Арчибальд Кронин - Hatter's Castle

He glared round them all and, his anger rising at their indifference, shouted:

"It's the Latta I'm talkin' about. Maybe ye think it's like this rotten game of bowls that you're watchin' not finished yet. But I tell you it is finished finished and done wi' and it's my Nessie that's won it!"

"Hush, man, hush!" exclaimed Gordon, who sat immediately confronted by Brodie. "I can't see the play for ye. Sit down or stand aside and don't blatter the ears off us."

"I'll stand where I like. Shift me if ye can," retorted Brodie dangerously. Then he sneered : "Who are you to talk, anyway? You're only the ex-provost you're not the king o' the castle any more it's our dear friend Grierson that's got your shoes on now and it's him I'm wantin' to speak to." He directed his sneering gaze at Grierson and addressed him: "Did you hear what I said about the Latta,

Provost? No! Dinna start like that I havena forgotten about that braw son o' yours. I know well that he's gone up for it. Provost Grierson's son is up for the Latta. God! It must be as good as in his pocket."

"I never said that yet," replied Grierson, provoked in spite of himself. "My boy can take his chance! It's not as if he was needin' the money for his education, onyway."

Brodie ground his teeth at the sharp implication in the other's careless words and tried fiercely to force his brain to contrive some devastating reply, but as always, when opposing Grierson, he could find no suitable expression of his wrath. The thought that he, who had advanced a moment ago in lordly indifference, had been rendered impotent by a word, goaded him, and, sensing also that he was not creating the impression upon them which he had wished, his temper overcame him and he shouted:

"Why did ye ask me to withdraw my daughter if ye didna want your whelp to win it? answer me that, you sneakin' swine! You stopped me at the Cross and asked me to keep back my Nessie."

"Tuts! Don't shout like that at my ear, man," retorted Grierson coolly. "I don't like the reek o' your breath. I told ye before I was thinkin' of your Nessie. Somebody that's qualified to speak asked me to mention it to ye. I wasna wantin' to do it and now I'm sorry I did mention it."

"You're a liar!" bawled Brodie. "You're a damned mealy-mouthed liar!"

"If ye've come here to force a quarrel on me, I'll not let ye do it," returned Grierson. "There's no lying about the matter and no secret either. Now that your daughter has gone up, I don't mind tellin’ you it was Doctor Renwick asked me to speak to ye."

"Renwick!" exclaimed Brodie incredulously. He paused; then, as a light dawned upon him, he shot out, "I see! I see it plain. You put him up to it. He's hand in glove with you against me. He hates me just as much as do as much as ye all do." He swept his arm blindly around them. "I know you're all against me, you jealous swine, but I don't care. Ill win through. Til trample over ye all yet. Have any of ye got a daughter that can win the Latta? Answer me that!"

"If your daughter does win the Latta," cried some one, "what the de'il does it matter to us? Let her get it and good luck to her. I don't give a tinker's curse who wins it."

Brodie gazed at the speaker.

"Ye don't care?" he replied slowly. "Ye do care you're leein' to me. It'll spite the faces off ye if a Brodie wins the Latta."

"Away home, man, for God's sake," said Gordon quietly. "You're not yourself. You're drivelin'. You can't know what you're sayin'.”

"I'll go when I like," mumbled Brodie. The stimulation of the drink suddenly left him, his fierceness waned, he no longer desired to rush upon Grierson and tear him apart, and, as he gazed at their varying expressions of unconcern and disgust, he began to feel profoundly sorry for himself, to ask himself if this could be the same company which he had dominated and overawed in the past. They had never liked him but he had controlled them by his power, and now that they had escaped from out his grasp, his sympathy towards himself grew so excessive that it reached the point of an exceeding sorrow which sought almost to express itself in tears.

"I see how it is," he muttered gloomily, addressing them at large. "Ye think I'm all over and done wi'. I'm not good enough for ye now. God! If it didna make me laugh, it would make me greet. To think that ye should sit there and look down your noses at me at me that comes of stock that's so high above ye they wouldna even use ye as doormats." He surveyed them each in turn, looking vainly for some sign of encouragement, some indication that he was impressing them. Then, although no sign came, he still continued, more slowly and in a dejected, unconvincing tone:

"Don't think that I'm finished! I'm comin' up again. Ye can't keep a good man down and ye'll not keep me down, however much ye may try. Wait and see what my Nessie will do. That'll show ye that stuff that's in us. That's why I came here. I don't want to know ye. I only wanted to tell ye that Nessie Brodie would win the Latta, and now that I've done it, I'm satisfied!" His moody eye swept them, then finding that he had nothing more to say, that they too were silent, he moved off; yet after a few paces he arrested himself, turned, opened his mouth to speak; but no speech came and at length he lowered his head, swung around, and again shambled off. They let him go without a word.

As he left the confines of the Green and proceeded along the road, nursing bitterly his wounded pride, he suddenly perceived in the distance the dim figures of his two daughters approaching him from the station. He stared at them almost stupidly, at Nessie and Mary Brodie, both of them his children, as though the strange sight of them together in the public street confused him. Then all at once he realised that Nessie was returning from her examination, that Mary had disobeyed him by meeting the train. No matter! He could deal later with Mary, but now he desired urgently to know how Nessie had fared, to appease his wounded vanity in the knowledge of her success, and walking forward quickly, he met them, confronted them in the middle of the pavement. There, absorbing eagerly every detail of the younger girl's tired face, he cried:

"How did ye get on, Nessie? Quick! Tell me was everything all right?"

"Yes," she murmured. "Everything was all right."

"How many books did ye fill? Was it two or three?"

"Books?" she echoed faintly. "I only wrote in one book. Father."

"Only one book!" he exclaimed. "Yc only filled one book for all the time ye've been away." He considered her in astonishment, then, his face slowly hardening, he demanded harshly, "Can ye not speak, woman? Don't ye see I want to know about the Latta. I’m asking you for the last time. Will you tell me once and for all how ye got on?"

With a great effort she controlled herself, looked at him out of her placating eyes and, forcing her pale lips into a smile, cried:

"Splendid, Father! I got on splendid. I couldn't have done better."

He stared down at her for a long time, filled by the recollection of the arrogance with which he had proclaimed her success, then he said slowly, in an odd, strained voice :

"I hope ye have done splendid. I hope so! For if ye haven't, then, by God! it'll be the pity of ye!"

IT WAS the Saturday following that of the examination for the Latta, the time half-past ten in the morning. Nessie Brodie stood looking out of the parlour window with an expression of expectation upon her face mingled, too, by a hidden excitement which made her eyes shine bright and large out of her small face, as though they awaited the appearance of some sudden, thrilling manifestation in the empty roadway that lay before them. The face, despite its ingenuous weakness, wore something of an unguarded look, for the consciousness that she was alone in the room and unobserved allowed a freer and more unrestrained display of these emotions that she had carefully concealed during the course of the past uneasy week. During that week her father's attitude to her had been insupportable, alternating between a fond complacency and a manner so disturbing and threatening that it terrified her; yet she had borne it, comforting herself in the knowledge that she possessed a strategy more subtle, more effective than all his bluster and his bullying. She thought she had won the Latta, had experienced, indeed, with the passage of each of the seven days since the examination, a growing certainty that she had won it. It was impossible that all her work, the compulsory toil, all these long, cold hours of endurance in this same parlour could go unrewarded, and although a feeling of dissatisfaction with her own paper had possessed her when she left the University last week, now her confidence was completely restored; she felt that she must have taken the Bursary to use her father's phrase in her stride. Still, there was always the chance, the faint unreasonable chance, that she might not have been successful! It was unthinkable, impossible, yet it was against this chance that by some strange, astute working of her mind she had so cleverly formulated her precaution. They thought, both Mary and her father, that the result of the Latta would not be announced for another week she had told them so and they had believed her but she knew better than that, knew that the result would reach her this morning. She was expecting it immediately, for the forenoon delivery of letters at eleven o'clock contained the Glasgow mail, and from enquiries which she had made at the University she knew that the results of the examination had been posted to each competitor on the evening of the day before.