immediately to one leg, paralysing it and rendering him incapable of locomotion. She had seen through him, of course, but though undeceived by his pretences, a wave of her foolish maternal love would rush over her and she would compliantly answer, 'Away up to your room then, son, and I’ll fetch ye up something nice. Ye've got a friend in yer mother, anyway, Matt.' Her stultified affections were obliged to find an outlet and she had lavished them upon her son, feeling the imperative need, in that harsh household, of binding him to her by bonds of love. Had she spoiled his manhood by her indulgence? Softened her son into a weakling by lax, tolerant fondness? Immediately her mind formulated the idea, her heart indignantly repudiated it, telling her that she had shown him nothing but kindness, gentleness and lenience, had wished for him nothing but what was good; she had slaved for him too, washed, darned, knitted for him, brushed his boots, made his bed, cooked the most appetising meals for him.
'Ay,' she muttered to herself, 'I've served that laddie hand and foot. Surely he can never forget me? I've taken the very bite out my mouth for him.'
All the toil she had expended upon her son, from the washing of his first napkins to the final packing of his trunk for India, rose up before her, and she was confronted with a sense of bewildering futility of all her love and service in the face of his present treatment of her. She blindly asked herself if it were her incompetence alone which had rendered her enormous and unremitting efforts useless, so that he now used her so indifferently and left her in such harassing suspense.
Here, a sudden sound startled her, and she looked up wanly, to observe that Agnes had returned and was addressing her in an uneven tone of ill-repressed vindictiveness.
'Mamma,' she cried, 'I'm going to marry Matt. I'm going to be his wife and I want to know what's going to be done about this. You've got to do something at once.'
Mamma regarded her humbly, with the mild, moist blue eyes that shone meekly from under the grotesque, bedraggled black hat.
'Don't start on me, Agnes dear,' she said submissively. 'I've had enough to stand in my time without having a hard word from you. I'm not fit to answer ye back, ye can surely see,' and she added feebly, 'I'm just a done woman.'
'That's all very well,' cried Agnes in a huff, 'but I'm not going to have Matt taken away like this. He belongs to me as much as any one. I'm not going to give him up.'
'Aggie,' replied Mamma, in a dead voice, 'we don't know anything; we can't tell what's happening; but we can pray. Yes! That's what we can do. I think I would like us to put up a prayer in this very room. Maybe the Almighty, the same Lord God that looks down on Matt in India, will look down on us two anxious women here and show us a light to comfort us.'
Agnes, touched on her weakest side, was mollified, and the stiffness of her figure relaxed, the glitter faded from her eye as she said,
'Maybe you're right, Mamma. It would be a comfort.' Then, more as a polite formality than anything else, she asked, 'Will you speak, then, or will I?'
'You do it better than me,' said Mrs. Brodie unassumingly. 'You put up a word for us both.'
'Very well, Mamma,' replied Agnes complacently.
They knelt down in the small, stuffy room, amongst the jumbled clutter on the floor of bottles, boxes, tins, surrounded by the untidy litter of straw packing and sawdust, their altar a packing case, their ikon a framed advertisement upon the wall. Still, they prayed.
Agnes, kneeling straight and upright, her thick, short body tense with an almost masculine vitality, and potent with the pressure of her restraint, began to pray in a loud, firm voice. Amongst the godly people in the church movements with which she was identified Miss Moir was noted for the power and richness of her spontaneous prayer, and now the words flowed from her lips in an eloquent stream, like the outpourings of a young and fervent priest supplicating for the
sins of mankind. Yet she did not petition, she seemed indeed to demand, and her dark eyes glowed, her full bosom heaved with the intensity of her appeal. All the fire of her nature entered that passionate prayer. Her words were proper, modest, stereotyped, but in essence it was as though she throbbingly implored the Almighty not to cheat her of the man she had captivated and subdued by the meagre charms with which He had endowed her. No one had ever looked at her but Matt, she knew her attractions to be limited, and, if he failed her, she might never marry. All the suppressed feeling dammed within her had been restrained within bounds only by visions of the ioyous promise of the future and she now tacitly implored the Almighty not to defraud her of the fulsome fruition of these desires in the state of holy matrimony.
Mamma, on the contrary, seemed to sink down in a supine mass, like a heap of discarded, draggled clothing; her head sagged with a pleading humility; the faint, speedwell blue of her pathetic eyes was washed with tears; her nose flowed with lacrymation. As the loud, fervent words fell upon her ears, the image rf her son rose before her and, while at first she applied her handkerchief furtively, soon she used it profusely, and at length she wept openly. All the time, her heart seemed to beat out the words, 'Oh! God! If I did wrong over Mary, don't punish me too much. Don't take Matt away from me. Leave me, still, my son to love me.'
When the prayer was ended there was a long pause, then Agnes rose, extended her hand to Mamma and helped her to her feet; facing each other closely, amicably, the two women now regarded each other with a glow of understanding and sympathy. Mamma nodded her head gently, as if to say, 'That'll do it, Agnes. It was wonderful.'
New life seemed to have possessed them both. This outpoured confession of all their hopes, fears and desires to the unknown heavens towards a Supreme, Omniscient and Omnipotent Being left them assured, comforted, and fortified. Now they were positive that all would be well with Matthew and, as Mamma at length turned to go, invigorated and refreshed, a look passed between them expressive of their sweet, secret cooperation and they kissed each other a sanguine affectionate good-bye.
III
TOWARDS the middle of March, the empty shop next door to Brodie's became the nucleus of a seething activity. Previously, when, in its unoccupied wretchedness, it had been to him a perpetual eyesore against the refinement of his establishment, he had viewed it with contemptuous disgust; but immediately after Dron's communication that it had been sold, he began to see it with a different, a peculiar and more intense disfavour. Every time he passed in or out of his own quarters he darted a furtive, antagonistic glance at the vacant, dilapidated premises, quickly, as if he feared to have that glance intercepted, yet vindictively, as though he vented his spleen upon the inanimate building. Its two empty windows were no longer vacuous, but became to him hateful, and each morning as he came along, fearing, yet hoping, that signs of the incoming of the new company would be evident, and still the same shabby, void aspect met his gaze, he experienced a compelling desire to hurl a heavy stone with all his force, to shiver the blank and glass panes. As day followed day for an entire
week, and still nothing happened, this deferred action angered him he had been so strung up for battle and he began to ponder obtusely if the whole idea was not simply a spiteful invention of Dron's, concocted in order to irritate him. For the space of one full day he felt convinced that the shop had not been sold and, during that time, he scoffed openly, with a flaunting triumph, but immediately, a short announcement in the Levenford Advertiser, stating briefly that the Mungo Company would open a new branch at Number 62 High Street at the beginning of the month of April, and that the fullest details would be given in the following week's issue, destroyed this transitory illusion; the conflict, occurring solely in Brodie's own perverted mind, between himself and the inert building reopened more bitterly than before.
Shortly after this pretentious announcement in the Advertiser, a dapper, urbane visitor had come into Brodie's shop and, with an agreeable yet deprecatory smile, presented his card in introduction.
'Mr. Brodie, I am, as you see, the district manager of the Mungo Hat and Hosiery Company. I want us to be friends,' he said, holding out his hand affably.
Brodie was dumbfounded, but beyond ignoring the proffered hand, he gave no indication of his feelings and made no departure from his usual manner.
'Is that all ye want?' he asked abruptly.
