Арчибальд Кронин - Hatter's Castle

"Yes, Father, I'm getting on splendid couldn't be better. That Grierson hasn't got a chance. I'm the stumbling block. The Latta's mine already." He was pleased at that, rubbing his hands together and smiling at her approvingly and it was fine for her to feel that she was pleasing him! She would hide everything so cleverly and carefully that he would never see that she was not sure of herself.

She had her own ways of doing things, the clever girl that she was! She was inside her own mind now, creeping about the passages of her brain, admiring, congratulating herself, seeing her very thoughts flow with a marvellous rippling fluency, watching them delightedly as they flashed past her like brilliant, rushing waves of scintillating light.

At last she started suddenly, her eyes lost their vacancy, her face its smooth, unruffled placidity and, as she rubbed her brows with her hand and looked at the clock, she murmured, confusedly, "Good sakes! What have I been thinking about ? Have I been asleep or what? There's an hour gone and I can't mind a thing about it!" She shook her head with annoyance at her own weakness, at the loss of this

precious hour, and was once more about to apply herself to the Book of Euclid when the door opened quietly and her sister came into the room.

"Here's a glass of milk for you, dear," whispered Mary, tiptoeing up to the table. "Father's asleep now, so I thought I might bring you this. It's cold as can be. I've had the jug in running water for an hour."

Nessie took the glass from her sister and began to sip it in an absent fashion.

"It's cool as cool," she replied, after a moment. "It's as good as ice cream on a day like this. Did you ever feel it so close?"

Mary pressed her palm lightly against her sister's cheek.

"You're hot!" she murmured. "Will you not take a half an hour off and come out in the air with me?"

"And what would happen to me if he woke up and found I had gone out?" queried Nessie, with a sharp look. "You know you would get it worse than me, too! No! I'll stay where I am. This milk is cooling me fine. Besides, I've got all this book to get through before Friday."

"How is the headache now?" said Mary after a pause, during which she contemplated the other with some anxiety.

"Just the same! It doesn't feel like a headache now. It's more a numbness."

"Would you like me to put on some more cold water and vinegar cloths for you?"

"Never mind, Mary! I don't think they do much good. I'll be better after next Saturday when I've got the exam. over. That's the only thing that'll cure it."

"Is there nothing you can think of that you'd like?"

"No! There's nothing I fancy at all. It's real kind of you though, Mary. You've been wonderful to me and you've had to put up with so much yourself. But I could never have done without you."

"I've done nothing," replied Mary sadly. "I would like to have done much more. I wish I could have stopped you from going up for the Bursary, but it was impossible! I didn't want you to take it."

"Don't say that!" cried Nessie quickly. "You know I must go up for it. I've thought of nothing else for the last six months and if I had to draw back now it would fair break my heart. I must take it."

"Do you really want to go on with it?" asked Mary doubtfully.

"Just think how I've worked," replied Nessie with some emotion. "Just think how I've been made to work. Am I going to let all that go for nothing? I should hope not. I'm so set on it myself now that I couldn't hold back if I was to try. I feel it now like something that's gripping me and drawing me on."

Mary gazed at the nervous eagerness in her sister's eyes, and, in an attempt to soothe the other, murmured consolingly:

"It'll not be long till it's over now, anyway, Nessie! Don't fret yourself too much about it. Let the work go easy for a day or two."

"How can you talk like that," exclaimed Nessie petulantly. "You know I've got all this ground to get over and it's most important too. This third book is not right into my head yet. I must get it in. I've I've got to drive it in like a nail so that it will stay in and never come out. I might get a question on this very thing that you're felling me to leave alone."

"Hush, Nessie dear! Don't excite yourself," pleaded Mary.

"It's enough to make anybody excited," cried the other wildly. "Here am I working the brains out of myself and you would think that all I had to do was to walk up to that university and ask for the Latta and come home with it in my hand like a stick of toffee. It's not like that at all, I tell you."

"Wheesht, Nessie! Be calm, pettie," soothed Mary. "Don't upset yourself; I didn't mean anything like that."

"You did so!" returned Nessie agitatedly. "Everybody thinks the same thing. They think it's that easy for me because I'm so clever. They don't know the work and the toil that I've been forced to put in. It's been enough to drive me out of my mind."

"I know though, dear," replied Mary softly, stroking the other's brow. "I know all about it and how you've been kept at it! Don't worry yourself though. You're getting tired and anxious. You used to be ever so confident about it. Never mind if you don't win the miserable Bursary. What does it matter!"

Nessie, however, was so strung up that no attitude her sister could have adopted would have pleased her and now she burst into tears.

"What does it matter," she sobbed hysterically. "That's a good one, that is, for me that's set my very heart on winning it. And to call the good hundred sovereigns that I'll get 'miserable' is enough to discourage anybody. Don't you know what Father'll do to me if I don't win it? He'll kill me."

"He'll not do that, Nessie," replied Mary steadily. "I'm here now and I'll protect you from any fear of that. I'll be there when you get the result and if he tries to lay a finger on you it'll be the worse for him."

"What could you do?" cried Nessie. "You talk as if it was better for you to stand up to Father than for me to win the Latta."

Mary did not reply to this ungracious speech but stood silent, soothing Nessie by gentle movements of her hands, until at last the other's sobs ceased and, drying her eyes, she remarked with a sudden composure:

"I don't know what we're goin' on about, running around in a circle like that. We've been talkin' nonsense. Of course I'll win the Latta and that's the end of it!"

"That's right, dear," returned Mary, happy to see the other more tranquil. "I know you will. Have you got on well to-day?"

"Splendid!" replied Nessie, in a constrained manner, strangely at variance with her words. "Like a house on fire. I don't know what came over me then. You'll not think any more about what I said, will you, Mary?" she continued in a persuasive voice. "Don't say a word about it to any one! I wouldn't like Father

to hear I had been so silly. Why, I'm as sure of the Bursary as I am of finishing this milk," and she emptied the remains of the milk at a gulp.

"You'll know I'll say nothing," answered Mary, looking at her sister perplexedly, considering with some degree of wonder this sudden change in her manner and disposition. Did Nessie really think that she would succeed, or was this attitude assumed to conceal a deeper and more secret fear that she might fail? Thinking anxiously of the immediate future that lay before her sister, Mary said slowly:

"You'll be sure to let me know the result before Father, won't you, Nessie? Let me know whenever it comes out."

"Of course I will," replied the other with a continuance of the same manner, but directing her eyes from her sister and looking sideways out of the window. "We'll not know till a fortnight after the examination."

"You're sure now," insisted Mary. "Say that we'll open the letter together."

"Yes! Yes!" cried Nessie fretfully. "Have I not told you that I would long ago. You can open it yourself, for all I care. I've promised you and I'll not break my word. You should be letting me get on instead of harping about that."