is a wee salute to the bonniest lass in Levenford."
She had controlled her temper so long that now it seemed impossible for her to contain herself further and her veiled eyes sparkled and a faint colour ran into her cheeks as though she might immediately stamp her foot and assail him furiously with her tongue. But instead, she stifled the words she wished to utter behind her tight lips and, turning on her heel, marched into the scullery where she began noisily to wash the dishes. With a chastened expression Brodie stood, his head slightly on one side, listening to the clatter of china; he heard in it some suggestion of her exasperation, but soon, returning his eyes again to the glass in his hand, he slowly raised it to his lips and slowly drained it; then, advancing to his chair, he lowered himself heavily into it.
Matt, who had remained at the place by the fireplace where he had been thrust by Nancy, a silent and dismayed spectator of his father's recent actions, now moved uneasily upon his feet, subdued more abjectly by the closer proximity of the other as he sat brooding in his chair. He looked restlessly around the room, bit his pale lips, rubbed his soft, damp hands together, wishing fervently to leave the room but, thinking his father's eye to be upon him, was afraid to stir. At length, emboldened by the continued silence in the room, he widened the scope of the sweeping circles of his eye and allowed his flickering glance to touch for a swift second upon the face of the other beside him. Immediately he saw that Brodie was not, as he had feared, contemplating him but instead gazing earnestly towards the open doorway of the scullery and, reassured by the other's abstraction, he ventured one tentative foot in front of him, was not observed, and, continuing his stealthy progress slid quietly out of the kitchen.
His intention had been to escape from the house as quickly as possible, resigning himself to an interminable wait in the streets outside until his father had gone to bed, but he was arrested, in the dimness of the hall, by a segment of light striking out from the parlour. As he paused, suddenly it occurred to him that since Nessie was within, he might spend a few moments more comfortably with her before departing into the frosty night outside. He felt too, unconsciously, the pressing need for the opportunity to declaim upon the merit of the attainment of his new post and the desire for some approving tribute to restore the damage inflicted upon his self-esteem. Consequently he opened the door and looked into the room.
Nessie, seated at the table, surrounded by the inevitable accompaniment of her books, did not look up at his entry but remained with folded arms, hunched shoulders and bent head. But when he spoke, with a sudden quick start she flinched as though the unexpected waves of speech had struck her across the stillness of the room.
"I'm coming in a minute," was all that he had said.
"Oh, Matt!" she cried, pressing her small closed hand into her left side. "What a start you gave me! I didn't hear you come in. I seem to jump at anything these days."
As he observed her present attitude, the inclination of her head, the mild and limpid eyes, filled with a mute apology for her weakness, a striking memory presented itself to him, making him for the moment forget his own concerns.
"My goodness, Nessie," he exclaimed, staring at her. "You're getting as like Mamma as life. I can almost see her looking out of your face the now!"
"Do you think so, Matt," she replied, flattered in some degree to be the object of his interest. "What makes you say that?"
He seemed to consider,
"I think it's your eyes; there's the same look about them as though you thought something was going to happen to you and were looking ahead for it."
At his words she was hurt and immediately lowered these betraying eyes, keeping them fixed upon the table as he continued: "What's come over you lately ? You don't seem the same to me at all. Is there anything wrong with you that's making you like that?"
"Everything's wrong," she answered slowly. "Since Mamma died I've been as miserable as could be and I haven't had a soul to speak to about it. I can't suffer to be near to to Nancy. She doesn't like me. She's always at me for something. Everything is different. The house has been so different that it's not like the same place Father's different too."
"You've nothing to be feared of from him. You were always his pet," he retorted. "He's always sucking around you in some way."
"I wish he would leave me alone," she replied dully. "He's just driving me on all the time with this work. I can't stand it. I don't feel well in myself."
"Tuts! Nessie," he exclaimed reprovingly. "That's Mamma all over again. Ye should pull yourself together. What's the matter with you?"
"I've always got a headache! I wake up with it in the morning and it never leaves me all day. It makes me so stupid that I don't know what I'm doing. Besides, I can't eat the food we get now and I'm always tired. I'm tired at this very minute."
"You'll be all right when you've got this exam over. You'll win the Latta all right."
"I'll win it all right," she exclaimed wildly. "But what's going to become of me then? What is he going to do with me after? Tell me that! Am I to be shoved on like this all the time and never know what's going to come of it? He'll never say when I ask him. He doesn't know himself."
"You'll be a teacher that's the thing for you."
She shook her head.
"No! That wouldn't be good enough for him. I wanted to do that myself to put down my name to go on to the Normal, but he wouldn't allow it. Oh, Matt!" she cried, "I wish I had somebody to put in a word for me. I'm so downright wretched about it and about everything else I wish sometimes I had never been born!"
He shifted his gaze uncomfortably from her appealing face which, stamped by a forlorn wistf ulness, seemed to implore him to help her.
"You should get out the house and play with the other girls," he advanced, somewhat uncertainly. "That would take your mind off things a bit."
"How can I?" she exclaimed frantically. "Ever since I was a wee thing I've been kept in at these lessons, and now I'm flung in here every night, and will be, too, for the whole of the next six months. And if I dared to go out, he would leather me. You wouldn't believe it, Matt, but I sometimes think I'll go out of my mind the way I'm kept grindin' at it."
"I go out," he exclaimed valiantly. "He didn't stop me goin' out."
"You're different," she replied sadly, her puny outburst subsiding and leaving her more dejected than before. "And even if I did go out, what good would it do? None of the other girls would play with me. They'll hardly speak to me as it is. One of them said the other day that her father said she was to have nothing to do with any one that came out of this house. Oh! I do wish you could help me, Matt!"
"How can I help you?" he replied roughly, irritated at her entreaties. "Don't you know I'm goin' away next week?"
She gazed at him with a slight wrinkling of her brow and repeated, without apparently comprehending:
"Going away next week?"
"To South America," he replied grandly; "to a splendid new position I've got out there. Miles and miles away from this sink of a town."
Then she understood, and in the sudden perception that he was leaving immediately for a far distant land, that she, of all the Brodie children, would be left in a solitary, unprotected state to face the dreadful unhappiness of her present existence in the home, she paled. Matt had never helped her much, and during these latter months had, indeed, comforted her still less, but he was her brother, a companion in her distress, and she had only a moment ago appealed to him for assistance. Her lips quivered, her eyes became blurred, she burst into tears.
"Don't go, Matt," she sobbed. "I'll be left all alone if ye go. I’ll have nobody at all in this terrible house."
"What are ye talking about," he retorted savagely. "You can't know what you're saying. Am I going to give up the chance of a lifetime money and freedom and and everything for the likes of you? You're mad!"
"I'll be mad if you go," she cried. "What chance will I have here all by myself? Mary away, and you away, and only me left! What'll become of me?"
"Stop your howling," he shot at her, with a quick glance towards the door. "Do you want everybody to hear you with that bawling? He'll be in at us in a minute if you're not careful. I've got to go and that's all about it."
"Could ye not take me with you then, Matt," she gulped, stifling her sobs with difficulty. "I know I'm young but I could keep the house for ye. That's always the sort of thing I've wanted to do and not these miserable lessons. I would do everything for you, Matt."