'Get up, you bitch!' he hissed, as he again spurned her brutally with his foot. 'Do you hear me? Get up.'
From the staircase the broken voice of Mamma senselessly repeated,
'I'm not to blame! I'm not to blame!' Over and over came the words, 'I'm not to blame. Don't blame me.' She stood there abjectly, cringingly, protesting ceaselessly in a muttering voice her inculpability, whilst behind her the terrified figures of Nessie and the old woman were dimly outlined. Brodie gave no heed to the interruption. He had not heard it.
'Get up,' he repeated, 'or I'll help ye up'; and, as she rose, he lifted
her to her feet with a final jerk of his foot.
Mary staggered up. Why, she thought, did he not kill her and be done with it? Her side, where he had kicked her, stabbed with a piercing hurt. She was too terrified to look at him. She felt that he was torturing her only to destroy her in the end.
'Now,' he ground out slowly from between his clenched teeth, with words that bit into her like vitriol, 'you'll listen to me.'
As she stood there, bent and drooping, he moved his head slightly and thrust forward his hard, relentless face into hers. His eyes gleamed closely, with a concentrated, icy glitter that seared her with its chill.
'You'll listen to me, I say. You'll listen to me for the last time. You are not my daughter any longer. I am going to cast you out like a leper! Like a leper you filthy slut! That's what I'm going to do to you and your unborn bastard. I'm going to settle with your fancy man in my own time, but you you're going out to-night.'
He repeated the last words slowly, whilst he pierced her with his cold eyes. Then, as though reluctant to abandon the satisfaction of her abasement under his glare, he turned slowly, walked heavily to the door and flung it open. Immediately a terrific inrush of wind and rain filled the hall, clattering the pictures on the walls, billowing the hanging coats on the stand, and rushing upwards with the force of a battering-ram towards the clinging group upon the stairs.
'It's a beautiful night for a stroll,' snarled Brodie, with drawn lips. 'It's dark enough for you to-night! You can walk the streets to your heart's content to-night, you strumpet!'
With a sudden thrust of his arm he caught her by the neck and compressed it within his huge, prehensile grasp. No sound but the
howling of the wind filled the hall. Of the three terrorised onlookers,
the uncomprehending child, the mother, and the half -fearful, half-
gloating old woman, not one spoke. They stood paralysed to silence.
The feel of her soft yet resistant throat fascinated him ; he wanted to
squeeze it like a pipestem until it snapped, and, for an instant, he stood
thus, fighting the impulse; but he started violently and, with a sudden
tug, dragged her to the door.
'Now,' he shouted, 'you're going out and you'll never come back not until you crawl back and grovel down to lick these boots that have kicked you.'
At that, something within Mary spoke. 'I will never do that,' she whispered from her pale lips.
'No!' yelled Brodie. 'You will never come back, you harlot!'
He pushed her, with a violent, final thrust, from him. She disappeared into the raging blackness beyond. As she vanished completely to sight and sound, as though she had stepped over a precipice, he stood there in an ecstasy of passion, his fists clenched, filling his lungs with the wet, saline air, shouting at the pitch of his voice, 'Don't come back, you whore! you whore!' He shouted the last word again, and again, as if its repetition afforded him, in its coarse vituperation, a satisfaction, an alleviation of his fury. Then he turned upon his heel and shut her out into the night.
XI
MARY rested where she had fallen. She felt stunned, for Brodie's final, brutal thrust had thrown her heavily, flat upon her face, into the rough, gravel courtyard. The rain, driven in straight, parallel spears, impinged painfully upon her lightly covered body and spattered the surface of the puddle in which she lay. Already she was soaked to the skin, but the wetness of her rain-saturated clothing brought, at that moment, only a refreshing coolness to the fever that burned within her. She had felt under her father's terrible eyes that
he would surely murder her and now, although her bruised and aching body still burned, a sense of escape filled her mind and transfigured its terror to lightness and relief. She had been cast out shamefully, but she was alive; she had left for ever a home which had become lately a hated prison; and now she plucked together her shattered forces and bravely fixed her mind upon the future.
Denis, she became aware amongst the fearful confusion of her thoughts, was perhaps sixty miles away; she was enveloped in a storm of unprecedented magnitude; she had no coat, no hat, insufficient clothing and no money; but now she had courage. Firmly she compressed her wet lips as she desperately endeavoured to examine her position. Two courses lay open to her: the one to attempt to reach the cottage at Garshake, the other to go to Denis' mother at Darroch.
It was twelve miles to Garshake and, beyond the fact that she knew that it was named Rosebank, she had no knowledge of where the cottage stood; besides, even if she succeeded in getting inside, she would be alone, penniless and without food; and now she realised
that she needed succour of some kind. She therefore abandoned all thought of reaching Rosebank and turned, inevitably, to the alter- native idea. She must go to Denis' mother! At least she would receive shelter from her, shelter until Denis returned. His mother would not refuse her that; and she hearteningly recollected that once Denis had said to her, 'If the worst happened, you could come to my mother.'
She would do that! She must do that. To get to Darroch she would be obliged to walk. She was not aware of any train which left Levenford for Darroch on Sunday
night; and if one did run she did not know its time of departure, nor had she the cost of her ticket. Two routes therefore offered themselves for her choice. The first was the main artery of communication between the two places, a broad main thoroughfare nearly five miles long, the other, a narrow, unfrequented road running directly across the open countryside, narrowing here to a lane and there to a mere track, but avoiding the circuitous windings of the outskirts of both towns, and shorter than the former by almost two miles. Her strength was now so insufficient, and her sufferings so great, that she decided to take the latter route because it was the lesser distance. She thought she could walk three miles.
Prostrate upon the ground and protected by the high wall of the courtyard she had not appreciated the full power of the storm, which was, indeed, the worst which had ravaged the Scottish Lowlands for over a century. The wind, springing from the southwest, tore past at the unprecedented velocity of sixty miles an hour. In the town only those driven by necessity were abroad, and of these only the hardiest remained for more than a few moments in the open. Slates torn from the roofs of houses sailed downwards through the air, each with the force and cutting violence of a falling guillotine; whole chimney pots were wrenched off, flung through the air entire, and dashed upon the cobblestones below; the large, thick, plate-glass window of the Building Society's office was blown into pieces, like dry parchment, by the force of the wind alone. Amongst the roar of the hurricane the reports of falling objects as they struck upon the streets came continuously, like a bombardment. In the Newtown the gable of a newly erected house was caved in by the blast and the wind, entering the aperture like a wedge, prised off the roof and seized it. Off flew the entire roof, its sides extended like the planing wings of a bird, soaring through the air, until finally the wind ceased to support it and it dived like a plummet into the black water of the estuary a full three hundred yards away.
In the low-lying parts of the town the ceaseless rain caused such flooding that entire areas lay under water; houses stood apart like isolated dwellings rising from a strange lagoon, and the deluge, rushing around them, percolated the walls, entered through doors and windows, and completely inundated the lower floors.
The lightning which ran riot over the surrounding countryside produced a less diffuse but more deadly havoc. A shepherd, herding on the Doran hills, was struck instantly dead; two farm servants sheltering under a tree were struck down and their charred bodies crushed by the fall of the riven tree; livestock suffered severely; countless sheep and cattle were killed as they lay in the open or sought a more precarious shelter under trees, and a full
