Арчибальд Кронин - Hatter's Castle

Now that his leave-taking was at hand, Matthew had experienced during the last few days a well-defined sinking feeling in the vicinity of his navel, and though of his own volition he would willingly and self-sacrificingly have abandoned the thrill of such a disturbing emotion, like a nervous recruit before an action, the pressure of circumstances forbade his retirement. The lions which had arisen in his imagination and leapt glibly from his tongue a short week ago to engage the fascinated attention of Mary and Mamma now returned growling, to torment him in his dreams. Renewed assurances from people connected with the yard that Calcutta was at the least a larger community than Levenford failed to comfort him, and before retiring each night he cultivated the habit of searching for snakes which might be perfidiously concealed beneath his pillow.

For Mrs. Brodie the emotional influence of the occasion had provided a strong stimulus, as though she felt at last able to identify herself in a situation worthy of a leading character in one of her beloved novels. Like a Roman matron renouncing her son to the State with Spartan fortitude, or, more sensibly, a Christian mother sending out a second Livingstone on a mission of hope and glory, she forsook her meek despondency and, bearing up nobly, packed, repacked, devised, succoured, comforted, encouraged and exhorted, and sprinkled her conversation with text and prayer.

Brodie had not missed the change in her, gauging with a sardonic eye the explanation of the transient phase. "You're makin' a bonny exhibition o' yourself, my woman," he had sneered at her, "wi' your posing and posturin', and your runnin' after that big gowk o' yours, and your cups o' tea and snashters at a' hours. Ye would think ye were Queen Victoria to look at ye. Is it a general ye're sendin, out to the war or what that you're blowin' yerself out like a pig's bladder? I know well what will happen. Whenever he's away yell collapse, and we'll have ye back on our hands more o' a driech empty bag than ever. Faugh! Let some sense in that silly skull o' yours, for God's sake."

She had felt him cold, unfeeling, even callous, as she feebly expostulated, "But, Father, we maun give the boy his start. There's a great future in front of him;" and thereafter, concealing her endeavours from her husband, she had redoubled, with an outraged, conscious rectitude, these spirited efforts on behalf of her young, potentially illustrious pioneer.

Now, having adjusted her gloves to a smooth perfection, she remarked,

"Are you ready, Matt dear?" in a tone of such forced cheerfulness that it chilled Matthew's very blood. "We are going down, Mary, to the chemist's," she continued in a chatty manner.

"The Rev. Mr. Scott told Agnes the other day that the best remedy for malaria was quinine a wonderful cure he said, so we're off to get a few powders made up." Matthew said nothing, but visions of himself lying, fever-racked, in a crocodile-infested swamp rushed through his mind and, considering glumly that a few scanty powders seemed a paltry protection against such an evil, in his mind he sullenly repudiated the reverend gentleman's suggestion.

"What does he know about it, anyway? He's never been there. It's all very fine for him to talk," he thought indignantly, as Mrs. Brodic took his arm and led him, an unwilling victim, from the room.

When they had gone Mary filled the kettle and put it on the hob. She seemed listless and melancholy, due, no doubt, to the thought of losing her brother, and for a week had moved in a spirit of extreme dejection which might reasonably have been entirely attributed to sisterly solicitude. Curiously, though, it was just one week since she had been with Denis at the fair, and though she longed for him, she had not seen him since. That had been an impossibility, as she knew

him to be in the North, travelling on business, from a letter posted in Perth which, startlingly, she had received from him. It was an event for her at any time to receive a letter (which, on such rare occasions, was inevitably perused by the entire household) but fortunately she had been first down that morning and so no other had seen it or the sudden throbbing gladness of her face, and she had thus avoided detection, interrogation, and certain discovery.

What felicity it had been to hear from Denis! She realised with an inward thrill that he must have held this paper in his own hands, the hands which had touched her so caressingly, brushed the envelope with those lips which had sealed themselves upon hers, and, as she read the letter behind the locked door of her room, she flushed even in this privacy, at the impetuous, endearing words he wrote. It became evident to her that he desired to marry her and, without considering the obstacles which might be between them, took for granted apparently that she had accepted him.

Now, seated alone in the kitchen, she took the letter from her bodice and reread it for the hundredth time. Yes! He wrote fervently that he was pining for her, that he could not exist without her, that life to him was now an endless waiting until he should see her, be near to her, be with her always. She sighed, ardently, yet sadly. She, too, was pining for him. Only ten days since that night by the river's brink, and each day more piteous, more dolorous than the one before!

On the first of the seven she had felt ill physically, while the realisation of her boldness, her disobedience of her father, the defiance of every canon of her upbringing struck her in one concentrated blow; but as time passed and the second day merged into the third and she still did not see Denis, the sense of iniquity was swamped by the sense of deprivation and she forgot the enormity of her conduct in a straining feeling of his necessity to her. On the fourth day, in her sad bewilderment, when she had essayed so constantly to penetrate the

unknown and unrealised depths of her experience that it began to appear to her like a strange, painful unreality, his letter had come, raising her at once to a pinnacle of ecstatic relief. He did, then, love her after all, and everything became obliterated in the joy of that one dazzlhig fact; but on the succeeding days she had gradually slipped from the heights and now she sat realising the hopelessness of ever obtaining sanction to see Denis, asking herself how she could live without him, wondering what would become of her.

As she pondered, carelessly holding the letter in her hand, old Grandma Brodie entered unobserved.

"What's that you're reading?" she demanded suddenly, peering at Mary.

"Nothing, Grandma, nothing at all," Mary blurted out with a start, stuffing the crushed paper into her pocket.

"It looked to me gey like a letter and ye seemed in a big hurry to hide it. You're always mopin' and moonin' over something now. I wish I had my specs. I would soon get to the bottom o' it." She paused, marking the result of her observation malevolently on the tablets of her memory. "Tell me," she resumed, "where's that glaikit brother o' yours?"

"Gone to get quinine at the chemist's with Mamma."

"Pah! what he needs is gumption not quinine. He would need a bucket o' that to stiffen him up. Forbye, some strained castor oil and a drop of good spirits would be more useful to him outbye there. I've no time for sich a palaver that has been goin' on. Everything's upset in the house with the fiddle faddle of it a'. Tell me, is tea earlier to-night?" She clicked her teeth hopefully, scenting like a harpy the nearness of sustenance.

“I don't know, Grandma," replied Mary. Usually the old woman's unbashful eagerness for food left her indifferent, but to-night, in her own troubled perplexity, it nauseated her; without further speech she got up and, feeling that she must be alone and in a less congested atmosphere, went out into the back garden. As she paced back and forth across the small green she felt it strangely cruel that life should continue to move heedlessly around her in the face of all her sadness and confusion, that Grandma Brodie should still crave greedily for her tea, and the progress of Matt's departure march indifferently along. The current of her thoughts had never flowed so despondently as, with restless movements, she seemed dimly to perceive that the circumstances of her life were conspiring to entrap her. Through the back window she saw Matthew and her mother return, saw Mamma buslle to prepare the table, observed Matthew sit down and begin to eat. What did they care that her brain throbbed with perplexity behind a burning forehead, that she wished one word of compassionate advice but knew not where to seek it? The barren drabness of this back garden, the ridiculous rear view of the outlines of her home, enraged her, and she desired with bitter vehemence to have been born into a family less isolated, less exacting, less inhuman, or, better, not to have been born at all. She envisaged the figure of her father, bestriding, like a formidable colossus, the destiny of the Brodies and directing her life tyrannically with an ever watchful, relentless eye. His word it was which had withdrawn her at the age of twelve from school, which she loved, to assist in the duties of the household; he had terminated her budding friendships with other girls because this one was beneath her, or that one lived in a mean house, or another's father had incensed him; his mandate had forbidden her to attend the delightful winter concerts in the Mechanic's Hall on the grounds that she demeaned herself by going; and now he would destroy the sole happiness that life now held for her.