But his bright, insinuating suggestions fell on deaf ears. Brodie paid no heed to him, but stood, moved by an unusual impulse of self-analysis, absorbed in the contemplation of his strange departure from his invariable routine. Why, he asked himself, was he hanging about the shop instead of entering his office with his usual imperial negligence? He was going to smash them next door, of course, but would he do it by sitting calmly at his desk, attempting to read the Glasgow
Herald? He felt he must do something, take some definite line of conduct, but as he moved about, chafing at his desuetude, his sluggish mentality offered him no tangible suggestions towards the powerful action which he craved. If only he could have used the terrific strength of his body in this present cause, then he would have toiled till the sweat poured from him, till his joints cracked with the strain of his effort; he would willingly have embraced the supporting pillars of the opposing shop and, uprooting them, have dragged down the entire edifice about him; but some dim perception of the uselessness of his brute force dawned upon him and stung him bitterly.
At this point a woman, holding by the hand a small child of about six years of age, entered the shop. She was obviously of a poor class and advanced to Perry who greeted her deferentially.
'I wanted a bonnet for ma wee boy. He's goin' to the school next week!' she said confidentially.
Perry beamed upon her.
'Certainly, Madam! What can I show you for the little man?' Suddenly a strange impulse, a fierce inclination against his hated opposition, seized Brodie, and, although these customers were obviously of an inferior class and clearly of that type whom he invariably left to his assistant, he was impelled to go forward.
'Let me do it,' he said, in a harsh, unreal tone.
The woman gazed at him timidly and, instinctively in awe of him, her lightly worn assurance fell from her; she became, not a lady who was selecting yes and paying for a hat to set her son bravely out upon the adventure of school, that first step upon the mysterious highway of life, but merely a mean, shabby, workman's wife.
'This young gentleman served me the last time,' she whispered irresolutely, indicating Perry. 'I was in last year and he suited me nicely.'
The little boy instantly sensed his mother's discomfiture, felt also the lowering oppression of the huge, dark figure above him, and, burying his face in his mother's dress, he began to whine plaintively.
'Mammie! Mammie, I want to go hame,' he sobbed. 'I don't want to stay here. I want hame.'
'Stop greetin' now. Stop your greetin' at once, will ye.' The poor woman, utterly humiliated, stood discomposed and faltering, whilst the wailing child burrowed his head dourly into the sanctuary of her person; she shook him, and the more fiercely she shook him the louder he howled; her face coloured with shame and annoyance; she herself was near enough to tears. 'Can that black-browed Brodie not keep out o' the place ? it's the bairn's hat I wanted not him,' she thought angrily, as she lifted the yelling child in her arms and said
with great embarrassment, 'I better come back another time. He's a bad boy. I'll come again when he can behave himself.' While she cast, for appearance' sake, this specious aspersion against her own child, her outraged maternal instinct assured her that she would never return. She had turned to go and would have vanished irrevocably, when Perry in a low, tactful voice suggested tentatively from the background:
'Perhaps a sweetie?' And from an unsuspected recess in a drawer he adroitly produced a large peppermint drop and poised it prominently, alluringly, between his finger and thumb. Instantly the child stopped crying and, exposing one large, brimming, doubtful eye from out the folds of its mother's bodice, lifted it calculatingly towards the sweet. The mother, at this indication of trust, halted, questioningly regarding the child.
'Would you?' she queried.
With a final, convulsive sob the boy nodded his head trustingly towards Perry and stretched forward a small, avid claw. They returned. The sweet quickly bulged the wet, shining, young cheek, and, peace now being restored, Perry continued to soothe the child, to propitiate the mother, to minister to them both until, finally, the notable purchase, for such he now made them feel it to be, was satisfactorily effected. As they departed, he showed them to the door with the same ubiquitous courtesy, receiving the mother's last grateful glance upon the top of his lowered unassuming head, whilst Brodie, who had moved sullenly, ponderously, to the background, looked on gloomily.
Perry returned, rubbing his hands with satisfaction. Strange young man that he was, he built his conceit only upon his imaginary powers and took no credit for the undoubted attributes of quickness and intuition which were actually his; though he had just achieved a triumph of diplomacy and tact, yet his sole feeling was a humble satisfaction that he had saved the customer for Brodie before the eyes of the august master himself. He glanced up deferentially as the other spoke.
'I didna know we gave away sweeties wi' our hats,' was all that Brodie said, as he turned sombrely into his office.
The day had begun; and it wore steadily on, with Brodie remaining still shut up in his room, immersed in his own intimate thoughts. Across his stern face shadows drifted like clouds across the face of a dark mountain. He suffered. Despite the iron hardness of his will, he could not prevent his responsive ears from quickening to every sound, from anticipating the gradual halting of footsteps as they drew near his shop, from analysing the lightest noise without his office, as if to differentiate the entry of a customer from Perry's restless
pacings; yet, to-day, he felt that, though he had never before consciously noted them, the sounds were few and unsuggestive. The sun poured through the window upon him, the slush of the thaw which had succeeded the long frost was now completely gone, and the day was crisply dry, yet warm, so that in this dawning hint of spring the streets would, he knew, fill with people, happy, eager, thronging the shops; yet no chatter of enquiring voices broke the outer silence.
The blank, dividing wall which stood before him seemed to dissolve under his piercing gaze and reveal, in the premises next door, a bustling and successful activity. A reaction from his sneering confidence of the morning took him and he now morbidly visioned crowds of people jostling each other there in a passionate eagdness to buy. Savagely he bit his lip and again picked up his discarded paper in an effort to read; but in a few moments, to his annoyance, he returned to himself to find that he was gazing stupidly at the wall in front: as though it hypnotised him.
Moodily, he reflected how delightful it had been in the past to lie back in his chair for what else had he done with an eye through the half-open door, lording it over Perry and those who entered his domain. The menial duties of the business were entirely Perry's, who fetched and carried to his royal word, and he himself had not mounted the steps or lifted his hand to the shelves, or bound
up a parcel for longer than he could remember. Most customers he ignored; with some he would stroll in whilst they were being served, nod casually, pick up the hat under review, pass his hand over its nap or bend the brim in haughty approval of his own merchandise, saying with his air, 'Take it or leave it, but ye'll not get a better hat anywhere.' Towards only a few, a handful from the best families of the county, did he actually direct his personal service and attention.
It had then been so delightful to feel assured that people must come to him, for, in his blind autocratic way, he had scarcely realised, had not paused to consider, that the absence of competition and lack or choice might drive many people to him, that necessity might be the mainstay of his business; but now, as he sat alone, he became unhappily aware that, for the time being at least, his monopoly was at an end. Nevertheless he would not, he firmly determined, alter his conduct; if he had not been obliged to run after people to solicit their paltry custom, he would not now be coerced into so doing; he had run after no man in his life and he now swore a solemn oath that he would never do so.
The dim, early days of his beginning in Levenford, so long since that he had almost forgotten, returned mistily to him; but through these mists he saw himself as a man who had never curried favour, nor fawned, nor acted the subservient toady. Though there had been no Perry then, he had been upright and honest and determined, had worked hard and asked no favour. And he had succeeded. He glowed as he thought of his slow rise in importance and consequence, of his recognition by the Council, his election to the Philosophical Club, of the gradual conception of his house, of its building and, since that date, of the growing and subtle change in his situation to that unique, isolated, notable position which he now held in the town. It was, he told himself, the good blood that ran in his veins which had done that for him, which had brought him to the top, where he belonged, despite the handicaps which had beset him in his youth, that blood of his ancestors which as in a noble horse would always tell and which would not fail him now.
Waves of anger at the injustice of his present position swept in on him and he jumped to his feet. 'Let them try
