Yes, indeed, Mr. Brodie, Sir John has a kind word and a kind action for everybody.”
Brodie eyed him scornfully.
'Faugh!' he said contemptuously. 'What are you ravin' about, you witless creature! You don't know what I mean, you poor worm! You don't understand.' Disregarding the other's crushed appearance as beneath his notice, he stepped upwards into his office once more, arrogantly, imperiously, and resumed his big chair; then, as he gathered together the sheets of his morning paper before his unseeing eyes, he muttered softly to himself, like one who dallies wantonly, yet seriously, with a profound and cherished secret: 'They don't understand. They don't understand!'
For a full minute he remained staring blankly in front of him, while a dull glow lurked deeply in his eye; then, with a sudden toss of his head and a powerful effort of will, he seemed to thrust something violently from him as though he feared it might master him; shaking his body like a huge dog, he recollected himself, observed the paper in front of him, and, with a visage once more composed and tranquil, began again to read.
V
'MARY, put the kettle on the fire. We'll be back in time for me to give Matt some tea before he goes off to see Agnes,' said Mrs. Brodie, drawing on her black kid gloves with prim lips and a correct air, adding, 'Mind and have it boiling, now, we'll not be that long.' She was dressed for one of her rare sorties into the public street, strangely unlike herself in black, flowing paletot and a plumed helmet of a hat, and beside her stood Matthew, looking stiff and sheepish in a brand-new suit, so new indeed that when he was not in motion his trouser legs stood to attention with edges sharp as parallel-presenting swords. It was an unwonted sight on the afternoon of a day in mid-
week, but the occasion was sufficiently memorable to warrant the most unusual event, being the eve of Matthew's departure for Calcutta. Two days ago he had, for the last time, laid down his pen and picked up his hat in the office at the shipyard and since then had lived in a state of perpetual movement and strange unreality, where life passed before him like a mazy dream, where, in his conscious moments, he became aware of himself in situations both unusual and alarming. Upstairs his case stood packed, his clothing protected by camphor balls, so numerous that they had invaded even the inside of the mandolin and so powerful that the entire house smelled like the new Levenford Cottage Hospital, greeting him whenever he entered the house with an odious reminder of his departure. Everything that the most experienced globe trotter could desire lay in that trunk, from the finest obtainable solar topee given by his father and a
Morocco-bound Bible by his mother to the patent automatic opening water bottle from Mary and the small pocket compass that Nessie had bought with the accumulation of her Saturday pennies.
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
