'An old body like yersel' needs a drop now and then. See, I'm givin' you plenty and don't take much water with it.'
'Oh, no, James,' she protested. 'Don't give me ower much. You know I'm not fond o' much o't just a wee drappie to keep out the cold.'
At her last words a sudden memory cut across his jocularity like a whip lash and he snarled at her:
'Don't use these words to me! It minds me too much of somebody I'm not exactly fond of. Why do ye speak like a soft and mealy-mouthed hypocrite?' He glowered at her while she drank her whisky quickly, for fepr he should take it from her; then, urged by a more vindictive spirit, he cried out, 'Come on. Here's some more. Glass about.'
'Na! Na!' she exclaimed mildly. 'I've had enough. It's warmed me nicely and gie'n my mouth a bit flavour. Thenk ye all the same, but I'll no' have any more.'
'Ye’re not say no to me.' he shouted roughly. 'What are ye to refuse good spirits? Ye asked for it and you'll have it, even if I've to pour it down your auld thrapple. Hold out your glass; we'll drink fair.'
Wonder ingly she submitted, and when he had given her another liberal helping, she drank it more slowly, appreciatively, smacking her lips and rolling it over her tongue, murmuring between her sips,
'It's the real stuff, richt enough. It's unco kind o' ye, James, to spare me this. I've never had so much afore. Troth. I'm not used to it.' She was silent whilst the liquid in her glass dwindled, then all at once she burst out, 'It's got a graund tang on your tongue has it no? 'Deed it almost makes me feel young again.' She tittered slightly. 'I was just thinkin' ' she tittered more loudly.
At the sound of her levity he smiled darkly.
'Yes,' he drawled, 'and what were ye thinkin', auld woman? Tell us so that we can enjoy the joke.'
She snickered the more at his words, and covering her wrinkled face with her knotted hands, abandoned herself to a delicious, inward humour until at last she coyly unveiled one senile, maudlin eye and whispered brokenly:
'Soap! I was just thinkin' about soap.'
'Indeed, now; ye were thinkin' about soap!' he mimicked. 'That's very appropriate. Was it a wash that ye wer wantin'? For if that's the case, I can assure ye that it's high time ye had one.'
'Na, na,' she giggled, 'it's no' that. It just flashed into my heid what the wives used to do in my young days, when they wanted a drop o' speerits without the guid-man knowin' about it. They they wad go to the village grocer's for their gill and get it marked to the book as soap. Soap!' She was quite overcome by her enjoyment of this delicious subtlety and again buried her face in her hands; but she looked up after a moment to add, 'Not that I ever did a thing like that! No! I was aye respectable and could scrub the house without that kind of cleanser!'
'That's right! Blow your own trumpet,' he sneered. 'Let us know what a paragon o' virtue you were. I'm listenin'.'
'Ay! I did weel in these days,' she continued reminiscently, losing, in the present fatuity of her mind, all awe of her son, 'and I had muckle to put up wi'. Your father was as like you are now as twa peas in a pod. The same grand way wi' him and as touchy as gunpowder. Many the night he would come in and let fly at me if things werna to his taste. But I stood up to him in a' his rages! I'm pleased to think on that.' She paused, her look becoming distant. 'I can see it like it was yesterday. Man, he was proud, proud as Lucifer.'
'And had he not reason to be proud?' he exclaimed harshly, becoming aware that the drink was not taking her the way he had expected, that she was ceasing to amuse him. 'Do ye not know the stock he came from?'
'Oh, ay, I kenned a' about that, lang syne,' she tittered spitefully, filled by a heady, rancorous imprudence. 'He had the airs o' a duke, wi' his hand me this and reach me that, and his fine clothes, and his talk o' his forbears and what his rights were if he but had them. Oh! He was aye splorin' about his far back connection wi' the Wintons. But I often wonder if he believed it hisself. There's a' kinds o' connections,' she sniggered, 'and 'tis my belief that the lang syne connection was on the wrang side o' the blanket.'
He glared at her, unable to believe his ears, then finding his tongue, he shouted:
'Silence! Silence, ye auld bitch! Who are you to talk like that about the Brodies? Ye bear the name yerser now. How dare ye run it down before me,' and he grasped the neck of the bottle as though to hurl it at her.
'Now, now, Jims,' she drivelled, quite unperturbed, raising one uncertain, protesting hand, 'ye mustna be unreasonable. I'm not the kind o' bird that files its ain nest this is a' atween the family, so to speak and ye surely know it was a' gone intill and found out that the whole trouble began lang, lang syne, wi' an under-the-sky affair atween Janet Dreghorn, that was the heid gardener's daughter, and young Robert Brodie that cam' to the title mony years after. Na! Na! They were never bound by ony tie o' wedlock.'
'Shut your blatterin' mouth,' he roared at her. 'If ye don't, I'll tear the dirty tongue out o' it. You would sit there and miscall my name like that! What do you think ye are? Ye were lucky my father married you. You you ' He stammered, his rage choking him, his face twitching as he looked at her senseless, shrunken features. She was now completely intoxicated, and unconscious equally of his rage and of Nessie's frightened stare, continued:
'Lucky!' she babbled, with a drunken smirk, 'maybe I was and maybe I wasna, but if ye kenned the ins and outs o' it all, ye might think that ye were lucky yoursel'!' She broke into peals of shrill laughter, when suddenly her false teeth, never at any time secure and now dislodged from her palate by her moist exuberance, protruded from between her lips like the teeth of a neighing horse, and impelled by a last uncontrollable spasm of mirth, shot out of her mouth and shattered themselves upon the floor. It was, in a fashion, a fortunate diversion, for otherwise he must certainly have struck her, but now they both gazed at the detached and scattered dentures that lay between them like blanched and scattered almonds, she staring with collapsed grotesque cheeks and shrunken, unrecognisable visage, he with a muddled amazement.
'They're lyin' before ye like pearls before swine,' he exclaimed at last. 'It serves ye right for your blasted impudence.'
'My guid false teeth!' she moaned, sobered by her loss, yet articulating with difficulty, 'that I've had for forty years! They were that strong too, with the spring atween them. What will I do now? I canna eat. I can hardly speak.'
'That'll be a good job, then,' he snarled at her, 'if it keeps you from gabblin' with your lyin' tongue. It serves you right.'
'They'll not mend,' she whined, 'Ye maun get me a new set.' Her forlorn eyes were still fixed upon the floor. 'I canna just suck at my meat. Ye don't get the good out o' it that way. Say you'll get me another double set, James.'
'Ye can whistle for that,' he retorted. 'What good would new teeth be to an auld deein' thing like you? You're not goin' to last that much longer. Just look on it as a judgment on ye.'
At his words she began to whimper, wringing her bony hands together and mumbling incoherently, 'What a to do! I'll never get ower it. What's to become o’ me that's had them so lang. It was a' the fault o' the speerits. I could aye manage them fine. It'll mean the end o' me.'
He regarded her ludicrous, whining figure with a scowl, then, moving his glance, he suddenly observed the drawn face of Nessie, watching the scene with a frightened yet fixed attention.
'What are you playin' at next?' he growled at her, his mood changed by his mother's recent remarks. 'Can ye not get on with your own work ? You'll get a bra w lot done with that glaikit look about you. What's the matter with ye?'
'I can't get on very well with the noise, Father,' she replied timidly, lowering her eyes; 'it distracts my attention. It's not easy for me to work when there's talking.'
'So that's it!' he replied. 'Well! There's plenty of room in the house now. If the kitchen isn't good enough for you, we'll put ye in the parlour. You'll not hear a sound there. Then ye'll have no excuse for idlin'.' He got up and, before she could reply, advanced with a slight lurch to the table where he swept her books into one disordered heap; clutching this between his two enormous hands,
he turned and stalked off, crying, 'Come on. Into the parlour with ye. The best room in the house for my Nessie. You'll work in peace there and work hard too. If ye can't study in the kitchen you'll gang into the parlour every night.'
Obediently she arose and followed him into the cold, musty room where, after stumbling about in the darkness, he flung her books upon the table and at length succeeded in lighting the gas. The pale light gleamed from its frosted globe upon the chilly, uncovered mahogany table, the empty, unused fireplace, upon all the cold discomfort of the neglected, dust-shrouded chamber and lit up finally the overbearing figure of Brodie and the shrinking form of the child.
