Арчибальд Кронин - Hatter's Castle

They descended the winding hill to Markinch where, disdaining the small, somewhat ineffectual inn which stood at the head of the village, Renwick drove on to the last cottage of the row that fringed the shore of the Loch, and with a wise look towards Mary, jumped out and knocked upon the door. The cottage was in perfect harmony with the surrounding beauty, its white walls splashed by the rich yellows of nasturtiums, its green porch embowered by red rambler roses, its garden fragrant with the poignant scent of mignonette such a cottage, indeed, as she had once visioned for herself in Garshake; and to the door of this small house came a small, bent body of a woman who now lifted her hands and cried delightedly:

"Doctor! Doctor! It's not yourself? Guidsakes alive! Is it you, yourself?"

"Indeed it is, Janet," cried Renwick, in her own tone. "It is I myself, and a young lady herself. And the two of us, ourselves, are fair famished from our drive. If we don't get one of your lovely teas, with your own scones and jam and butter and heaven knows a' what, then we'll just sadly fade awa' and never come back."

"Ye'd no' do that, though," cried Janet vigorously. "Na, na! Ye'll have the finest tea in Markinch inside five minutes."

"Can we have it in the garden, Janet?"

"Of course ye can, Doctor! Ye can have it on the roof o' my cottage, gin ye say the word."

"The garden will do, Janet," replied Renwick with a smile. "And Janet! Let the wee lad look after Tim. And give us a call when you're ready. We'll go along the shore a bit."

"Right! Right, Doctor! Ye've only to say the word," answered Janet eagerly, and as she departed to do his bidding, he turned and came back to Mary.

"Shall we go a little way along?" he asked; and at her assent he assisted her from her seat to the ground, saying:

"Janet won't keep us waiting five minutes, but you may as well stretch your legs. You must be cramped from sitting."

How delighted the old woman had been to see him, thought Mary, and like all who were in contact with him, how eager to rush to serve him! Thinking of this, as they proceeded along the fine firm shingle of the shore, she remarked:

"Janet's an old friend of yours! Her eye actually leaped when she saw you."

"I did something for a son of hers in Levenford once," he replied lightly. "She's a sweet, old soul with a tongue like an energetic magpie," here he looked at her across his nose, adding "but better than that, she makes delicious scones. You must eat exactly seven of them."

"Why seven?" she queried.

"It's a lucky number," he answered, "and just the right amount of scone food for a healthy, hungry young lady." He looked at her critically. "I wish I had the dieting of you, Miss Mary. There's a sad loveliness in that faint hollow of your cheek, but it means that you've been neglecting your butter and milk. I'll wager you gave all those things I sent you to that wee Nessie of yours."

She blushed.

"No! I didn't really! It was good of you to send them to us.”

He shook his head compassionately.

"Will you ever think of yourself, Mary Brodie ? It hurts me to think what will come of you when I'm away. You want some one to keep a severe and stern eye upon you, to make you look after yourself. Will you write to me and tell me how you Ye behaving?"

"Yes," she said slowly, as though a faint coldness had risen to her from the still water beside them, "I'll write when you've gone!"

"That's right," he cried cheerfully. "I'll regard that as a definite promise on your part."

Now they stood looking out upon the sublime tranquillity of the view before them, that seemed to her so remote from the troubled existence within her home, so exalted above the ordinary level of her life. She was overcome by its appeal and, released by the perception of this beauty, all her suppressed feeling for this man by her side swept over her. She was drawn to him with a deeper and more moving emotion than that which had once stirred her; she wished blindly to show her devotion, visibly to demonstrate her homage to him; but she could not and was compelled to remain quiet by his side, torn by the beating qf her straining heart. The faint murmur of the Loch, as it scarcely lapped its shore, swept across the quietude of the scene, whispering to her who and what she was, that she was Mary Brodie, the mother of an illegitimate child, and echoing in her ears in endless repetition that word with which her father had condemned her when he hurled her from the house upon the night of the storm.

"I hear Janet's cracked cow bell," he said at length. "Are you ready for the scones?"

She nodded her head, her throat too full for speech, and as he lightly took her arm to assist her across the shingled beach she was conscious of his touch upon her as more unbearable than any pain which she had ever felt.

"All ready! All ready!" cried Janet, rushing about like a fury. "Table and chairs and everything in the garden for ye, like ye ordered. And the scones are fresh this mornin's bakin'."

"That's fine!" remarked Ren wick, as he seated Mary in her chair and then took his own.

Although his tone had dismissed the old woman, she lingered, and after a full, admiring glance at Mary, moistened her lips and was about to speak when, suddenly observing the look upon Renwick's face, she arrested, with a prodigious effort, the garrulous speech which trembled upon her tongue and turned towards the house.

As she departed, shaking her head and muttering to herself, a slight constraint settled upon Mary and Renwick; although the tea was excellent and the cool of the garden, spiced by the fragrance of the mignonette, delicious, neither appeared quite at ease.

"Janet's an old footer," he said, with an attempt at lightness. "That's a good Scotch word which just suits her. If I'd give her an opening, she'd have deafened us." But after this remark, he fell into an awkward silence which impelled Mary's mind back to that only other occasion in her life when she had sat at table alone with a man, when she had eaten an ice cream in the gaudy atmosphere of Bertorelli's Saloon, when Denis had pressed her foot with his and

charmed her with his gay and sparkling tongue.

How different were her surroundings here, in this cool freshness of the cottage garden filled with the exhaled perfume of a hundred blossoms; how different, too, was her companion, who neither chattered of alluring trips abroad, nor yet, alas, caressed her foot with his. Now, however, he was shaking his head at her.

"You've only eaten two after all," he murmured, looking at her tragically, adding slowly, "and I said seven."

"They're so large," she protested.

"And you're so small but you would be bigger if you did as you were told."

"I always did as you told me in the hospital!"

"Yes," he replied after a pause, "you did, indeed." A heaviness again seemed to settle upon him while his thoughts flew back 'o the vision of her as he had first seen her, with her eyes closed, inanimate, blanched, a broken, uprooted lily. At last he looked at his watch,

then looked at her with a sombre face. "Time's getting along, I'm afraid. Shall we get back?"

"Yes," she whispered, "if you think it is time."

They arose and went out of the sweet seclusion of the garden which might have been made for the enclosure of two ardent lovers without further speech, and when he had helped her into the trap, he returned and paid old Janet.

"I'm not wantin' your siller, Doctor," she skirled. "It's a pleasure to do it for you and the bonnie leddie."

"Here, Janet," he cried, "take it now or I'll be cross with you."

She sensed the faint difference in his mood and, as she took the money, whispered in a humble tone:

"Have I put my foot in't? I'm gey and sorry if I've done that. Or was it the scones that werna to your taste?"