“I’ll do it, Father! I'll do it!" she whimpered.
"Yes, you'll do it or I'll know why," he cried wildly. "I tell you there's a conspiracy in this town against me. Every man's hand is turned against me. They hate me for what I am. They're jealous. They know that I'm away and above them that if I had my rights I would wipe my dirty boots on the smug faces o' the lot of them. But never mind," he nodded his head to himself in a wild burst of unreason, "I'll show them yet. I'll put the fear o' me into them! The Latta will be the start o' it. That'll put a spoke in the Lord High Provost's wheel then we'll begin in real earnest."
At this point Mary, who had been standing in the background observing her father's paroxysm and his manner towards Nessie with an expression of acute anxiety, came forward and said coaxingly:
"Will you not take your broth before it gets cold, Father? I took such pains with it. Let Nessie get hers too she must eat up if she's going to study as hard as she does."
His exaltation was suddenly arrested at her words. His expression changed, as though something withdrew from it, retired quickly from open view into the hidden recesses of his mind, and he exclaimed angrily:
"What do you want to interfere for? Can you not leave us alone? When we want your advice well ask for it." He picked up his spoon and sullenly began his soup; then, after a while, as though he had been brooding on her effrontery in speaking, he exclaimed, "Keep your remarks about Nessie to yourself. I'll manage her my own way.”
The meal proceeded for some time in silence, but when they were partaking of the next simple course, Brodie again turned to his younger daughter, and staring at her sideways began, in the ingratiating tone which he invariably adopted for this rote of questions and which, from constant repetition and the manner of his address, now excited her almost to the point of hysteria.
"And how did you get on to-day, Nessie?"
"Quite well, Father!"
"Did anybody praise my own lass to-day? Come on, now, somebody said something about you. It was your French to-day, was it not?"
She answered him mechanically, at random, anyhow only to be rid of the nerve-racking necessity of formulating new and gratifying replies to his fatuous, yet pressing queries, of appeasing his insatiable demand for tangible evidence of her prowess, of the attention which his daughter was attracting at school. At length, when he had satisfied himself, although she on her part hardly knew what she had said, he lay back in his chair and, regarding her with a bland, proprietary eye, remarked:
"Good enough! Good enough for the Brodies! That was high praise for them to give us. You're doin’ not so badly, woman! But ye maun do better. Better and better. Ye've got to make as sure o' that Latta as if it was lying on that plate in front o' ye. Guid sakes! Just think on it. Thirty guineas every year for three years that makes ninety guineas or near enough to a hundred, golden sovereigns. There's a hundred, golden sovereigns lying there on that plate o' yours waiting to be picked up. Ye havena got to scramble for them, or stoop for them; you've just got to gather them up! God! If ye don't put these wee hands o' yours out to lift them, I'll twist the heid off ye!" He looked at the empty plate before her, seeing it piled high with sovereigns, gleaming with the rich lustre of heaped gold, filled with a sum which, in his reduced circumstances, seemed to him enormous. "It's a rich, rich prize," he murmured, "and it's yours! I could see it makes the greedy eyes o' that snipe Grierson drop out o' their sockets to think on it comin' into this house. I'll learn him to affront me in the main street of the town!" He was moved by a short, silent laugh that was like a sneer, then, looking again at Nessie, he lifted his eyebrows and, with a resumption of his absurdly arch manner, said in a tone of high confidence,
"I'll be home early to-night, Nessie! We'll make a bend the minute we've finished our tea. Not a minute will we waste! We'll be on with our lessons before we've swallowed the last bite." He looked at her slyly, as he remarked,
"You can be at it in the parlour, and I'll bide in here to see that not a soul disturbs ye. Quiet! Quiet! That's what ye want, and I'll see that ye have it. Ye'll have the quiet o' the grave!"
He seemed pleased with the force of this comparison and repeated the last words
impressively and sonorously. Then in a harder tone he added; "Ye maun stick to it! Stick in hard. Put your back into it. What ye do, do well. Remember you're a Brodie and set your teeth to win through with it."
His task of exhortation for the moment completed, filled, too, by a consciousness of worthy effort accomplished, he removed his eye from Nessie and allowed it to rest oppressively upon the face of his other daughter, daring her to interfere.
"What are you glowerin' at?" he demanded, after a moment. "Have I not told ye to keep out of the way when me and Nessie are speakin' together? When we want you we'll ask for you. I told you when ye entered this house again that you were to keep your paws off her, so see that you do it. I'm not wantin' her spoiled like her namby-pamby mother spoiled the rest o' ye."
She was about to leave the room, knowing this to be the most effectual manner of curtailing his resentment against her, when suddenly the front doorbell rang loudly and she paused at the unexpectedness of the occurrence. Such traffic as came to the house, chiefly from the tradesmen of the Borough, was to the back door, and for the front bell to ring thus was a rare event, so unusual now that Brodie looked sharply up, and exclaimed to her, after a moment:
"See what it is!"
She went to the door and opened it, revealing to her own gaze a messenger, who stood upon the steps of the porch bearing in his hand a medium-sized parcel, and who now touched his cap, saying interrogatively:
"Miss Mary Brodie?"
She nodded, her eyes fixed in some dismay upon the package which he was now apparently delivering into her hands and which, from the smooth brown paper and neat pink cord which enclosed it, she knew to be no ordinary parcel, no clumsily wrapped groceries from a local store, neither provisions nor anything which she had herself ordered, but a paragon of a parcel that she associated immediately in her mind with others bearing the same exclusive air, which had, at intervals, descended mysteriously upon her during the last month. But these other packages had invariably come in the middle of the forenoon, at a fixed hour when she was always alone in the house and now, with a sudden anxiety besetting her, she demanded of the messenger the strange question:
"Are you not late?"
He moved his feet uncomfortably, confirming the suspicion in her mind as he defended himself.
"I've had a lot of deliveries," he said. "This came from Glasgow. I had to wait on it." He was glad apparently to see her accept the package without rebuking him and clattered off without further speech, leaving her supporting the light weight of the neatly corded box as though it pressed her down into an acute discomfiture. These consignments of delicacies which had regularly arrived for her enigmatically, yet so safely and opportunely and which she had lavished upon Nessie with an unquestioning delight was this another? With a beating heart she slowly closed the door and, her brain moving actively, she slipped into the parlour, secreted the parcel under the sofa, and again reentered the kitchen, hoping uneasily that her father would make no enquiry into the nature of the visitor. But she saw at once that this faint chance was impossible, that he was impatiently awaiting her return, even now lying back in his chair and fixing her with a large and curious eye.
"Who was that at the door?" Then at her silence he demanded, "Come along! What are ye standing so glaikit for? Who was it?"
"It was only a message boy, Father," she replied quietly, essaying to render her voice composed.
"A message boy!" he repeated incredulously. "Coming to the front door of the house! Gad! What have we got to put up with next."
Then, his anger rising at a sudden thought, he exclaimed, "I'm not going to sit down under that sort of insult. Who sent him ? Tell me and I'll go in about it myself. Who was he from?"
"I don't know!" she faltered.
"Ye don't know!"
"No!" she answered and, still using every effort to conciliate him, hastily added, "Never mind, Father it'll not occur again. Don't upset yourself."
He looked at her for a moment with a lowering eye, noting her suppressed air of embarrassment, faint, yet clearly to be perceived against the pervading candour of her expression.
"Show me the messages he brought," he ground out at her at length. "I didna see you bring them in!"
"They're in the parlour," she replied in a low tone, making as though to move into the scullery. "It's only a parcel nothing you would want to see."
"Get me what he brought," he insisted. "Look sharp about it too. I’ve a notion to look at this strange, disappearing parcel."
"Oh! Father!" she cried. "Can you not believe me?"
"Get it!" he roared. "Or I'll know that you're a liar as well as the other thing."
She saw that she must obey and, with a halting step, went out of the room and returned with the package in her hands.
He glared at it, surprised to find that there had, indeed, been a parcel but more astonished now at its unwonted appearance.
"Pink ribbon," he muttered. "Gad, that's rich!" Then changing his voice abruptly, he sneered, "Would ye have me believe they send out our oatmeal with these falderals on it? Open that box at once. I'll see with my own eyes what's inside."
She knew that it was useless to protest further, and, with the fatal calmness of inevitable discovery, she took a knife from the table, cut the string and, after a few seconds, drew from their enwrapping packing of wool a large and luscious bunch of black grapes. He stared at them incredulously as they hung suspended from her hand before his startled eyes. It was an exquisite cluster, hanging in the dull room like an exotic blossom, each fruit large, firm and perfect, and powdered with a bluish bloom as delicate and seductive as the haze upon a distant landfall. They dangled temptingly upon their thick, smooth stalk, fragrant with a rich, sundrenched odour, filled to bursting with their soft, juicy flesh, ready to melt upon the tongue in a subtle mingling of sweet, succulent flavours. Black grapes at this time! An unheard-of, expensive, out-of-season luxury!
"Where did these come from?" he cried in a loud, hectoring voice. "Who sent these?"
"I don't know, Father," she answered truthfully, for indeed no note had ever accompanied these mysterious delicacies and she had only guessed vaguely, yet happily, that the sender had been Renwick.
"You do know, you slut," he roared at her; "or why should you hide them?" As he looked at her in an angry, baffled fashion, the memory rose before him of the deputation of godly, self-righteous women from the church who had called upon his wife during her illness to leave her fruit and jellies, and he cried,
"Is it some o' these blasted, snivelling women from the kirk that have sent them? Are we getting charity from the town? Is that what we're come to? I suppose they're sorry for you with such a poor mouth as you're aye puttin' on. Good God! They'll be sending us tracts and soup next." He seized the bunch of grapes roughly from her hand, contemplating them contemtuously, but, as he did so, he realised something of the cost of the exquisite fruit before him, knew suddenly that no collection of church workers, however godly, could have sent them. A slow sneer spread over his face as he exclaimed,
"No! I think I see what's at the back o' it. We don't know who sent them. It's what they call an anonymous donor. God Almighty! Are ye come back to that again, you trollop back to your presents from your fancy men! Faugh! You sicken me."
He looked at her with a snarl on his face, but she returned his gaze with a calm and steady eye, and it was poor Nessie, fortunately unobserved, who manifested some signs of confusion and distress.