to enrage; but now, as they noted his moody humour and slyly watched his oppressed demeanour, they wondered if his iron control might be at last beginning to fail him.
A gentle, insinuating voice from the corner, addressing the company at large, broke into their general air of meditation.
'If you Ye thinkin' o' the Company's shutters goin' up you'll a' have to bide a wee na, na, they'll not be shuttin' up shop for a bit, anyway not for a bittie,' drawled Grierson.
'How's that?' queried some one.
'Oh! Just a little private information,' answered Grierson complacently, pursing his lips, placing his finger tips together and beaming on the company, especially upon Brodie, with an aspect of secret yet benevolent comprehension. Brodie looked up quickly from beneath his tufted eyebrows, not fearing the man but dreading, from his past experience, the sly, meek attitude which betokened in the other a deep and calculating venom.
'What is it then, man?' asked Paxton. 'Out with it!'
But now that he had thoroughly aroused their curiosity, Grierson was in no haste to divulge his secret information and still smiled sleekly, keeping them on tenterhooks, tantalising them with the plum which would not drop from his lips until it was juicy with ripeness.
'Odd! You wouldna be interested,' he purred. ' Tis just a lettle piece o' local news I happened to get wind o' privately.'
'Do you know yourself, Brodie?' asked Paxton, in an effort to terminate the irritating procrastination.
Brodie shook his head mutely, thinking bitterly how Grierson got his finger first into every pie, how he was always the last to remove it.
'It's just a wee, insignificant bit of information,' Grierson said, with increased satisfaction.
'Then out with it, ye sly deevil!'
'Well, if you must know, the district manager o' Mungo's is goin' away, now that they're so firmly established. I'm told they're doin’ uncommon weel.' He smiled blandly at Brodie and continued, 'Ay! They've made a clever move too, in offering the vacant post and a real fine post it is an' all to a Levenford man. He's been offered it and he's accepted it.'
'Who is 't then?' cried several voices.
'Oh, he's a real deservin' chap, is the new local manager o' the Mungo Company.'
'What's his name then?'
'It's our friend's assistant, none other than young Peter Perry,' drawled Grierson, with a triumphant wave of his hand towards Brodie.
Immediately a babble of comment broke out.
'Man, ye don't say so!'
'The auld, weedowed mother will be unco' pleased about that.”
'What a step up for the young fellow!'
'He would jump at it like a cock at a groset.'
Then, as the first flush of excitement at the unexpected titbit of local gossip subsided, and the real realisation of its meaning to Brodie dawned upon them, a silence fell, and all eyes were turned upon him. He sat perfectly still, stunned at the news, every muscle in his huge body rigid, his jaw set, his teeth gripping the stem of his pipe with the increasing pressure of a slowly closing vice. So Perry was leaving him, Perry, upon whom of late he had come to depend utterly, realising at last that he had himself got out of the way of serving, that he was above it now and was unable to lower himself to such lackey's work had he even desired it. A sharp crack split the attentive silence, as, with the onset of a pang of sudden bitterness, his teeth compressed themselves with such a vicious, final force upon his pipe that the stem snapped through. As though in a trance, he looked at the riven pipe in his hand for a long second, then spat out the broken end coarsely upon the floor, looked again stupidly at the ruined meerschaum and muttered to himself, unconscious that they heard him;
'I liked that pipe liked it weel. It was my favourite.'
Then he became aware of the ring of faces regarding him as though he sat in an arena for their contemplation, became aware that he must show them how he met the bitter shock of the blow, or better, show them that it held no bitterness for him. He stretched out towards his glass, raised it to his lips with a hand as steady as a rock, looked steadily back at Grierson, whose gaze immediately slipped off that unwavering stare. He would at that moment have given his right hand for the power to utter some cutting, withering retort which would shrivel the other by its very potency, but, despite a fury of endeavour, his brain was not sufficiently agile, his slow, ponderous wit refused to function, and all that he could do was to say, with an attempt at his habitual, sneering grimace:
'It's of no concern, not the slightest! Not the slightest concern to me!'
'I hope he'll not take any o' your trade with him,' said Paxton solicitously.
'Now I come to think on't, 'tis a downright dirty trick, Mr. Brodie,' came in a toadying tone from one of the draughts players. 'He ken's a' your customers.'
'Trust these Mungo bodies to move smartly. They're a deevelish clever lot, in my opeenion,' said another voice.
'Myself, I think it's raither a poor spirit,' drawled Grierson considcringly. 'Somehow it gives me the impression that he's just like a rat leavin' the sinkin' ship.'
There was a sudden hush whilst every one sat aghast at the audacity of his remark, the most direct affront that had ever been offered to Brodie in that clubroom. They expected him to arise and rend the puny form of Grierson, tear him apart by the sudden exertion of his brute strength, but instead he remained inert, unheeding, as if he had not heard or understood the other's remark. With his thoughts sunk in a gloomy abyss, he reflected that this was the most deadly blow he had suffered of any, although already they had smote him hip and thigh.
They had lavished their abundant capital in the struggle against him. In a dozen ways had exercised their ingenious cunning, but now in taking Perry they had snapped his last mainstay. Appropriately, he recollected his assistant's strange suppressed manner that night, his half-intimidated, half-exultant look, as if he had been glad yet regretful, as if he had wished to speak and yet could not summon courage to do so. Strangely, he did not blame Perry, realising in justice
that the other had merely accepted a better offer than he could have made; instead, any animosity that stirred within him turned against the Mungo Company itself. His feeling, however, was at this moment not truly one of hatred, but rather of curious compassion for himself, a sad consideration that he, so noble, so worthy, should suffer at such treacherous hands, should in consequence be compelled continually to assume this false front of indifference, when hitherto his careless arrogance had, unwittingly, protected him like armour. Then, amongst his meditations, he became again aware of the circle of watching eyes and the imperative need for speech, and hardly knowing what he said, yet whipping himself to anger, he began:
'I've always fought fair! I've always fought wi' clean hands. I wouldna lower myself to the level o' bribery and corruption, and if they've bribed that pimply little snipe to leave me, then they're gey and welcome to him. It'll save me the bother o' sackin' him ay, they can keep him while they last. I don't give a tinker's curse about the whole affair.'
Reassured by his own speech, carried away by the expression of a sentiment he had not felt, his words grew louder, more confident, his glance more defiant and assured. 'No! Not a tinker's damn do I give,' he cried. 'But I'll not have him back again. Oh, dear, no! Let him draw his bribes while he can and when he's able for when they're burst and a' to hell, and he comes whinin' back for his auld job, then I'll see him in hell as weel, before I lift a hand to help him. He's unco' quick to run away; I've no doubt he thinks his fortune's mac l e the poor fool but when he's back in the ditch I took him out o', he'll regret the day he ever left the house o' James Brodie.'
He was transfigured, exalted by his speech, now believing utterly in this declamation which contrasted so absolutely with his sombre, sensible perception of a moment before; and, his spirit asserting itself more powerfully in the very recognition of its power, he glared back at them with wide, excited pupils. He hugged within himself the reflection that he could still control, dominate, overawe them, and as at last an idea, delightful and appropriate, struck him, he drew himself up and cried:
'No! It'll take more than that to upset James Brodie in spite o' what our wee friend in the corner has had the nerve to suggest. When ye hear me complainin', it'll be enough to get out your crape, and it'll be a lang, lang time before ye need mournin' on that account. It's a joke, though,' his eye flickered round them with a rampant facetiousness 'by gad! It's a joke that's worth a dram to us a'.
