then continued in a more ingratiating tone, 'I wonder though, Mamma, if you would lend me a pound or two for to- day. It's such a confounded nuisance, but my bank drafts have not come through from Calcutta yet.' He frowned at the annoyance of it all. 'It's causing me no end of inconvenience. Here am I stuck up for a little ready cash all through their beastly delay. Lend me a fiver and you shall have it next week.'
A fiver! She almost burst into hysterical tears at the word, at the painful absurdity of his request that she should lend him at a moment's notice five pounds she who was bleeding herself white to scrape together the monthly toll that would soon be levied on her, who had, apart from the three pounds she had laboriously collected for the purpose, only a few paltry copper and silver coins in her purse!
'Oh! Matt,' she cried. 'Ye don't know what you're askin'. There isna such a sum in the house!'
'Come on now,' he replied rudely, 'you can do it fine. Toll out. Where's your bag?'
'Don't speak to me like that, dear,' she whispered. 'I canna bear it. I would do anything for ye but what you're askin' is impossible.'
'Lend me one pound then, seeing you're so stingy,' he said, with a hard look at her. 'Come on! give me a miserable pound.'
'Ye can't understand, son,' she pleaded. 'I'm so poor now I can hardly make ends meet. Your father doesna give me enough for us to live on.' A yearning desire took hold of her to tell him of the manner in which she had been obliged to raise the money to send to him at Marseilles but she stifled it, realising with a sudden pause that this moment, above all, was not propitious.
'What does he think he's doing? He's got his business and this precious wonderful house of his,' Matthew sneered. 'What is it he's spending the money on now?'
'Oh! Matt, I hardly like to tell ye' she sobbed, 'but things seem to be in a bad way with your father in the business. I'm I'm feared the house is bonded. He hasna said a word to me but I saw some papers lyin' in his room. It's terrible. It's the opposition that's started against him in the town. I've no doubt he'll win through, but in the meantime I've got to make one shillin' do the work of two.'
He looked at her in sullen amazement, but refused, none the less, to be diverted from the issue.
'That's all very well, Mamma!' he grumbled. 'I know you. You always had something tucked away for a rainy day. I want a pound. I tell you I've got to have it. I need it.'
'Oh, my dear, have I not told ye how ill off we are,' she wept.
'For the last time, will ye lend me it?' he threatened.
As she again sobbingly refused him she thought, in her agitation, for the space of a horrified instant, that he was about to strike her, but abruptly he turned upon his heel and left the room. As she stood there, her hand clutching her side, she heard him banging about through the -rooms upstairs and finally come down, pass through the hall without speaking and slam out of the house.
When the reverberating echoes of the bang of the door had died upon the air, they still resounded in her brain like an ominous portent of the future and involuntarily she raised her hands to her ears to blot them out as she sat down at the kitchen table, an abject, disillusioned figure. She felt, as she rested there, her head supported in her hands, that the story of the bank draft must be a specious lie, that having spent the forty pounds, he was now penniless. Had he
almost threatened her? She did not know, but he had wanted the money badly, and she, alas, had been unable to give it to him. Before she could analyse her emotions further, and realising now that she should have been in a position to accede to his later demand, that in a fashion the fault had been hers, on top of her misery came a great rush of tenderness. Poor boy, he had been used to mixing with gentlemen who spent money freely, and it was only fair that he should have
money in his pocket like the rest. It was, in fact, a necessity after the high society life he had been leading. It was not just to expect a young man as well put on as Matt to go out without the means of backing up his smart appearance. He had really not been to blame and, in some degree, she regretted not having given him at least a few shillings, if he would have accepted them from her. As the affair became thus presented to her in a more satisfactory light and she was
filled by a sense of her own inadequacy, she rose and, drawn by an irresistible attraction she went up to his room and with loving care began to tidy the litter of wearing apparel which encumbered it. She now discovered that his clothing was not so plentiful as might have been expected from first appearances, finding one trunk to be completely empty, two of his cases to be filled with thin drill suits and another stuffed untidily with soiled linen. Eagerly, she seized upon socks to darn, shirts to mend, collars to starch, feeling it a joy to serve him by attending to these needs, beatitude even to touch his garments.
Eventually, having restored order amongst his things and arranged, for her attention, a large bundle which she bore away in triumph, she entered her own room, made her bed, and began in a more cheerful spirit to dust the furniture. As she came to the shallow china toilet tray that rested on the small table by the window, an undetermined sense of perplexity affected her; a familiar impression to which she had long been accustomed in her subconscious mind was now lacking. She pondered absently for a moment, then suddenly realised that she did not hear the intimate, friendly tick of her watch which, except on those state occasions when she wore it, lay always upon this small tray of hers which now confronted her, denuded of all but a few stray hairpins. When she had been compelled to change her room she had, of course, brought this tray with her and the watch had still remained upon it; indeed, for twenty years the touch of this tray had been consonant with her hearing of the watch, and at once she noticed the silence.
Although she knew that she was not wearing the watch she clutched at her bodice; but it was not there, and immediately she began to look for it in a flurry, searching everywhere in her own room, in Brodie's room, downstairs in the parlour and in the kitchen. As her unsuccessful search was prolonged, a worried look appeared on her face. It was her mother's watch, a fine scrolled silver shell with a gilt face, delicate spidery hands and a Swiss mechanism which never failed to register the exact minute, and although it was not valuable she had for it, and for the small faded daguerreotype of her mother clipped inside the case, a rare and sentimental affection. It was her only trinket and for this fact alone she treasured it deeply. As she stooped to survey the floor she knew that she had not mislaid it and she asked herself if some one had not accidentally interfered with it. Suddenly she straightened up. Her face lost its annoyance and instead became stricken. She realised in an illuminating flash that Matt had taken her watch. She had heard him in her room, after she had refused to give him the money, and he had rushed out without speaking to her. She knew irrevocably that he had stolen her watch for any paltry sum he might obtain for it. She would gladly have given him it as she had given him everything in life that was hers to give, but he had thieved it from her with a sly, sneaking baseness. With a hopeless gesture she pushed back a wisp of grey hair that had been disarranged in her futile search. 'Matt! my son,' she cried aloud. 'You know I would have given you it! What way did ye steal it?'
On this, the day following her son's return, when she had glowingly anticipated content and the mitigation of her worries, she found herself sunk more deeply into the well of her dejection. Dinner passed and the afternoon proceeded eventlessly towards evening. Amidst the trouble of her thoughts the fall of dusk and the fading of the short grey twilight made her wish poignantly to see him. Only let them be alone together, the mother and the son, and she felt she could
soften any hardness in his heart. He could not, she was convinced, withstand the entreaty of her affection; he would be at her feet in penitence and remorse if only she could express to him in words the love that was in her heart. But still he did not appear and, when the clock struck the half hour after five and he did not come in for tea, she was immeasurably distressed.
'I suppose that braw mannie o' yours is ower feared to come in,' Brodie sneered at her, as she handed him his tea. 'He's deliberately avoidin’ me sulkin' outside there until I've gane out again. Then he'll come sneakin' in for your sympathy and consolation. Don't think I don't see through it all, although it's behind my back.'
'No indeed, Father,' she quavered. 'I assure ye there's nothing to keep from ye. Matt has just gone out to look up some o' his friends.'
'Is that so, now?' he answered. 'I didna ken he had any friends,' but from what you make out he must be the popular hero, right enough! Well, tell your model son, when ye see him, that I'm savin’ up a' that I've got to say until I meet him next. I'll keep it hot for him.'
She made no reply, but served him with his meal, and when he went out set herself again to wait.
At seven o'clock, about an hour after Brodie had left the house, Matthew did, indeed, return. He came in quietly
