upon her, felt her doubts rush back upon her with a greater and more disquieting force. It was a mistake to visit a doctor who knew her so well. Denis might not like her taking a step like this without first consulting him; another time would be more propitious for her visit; she was not ill, but well and as normal as ever; she was making herself the victim of her own imagination, obviously, unnecessarily, dangerously.
Now the street was clear and she perceived that she must enter at once or not at all; telling herself that she would go in first and face her difficulties afterwards, she had placed her hand upon the gate handle when she recollected that she had no money with her to pay the fee which, even if he did not demand it, she must at once discharge to avoid a complication leading to discovery. She withdrew her hand and was again beginning to resume her indecisive pacing upon
the pavement, when, abruptly, she saw a maid looking from behind the curtains of a front window. Actually the maid observed nothing, but to Mary's excited fancy the servant's eye appeared to be regarding her suspiciously, and in the accusation of this apparent scrutiny the last shreds of her resolution dissolved. She felt she could endure the suspense of her indecision no longer, and with a guilty countenance she moved off hastily down the street, as though detected in some atrocious action.
As she fled down the street, retracing the whole of the weary way she had come, the repression of her unrelieved desire almost stifled her. She felt herself a blunderer and a coward; her face burned with shame and confusion; she felt she must at all costs avoid the public gaze. To keep away from any one who might know her, and to return home as quickly as possible, she did not follow the High
Street but took instead the alternative route a narrow, shabby alley named College Street, but referred to always as the Vennel which branched off the circuitous sweep of the main thoroughfare and drove, under the railway, directly towards the Common. With lowered head she plunged into the murk of the Vennel as if to hide herself there and hurried along the mean, disreputable street with its ill-paved causeway and gutters filled with broken bottles, empty tins and the foul litter of a low quarter. Only the desire to rush from recognition drove her through this lane which, tacitly forbidden to her, she never entered; but even in her precipitate flight its misery laid a sordid hand upon her.
Women stared at her from open courts as they stood idle, slatternly, bare-armed, talking in groups; a mongrel dog chased her, barking, snapping at her heels; a cripple, dirty and deformed, taking his ease upon the pavement, shouted after her for alms, pursuing her with his voice whiningly, importunately, insultingly.
She hurried with a greater speed to escape from the depressing confines of the lane and had almost made her way through, when she discerned a large crowd of people bearing down upon her. For one tragic, transient instant she stood still, conceiving this to be a mob rushing to assault her. Immediately, however, the sound of a band fell upon her ears, and she observed that the host, surrounded by an attendant rabble of dirty children and racing, mangy curs, descending
upon her like a regiment marching to battle, was the local branch of the Salvation Army, newly formed in Levenford. In the rush of its youthful enthusiasm, its devoted members were utilising the holiday by parading the low quarters of the town even at this early hour of the day to combat and offset any vice or debauchery that might be liberated on the occasion of the Cattle Show.
Onwards they came, banners flying, dogs barking, cymbals crashing, the band blaring out the hymn : 'Throw out the Life-line', whilst the soldiers of both sexes joined their voices loudly with harmonious fervour.
As they advanced she pressed herself against the wall, wishing the pavement to open beneath her feet and engulf her, and while they swept past, she shrank into herself as she felt the buffet and sway of the surging bodies coarsely against her own. Suddenly, as they rolled past, a female private of the army, flushed with righteousness and the joy of her new uniform, seeing Mary there so frightened and humiliated, dropped for a moment her piercing soprano and, thrusting her face close to Mary's, whispered in one hot, penetrating breath:
'Sister, are you a sinner? Then come and be saved; come and be washed in the Blood of the Lamb!'
Then, merging her whisper into the burden of the hymn, she sang loudly, 'Some one is sinking to-day', swung again into the fervent strains and was gone, tramping victoriously down the street.
A sense of unutterable degradation possessed Mary as she supported herself against the wall, feeling with her sensitive nature that this last disgrace represented the crowning manifestation of an angry Providence. In the course of a few hours the sudden, chance direction of her thoughts into an obscure and foreign channel had altered the whole complexion of her life. She could not define the feeling which possessed her, she could not coherently express or even understand the dread which filled her, but as she stumbled off upon her way
home she felt, in a nausea of self-reproach, that she was unworthy to live.
VH
ON the Monday after the Cattle Show a considerable commotion occurred in the Brodie household. The ra-ta- tat of the postman on that morning was louder than usual and his mien fraught with a more important significance, as he handed to Mrs. Brodie a letter embellished by a row of strange stamps, a thin, flimsy oblong which crackled mysteriously between her agitated fingers. Mamma, with a
palpitating heart, looked at this letter which she had been anticipating for days. There was no need for her to consider who had sent it, for she recognised immediately the thin, 'foreign' envelopes which she had herself solicitously chosen and carefully packed for Matt. She was alone and, in a transport of gratitude and expectation, she pressed the envelope to her lips, then close against her bosom, until, after a moment, as though she had by contact absorbed its hidden message directly into her heart, she withdrew it and turned it over in her red, work- wrinkled hands. Although she felt that the letter was exclusively hers she saw that it was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. James Brodic, and she dared not open it; she dared not run upstairs and cry joyfully to her husband,
'A letter from Matt!' Instead she took this first, precious, unsubstantial bulletin from abroad and placed it carefully upon her husband's plate. She waited. She waited submissively, yet with an eager, throbbing impatience, for the news from her son, returning from time to time into the kitchen from the scullery to reassure herself that the letter was still there, that this phenomenal missive, which had miraculously traversed three thousand leagues of strange seas and exotic lands to reach her safely, had not now suddenly vanished into the empty air.
At last, after what seemed to her an eternity, Brodie came down, still showing in his disposition, she observed thankfully, remnants of the previous day's pleasure. Immediately she brought him his porridge and, having placed this gently before him, stood expectantly a short distance off. Brodie took up the letter, weighed it silently on the palm of his huge hand, seemed to consider it dispassionately, weighed it ostentatiously again, then put it down unopened before him and commenced to eat his porridge. As he supped one spoonful after another, bent forward in a crouching attitude with both elbows upon the table, he kept his eyes fixed upon the envelope and maliciously affected not to see her.
Under the refinement of his malice she remained in the background, her hands pressed tightly together, her body tense with a fever of anticipation, until she could no longer endure the suspense.
'Open it, Father,' she whispered.
He affected a violent, exaggerated start.
'Bless my soul, woman, you near scared the life out me. What are ye hangin' about there for? Oh! I see! I see! It's this bit o' a thing that's drawin' ye.' He jerked his spoon towards the letter and lay back negligently in his chair, contemplating her. He was, he told himself in the full flush of his amiability, having a rare game with her. 'Ye've the look o' a wasp ower the jam pot,' he drawled. 'The same kind o' sickly hunger about ye. I was thinkin' mysel' it looked pretty thin; pretty poor stuff, I've no doubt.'
'It's the thin note paper I bought for him to save postage,' Mamma pleaded. 'Ye can get a dozen sheets o' it into the one envelope.'
'There's not a dozen sheets here. No, I question if there's more nor two or three at the outside. I hope that doesna mean bad news,' he said sadly, cocking one small, spiteful eye at her.
'Oh! Will ye not open it and put my mind at rest, Father?' she implored. 'I'm fair eaten up with anxiety, ye must surely see.'
He lifted his head arrestingly.
'There's plenty time plenty o' time,' he drawled, spinning out the words. 'If ye've waited ten weeks, another ten minutes’ll not burst ye. Away and bring me the rest o' my breakfast.'
