keep out the cold, or cheer a man up, like a wee droppie.' A wee droppie! What an expression for a grown man to use, thought Brodie; but it was like Grierson to talk like that, with his soft, pussy voice and his creeping, sneaking ways. The obvious construction of the remark which rose to his mind was that, at the Cross, they had him a drunkard already, he who hadn't touched drink for months.
He jerked out of his seat impatiently and looked through the frosted window at the snow which was everywhere, on the ground, on the frozen Leven, on the house tops, in the air, falling relentlessly, as though it would never cease to fall. The drifting flakes appeared to Brodie each like an oppression in itself supportable, but becoming insufferable by weight of numbers. As he cogitated, a dormant molecule of thought began to swell within his mind. He felt in his dull brain the blind injustice of the veiled accusation that he had been consoling himself with drink. 'That's it,' he muttered. 'I'm gettin' the blame and none of the comfort.' The desolation of the scene again struck frigidly upon him. He shivered once more and continued to talk to himself. This propensity of articulate self- communion was entirely new, but now, as he spoke thus, the process of his ideas became more lucid and less entangled. 'They say I'm takin' a dram, do they; it's the sort of thing the measly swine would say, without rhyme nor reason; but, by God! I will take them at their word. It's what I'm needin' anyway, to take the taste o' that braxy out o' my mouth the poor, knock-kneed cratur' that he is, wi' his 'wee droppies.' Him and his sleekit 'beg your pardons' and 'by your leaves', and his scrapin' and bowin' down in the dirt. Some day I'll kick him and keep him down in it. Ay, I maun have something to clean my mouth after this mornin's wark.' His face grimaced dourly as he added ironically, still addressing the empty room, 'But thank you all the same, Mister Grierson thank you for your verra acceptable suggestion.'
Then his features changed; suddenly he experienced a wild and reckless desire to drink. His body felt strong, so brutally powerful chat he wanted to crush iron bars, so eagerly alive, with such vast potentiality for enjoyment, that he felt he could empty huge reservoirs of liquor. 'What good does it do me to live like a blasted stickit minister they talk about me just the same. I'll give them something to babble about, blast them!' he cried, as he pulled his hat down over
his eyes and strode darkly out of the shop.
A few doors off stood a small, quiet inn, 'The Winton Arms', owned by an elderly, respectable matron named Phemie Douglas, famed for her liquor, her virtue, and her snug sitting room known as 'Phemie's wee back parlour' to the choicer spirits amongst the better class of the townspeople, for whom it was a favourite resort.
Brodie, however, on entering the tavern, avoided this social centre, as he now had no time for words; he wanted to drink, and the longer he waited the more he desired it. He entered the public bar, which was empty, and demanded from the barmaid a large whisky toddy.
'Hurry up and bring it,' he said, in a voice dry from the violence of his craving. Now that he had ordained that he would drink, nothing could stop him, nothing arrest the swelling urge which made his throat dry, caused his hands to clench and unclench restlessly, made his feet stamp chafingly upon the sawdust floor of the bar whilst he awaited the hot whisky. When she brought it, he drank the scalding liquid in one, long breath.
'Another,' he said impatiently.
Altogether he had four, large whiskies, hot and potent as flame, which he consumed as rapidly as he obtained them, and which now worked within him like the activation of some fiery ferment. As he glowed, he began to feel lighter; the shadows of the last three months were lifting; they still swirled like smoke clouds about his brain, but nevertheless they lifted. A sardonic leer played about his mouth as a sense of his superiority and of his invulnerable personality impressed him, but this was the sole expression of the thoughts which rushed within him. His body remained quiet, his actions grew cautious, more restrained; he remained absolutely within himself, whilst his bruised pride healed itself in the roseate thoughts which coursed swiftly through his mind. The barmaid was young, attractive, and quite desirous of being talked to by this strange, huge man, but Brodie ignored her, did not even observe her, as, wrapped in the splendid emancipation from his hateful despondency and engrossed in the incoherent but dazzling consideration of his future plans and triumphs, he remained silent, staring blankly in front of him. Finally he asked for a bottle of whisky, paid for it, and went out.
Back in his office he continued to drink. His brain clarified with each glass, grew more dominant, more compelling; his body responded more quickly and more perfectly to his movements; he now sanctioned with an intense approval all his recent actions.
The empty bottle stood on the table before him, bearing on the label the words: 'Mountain Dew', which struck his bemused fancy as notably appropriate; for now he felt as powerful as a mountain and as sparkling as dew.
'Yes,' he muttered, addressing himself to the bottle, 'you mark my words; they can't down me. I'm more than a match for them. I can master them. Everything I did was right. I wouldna draw back a step o' the road I took wi' her. Just you wait and see how I'll go ahead now. Everything will be forgotten and nothing will stop me! I'll get the whip hand o' them.'
Actually he did not know whom he was indicting, but he included largely and indeterminately in that category all whom he imagined had opposed him, slighted him, or failed to recognise him as the man he was. He did not now think of the threatened opposition to his business, which became, in the swollen magnitude of his disdainful pride, too petty, too ridiculously ineffectual to affect him adversely.
The opposition which he recognised was universal, intangible, yet crystallised in the feeling that any man's hand might be raised against his sacrosanct dignity; and now this obsession, always latent within him, strengthened and become more corrosive in his mind. And yet conversely, whilst the danger to his position loomed the more largely before him, his faith in his ability to conquer such a menace was augmented and exalted in such a manner as to render him almost omnipotent.
At last he started, took out his watch and looked at it. The hands, which appeared larger and blacker than usual, showed ten minutes to one.
'Time for dinner,' he told himself agreeably. 'Time to see that braw, tidy wife o' mine. It's a grand thing for a man to have such a bonnie wife to draw him hame.' He got up impressively, but with a slight, almost imperceptible sway, and walking solidly out of his office, disregarding the awestruck, cringing Perry absolutely. He stalked through the shop and into the street, gained the middle of the street, and held it like a lord. Along the crown of the causeway he swaggered, head erect, shoulders thrown back, planting his feet in front of him with a magnificent sense of his own importance. The few people who were abroad gazed at him in amazement, and as, from the corner of his eye, he saw them glance, their astonishment fed his vanity, his intoxicated assurance battened on their wonder. 'Take a good look,' his attitude seemed to say. 'It's Brodie you're lookin' at James Brodie, and, by God, he's a man!' He walked through the snow the whole way home as though he headed a triumphal procession, keeping so exactly in the centre of the road, and holding so undeviatingly to his course that such traffic as traversed the streets had perforce to go around him, leaving him the undisputed king of the causeway.
Outside his house he paused. The white envelope of snow vested it with an unreal and delusive dignity, softening the harsh lines, relieving the squat and rigid contours, blending the incongruous elements with its clinging touch so that, before his fuddled eyes, it reared itself in massive grandeur, looming against the opaque, slate- coloured sky with an illusion of infinite dimensions. He had never liked it so well or admired it so much and a sense of elation that he should possess it held him as he marched to the front door and entered his home.
In the hall he removed his hat and, with wide extravagant gestures, scattered in all directions the thick snow that had caked upon it, amusedly watching the mushy gobbets go slushing against the roof, the walls, the pictures, the chandelier; then, wildly, he stamped his heavy boots upon the floor, dislodging hard, pressed lumps of ice and snow. It would give that handless slut of his something to do to clean up his mess, he thought, as he walked into the kitchen with the air of a conqueror.
Immediately, he sat down and delved into the huge steaming bowl of broth, sweet with the essence of beef and bones, and stiff with the agglutination of barley, that stood on the table anticipating his arrival, the ignored reminder of his wife's devotion and forethought. Just the thing for a cold day, he thought, as he supped greedily with the zest of a ravenous animal, lifting huge, heaped spoonfuls rapidly to his mouth and working his jaws incessantly. The meat and small fragments of bone that floated through the pottage he rent and crushed between his hard teeth, revelling in the fact that for weeks his appetite had not been so keen or the taste of food so satisfying upon his tongue.
'That was grand,' he admitted to Mrs. Brodie, smacking his lips coarsely at her, 'and a good thing for you. If ye had singed my broth on a day like this I would have flung it about your lugs.' Then, as she paused at the unusual praise, he bellowed at her, 'What are ye gawkin' at; is this all I've to get for my dinner?'
At once she retreated, but, as she hastily brought in the boiled beef and platter of potatoes and cabbage, she
