'Will I make some tea for you, Father? I've not had any tea or any dinner either.'
He lifted his tortured face, looked at her stupidly, then cried thickly:
'Go away! Go to the parlour. Go to your lessons. Go anywhere, but let me alone!'
She fled from him and he sank again into the torment of his thoughts, filled by a profound self-pity as he realised that there was now no one to look after him or Nessie but his dotard and incapable mother. She would have to come back Mary, his daughter!
He would have to allow her to return and keep the house, if only for Nessie's sake. Mary must now come back! The full significance of his discussion of this matter with Nancy struck him like a fresh blow as he recollected how he had coaxed her to write the letter of refusal. And she had known all the time that she was leaving him. He had been too late with his offer of marriage; and now, how would he ever do without her? A piercing anguish took him as he thought of her, even now, in his son's arms, opening her lips to his kisses, offering her firm, white body gladly to his embrace. As though vainly to obliterate the torture of the vision, he raised his hand and pressed it upon his throbbing eyes, whilst his lips twisted painfully and a hard, convulsive sob burst from his swelling breast and echoed through the quiet of the room.
THE three-twenty train from Glasgow to Ardfillan, the first half of the journey accomplished successfully, had left Overton behind, and traversing the low, dripping, smoke-filled arches of Kilmaheu Tunnel, emerged into the breezy March afternoon with a short, triumphant whistle that sent a streamer of steam swirling behind the engine like a pennant, and presently began to coast gently down the
flight incline of the track which marked the approach to Levenford Station. The train was lightly laden, having many of its carriages empty and several with but one passenger in each and, as though conscious of having achieved the sharp ascent of Poindfauld and traversed the dark, grimed caverns of Kilmaheu, it now proceeded at an easier and more leisured pace through the soft, dun countryside
across which the railway track advanced like a long, narrowing furrow.
Within the train, alone in a compartment, in a corner facing the - engine, and with the small portmanteau that constituted her entire luggage beside her, sat a girl. Dressed in a plain, grey costume of serviceable, inexpensive serge, shaped to a neat yet unfashionable cut, and wearing upon her dark, close-coiled hair a grey velvet hat relieved only by a thin, pink ribbon gathered at one side into a simple bow, she remained upright yet relaxed, directing her gaze out of the window, viewing eagerly, yet wistfully, each feature of the fleeting landscape. Her face was thin, the nose straight and fine, the nostrils delicate, the lips sensitive and mobile, the smooth, pale sweep of the brow accentuated by the dark, appealing beauty of her eyes; and upon the entire countenance lay a melancholy sweetness, a pure and clarified sadness, as though some potent, sorrowful experience had stamped upon every lineament the subtle yet ineradicable mark of suffering. This faint, sombre shadow which lightly touched, accentuating even, the dark beauty of the face, made her seera more mature than her actual age of twenty-two years and gave to her an appearance of arresting delicacy, of refined sincerity which was intensified by the severe simplicity of her apparel. Like the face, but in a different sense, her hands, too, immediately engaged attention, as, denuded of gloves, which lay upon her knee, they rested lightly, palm upwards, passive upon her lap. The face was that of a Madonna but the hands, red, conspicuous, coarse-grained and slightly swollen, were the hands of a servant; and if it was suffering which had sublimated the face to a more exquisite beauty, the hands spoke eloquently of bitter toil that had blemished them into this pathetic, contrasting ugliness.
As she gazed intently out of the window she remained quiescent, passive as her own work-worn hands, yet across her sensitive features a faint excitement quivered which betokened the inner agitation of her turbulently beating heart. There, she thought, was the Mains farm, its brown, furrowed fields lapped by the wind-beaten, crested waters of the Estuary, its stack yard a square, yellow patch against the iow, white- washed huddle of the homestead; there, too, was the weathered pile of the Linten Lighthouse, and, equally unchanged, the blue, massive outlines of the Rock itself; there, against the sky, the long, skeleton tracery of the Latta shipyards, and now, swinging into view, the sharp, stippled steeple of the Borough Hall. Affected by the touching familiarity of all that she saw, she considered how unaltered everything was, how permanent, secure and solid. It was she, Mary Brodie, who had changed, and she now longed wistfully to be as she had been when she had lived in these surroundings, before the branding iron of circumstance had set its seal upon her. As she meditated thus, with a sudden, wrenching pang like the tearing open of a wound, she observed the Levenford Cottage Hospital where for two months she had lain facing death, where, too, her infant child had died; and, at the sudden poignant reminder, the serenity of her countenance broke and though no tears flowed they had all been shed before her lips quivered painfully. She marked the window through which her fixed eyes had ceaselessly sought the sky, the gravel walk flanked by laurel bushes along which she had directed the first, flagging steps of her convalescence, the very gatepost to which she had then clung, fluttering and exhausted from the feebleness of her state. She willed the train to stop that she might linger with her memories, but it bore her quickly away from this sad reminder of the past and, circling the last bend, gave to her spasmodic, transient glimpses of Church Street, a line of shops, the Public Library, the Cross, then swept her into the station itself.
How small the platform seemed, with its diminutive waiting rooms and insignificant wooden ticket office, yet when she had once stood in this same station to take the train for Darroch she had, in the agitation of her adventure, trembled at its very magnitude; and, indeed, she trembled now as she realised that she must leave the solitary seclusion of her compartment and venture forth into the public gaze. She stood up firmly, gripping her portmanteau, and although a faint colour tinged her cheeks, she set her soft lips into the mould of fortitude and stepped bravely out upon the platform. She was back again in Levenford after four years!
To the porter who approached, she surrendered her bag with instructions that it should be delivered to her at the next round of the station van and, having given up her ticket, she descended the short flight of steps to the street and set out with a throbbing bosom for her home. If she had been beset by memories in the train, now they rushed in upon her with an overpowering force, and it seemed to her as if each step she took brought before her some fresh remembrance to further strain her already bursting heart. There was the Common, fringed in the distance by the Leven; here was the school she had attended as a child; and, as she passed the portals of the Public Library, still guarded by the same swing doors, she became aware that it was here, on this very spot, that she had first met Denis. The thought of Denis brought no pang, no bitterness, but now merely a sad regret, as though she felt herself no longer his beloved nor yet the victim of his love, but only the helpless puppet of an irresistible destiny.
While she proceeded along Railway Road she observed coming towards her a woman whom she had known in the days before her banishment and she settled herself for the wound of a sharp, contemptuous glance; but no glance came, no sharp wound, for the other drew near and passed her with the placid countenance of complete unrecognition. How much I must have changed, thought Mary sadly, as she entered Wellhall Road and, coming upon Doctor Renwick's house, she wondered with a curious detachment if he too might find her changed, should she ever encounter him. He had been so good to her, that even to pass this dwelling moved her strangely. While she did not consider the fact that he had saved her life, as though this were of slight importance, she remembered vividly the letters he had written her first when she had gone to London and later to inform her of her mother's illness and subsequently of her death all filled with a kind and unmistakable sympathy. She might never have returned to Levenford but for these letters, for, had she not received the second, she would not have written home and Nessie would never have known her address to send her that frantic appeal. Poor, frightened Nessie! Thoughts of her sister and of her father now invaded her, and as she drew near to her home, with the memory of the night on which she had left it stamped like an indelible background upon her mind, she became outwardly agitated; the calm, long-set tranquillity of her appearance was at last melted by the warm, surging currents set racing by the unwonted action of her fast beating heart.
Again she felt herself tremble at the prospect of meeting her father; she shuddered slightly as, of her own volition, she moved towards the oppressive influence of the dwelling which had once contained her like a prisoner.
When, finally, she reached her home, it was with a shock that she observed the outer aspect of the house, wondering, in her first bewilderment, if it were she who viewed it with different eyes, but in a moment noting more intently the subtle, individual alterations which gave it an appearance at once slovenly and sordid. The windows were dirty, with such curtains as veiled them soiled and draggled, with blinds hanging unevenly; in the turret one small window was open and uncovered, the other completely shuttered, like a closed eye, so that the face of the tower winked at her with a fixed, perpetual leer. The clean, grey stone of the frontage was stained by a long, irregular, rusty smear, drawn by the rush of water from a broken gutter, and straggling across the house face like a
