so as to take it back to Ireland with them they've gone back there, ye know. Ye can't believe all ye hear; of course, there's all sorts of stories about, but I believe the truth is that, when it died, they took a spite at her and got rid of her the quickest they could!'
Mrs. Brodie shook her head negatively.
'That wouldna be difficult,' she retorted. 'Mary was always an independent girl; she would take charity from nobody no, she would work for her living first.'
'Well, anyway, Mamma, I didn't like telling you, but I thought it best you should know. Anyway, your responsibility for her is ended. Mind you, although she has lowered the name of my intended, I bear no grudge against her. I hope she may in time repent; but you have got others to think of.'
'Ay, that's true, Agnes! I maun swallow the bitter pill; but I will say this I never thought much of Mary, never valued her until I lost her. Still I maun forget, if I can, and think of them that's left to us.' She sighed heavily. 'What's come over our poor Matt at all, at all? It fair breaks my heart not to have news o' him. Can he be ill, think ye?' They were now embarked upon the consideration of the subject vital to them both and, after a moment's thought, Miss Moir shook her head dubiously.
'He's said nothing about his health,' she replied. 'He's been off his work once or twice, I know, but I don't think it was from sickness.'
'Maybe he wouldn't like to frighten us,' said Mrs. Brodie diffidently, 'There's agues and fevers and jaundice and all kinds of awfu' troubles out in these foreign parts. He might even have got sunstroke, although it's strange to think of such a thing with all this snow about us here. Matt was never a strong boy.' Then she added inconsequently. 'He aye had a weak chest in the winter, and bronchitis, that needed thick garments.'
'But, Mamma,' cried Agnes impatiently, 'he would never get bronchitis in a hot country. They would never get snow like this in Calcutta.'
'I ken that, Agnes,' replied Mrs. Brodie firmly, 'but a weakness like that might work inwardly in a hot country, and forebye if he opened his pores he might sit doun and get a chill, as easy as look at ye.'
Agnes did not seem to take kindly to this train of thought and she arrested it by a pause, after which she said slowly:
'I've been wondering, Mamma, if some of these black persons have not been exerting an evil influence over Matt. There's people called Rajahs rich heathen princes that I've read awful things about, and Matt might be led away. He might be easily led,' she added solemnly recollecting, perhaps, her own enticement of the receptive youth.
Mrs. Brodie instantly had visions of all the potentates of India luring her son from grace with jewels, but indignantly she repudiated the sudden, baleful thought.
'How can ye say that, Agnes?' she cried. 'He kept the best of company in Levenford. You should know that! He was never the one for bad companions or low company.'
But Agnes who, for a Christian woman, had an intensive knowledge of her subject, which must necessarily have come to her through the marvellous intuition of love, continued relentlessly:
'Then, Mamma, I hardly like to let the words cross my lips, but they have wicked, wicked attractions out there like dancing girls that that charm snakes and dance without ' Miss Moir, with downcast eyes, broke off significantly and blushed, whilst the down on her upper lip quivered modestly.
Mrs. Brodie gazed at her with eyes as horrified as if they beheld a nest of those snakes which Agnes so glibly described; demoralised by the appalling suddenness of a suggestion which had never before entered her mind, she wildly visualised one of these shameless houris abandoning the charming of reptiles to charm away the virtue of her son.
'Matt's no' a boy like that!' she gasped.
Miss Moir compressed her lips delicately and bridled, then raised her heavy eyebrows with an air of one who could have revealed to Mrs. Brodie secrets regarding the profundities of Matthew's passionate nature which had hitherto been undreamed of. As she sipped her cocoa her attitude seemed to say, 'You ought to know by now the propensities of your children. Only my inviolate and virtuous maidenhood has kept your son pure.'
'Ye've no proof, have ye, Agnes?' wailed Mrs. Brodie, her apprehension strengthened by the other's strange air.
'I have no definite proof, of course, but I can put two and two together,' replied Miss Moir coldly. 'If you can read between the lines of these last letters of his, he's always at that club of his, and playing billiard matches, and out at night with other men, and smoking like a furnace.' Then, after a moment's silence, she added petulantly:
'He should never have been allowed to smoke. It was a step in the wrong direction. I never liked the idea of these cigars; it was downright fast!'
Mrs. Brodie wilted visibly at the obvious insinuation that she had countenanced her son's first step on the road to ruin.
'But, Aggie,' she blurted out, 'you let him smoke an' all, for I mind well he persuaded me by saying ye thought it manly.'
'You're his mother. I only said it to please the boy. You know I would do anything for him,' retorted Agnes, with a sniff which verged almost into a sob.
'And I would do everything for him too,' replied Mrs. Brodie hopelessly; 'but I don't know what's going to come of it all.'
'I've been seriously wondering,' pursued Agnes, 'if you ought not to get Mr. Brodie to write a strong letter to Matt, sort of, well, reminding him of his duties and obligations to those at home. I think it's high time something was done about it.'
'Oh! That wouldna do at all,' cried Mamma hastily. 'It would never do. I could never approach him. It's not in me, and besides it's not the kind of thing his father would do.' She trembled at an idea so antagonistic to her invariable line of conduct towards Brodie, so contrary to her usual concealment of everything that might provoke that imperial wrath, and she shook her head sadly, as she added, 'We maun do what we can ourselves, for his father wouldna stir his finger
to help him. It may be unnatural, but it's his style. He thinks he's done a' he should do.'
Agnes looked grieved. 'I know Matt was always afraid always respected his father's word,' she said, 'and I'm sure you don't want any more discredit on the family.'
'No, Agnes, I don't like to contradict you to your face, but I'm certain you're not on the right track. I would never believe wrong of my boy. You're anxious, like me, and it's put you on the wrong idea. Wait a bit and you'll have a grand, big budget of good news next week.'
'It can't come quick enough for me,' replied Miss Moir, in a frigid tone which coldly indicated her grievance against Mrs. Brodie in particular, and her growing resentment, fed by the recollection of Mary's recent disgrace, against the name of Brodie in general. Her breast heaved and she was about to utter a bitter, contumacious reproach when suddenly the shop door bell went 'ping', and she was obliged, with heightening colour, to rise servilely to answer the call and to serve a small boy with an inconsiderable quantity of confectionery. This supremely undignified interruption did nothing towards restoring her equanimity but, instead, activated her to a lively irritation and, as the penetrating voice of her client demanding a halfpennyworth of black-striped balls clearly penetrated the air, the obstinate perversity of her temper deepened.
Unconscious of the working of this angry ferment in Miss Moir's exuberant bosom, Mrs. Brodie, in her absence, sat huddled in her chair before the stove, her thin chin sunk in the scraggy wetness of the sealskin coat. Surrounded externally by struggling currents of steamy vapour, there struggled also, within her mind, a dreadful uncertainty as to whether she might not be responsible for some vague and undetermined weakness in Matt, through a fault in his upbringing. A frequent expression of Brodie's a decade ago flashed into her mind, and she now saw vividly, in her anguish, her husband's contemptuous face as, discovering her in some fresh indulgence towards Matthew, he snapped at her, 'You're spoiling that namby- pamby brat of yours. You'll make a braw man o' him!' She had, indeed always attempted to shield Matt from his father, to protect him from the harshness of life, to give him extra luxuries and privileges not accorded to her other children. He had never had the courage to play truant from the Academy, but when he had desired, as he frequently did, a day off or had been for some reason afraid to attend school, it was to her that he had come, limping and whining,
'Mamma, I'm sick. I've got a pain in ma belly.' Whenever he had feigned illness, of whatever kind, he had affected always that limping, hobbling, lame-dog gait, as though the agony arising in any organ of his body flew
