HATTER'S CASTLE


BY A. J. CRONIN




BOOK I




THE spring of 1879 was unusually forward and open. Over the Lowlands the green of early corn spread smoothly, the chestnut spears burst in April, and the hawthorn hedges flanking the white roads which laced the countryside blossomed a month before time. In the inland villages farmers exulted cautiously and children ran barefooted after watering carts; in the towns which flanked the wide river the clangour of the shipyards lost its insistence and, droning

through the mild air, mounted to the foothills behind, where the hum of a precocious bee mingled with it and the exuberant bleating of lambs overcame it; in the city, clerks shed their coals for coolness and lolled in offices, execrating the sultry weather, the policy of Lord Beaconsfield, the news of the Zulu War, and the high cost of beer.

Thus, over the whole estuary of the Clyde, from Glasgow to Portdoran, upon Overton, Darroch, Ardfillan those towns which, lying between the Winton and Doran hills, formed the three cardinal points of the fertile triangle upon the right bank of the firth over the ancient Borough of Levenford, which stood bisecting exactly the base line of this triangle at the point where Leven entered Clyde, over all lay the radiance of a dazzling sun and, lapped in this strange benignant heat, the people worked, idled, gossiped, grumbled, cheated, prayed, loved, and lived.

Over Levenford, on this early day of May, thin wisps of cloud had hung languidly in the tired air, but now in the late afternoon these gossamer filaments moved slowly on to activity. A warm breeze sprang up and puffed them across the sky, when, having propelled them out of sight, it descended upon the town, touching first the high historic rock which marked the confluence of the tributary

Leven with its parent stream, and which stood, a landmark, outlined clearly against the opal sky like the inert body of a gigantic elephant. The mild wind circled the rock, then passed quickly through the hot, mean streets of the adjoining Newtown and wandered amongst the tall stocks, swinging cranes and the ribbed framework of half-formed ships in the busy yards of Latta and Company along the river's mouth. Next it wafted slowly along Church Street, as befitted

the passage of a thoroughfare dignified by the Borough Hall, the Borough Academy and the Parish Church, until, free of the sober street, it swirled jauntily in the advantageously open space of the Cross, moved speculatively between the rows of shops in the High Street, and entered the more elevated residential district of Knoxhill.

But here it tired quickly of sporting along the weathered, red sand-stone terraces and rustling the ivy on the old stone houses, and seeking the countryside beyond, passed inland once more, straying amongst the prim villas of the select quarter of Wellhall, and fanning the little round plots of crimson-faced geraniums in each front garden. Then, as it drifted carelessly along the decorous thoroughfare which led from this genteel region to the adjacent open country, suddenly it chilled as it struck the last house in the road.

This was a singular dwelling. In size it was small, of such dimensions that it could not have contained more than seven rooms; in its construction solid, with the hard stability of new grey stones; in its architecture unique.

The base of the house had the shape of a narrow rectangle with the wider aspect directed towards the street, with walls which arose, not directly from the earth, but from a stone foundation a foot longer and wider than themselves, and upon which the whole structure seemed to sustain itself like an animal upon its deep-dug paws. The frontage arising from this supporting pedestal reared itself with a cold severity to terminate in one half of its extent in a steeply pitched

gable and in the other in a low parapet which ran horizontally to join another gable, similarly shaped to that in front, which formed the coping of the side wall of the house. These gables were peculiar, each converging in a series of steep right-angled steps to a chamfered apex which bore with pompous dignity a large round ball of polished grey granite and, each in turn, merging into and becoming continuous with the parapet which, ridged and serrated regularly and deeply after the fashion of a battlement, fettered them together, forming thus a heavy stone-linked chain which embraced the body of the house like a manacle.

At the angle of the side gable and the front wall, and shackled likewise by this encircling fillet of battlement, was a short round tower, ornamented in its middle by a deep-cut diamond-shaped recess, carved beneath into rounded, diminishing courses which fixed it to the angle of the wall, and rising upwards to crown itself in a turret which carried a thin, reedy flagstaff. The heaviness of its upper dimensions made the tower squat, deformed, and gave to it the

appearance of a broad frowning forehead disfigured by a deep grooved stigma; while the two small embrasured windows which pierced it brooded from beneath the brow like secret, close-set eyes.

Immediately below this tower stood the narrow doorway of the house, the lesser proportion of its width giving it a meagre, inhospitable look, like a thin repellent mouth, its sides ascending above the horizontal lintel in a steep ogee curve encompassing a shaped and gloomy filling of darkly stained glass and ending in a sharp lancet point. The windows of the dwelling, like the doorway, were narrow and unbevelled, having the significance merely of apertures stabbed

through the thickness of the walls, grudgingly admitting light, yet sealing the interior from observation.

The whole aspect of the house was veiled, forbidding, sinister; its purpose likewise hidden and obscure. From its very size it failed pitifully to achieve the boldness and magnificence of a baronial dwelling, if this, indeed, were the object of its pinnacle, its ramparts and the repetition of its sharp-pitched angles. And yet, in its coldness, hardness and strength, it could not be dismissed as seeking merely the smug attainment of pompous ostentation. Its battlements were formal but not ridiculous; its design extravagant but never ludicrous; its grandiose architecture contained some quality which restrained merriment, some deeper, lurking, more perverse motive, sensed upon intensive

scrutiny, which lay about the house like a deformity and stood within its very structure like a violation of truth in stone.

The people of Levenford never laughed at this house, at least never openly. Something, some intangible potency pervading the atmosphere around it, forbade them even to smile.

No garden fronted the habitation but instead a gravelled courtyard, bare, parched, but immaculate, and containing in its centre the singular decoration of a small brass cannon, which, originally part of a frigate's broadside, had long since joined in its last salvo, and after years in the junk yard, now stood prim and polished between two attendant symmetrical heaps of balls, adding the last touch of incongruity to this fantastic domicile.

At the back of the house was a square grassy patch furnished at its corners with four iron clothes poles and surrounded by a high stone wall, against which grew a few straggling currant bushes, sole vegetation of this travesty of a garden, except for a melancholy tree which never blossomed and which drooped against a window of the kitchen.

Through this kitchen window, screened though it was by the lilac tree, it was possible to discern something of the interior. The room was plainly visible as commodious, comfortably though not agreeably furnished, with horsehair chairs and sofa, an ample table, with a bow-fronted chest of drawers against one wall and a large mahogany dresser flanking another. Polished wax-cloth covered the floor, yellow varnished paper the walls, and a heavy marble timepiece adorned

the mantelpiece, indicating by a subtle air of superiority that this was

not merely a place for cooking, which was, indeed, chiefly carried on in the adjacent scullery, but the common room, the living room of the house where its inhabitants partook of meals, spent their leisure, and congregated in their family life.


At present the hands of the ornate clock showed twenty minutes past five, and old Grandma Brodie sat in her corner chair by the range, making toast for tea. She was a large-boned, angular woman shrunken but not withered by her seventy-two years, shrivelled and knotted like the bole of a sapless tree, dried but still hard and resilient, toughened by age and the seasons she had seen. Her hands, especially, were gnarled, the joints nodular with arthritis. Her face had the colour of a withered leaf and was seamed and cracked with wrinkles;

the features were large, masculine and firm; her hair, still black, was parted evenly in the middle, showing a straight white furrow of scalp, and drawn tight into a hard knob behind; some coarse short straggling hairs sprouted erratically like weeds from her chin and upper lip. She wore a black bodice and shawl, a small black mutch, a long trailing skirt of the same colour and elastic-sided boots which, although large, plainly showed the protuberance of her bunions and

the flatness of her well-trodden feet.

As she crouched over the fire, the mutch slightly askew from her exertions, supporting the toasting fork with both tremulous hands, she toasted two slices of bread with infinite care, thick pieces which she browned over gently, tenderly, leaving the inside soft, and when she had completed these to her satisfaction and placed them on that side of the plate where she might reach out quickly and remove them adroitly at once, whenever the family sat down to tea, she consummated the rest of her toasting negligently, without interest. While

she toasted she brooded. The sign of her brooding was the clicking of her false teeth as she sucked her cheeks in and out. It was simply an iniquity, she reflected, that Mary had forgotten to bring home the cheese. That girl was getting more careless than ever and as undependable in such important matters as a half-witted ninny. What was tea to a woman without cheese? Fresh Dunlop cheese! The thought of it made her long upper lip twitch, sent a little river of saliva drooling from the corner of her mouth.

As she ruminated, she kept darting quick recriminative glances from under her bent brows at her granddaughter, Mary, who sat in the opposite corner in the horsehair armchair, hallowed to her father's use, and by that token a forbidden seat.

Mary, however, was not thinking of cheese, nor of the chair, nor of the crimes she committed by forgetting the one and reclining in the other. Her soft brown eyes gazed out of the window and were focused upon the far-off distance as if they saw something there, some scene which shaped itself enchantingly under her shining glance.

Occasionally her sensitive mouth would shape itself to smile, then she would shake her head faintly, unconsciously, activating thus her pendant ringlets and setting little lustrous waves of light rippling across her hair. Her small hands, of which the skin wore the smooth soft texture of petals of magnolia, lay palm upwards in her lap, passive symbols of her contemplation. She sat as straight as a wand and she was beautiful with the dark serene beauty of a deep tranquil pool where waving wands might grow. Upon her was the unbroken bloom

of youth, yet, although she was only seventeen years of age, there rested about her pale face and slender unformed figure a quality of repose and quiet fortitude.

At last the old woman's growing resentment jarred her into speech. Dignity forbade a direct attack, and instead she said, with an added bitterness from repression:

"You're sitting in your father's chair, Mary."

There was no answer.

"That chair you're sitting in is your father's chair, do you hear?"

Still no answer came; and, trembling now with suppressed rage, the crone shouted:

"Are you deaf and dumb as well as stupid, you careless hussy? What made you forget your messages this afternoon ? Every day this week you've done something foolish. Has the heat turned your head ?"

Like a sleeper suddenly aroused, Mary looked up, recollected herself and smiled, so that the sun fell upon the sad still pool of her beauty.


"Were you speaking, Grandma?" she said.


"No!" cried the old woman coarsely. "I wasna speakin'. I was just openin' my mouth to catch flies. It's a graund way o' passin' the time if ye've nothing to do. I think ye must have been tryin' it when ye walked doun the toun this afternoon, but if ye shut your mouth and opened your een ye might mind things better."


At that moment Margaret Brodie entered from the scullery, carrying a large Britannia metal teapot and walking quickly with a kind of shuffling gait, taking short flurried steps with her body inclined forward, so that, as this was indeed her habitual carriage, she appeared always to be in a hurry and fearful of being late. She had discarded the wrapper in which she did the housework of the day

for a black satin blouse and skirt, but there were stains on the skirt and a loose tape hung untidily from her waist, whilst her hair straggled untidily about her face. Her head she carried perpetually to one side. Years before, this inclination had been affected to exhibit resignation and true Christian submission in periods of trial or tribulation, but time and the continual need for the expression of abnegation had rendered it permanent. Her nose seemed to follow this deviation from the vertical, sympathetically perhaps, but more probably as the result of a nervous tic she had developed in recent years of

stroking the nose from right to left with a movement of the back of her hand. Her face was worn, tired and pathetic; her aspect bowed and drooping, yet with an air as if she continually flogged her jaded energies onwards. She looked ten years older than her forty-two years. This was Mary's mother, but now they seemed as alien and unrelated as an old sheep and a young fawn.

A mistress from necessity of every variety of domestic situation^ Mamma, for so Mrs. Brodie was named by every member of the house, envisaged the old woman's rage and Mary's embarrassment at a glance.

"Get up at once, Mary," she cried. "It's nearly half-past five and the tea not infused yet. Go and call your sister. Have you finished the toast yet, Grandma? Gracious! You have burned a piece. Give it here to me. I'll eat it. We can't have waste in this house." She took the burned toast and laid it ostentatiously on her plate, then she began needlessly to move everything on the tea table as if nothing had been done right and would, indeed, not be right until she had expiated the sin of the careless layer of the table by the resigned toil

of her own exertions.

"Whatna way to set the table!" she murmured disparagingly, as her daughter rose and went into the hall.

"Nessie Nessie," Mary called. "Tea time tea time!"

A small treble voice answered from upstairs, singing the words:

"Coming down! Wait on me!"

A moment later the two sisters entered the room, providing instantly and independent of their disparity in years for Nessie was twelve years old a striking contrast in character and features. Nessie differed diametrically from Mary in type. Her hair was flaxen, almost colourless, braided into two neat pigtails, and she had inherited from her mother those light, inoffensive eyes, misty with the delicate white-flecked blucncss of speedwells and wearing always that soft placating expression which gave her the appearance of endeavouring continually to please. Her face was narrow with a high delicate white forehead, pink waxen doll's cheeks, a thin pointed chin and a small mouth, parted perpetually by the drooping of her lower lip, all expressive, as was her present soft, void smile, of the same immature and ingenuous, but none the less innate weakness.

"Are we not a bit early to-night, Mamma?" she asked idly as she presented herself before her mother for inspection.

Mrs. Brodie, busy with the last details of her adjustments, waved away the question.

"Have ye washed your hands?" she answered without looking at her. Then with a glance at the clock and without waiting for a reply, she commanded with an appropriate gesture, u Sit in!"

The four people in the room seated themselves at table, Grandma Brodie being, as usual, first. They sat waiting, while Mrs. Brodie's hand poised itself nervously upon the tea cosy; then into the silence of their expectation came the deep note of the grandfather's clock in the hall as it struck the half hour and at the same moment the front door clicked open and was firmly shut. A stick rattled into the stand; heavy footfalls measured themselves along the passage; the kitchen door opened and James Brodie came into the room. He strode to his waiting chair, sat down, stretched forward his hand to receive his own special large cup, brimming with hot tea, received from the oven a large plateful of ham and eggs, accepted the white bread especially cut and buttered for him, had hardly seated himself before he had begun to eat. This, then, was the reason of their punctual attendance, the explanation of their bated expectancy, for the ritual of immediate service for the master of the house, at meal times as in everything, was amongst the unwritten laws governing the conduct of this household.

Brodie ate hungrily and with obvious enjoyment. He was an enormous man, over six feet in height and with the shoulders and neck of a bull. His head was massive, his grey eyes small and deep set, his jaw hard and so resolutely muscular that as he chewed, large firm knobs rose up and subsided rhythmically under the smooth brown jowl. The face itself was broad and strong and would have been

noble but for the insufficient depth of the forehead and the narrow spacing of the eyes. A heavy brown moustache covered his upper lip, partly hiding the mouth; but beneath this glossy mask his lower lip protruded with a full and sullen arrogance.

His hands were huge, and upon the backs of these and also of the thick spatulate fingers dark hairs grew profusely. The knife and fork gripped in that stupendous grasp seemed, in comparison, foolishly toyish and inept.

Now that Brodie had commenced to eat it was permissible for the others to begin, although for them, of course, there was only a plain tea; and Grandma Brodie led the way by fastening avidly upon her soft toast. Sometimes, when her son was in a particularly amiable humour, he would boisterously help her to small titbits from his plate, but to-night she knew from his demeanour that this rare treat

would not come her way, and she resignedly abandoned herself to such limited savour as the food at her disposal provided. The others began to partake of the meal in their own fashion. Nessie ate the simple food heartily, Mary absent-mindedly, while Mrs. Brodie, who had privately consumed a small collation an hour before, trifled with the burnt bread upon her plate with the air of one who is too frail, too obsessed by the consideration of others, to eat.


An absolute silence maintained, broken only by the sucking sound which accompanied the application of the moustache cup to the paternal lips, the clanking of Grandma's antiquated dentures as she sought to extract the fullest enjoyment and nutriment from the meal, and an occasional sniff from Mamma's refractory nose. The members of this strange family tea party manifested neither surprise, amusement, embarrassment nor regret at the absence of conversation, but masticated, drank, swallowed without speech, whilst the minatory eye of Brodie dominated the board. When he chose to be silent then no word might be spoken, and to-night he was in a particularly sullen mood, lowering around the table and between mouthfuls casting a black glower upon his mother who, her eagerness rendering her unconscious of his displeasure, was sopping her crusts in her teacup.


At last he spoke, addressing her.


"Are ye a sow to eat like that, woman?"

Startled, she looked up, blinking at him. "Eh, wha', James? What for, what way?"

"What way a sow would eat, slushing and soaking its meat in the trough. Have ye not got the sense to know when you Ye eatin' like a greedy pig? Put your big feet in the trough as well, and then you'll be happy and comfortable. Go on! Get down to it and make a beast o' yersel'. Have ye no pride or decency left in the dried-up marrow of your bones?"

"I forgot. I clean forgot. I'll no' do it again. Ay, ay, I'll remember."

In her agitation she belched wind loudly.

"That's right," sneered Brodie. "Remember your pretty manners, you old faggot." His face darkened. "It's a fine thing that a man like me should have to put up with this in his own house." He thumped his chest with his huge fist, making it sound like a drum.

"Me," he shouted, "me!" Suddenly he stopped short, glared around from under his lowered bushy eyebrows and resumed his meal.

Although his words had been angry, nevertheless he had spoken, and by the code of unwritten laws the ban of silence was now lifted.

"Pass your father's cup, Nessie, and I'll give him some fresh tea. I think it's nearly out," inserted Mrs. Brodie propitiatingly.

"Very well, Mamma."

"Mary dear, sit up straight and don't worry your father. I'm sure he's had- a hard day."

"Yes, Mamma," said Mary, who was sitting up straight and worrying nobody.

"Pass the preserves to your father then."

The smoothing down of the ruffled lion had commenced, and was to be continued, for after waiting a minute Mamma began again on what was usually a safe lead.

"Well, Nessie dear, and how did you get on at the school to-day?"

Nessie started timidly. "Quite well, Mamma."

Brodie arrested the cup he was raising to his lips.

"Quite well? You're still top of the class, aren't ye?"

Nessie's eyes fell. "Not to-day, Father! only second!"

"What! You let somebody beat you! Who was it? Who went above ye?"

"John Grierson."

"Grierson! That sneakin' corn hawker's brat! That low-down bran masher! He'll crow about it for days. What in God's name came over you? Don't you realise what your education is going to mean to you?"

The small child burst into tears.

"She's been top for nearly six weeks, Father," put in Mary bravely, "and the others are a bit older than her."

Brodie withered her with a look.

"You hold your tongue and speak when you're spoken to," he thundered. "I'll have something to say to you presently; then you'll have plenty of chance to wag your long tongue, my bonnie woman."


"It's that French," sobbed Nessie. "I can't get those genders into my head. I'm all right with my sums and history and geography but I can't do that other. I feel as if 111 never get it right."

"Not get it right! I should think you will get it right you're going to be educated, my girl. Although you're young, they tell me you've got the brains my brains that have come down to you, for your mother's but a half-witted kind of creature at the best o' times - and I'll see that you use them. You'll do double home work to-night."

"Oh! yes, Father, anything you like," sighed Nessie, choking convulsively over a final sob.

"That's right." A transient unexpected gleam of feeling, which was partly affection, but to a far greater extent pride, lit up Brodie's harsh features like a sudden quiver of light upon a bleak rock.

"Well show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I'm looking ahead and I can see it. When we've made ye the head scholar of the Academy, then you'll see what your father means to do wi' you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in hard." He raised his eyes from her to the distance, as though contemplating the future, and murmured, "We'll show them." Then he lowered his eyes, patted Nessie's bowed, straw-coloured head, and added, "You're my own lass, right enough! Ye'll be a credit to the name of Brodie."

Then as he turned his head, his gaze lit upon his other daughter, and immediately his face altered, his eye darkened.

"Mary!"

"Yes, Father."

"A word with you that's so ready with your jabbering tongue!"

In his sardonic irony he became smooth, leaning back in his chair and weighing his words with a cold, judicial calm.

"It's a pleasant thing for a man to get news o' his family from outsiders. Ay, it's a roundabout way, no doubt, and doesna reflect much credit on the head o' the house but that's more or less a detail, and it was fair stimulatin' for me to get news o' ye the day that nearly made me spew." As he continued his tone chilled progressively. "But in conversation with a member of the Borough Council to-day I was informed that you had been seen in Church Street in conversation with a young gentleman, a very pretty young gentleman." He showed his teeth at her and continued cuttingly, "Who I believe is a low, suspicious character, a worthless scamp."

In a voice that was almost a wail, Mrs. Brodie feebly interposed:

"No! no! Mary! It wasn't you, a respectable girl like you. Tell your father it wasn't you."

Nessie, relieved to be removed from the centre of attention, exclaimed unthinkingly:

"Oh! Mary, was it Denis Foyle?"

Mary sat motionless, her glance fixed upon her plate, a curious pallor around her lips; then, as a lump rose in her throat, she swallowed hard, and an unconscious force drove her to say in a low firm voice:

"He's not a worthless scamp."

"What!" roared Brodie. "You're speaking back to your own father next and for a low-down Irish blackguard! A blackthorn boy! No! Let these paddies come over from their bogs to dig our potatoes for us but let it end at that. Don't let them get uppish. Old Foyle may be the smartest publican in Darroch, but that doesn't make his son a gentleman."

Mary felt her limbs shake even as she sat. Her lips were stiff and dry, nevertheless she felt compelled to say, although she had never before dared argue with her father:

"Denis has got his own business, Father. He won't have anything to do with the spirit trade. He's with Findlay and Company of Glasgow. They're big tea importers and have nothing at all to do with with the other business."

"Indeed, now," he sneered at her, leading her on. "That's grand news. Have ye anything more ye would like to say to testify to the noble character of the gentleman. He doesna sell whisky now. It's tea apparently. Whatna godly occupation for the son of a publican! Well, what next?"

She knew that he was taunting her, yet was constrained to say, appeasingly:


"He's not just an ordinary clerk, Father. He's well thought of by the firm. He goes around the country on business for them every now and then. He he hoped he might get on might even buy a partnership later."

"Ye don't say," he snarled at her. "Is that the sort of nonsense he's been filling up your silly head wi' not an ordinary clerk just a common commercial traveller is that it? Has he not told ye he'll be Lord Mayor o' London next? It's j ust about as likely! The young pup!"

With tears streaming down her cheeks Mary again interposed, despite a wail of protest from Mamma.

"He's well liked, Father! Indeed he is! Mr. Findlay takes an interest in him. I know that."

"Pah! Ye don't expect me to believe what he tells ye. It's a pack of lies, a pack of lies," he shouted again, raising his voice at her. "He's a low-down scum. What can ye expect from that kind of stock? Just rottenness. It's an outrage on me that ye ever spoke to him. But ye've spoken to him for the last time." He glared at her compellingly, as he repeated fiercely, "No! Ye'll never speak to him again. I forbid it."

"But, Father," she sobbed, "oh! Father, I - I "

"Mary, Mary, don't dare answer your father back! It's dreadful to hear you speak up to him like that," came Mamma's voice from the other end of the table. But although its purpose was to propitiate, her interjection was on this occasion a tactical error and served only to direct momentarily the tyranny of Brodie's wrath upon her own bowed head, and with a jerk of his eyes he flared at her:

"What are you yammerin' about? Are you talkin' or am I? If ye've something to say then we'll all stop and listen to the wonder o' it, but if ye've nothing to say, then keep your mouth shut and don't interrupt. You're as bad as she is. It's your place to watch the company she keeps." He snorted and, after his habit, paused forcibly, making the stillness oppressive, until the old grandmother, who had not followed the trend of the talk or grasped the significance of the intermission, but who sensed that Mary was in disgrace, al-

lowed the culmination of her own feelings to overcome her, and punctuated the silence by suddenly calling out, in a rancorous senile tone:

"She forgot her messages the day, James. Mary forgot my cheese, the heedless thing she is;" then, her ridiculous spleen vented, she immediately subsided, muttering, her head shaking as with a palsy.

He disregarded the interruption entirely and returning his eyes to Mary, slowly repeated:

"I have spoken. If you dare to disobey me, God help you! And one more point. This is the first night of Levenford Fair. I saw the start o' the stinking geggies on my way home. Remember! No child of mine goes within a hundred yards of that show ground. Let the rest of the town go; let the riff-raff of the countryside go; let all the Foyles and their friends go; but not one of James Brodie's family will so demean themselves. I forbid it."

His last words were heavy with menace as he pushed back his chair, heaved up his huge bulk and stood for an instant upright, dominating the small feeble group beneath him. Then he strode to his armchair in the corner and sat down, swept his adjacent piperack with the automatic action of established habit, selected a pipe by sense of touch alone, withdrew it and, taking a square leather tobacco pouch from his deep side pocket, opened the clasp and slowly filled the charred bowl; then he lifted a paper spill from the heap below the rack, bent heavily forward, ignited the spill at the fire and lit his pipe. Having accomplished the sequence of actions without once having removed his threatening eyes from the silent group at table, he smoked slowly, with a wet, protruding underlip, still watching the others, but now more contemplatively, more with that air of calm, judicial supremacy. Although they were accustomed to it, his family inevitably became depressed under the tyranny of this cold stare, and now they conversed in low tones; Mamma's colour was still high; Mary's lips still trembled as she spoke; Nessie fiddled with her teaspoon, dropped it, then blushed shamefully as though discovered in a wicked act; the old woman alone sat impassive, pervaded by the comfortable sense of her repletion.

At this moment there were sounds of some one entering the house, and presently a young man came into the room. He was a slender youth of twenty-four, pale-faced and with a regrettable tendency towards acne, his look slightly hangdog and indirect, his dress as foppish as his purse and his fear of his father would allow, his hands, particularly noticeable, being large, soft, dead white in colour, with the nails cut short to the quick, leaving smooth round pads of flesh at the finger ends. He sidled into a chair without appearing to regard

any one in the room, accepted silently a cup of tea which Mamma handed him and began to eat. This, the last member of the household, was Matthew, sole son and, therefore, heir to James Brodic. He was permissibly late for this meal because, being employed as a clerk in the ship stores department in Latta's Shipyard, his hours of work did not cease until six o'clock.

"Is your tea right. Matt?" asked his mother solicitously, in a low voice.

Matthew permitted himself to nod silently.

"Have some of that apple jelly, dear. It's real nice," begged Mamma in an undertone. "You're lookin' a bit tired the night. Have ye had a lot to do in the office to-day?"

He jerked his head noncommittally whilst his pale, bloodless hands moved continuously, cutting his bread into small accurate squares, stirring the tea, drumming upon the tablecloth; he never allowed them to be still, moving them amongst the equipage of the table like an acolyte performing some hasty sacramental rite upon an altar. The downcast look, the bolted mouthfuls, this uneasy inquietude of his hands were the reactions upon his unstable nerves of that morose paternal eye brooding behind his back.

"More tea, son?" whispered his mother, stretching out her hand for his cup. "Try these water biscuits too, they're new in to-day;" then adding, as a sudden thought struck her, "Has your indigestion bothered you to-day?"

"Not too bad," at last he murmured in reply, without looking up.

"Eat your tea slowly then, Matt," cautioned Mamma confidently. "I sometimes think ye don't chew your food enough. Don't hurry!"

"Got to see Agnes to-night, though, Mamma," he whispered reprovingly, as though justifying his haste.

She moved her head in a slow, acquiescent comprehension.

Presently the old grandmother arose, sucking her teeth and brushing the crumbs from her lap, wondering, as she took her chair, if her son would talk to her to-night. When in the humour he would regale her with the choicer gossip of the town, shouting to her of how he had got the better of Waddel and taken him down a peg, how Provost Gordon had slapped him heartily upon the back at the Cross, how Paxton's business was going down the hill. No one was ever praised in these conversations, but they were delicious to her in their disparaging piquancy, toothsome in their sarcastic aspersion, and she enjoyed them immensely, fastening upon each morsel of personal information and devouring it greedily, savouring always the superiority of her son over the victim of the discussion.

But to-night Brodie kept silent, occupied by his reflections which, mellowed by the solace of his pipe, flowed into a less rancorous channel than that which they had followed at table. He would, he considered, have to tame Mary, who, somehow, did not seem like his child; who had never bowed down to him as lowly as he desired, from whom he had never received the full homage accorded him by

the others. She was getting a handsome lassie though, despite her unsubdued nature took the looks from him but he felt he must, tor his own satisfaction and her good, subdue that independent spirit. As for her acquaintance with that Denis Foyle, he was glad that the noise of it had reached his ears, that he had crushed the affair at the outset.

He had been astounded at her temerity in answering him as she had done to-night and could find no reason for it, but now that he had marked that tendency towards insubordination, he would watch her more carefully in the future and eradicate it utterly should it again occur.

His gaze then rested upon his wife, but only for an instant; considering it her only worth that she saved him the expense of a servant in the house, he quickly looked away from her with an involuntary, distasteful curl of his lips, and turned his mind to pleasanter things.

Yes, there was Matthew, his son! Not a bad lad; a bit sly and soft and sleek perhaps; wanted watching; and spoiled utterly by his mother. But going to India would, he hoped, make a man of him. It was getting near the time now and in only two or three weeks he would be off to that fine job Sir John Latta had got for him. Ah! Folks would talk about that! His features relaxed, as he considered how every one would recognise in this appointment a special mark of Sir John's

favour to him, and a further tribute to his prominence in the town, how, through it, his son's character would benefit and his own importance increase.

His eye then fell upon his mother, less harshly, and with a more indulgent regard than that he had directed towards her at table. She was fond of her food, and even as she sat nodding over the fire he read her mind shrewdly, knew that she was already anticipating, thinking of her next meal, her supper of pease brose and buttermilk. She loved it, repeated like a wise saw, "There's naethin' like brose to sleep on! It's like a poultice to the stomach." Ay! Her god was her belly, but losh! she was a tough old witch. The older she got, the tougher she grew; she must have good stuff in her to make her last like that, and even now she looked, to his mind, good for another ten years. If he wore as well as that, and he might wear better, he would be satisfied.

Finally he looked at Nessie and immediately his bearing became tinged, almost imperceptibly, with a faint indication of feeling, not manifest by any marked change of feature, but by his eye, which became flecked with a softer and more considerate light. Yes! Let Mamma keep her Matt, ay, and Mary too Nessie was his. He would make something of her, his ewe lamb. Although she was so young she had the look of a real smart wee thing about her and the Rector had said to him only the other night that she had the makings of a scholar if she stuck in hard to her work. That was the way to do it. Pick them out young and keep them at it. He was looking ahead too, with something up his sleeve for the future. The Latta Bursary! The crowning success of a brilliant scholastic career. She had it in her to take it, if she was nursed the right way. Gad! What a triumph! A girl to win the Latta the first girl to win it, ay, and a Brodie at that! He would see that she did it. Mamma had better keep her soft spoiling hands off his daughter. He would see to that.

He did not quite know what he would make of her, but education was education; there were degrees that could be taken later on at college, and triumphs to be won. They all knew in the Borough that he was a man of progress, of broad and liberal ideas, and he would bring this more emphatically before them, yes, ram it into their silly mouths. "Did ye hear the latest!" he could hear them chatter. "That clever lass o' Brodie's is awa' up to the College ay, she's taken the Latta fair scooped the pool at the Academy, and he's lettin' her travel up and down to the University. He's a liberal-minded man for sure, It's a feather in his bonnet right enough."

Yes! He would show them in the town. His chest expanded, his nostrils quivered, his eye became fixed and distant, as he gave rein to his fancy, while his unnoticed pipe went out and grew cold. He would make them recognise him, make them look up to him, would force them somehow, some day, to see him as he really was.

The thought of Nessie faded gradually from his mind and he ceased to contemplate her future but, making himself the central figure of all his mental pictures, steeped himself delightfully in the glory she would bring to his name.

At length he bestirred himself. He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, replaced it in the rack and, with a last silent survey of his family, as though to say, "I am going, but remember what I've said; I'll still have my eye on ye!" he went into the hall, put on his square felt hat with the smooth well-brushed nap, took up his heavy ash stick and was out of the house without a word. This was his usual method of departure. He never said good-bye. Let them guess where he was

going in his spare time, to a meeting, to the council or to the club; let them remain uncertain as to his return, as to its time and the nature of his mood; he liked to make them jump at his sudden step in the hall. That was the way to keep them in order and it would do them a deal of good to wonder where he went, he thought, as the front door closed behind him with a slam.

Nevertheless, the removal of his actual presence seemed to bring some measure of relief to his family, and with his departure a cloud of constraint lifted from the room. Mrs. Brodie relaxed the muscles which for the last hour had been unconsciously rigid and, while her shoulders sagged more limply, the tension of her mind was released and her spirit revived feebly.

"You'll clear up, won't you, Mary?" she said mildly. "I feel kind of tired and far through to-night. It'll do me no harm to have a look at my book."

“Mamma," replied Mary, adding dutifully as was expected of her every evening, "You've earned a rest. I'll wash up the dishes myself."


Mrs. Brodie nodded her inclined head deprecatingly, but none the less in agreement, as she arose and, going to her own drawer in the dresser, took from its place of concealment a book, "Devenham's Vow," by one Amelia B. Edwards, which, like every book she read, was on loan from the Levenford Borough Library. Holding the volume tenderly against her heart she sat down, and soon Margaret

Brodie had sunk her own tragic, broken individuality in that of the heroine, comforting herself with one of the few solaces which life now held for her.

Mary quickly cleared the dishes from the table and spread upon it a drugget cover, then, retiring to the scullery, she rolled up her sleeves from her thin arms and began her task of washing up.

Nessie, confronted by the unencumbered table, which mutely reminded her of her father's incitement to work, glanced first at the engrossed figure of her mother, at her grandmother's unheeding back, at Matt now tilted back in his chair and picking his teeth with an air, then with a sigh began wearily to withdraw her books from her school satchel, laying them reluctantly one by one in front of her.

"Come and play draughts first, Mary," she called out.

"No, dear, Father said home work. Perhaps we'll have a game after," came the reply from without.

"Will I not dry the dishes for you to-night?" she suggested, insidiously trying to procrastinate the commencement of her toil.

"I'll manage all right, dear," replied Mary.

Nessie sighed again and remarked to herself sympathetically, in a voice like her mother's,

"Oh! dear me!"

She thought of the other children she knew who would be fraternising to play skipping ropes, rounders, cat and bat, and other magical frolics of the evening, and her small spirit was heavy within her as she began to work.

Matthew, disturbed in his transitory reverie, by the reiterated murmurs close to his ear of: je suis, tu es, il est, now restored his quill to his vest pocket and got up from his chair. Since his father had gone his manner had changed, and he now adopted the air of being slightly superior to his surroundings, as he shot his cuffs, looked at the clock significantly and went out of the room, with a slight but pronounced swagger.

The room was now silent but for the rustle of a turning page, the slight clink of china invading it from without and the harrowing murmur: nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont; but in a few moments the audible evidence of activity in the scullery ceased and shortly afterwards Mary slipped quietly through the room into the hall, mounted the stairs and tapped at her brother's room. This was a nightly pilgrimage, but had she now been suddenly bereft of every sense but that of smell, she could still have found this room by the rich, unctuous odour of cigar smoke which emanated from it.

"Can I come in, Matt?" she murmured.

"Enter," came a studied voice from within.

She entered. As she came in he who had spoken so dispassionately did not look up, but seated in his shirt sleeves upon the bed in the exact position where, with the looking-glass upon his chest of drawers tilted to the correct angle, he could best see himself, continued placidly to admire himself and to puff great clouds of smoke appreciatively towards his image.

"What a lovely smell your cigar has, Matt," she remarked, with ingenuous approval.

Matthew removed the weed from his lips in a dashing manner, still regarding himself approvingly.

"Yes," he agreed, "and it should have at the money. This is a Supremo, meaning the best. Five for sixpence, but this single one cost me three halfpence. It was a sample and if I like it I’ll go in for a few. The smell is good, Mary, but the bouquet is what we smokers appreciate. No cigar is really first class unless it has bouquet. This has what is called a nutty bouquet." He removed his eyes unwillingly from the mirror and contemplating his cigar more closely added,

"Now I'll stop; I think I've smoked enough."

"Oh! Go on," she encouraged. "It's lovely! Far nicer than a pipe!"

"No! I must keep the other half for this evening' he replied firmly, carefully extinguishing the glowing end against the cold china of his wash basin and preserving the stubb in his waistcoat pocket.


"Does Aggie Moir like you to smoke?" she murmured, drawing her conclusions from his actions.

"Agnes, if you please not Aggie," he replied in a pained voice. "How often have I told you not to be familiar like that. It's vulgar. It's it's a liberty on your part."

She lowered her eyes. "I'm sorry, Matt."

"I should hope so! Remember, Mary, that Miss Moir is a young lady, a very worthy young lady, and my intended as well. Yes, if you must know, she does like me to smoke. She was against it at first but now she thinks it manly and romantic. But she objects to the odour of the breath afterwards and therefore gives me cachous. She prefers the variety called 'Sweet Lips.' They're very agreeable."

"Do you love Agnes very much, Matt?" she demanded earnestly.

"Yes, and she loves me a great deal," he asserted. "You shouldn't talk about things you know nothing about, but you've surely the sense to know that when people are walking out they must be fond of one another. Agnes worships me. You should see the things she gives me. It's a great thing for a young man to have an affinity like that. She's a most estimable girl."

Mary was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed upon him intently, then suddenly pressing her hand to her side, she asked involuntarily, wistfully:

"Does it hurt you when you think of Agnes when you're away from her?"

"Certainly not," replied Matthew primly. "That's not a nice thing to ask. If I had that pain I should think I had indigestion. What a girl you are for asking questions and what questions you do ask! We'll have no more of it, if you please. I'm going to practise now, so don't interrupt."

He rose up and stooping carefully to avoid creasing his best trousers, took a mandolin case from under the bed and extracted a mandolin decorated with a large bow of pink satin ribbon. Next he unrolled a thin yellow-covered music book entitled in large letters: "First Steps in the Mandolin", and in smaller print below: "Aunt Nellie's Guide for Young Mandolin Players, after the method of the famous Sefior Rosas", opened it at page two, laid it flat upon the bed before him, and sitting down beside it, in an attitude of picturesque ease, drew the romantic instrument to him and began to play. He did not, alas, fulfil the expectation which his experienced posture aroused, or dash ravishingly into an enchanting serenade, but with a slow and laborious touch picked out two or three bars of "Nelly Ely", until his execution grew more and more halting and he finally broke down.

"Begin again," remarked Mary helpfully.

He rewarded her with an aggrieved look.

"I think I asked you to remain silent, Miss Chatterbox. Remember this is a most difficult and complicated instrument. I must perfect myself in it before I leave for India. Then I can play to the ladies on board during the tropical evenings. A man must practise! You know, I'm getting on splendidly, but perhaps you would like to try as you're so clever."

He did, however, begin again and eventually tweaked his way through the piece. The succession of tuneless discords was excruciating to the ear, and, in common with the art of smoking, could only be indulged in during the absence of his father; but Mary, nevertheless, with her chin cupped in her hands, watched, rather than listened, admiringly.

At the conclusion Matthew ran his fingers through his hair with a careless, yet romantic gesture.

"I am perhaps not in my best form to-night; I think I am a little 'triste, pensive, Mary, you know. Perhaps a little upset at the office to-day these confounded figures it disturbs an artistic temperament like mine. I'm not really understood down at the Yard." He sighed with a dreamy sadness befitting his unappreciated art, but soon looked up, anxious for encouragement, asking:

"But how did it really go? How did it seem?"

"Very like it," replied Mary reassuringly.

"Like what?" he demanded doubtfully.

"The Saucy Kate Galop, of course!"

"You little ninny," shouted Matthew. "It was 'Nelly Ely'." He was completely upset, looked at her crushingly, then jumped off the bed and put the mandolin away in a huff, remarking, as he bent down, "I believe you only said it to spite me," and asserting disdainfully as he got up, "You've no ear for music, anyway." He did not seem to hear her profuse apologies, but turning his back took a very stiff high collar and a bright blue spotted tie from the drawer, and still occupied by his pique, continued:

"Miss Moir has! She says I'm very musical, that I've got the best voice in the choir. She sings delightfully herself. I wish you were more worthy to be her sister-in-law."

She was quite upset at her clumsy tongue and well aware of her un worthiness, but she pleaded:

"Let me tie your necktie anyway, Matt."

He turned sulkily and condescendingly permitted Mary to knot the cravat, a task she always undertook for him, and which she now performed neatly and dexterously, so that presenting himself again before the mirror, he regarded the result with satisfaction.

"Brilliantine," he demanded next, forgiving her by his command. She handed him the bottle from which he sprinkled copious libations of mellifluous liquid upon his hair and with a concentrated mien he then combed his locks into a picturesque wave.

"My hair is very thick, Mary," he remarked, as he carefully worked the comb behind his ears. "I shall never go bald. That ass Couper said it was getting thin on the top the last time he cut it. The very idea! I'll stop going to him in future for his impertinence."

When he had achieved the requisite undulation amongst his curls, he extended his arms and allowed her to help him to assume his coat, then took a clean linen handkerchief, scented it freshly with Sweet Pea Perfume, draped it artistically from his pocket, and surveyed the finished result in the glass steadily.

"Smart cut,” he murmured, "neat waist. Miller does wonderfully for a local tailor, don't you think ?" he queried. "Of course I keep him up to it and he's got a figure to work on! Well, if Agnes is not pleased with me to-night, she ought to be." Then, as he moved away, he added inconsequently, "And don't forget, Mary, half-past ten to-night, or perhaps a little shade later."

"I'll be awake, Matt," she murmured reassuringly.

"Sure now?"

"Sure!"

This last remark exposed the heel of Achilles, for this admirable, elegant young man, smoker, mandoliiiist, lover, the future intrepid voyager to India had one amazing weakness he was afraid of the dark. He admitted Mary to his confidence and companionship incontestably for the reason that she would meet him by arrangement on these nights when he was late and escort him up the obscure and

gloomy stairs to his bedroom, without fail and with a loyalty which never betrayed him. She never considered the manner of her service to him, but accepted his patronizing favour gratefully, with humility, and now as he went out, leaving behind him a mingled perfume of cigars, brilliantine and sweet pea blossom and the memory of his bold and dashing presence, she followed his figure with fond and admiring eyes.

Presently, bereft of the tinsel of his personality, Mary's spirits drooped, and unoccupied, with time to think of herself, she became disturbed, restless, excited. Every one in the house was busy: Nessie frowning over her lessons, Mamma deeply engaged in her novel, Grandma sunk in the torpor of digestion. She wandered about the kitchen, thinking of her father's command, uneasy, agitated, until Mamma looked up in annoyance.

"What's wrong with you wanderin* about like a knotless thread! Take up your sewing, or if you've nothing to do, away to your bed and leave folks to read in peace!"

Should she go to bed? she considered perplexedly. No! It was too ridiculously early. She had been confined in the house all day and ought perhaps to get into the open for a little, where the freshness of air would restore her, ease her mind after the closeness of the warm day. Every one would think she had gone to her room; she would never be missed. Somehow, without being aware of her movements, she was in the hall, had put on her old coarse straw bonnet with the

weather-beaten little bunch of cherries and the faded pink ribbon, had slipped on her worn cashmere coat, quietly opened the front door and moved down the steps.

She was startled, almost, to find herself outside, but thought reassuringly that with such clothes it was impossible for her to go anywhere, and as she reflected that she had no really nice things to wear, she shook her head sadly so that the woebegone cherries, which had hung from her hat through two long seasons, rattled in faint protest and almost dropped to the ground. Now that she was in the open her mind moved more freely and she wondered what Denis was doing. Getting ready to go to the fair, of course. Why was every one else allowed to go and not she? It was unjust, for there was no harm in it. It was an institution recognised, and patronised tolerantly, by even the very best of the townspeople. She leant over the front gate, swinging to and fro gently, drinking in the cool beauty of the dusk, fascinated by the seductive evening, so full of dew-drenched

odours, so animate with the awakening life that had been still during the day. Swallows darted and circled around the three straight silver birches in the field opposite, whilst a little further oflf a yellow-hammer called to her, entreatingly, "Come out! Come out! Jingle, jingle, jingle the keys, jingle, jingle, jingle the keys!" It was a shame to be indoors on a night like this! She stepped into the roadway, telling herself that she would take a little walk, just to the end of the road before coming back for that game of draughts with Nessie. She sauntered on unobserved, noting unconsciously that in the whole extent of the quiet road no person was in sight. Denis was expecting her to-night at the fair. He had asked her to meet him, and she, like a mad woman, had promised to be there. The pity of it that she could not go! She was terrified of her father and he had absolutely forbidden it.

How quickly she reached the end of the road, and although she seemed to have been out only for a moment she knew that she had come far enough, that it was now time for her to go back; but as her will commanded her to turn, some stronger force forbade it, and she kept on, her heart thumping furiously, her steps quickening in pace with her heartbeats. Then, through the magic of the night, the sound of music met her ears, faint, enticing, compelling. She hastened her gait almost to a run, thought, "I must, oh! I must see him," and

rushed onwards. Trembling, she entered the fair ground.



II


LEVENFORD FAIR was an annual festival, the nucleus of which was the congregation of a number of travelling troupes and side shows, a small menagerie, which featured actually an elephant and a cage of two lions, an authentic shooting gallery where real bullets were used, and two fortune tellers with unimpeachable and freely displayed credentials, which, together with a variety of other minor attractions, assembled at an agreed date upon that piece of public land known

locally as the Common.

The ground was triangular in shape. On one side, at the town end, stood the solidly important components of the fair, the larger tents and marquees, on another the moving vehicles of pleasure, swings, roundabouts and merry-go-rounds, and on the third, bordering the meadows of the river Leven, were the galleries, coconut shies, lab-in-the-tub and molly-dolly stalls, the fruit, lemonade, hokey-pokey and nougat vendors, and a multitude of small booths which engaged and fascinated the eye. The gathering was by far the largest of its kind

in the district and, its popularity set by precedent and appreciation, it

drew like a magnet upon the town and countryside during the evenings for the period of one scintillating week, embracing within its confines a jovial mass of humanity, which even now slowly surged around the triangle on a perpetually advancing wave of pleasure.

Mary plunged into the tide and was immediately engulfed. She ceased to become an entity and was absorbed by the sweep of pushing, laughing, shouting, gesticulating beings, which bore her forward independent of her own volition, and as she was pushed this way and that, yet always borne onwards by this encompassing force, she became at once amazed at her own temerity. The press of the rough crowd was not what her idyllic fancy had pictured, the blatant shouts

and flaring lights not the impressions of her imagination, and she had not been five minutes on the ground before she began to wish she had not come and to perceive that, after all, her father might be right in his assertion, wise to have forbidden her to come. Now she felt that, though the sole purpose of her coming was to see Denis, it would be impossible for him to discover her in such a throng, and as a sharp, jostling elbow knocked against her ribs and a fat ploughboy trod upon her foot and grinned uncouthly in apology, she grew wretched and frightened. What manner of feeling had drawn her amongst these vulgar clowns? Why had she so imprudently, rashly, dangerously disobeyed her father and come with such light and ardent unrestraint at the beck of a youth whom she had known for only one month?

As she swayed around she viewed that month in retrospect, recollecting with a melancholy simplicity that the swing doors of the Borough Public Library had been, in part, responsible. These doors bore on the inside the authoritative word "Pull", and, in obedience to that terse mandate, when coming out of the Library, one was supposed to pull strenuously upon them; but they were so stiff and heavy that, when one was cumbered with a book and unobserved by the compelling eye of the janitor of the Borough Buildings, it was much easier to disregard the law and push. Upon one memorable occasion she had, undoubtedly, pushed, and thrusting forward with no uncertain hand, had launched herself straight into the waistcoat of a young man in brown. The impetus of her exit allowed her to observe fully the colour of his neat suit. His hair, too, was brown, and his eyes, and his face which had tiny freckles of a deeper brown

dusted upon it; and as she raised her startled eyes she had noticed immediately, despite her discomposure, that his teeth, when he smiled, as he did instantly, were white and perfect. Whilst she stared at him with wide eyes and parted lips, he had composed his features, had politely collected her fallen book, calmly opened it, and looked at her name on the borrower's ticket.

"I am sorry to have upset you, Miss Mary Brodie," he had said gravely, but smiling at her the while out of his hazel eyes. "These doors are exceedingly treacherous. They ought, of course, to have glass windows to them. It is entirely my fault, for not having brought the matter before the Borough Council."

She had giggled insanely, immodestly, but alas, irrepressibly at his delicious raillery and had only ceased when he added, tentatively, as though it were of no importance: "My name is Foyle I live in Darroch." They looked at each other for a long moment, while she, of course, had flushed like a fool (since then he had told her that it was an adorable blush) and had said timidly, "I'm afraid I must be going." What a weak remark, she now reflected! He had not attempted to detain her, and with perfect courtesy had stepped aside, lifted his hat and bowed; but all the way down the street she had felt those lively brown eyes upon her, respectful, attentive, admiring. That had been the beginning!

Presently she, who had never before seen him in Levenford, for the good reason that he had seldom come there, began to see him frequently in the streets. They were, in fact, always encountering each other, and although he had never had the opportunity to speak, he always smiled and saluted her, cheerfully yet deferentially. She began to love that gay spontaneous smile, to look for the jaunty set of his shoulders, to desire the eager radiance of his glance. Sometimes she discerned him with a group of the hardier and more intrepid spirits of Levenford standing at the newly opened ice-cream saloon of Bertorelli's, and perceived with awe that these bold striplings accepted him as an equal, even as a superior, and this, together with the knowledge that he should frequent a place so wild and reckless as an Italian ice-cream shop, made her tremble. His slight acquaintance with her had, too, given her distinction, and even in his absence, when she passed this group of the youthful elect, a polite silence immediately ensued, and as one man the members of the band swept off their hats to honour her thrilling, but disconcerting her.

A week later she had again visited the Library, and despite the fact that this time she carefully pulled the doors as a public gesture of self-reproach and censure, openly avowing her penitence, she again found Denis Foyle outside.

"What a coincidence, Miss Brodie!" he had said. "Imagine us meeting here again. Strange that I should be passing just at this moment." How could she know, poor thing, that he had been waiting for two hours on the opposite side of the street.

"May I see what book you are reading this week?"

" Tomeroy Abbey', by Mrs. Henry Wood," she had stammered.

"Ah, yes; volume two. I saw you had volume one last time you were here."

He had, she mused, given himself away there, and as she observed a slight, shy eagerness in his glance, realised that he was altogether less composed, less assured than upon their previous encounter, and a melting tenderness filled her as she heard him say fervidly:

"Will you permit me to carry your book for you, please, Miss Brodie?" She blushed darkly now at her unladylike and unpardonable conduct, but the unalterable fact remained that she had given him the book, had surrendered the volume without a word, as though in effect she had meekly proffered him the modest volume in return for the sweet acceptance of his attentions. She sighed as she thought of that small and apparently trivial beginning, for since that occurrence they had met on several, no, on many occasions, and she had become so enwrapped by a strange and incomprehensible regard for him that it left her really hurt and lonely to be away from him.

With a start she came out of the past. By this time she had been once around the fair without seeing anything but a blur of gaudy colours, she became once more aware of her unpleasant predicament, of the hopelessness of ever distinguishing amongst this nightmare sea of faces that seethed around her the one she sought, and as she was now opposite an opening in the crowd which permitted access to the street, she began with difficulty to squeeze her way out.

Suddenly a warm hand clasped her small, cold fingers. Hurriedly she looked up and saw that it was Denis. A wave of security enveloped her and invaded her veins in a delicious sense of comfort, filling her with such relief that she pressed his hand in hers and in the open simplicity of her nature said hurriedly, ardently, before he could speak:

"Oh! Denis, I've been so miserable here without you! I felt as if I had lost you for ever."

He looked at her tenderly, as he replied:

"I was a fool to ask you to meet me here in all this crowd, Mary. I knew I would find you, but I quite forgot that you might get into the crush before then. My train was late too. Have you been here long?"

"I don't know how long," she murmured. "It seemed like years, but I don't care now that you're here."

"I hope you didn't get pushed about in the crowd," he protested. "I blame myself for letting you come on by yourself. Indeed I do! I should have met you outside, but I hadn't an idea there would be so many here to-night. You're not annoyed?"

She shook her head negatively; and without concealing her delight in him, without upbraiding him for his tardiness or permitting him to see the risk she had taken in coming to meet him here, replied guilelessly, happily:

"It's all right, Denis. I don't mind the crowd nothing matters now that you've found me."

"What a girl you are, Mary," he cried. "It's an angel you are to forgive me. But I'll not rest till I've made it up to you. Let's make up for lost time. I'll not be happy till I've given you the time of your life. What shall we do first? Say the word and it's as good as done."

Mary looked around. How changed everything was! How glad she was to have come! She saw that the people around were not rough but merely boisterous and happy, and had she now been confronted with the heavy-footed ploughboy she would have returned his rustic grin with an understanding smile. She saw everywhere

colour, excitement and movement; the shouts of the showmen animated her, the cracking of shots in the shooting gallery thrilled without daunting her; the blare of music around intoxicated her, and as her sparkling eye was drawn by a ring of hobby horses gaily circling, prancing, gambolling to the tune of the Kandahar Waltz, she laughed excitedly and pointed to them.

"These," she gasped.

"Sure!" cried Denis. "Your word is law, Mary! We'll kick off on the leppers. All aboard for the Donegal Hunt." He grasped her arm, leading her forward, while magically the crowd, which had so oppressed her, seemed to melt before them.

"Here we are," he exclaimed gaily. "Two together, with tails like lions and teeth like dromedaries. Up you go, Mary! Yours will jump the side of a house by the wicked look in his eye."

They were seated on the horses, grasping the reins, waiting, circling at first slowly, then quickly, then whirling to the mad music, thrilled with the joy of movement, tearing around above the gaping, unmounted commoners who seemed far below the flying hoofs of their prancing chargers, chasing together through wide celestial spaces, soaring upwards in a spirited nobility of movement. When at last they slowly came to rest, he refused to allow her to dismount, but compelled her willing presence beside him for another, and another and still another turn, until, as her experience grew, and her confidence in the saddle increased, she relaxed the tenseness of her grip upon the reins and directing her mount by the light touch of one hand, relaxed her body to its curvetting movement and exhibited proudly to him the address and dexterity of her horsemanship. He praised her, encouraged her, revelling in her enjoyment, until at length Mary's conscience pricked her and, feeling that he would be ruined through her prodigal rashness, she implored him to come off. He laughed till his sides shook.

"We could stay on all night if you wanted to! It's nothing at all if you're happy."

"Oh, yes, it is, Denis! It's an awful expense. Do let us get down,” she begged. "I'm just as happy watching!"

"All right, then! Well get off to please you, Mary; but we're only beginning. To-night it's a millionaire you're with. We're goin through the whole bag of tricks."

"If you're sure you can afford it, Denis," replied Mary doubtfully. "It's simply wonderful here! But I don't want you to spend too much on me."

"Sure I couldn't spend enough on you, Mary," he replied warmly, "if I spent every farthing I've got!"

That was the raising of the curtain; and now they plunged into the throng, feasting their eyes upon the panorama of gaiety and absorbing the merriment around them eagerly, joyously, and together.

An hour later, having experienced every variety of movement offered for their delectation, thrown balls at all conceivable objects from coconuts to Sallies, seen the flea-bitten lions and the apathetic elephant, prodded the fat boy at the earnest request of the showman to ensure there being no deception, admired the smallest woman in the world, shuddered appreciatively at the living skeleton, and purchased every edible commodity from honey pears to cough candy, they stood, the most joyously animated couple in the whole show ground, before the biggest tent in the fair. It was the famous Mclnally's, which provided, as its posters indicated, a feast of refined and elegant entertainment. In front of the tent was a wooden platform now illuminated by four naphtha flares, and upon the centre of this stage stood the famous Mclnally himself, easily distinguishable by his glossy top hat and flowing frock coat, by his largely checked trousers and the enormous brass Albert that stretched, yellow as gold and thick as a mayoral chain, across his whitish velvet waist- coat. On either side of him stood, to quote again from the red and blue lettered advance notices that plastered the walls and gateposts of the countryside, a coruscating galaxy of talent. On his right a tall, soulful gentleman in full but musty evening dress leant with a melancholy grace against a pole of the marquee, directing his romantic gaze upwards from the mob as though he sought upon an ethereal balcony some Juliet who might be worthy of him, and concealing as best he might the soiled condition of his linen by elongating his coat sleeves and folding his arms manfully across his shirt front. But this sombre Romeo did not constitute the sole attraction of the show, for at the other end of the stage on Mclnally's left, was poised a bewitching creature clad in pink tights and white ballet skirt, with a peaked yachting cap set at a rakish angle upon her head, executing

from time to time a few mincing steps hinting at the promise of more ravishing movements to come, and throwing kisses to the multitude below with an airy, graceful action of her arms that suggested she was drawing yards of streamers from her lips.

"Isn't she lovely?" whispered Mary, who by this time had drawn so close to her companion that she had taken his arm.

"If you saw her in daylight you would be surprised," replied the more sophisticated Denis. "I've been told something about her. As a matter of report," he continued slowly, as though liberating a baleful secret, "they say she squints."

"Oh! Denis! How can you say such a thing!" cried Mary indignantly. But she gazed doubtfully at the suggestive angle of the yachting cap. Was it merely saucy or was its purpose more profoundly significant?

"Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, walk up!" shouted Mclnally, removing his hat with a flourish and holding it extended in a courtly gesture of invitation. "The Performance is going to begin. We are just about to commence. Positively the last Performance of the evening. An entertainment of the highest class, admission twopence and twopence only. Artistic, refined and elegant Gentlemen, you may bring your wives and sweethearts, an entertainment without a blush. The one and only Mclnally, positively of the highest class and one class only. Just about to begin! Gentlemen! On my left Madame Bolita in the most wonderful and artistic Terpsichorean exhibition of the century." At the mention of her name Madame pirouetted lightly, smiled coyly, extended her wrists coquettishly and

drew out fresh streamers, which were, if anything, more tenacious than before.

"Ladies! On my right, Signor Magini, the most renowned, accomplished vocalist, direct from the Opera Houses of Paris and Milan, in the illuminated song scena of the age." Signor Magini, whose real name was Maginty, looked more romantically melancholy than ever and bowed dreamily as though ladies had mobbed him with bouquets in Paris and fought for his favour in Milan. "We are about to commence to begin. We are about to begin to commence! Walk up! Walk up! The last show to-night. We are closing down for the evening. Thanking you one and all for your kind attention. Walk up, walk up."

"It must be going to begin," said Denis. "He's told us so often. Shall we chance it?"

"Yes," thrilled Mary.

They went inside.

In the tent it smelt of paraffin, hot sawdust and orange peel and, feeling their way through the dim, redolent interior, they found a vacant place, seated themselves, and after a moment of expectant waiting, were rewarded by the opening of the programme. This was divided into two parts, the first given over to Madame Bolita, the second to the Signor from Paris and Milan; but whether the great Mclnally was drawn by the compelling odour of his supper of steak and onions issuing from his caravan at the rear, or whether he felt that there was time for yet another performance which should be positively the last, is impossible to say; certainly the entertainment was the essence of brevity.

Madame pirouetted, postured and leaped heavily, accentuating the thuds of her descent upon the thin sounding board of the stage by short involuntary expirations which might in a less accomplished artiste have been mistaken for grunts, and accompanying her lighter movements by much snapping of her fingers and shrill cries of: "La! la! oh! la, la!" She would pirouette tremulously at the back of the platform, trip forward skittishly to the row of footlights, thrust back one substantial leg into the air with a disdainful kick, advance her

chin languishingly upon one extended forefinger, and, swaying slightly upon her remaining support, survey the audience with an air of profound achievement. Then, mingling the faint, intermediate rattle of applause with a self-congratulatory, "oh! la, la!", she would toss her head enticingly and bound off into a circular gkrnbd which took her conveniently back to her original position. The climax of the first part of her act came with a noble effort when, her arms outstretched, her face contorted by endeavour, she subsided slowly and

painfully into the split, a position from which, however, she did not attempt to arise, but was rescued by the timely fall of the curtain.

"Not bad, considering her age," remarked Denis confidentially, "but she'll go right through that stage one day, and never be heard of again."

"Oh! Denis," whispered Mary reproachfully. "You don't really mean that. Surely you liked her?"

"If you liked her, I liked her! But don't ask me to fall in love with her," he replied teasingly. "Well see what she does next," he added, as, after an adequate pause, the curtain again rose to reveal a darker stage into which the adipose figure of the incomparable Bolita swung slowly. Shrouded in a long white gown, bereft of the yachting cap, but still discreetly veiled by long yellow tresses which hung luxuriantly about her, and wearing a large and incontestably angelic pair of wings, she floated through the obscure air and remained poised

seraphically before their astonished gaze. Gone now were the fripperies of the dance, the tinsel of the ballet, as though, reformed and purged, she now disdained the creature who had cried, "Oh! la, la!" and performed the atrocity of the split; thus she swam piously about the stage to the accompaniment of an audible creaking of the wire and pulley which supported her and the tinkling out of "The Rock of Ages" upon the piano in the wings. There was much applause, chiefly in the shape of shrill whistles from the back benches and loud cries

of " 'core, 'core"; but encores were unheard of in the Mclnally regime and Madame, having taken her bow with fluttering wings, retired gracefully and turned into her caravan to see if little Katie Maginty, her grandchild, had gone to sleep.

Mary clapped her hands enthusiastically and turned to Denis.

"What's your opinion now?" she enquired earnestly, as though daring him to belittle such a heavenly creature. They sat very close together on the thin wooden form, their hands clasped, their fingers interlocked, and Denis, looking at her entranced upturned face, pressed her fingers as he replied, meaningly:

"I think you're wonderful!" It was the height of repartee! Mary laughed outright, but at the sound of her own laughter, so unusually gay and unrestrained, inversely there arose in her mind, as if by contrast, the picture of her home, and suddenly chilled, as though she had been plunged into icy water, she shivered and lowered her head.

But with an effort she thrust away her despondency; comforted by Denis' nearness she looked up again to see that Magini was holding the stage. A white screen had been lowered and now the magic lantern at the back of the tent flashed upon it the title: "Tender and True" or "The Mariner's Maid." The jingling piano struck up the opening bars of the ballad and Magini began to sing, while as he sang the honeyed words, richly coloured slides were shown upon the screen, demonstrating the touching vicissitudes attending the progress of true love. The meeting of the sailor and the miller's daughter by the mill stream, the parting, the lonely mariner in his hammock, the trials of the noble-hearted seaman on the deep, and the no less lachrymal tribulations of his beloved at home, the still horrors of the shipwreck, the stark heroism of the rescue, flashed in turn before the breathless gaze until the final reunion of the well-deserving lovers, with clasped hands by that same mill stream the first slide repeated gave relief and satisfaction to the entire audience.

He next sang, by special request, "Juanita", dealing with the seductive charms of a lady, darker and more passionate than the sailor's dovelike affinity, and holding a wilder and more dangerous appeal.

When he concluded, the cheering from the back benches was vociferous and prolonged and it was some time before he could be heard to announce his last number as "The Land of Love", a favorite song, he informed his audience, of Giro Pinsuti's. In contrast to the others it was simple, melodious and touching, and although the vocalist had never been farther south than the limits of Mclnally's

circuit at Dumfries, he sang with a pure and natural voice. As the soft waves of sound floated through the dark tent Mary felt herself swept towards Denis in a rush of throbbing tenderness and pathy. The sublime elevation of her emotion filled her eyes with tears. No one had ever treated her like Denis. She loved him. Raised far above the level of her confined and monotonous existence by the glitter of the evening and the glamour of the music, she would, if he had demanded it, have died willingly for this young godlike creature whose side was pressed against her side in a bitter sweet union: sweet because she adored him, and bitter because she must leave him.

The song was ended. With a start she realised that the performance was over, and linked by an understanding silence she passed with Denis out of the tent into the fresh night air. Now it was dark, the ground illuminated by flares, the crowd diminished but still gaily surging, yet for these two, filled by a deeper enchantment, the attraction of the fair had waned. They looked around undecidedly.

"Shall we do any more of this?" asked Denis slowly. Mary shook her head. The evening had been so wonderful she felt it should have lasted for ever; but it was over, finished, and the hardest task of all was to say good-bye to him. She would have to walk back, a weary way out of that land of love, and now, alas! it was time for the journey to begin.

"Come for a little stroll then," he urged. "It's not late yet, Mary. Well not go far."

She could not leave him! With a premonitory sadness rising in her throat at the very thought of her departure, she felt blindly that she must be with him a little longer. She wished to delay the sad reaction from this excitement and enchantment; she wanted his presence always, to soothe her and comfort her. The poignancy of her present feeling for him hurt her like a wound in her side and its potency drove from her mind the thought of her home, her father, every deterring thought that might have prevented her accompanying him.

"Come, Mary dear," he pleaded. "It's still early."

"For a little way then," she consented in a whispered tone. The path they took followed the winding bank of the Leven with the rippling river on one side and on the other meadows of dewy pasture land. A full moon, that shone like a burnished plate of beaten silver, hung high in the sky, amongst a silver dust of stars, and was bosomed in the mysterious depths of the dark water beneath.

At times thin pencils of misty cloud streaked this white nimbus that lay so far above and yet so deeply within the river, like ghostly fingers shielding from the eyes a luminance too brilliant to endure.

As they walked, silent in the beauty of the silvery radiance, the air, cool with the dew-drenched freshness of night and sweet with the scents of lush grass and wild mint, encompassed them softly and settled upon them like a caress.

Before them two large grey moths pursued each other along the pathway, fluttering fantastically among the tall sedges and rushes of the bank, silently circling and crossing, flitting, but always following each other, always together. Their wings shone in the white light like large sailing motes within a moonbeam and the whisper of their flight fell upon the quietude like the downward flutter of a falling leaf.

The river too, was almost silent, gurgling and sucking softly at its banks, and the low purling song of the stream became part of the stillness of the night.

They had walked some distance and now the fair-ground was marked only by a faint glare in the sky extinguished by the moon, and the brassy music by a weak whisper on the breeze obliterated by the stillness; yet Mary and Denis knew nothing of the music or the moon, and though unconsciously they absorbed the beauty around them they were aware only of each other. That she should be for the first time alone with Denis and isolated from the world filled Mary with a tremulous happiness, set her heart beating in a wild and joyous sweetness.

Denis, too, the sophisticated young man of the town, was overwhelmed by an emotion that was strange and new. The easy currents of conversational small talk which made him always the life and soul of a party, the blandishments that flowed naturally from his lips, were dried up at the source. He was silent as a mute at a funeral, and, he told himself, as dismal. He felt that his reputation was at stake, that he must make some remark, no matter how trivial. Yet while

he cursed himself inwardly for a dolt, a blunderer, a simpleton, imagining that he was estranging Mary by his dumb stupidity, his tongue still remained dry and his quick brain so flooded by his emotions that he could not speak.

Outwardly they both walked placidly and sedately, but inwardly there surged in each a tide of pent-up feelings, and because they did not speak this feeling grew more intense.

In Mary's side there came an actual pain. They were so close together that the sense of intimacy filled her with inexpressible yearning, an unfathomable longing which found its only ease in the firm clasp upon her arm that linked her pulsating body to his and soothed her like a divine balm.

At length they stopped suddenly, involuntarily, turned, and faced each other. Mary lifted her face to Denis. The small oval of her features in the pallor of the moonlight showed a spiritual translucency. He bent and kissed her. Her lips were soft and warm and dry and they offered themselves to his like an oblation. It was the first time she had kissed any man, and although she was perfectly innocent and entirely ignorant, yet the instincts of nature throbbed within her

and she pressed her lips close against his.

Denis was overwhelmed. His mild experience as a gallant had encompassed nothing like this, and, feeling as if he had received a rare and wonderful gift, without knowing what he did, he dropped spontaneously upon his knees beside Mary and, clasping his arms around her, pressed his face in homage against her dress. The smell of the rough worn serge of her skirt was fragrant to him; he felt her legs, so pathetically slender and immature, tremble slightly under his touch. Clasping her hand he drew her down beside him. Now he could see the little hollow in her neck and from it a tiny blue vein running down. As he took off her hat a ringlet of hair fell over her smoothly pale brow, and first he kissed that awkwardly, humbly, with a clumsiness which did him credit, before he laid his lips upon her eyes and closed them with his kisses.


Now they were in each other's arms, sheltered by rushes and bushes of broom, the soft grass plastic beneath them. The contact of their bodies gave them a delicious warmth so that there was no need of speech, and in silence they left the world, knowing and caring nothing but for each other. Her head lay back on his arm, and between her parted lips her teeth shone in the moonlight like small white seeds.

Her breath was like new milk. Again he saw in the arch of her neck the small vein threaded under the smooth skin, like a tiny rivulet through virgin snow, and caressingly he stroked it, gently tracing with his finger tips its lovely downward passage. How firm and round her breasts were, each like a smooth and perfect unplucked fruit enclosed within his palm for him to fondle! The pressure of his hand sent the hot colour into her face, and though her breath came faster, yet she suffered him. She felt these small virgin breasts, the consideration of which had never before invaded the realm of her consciousness, grow turgid, as if an ichor from her blood had filled them, and all her puny strength surged into them as though from her nipples drops might well forth to an invisible suckling.

Then her mind was dazzled, and, as she lay with closed eyes in his embrace, she forgot everything, knew nothing, ceased to be herself, and was his. Her spirit rushed to meet his swifter than a swallow's flight and together uniting, leaving their bodies upon the earth, they soared into the rarer air. Together they floated upwards as lightly as the two moths and as soundlessly as the river. No dimension contained them, no tie of earth restrained the ecstasy of their flight.

The lights in the fair-ground went out one by one; an old frog, its large, sad eyes jewelled in the moonlight, broke through the grasses beside them, then noiselessly departed; a dim white mist sheathed the radiance of the river like breath upon a mirror; then, as the lace veils of vapour loomed over the land, crepuscular shadows filled the hollows of the meadows and the earth grew faintly

colder as though its heat had been chilled by the rimed air. With the falling mist all sound was blotted out and the stillness became absolute until after a long time a trout jumped upstream and splashed heavily in its pool.

At the sound, Mary stirred slowly, and consciousness of the world

half returning, she whispered softly:

"Denis, I love you. Dear, dear Denis! But it's late, very late! We must go."

She lifted her head heavily, moved her drugged limbs slowly, then, like a flash, the recollection of her father, her home, her position here, invaded her mind. She started up, terrified, horrified with herself.

"Oh! What have I done? My father! What will become of us?" she cried. "I'm mad to be here like this."

Denis stood up.

"No harm will come to you, Mary," he said, as he essayed to soothe her. "I love you! I will take care of you."

"Let me go then," she replied, while tears ran down her pale cheeks. "Oh! I must be back before he gets in or I’ll be shut out all night. I'd have no home!"

"Don't cry, dear Mary," he entreated; "it hurts me to see you cry. It's not so very late not eleven o'clock yet! Besides, I am responsible for everything; all the blame is mine."

"No! No!" she cried. "It's all my fault, Denis. I should never have come. I disobeyed my father. I'll be the one to suffer."

Denis placed his arm around her trembling form and, looking again into her eyes, said firmly:

"You will not suffer, Mary! Before we go I want you to understand one thing. I love you. I love you above everything. I am going to marry you."

"Yes, yes," she sobbed. "Only let me get home. I must. My father will kill me! If he's not late to-night something terrible will happen to me to us both." She started off at a run up the path, slipping and stumbling in her anxiety to make haste, whilst he followed, trying to console and comfort her, uttering words of the most endearing tenderness. But, although at his words she ceased to weep, she still ran and did not speak again until they reached the edge of the town.

There she stopped abruptly.

"Don't come any farther, Denis," she panted. "This is enough! We might meet him my father."

“But it's so dark on the road," he said. "I'm afraid to leave you."

"You must go, Denis! He might come on us together."

"But the darkness?"

"I can't help that. I'll run all the way."

"It'll hurt you if you race home like that, Mary, and it's so black, the road seems so lonely now."

"Leave me! You must!" she cried. "I'll go myself! Good-bye!"

With a last touch of his hand she fled from him; her figure dissolved into the blackness and was gone.

As he gazed into the impenetrable gloom, vainly trying to follow her rapid flight, wondering if he should call to her or follow her, he raised his arms in perplexity, as though beseeching her to return to him, then slowly he lowered them and, after a long passivity, turned heavily upon his heel and took his dejected way towards his own home.

Meanwhile, in a panic of urgency, Mary forced her tired body along the road, the same road that she had so lightly traversed earlier on this same evening, having lived, it seemed to her, a whole century in time and experience during the space of these few intervening hours. It was unthinkable that she, Mary Brodie, should be at this time of night alone in the open streets; the sound of her solitary footsteps frightened her, echoing aloud like a reiterated accusation for her father, for every one to hear, shouting out the madness, the iniquity of her present situation. Denis wanted to marry her! He must be mad too madly unaware of her father and of the circumstances of her life. The echoes of her steps mocked her, whispering that she had been bereft of her senses to plunge herself in this predicament, making the very contemplation of her love for Denis a painful and grotesque absurdity.

As she neared her home, suddenly she became aware of another figure in front of her, and the dread that it might be her father filled her with numb apprehension. Although he frequently did not return from the club until after eleven o'clock, sometimes he was earlier, and as she drew nearer, silently gaining upon the figure, she felt that it must be he. But, all at once, a gasp of relief escaped her, as she perceived that it was her brother, and, abandoning her caution, she ran up to him, panting.

"Matt! Oh! Matt! Wait!" and stumbling against him, she clutched his arm like a drowning woman.

"Mary!" he exclaimed, starting violently, hardly able to believe his eyes.

"Yes! It's me, Matt, and thank God it's you! I thought it was Father, at first."

"But But what on earth are you out for at this time of night?" he cried, in shocked amazement. "Where have you been?"

"Never mind just now, Matt," she gasped. "Let us get in quick before Father. Please, Matt, dear! Don't ask me anything!"

"But what have you been up to? Where have you been?" he repeated. "What will Mamma think?"

"Mamma will think I've gone to bed, or that I'm reading in my room. She knows I often do that when I'm sitting up for you."

"Mary! This is a terrible escapade. I don't know what to do about it. It's shameful to find you out in the street at this time of night."

He moved on a few steps then, as a thought struck him, stopped abruptly. "I wouldn't like Miss Moir to know about this. It's disgraceful! Such a going-on by my sister might prejudice me in her eyes."

"Don't tell her, Matt! Don't tell anybody! Only let us get in. Where is your key?" Mary urged.

Muttering under his breath, Matthew advanced to the front steps, and while Mary gasped with relief to see that the outer door was unbolted, which meant that her father had not returned, he opened the door.

The house was still, no one awaited her, no recriminations or accusations were hurled at her, and realising that she was miraculously undiscovered, in a transport of thanksgiving Mary took her brother's hand, and in the darkness they crept noiselessly up the stairs.

Inside her own room she drew a deep breath, and as she felt her way securely about its known confines, the very touch of familiar objects reassured her. Thank God she was safe! Nobody would know! She tore off her clothes in the dark and crept into bed, when instantly the cool sheets soothed her warm weariness and the soft pillow caressed her aching head. Her hot, tired body relaxed in an

exquisite abandon, her trembling eyelids closed, her fingers uncurled from her palms, her head drooped towards her shoulder, and with her last waking thought of Denis, her breathing grew regular and tranquil. She slept.




III


JAMES BRODIE awoke next morning with the sun streaming in through his window. He had especially designated this room at the back of the house as his bedroom because, with an animal appreciation of sunshine, he loved the bright morning rays to strike in and waken him, to soak through the blankets into his receptive body and saturate his being with a sense of power and radiance. "There's no sun

like the morning sun," was one of his favourite sayings, one of his stock of apparently profound axioms which he drew upon largely in his conversation and repeated with a knowing and astute air. "The mornin' sun's the thing! We don't get enough o' it, but in MY room I’ve made sure o' all that's goin'."

He yawned largely and stretched his massive frame luxuriously,observed with half-opened yet appreciative eyes the golden swarm of motes that swam around him, then, after a moment, blinked questioningly towards the clock on the mantelpiece, the hands of which marked only eight o'clock; becoming aware that he had another quarter of an hour in bed, he put his head down, rolled over on his side, and dived beneath the blankets like a gigantic porpoise.

But soon he came up again. Despite the beauty of the morning, despite the brosy odour of the boiling porridge which his wife was preparing downstairs and which, arising, gently titillated his nostrils, his present humour lacked the full complacency which he felt it should have held.

Moodily, as though seeking the cause of his discontent, he turned and surveyed the hollow on the other side of the big bed, which his wife had left a full hour ago when, according to custom, she had arisen in good time to have everything in order and his breakfast ready upon the table the moment he came down. What good, he reflected resentfully, was a woman like that to a man like him? She might cook, wash, scrub, darn his socks, brush his boots, aye, and lick his boots too; but what kind of armful was she now? Besides, since her last confinement, when she had borne him Nessie, she had been always ailing, in a weak, whining way, offending his robust vigour by her flaccid impotence and provoking his distaste by her sickly habits. Out of the corner of his eye when she thought herself unobserved, as in the early hours of the morning when she left the bed before him, he would contemplate her almost stealthy dressing with disgust. Only last Sunday he had detected her in the act of concealing some soiled garment and had roared at her like an angry ram:

"Don't make a midden of my bedroom! It's bad enough for me to put up with you without havin' your dirty clothes flung in my face!" She had, he considered bitterly, long since been repugnant to him; the very smell of her was obnoxious to him, and had he not been a decent man, he might well have looked elsewhere. What had he dreamed last night? He thrust out his lower lip longingly and stretched his legs powerfully as he played with the vision of his sleep, thinking of the tantalising young jade he had chased through the woods who, though he had run like a stag, had been saved by the fleetness of her foot. She had run, faster than a deer, her long hair flying behind her, and with not a stitch on her back to cumber her, but still, despite her speed, had turned to smile at him enticingly, provokingly. If he had only gotten a grip of her, he thought, allowing his erotic fancy to riot delightfully as he lay back, basking his ponderous body in the sun, his parted lips twitching with a half-lewd, half-sardonic amusement, he would have made her pipe to a different tune.

Suddenly he observed that it was quarter past eight and without warning, he jumped out of bed, put on his socks, trousers and slippers, and pulled off his long nightgown. His naked torso gleamed sleekly and the muscles of his shoulders and back undulated like pliant knotted ropes under the white skin which shone like smooth satin, except where the thick brown hair was felted on the chest,

dense and adherent as lichen upon a rock. For a moment he stood thus, placed before the small mirror above the washstand, admiring his clear eyes, his strong white teeth, and running his fingers with a bristling sound over the stubble on his heavy jaw. Then, still stripped to the waist, he turned, took up a mahogany box of razors wherein lay seven special hollow-ground, Sheffield blades with their ivory handles marked each with a day of the week, carefully picked out the one inlaid with the word Friday, tried the temper appreciatively against his thumb nail and began to strop it slowly upon the leather thong which hung near from its appointed hook. The strap was thick, and, as Matthew and Mary had testified in their younger days, of an enduring toughness, and as Brodic worked the razor slowly up and down upon its tan surface it set the true blade to an infinite keenness. When he had adjusted the edge to his satisfaction, he went to the door, picked up his hot shaving water which was there, steaming, to the minute, returned to the mirror, lathered his face copiously and began to shave with long, precise movements.

He shaved meticulously, leaving his chin and cheeks as smooth as silk, cautiously avoiding the glossy curl of his moustache and sweeping the razor against his tense skin with such firm, measured strokes that it filled the silence of the room with a regularly intermittent rhythm of crisp, rustling sound. Shaved, he cleaned the razor upon a slip of paper taken from a specially cut pile, which it was Nessie's duty to prepare and replenish, re-stropped it and replaced it in its case; then, decanting the large ewer into its basin, he washed ex-travagantly in cold water, splashing it upon his face and sluicing lavish handfuls about his chest, head, and arms. This prodigal use of cold water even on the iciest mornings of winter was his inflexible habit, maintaining, he claimed, his perfect health, and saving him from the catarrhal colds which so frequently affected his spouse. "I slunge myself in cold water," he would often boast, "as cold as I can get it. Ay! I wad break the ice to dook myself, and the more frozen it is the warmer it makes me after. It doesna make me chatter or snivel with a red nose, like some folks I could mention. No! No! It makes me glow. Give me plenty cold, cold water there's health in it;" and now, as he vigorously applied a coarse rough towel to his body, whilst he hissed between his teeth like an ostler, he felt a ruddy glow sweep through him and dispel in part the rankncss of his early mood.

He finished his dressing by assuming, with scrupulous care, a shirt of fine, expensive linen, starched Gladstone collar and bird's-eye cravat fixed with a gold horseshoe pin, embroidered grey waist-coat, and long coat of superfine broadcloth. Then he went downstairs.

Breakfast he invariably ate alone. Matthew left the house at six, Nessie at half-past eight, his mother was never up before ten o'clock, Mrs. Brodie and Mary took their morning meal privately and when they chose, in the dim regions where cooking was performed, and it fell therefore that Brodie sat down to his large bowl of porridge in solitary dignity. He enjoyed all his meals, but to breakfast in particular he brought, in the freshness of morning, a more lively appetite, and he now addressed himself eagerly to his porridge, and after, to

the two fresh eggs lightly boiled to the requisite second and shelled into a large cup, to the large soft rolls and thick fresh butter, and to his coffee, a beverage of which he was inordinately fond and one permitted to no one else in the household.

As Mary passed soundlessly in and out of the room during the meal to serve him, he noticed from beneath his lowered lids how pale she looked, but he made no remark, for it was his policy not to encourage his womenfolk to consider themselves ill; it gave him, nevertheless, an inward satisfaction as he attributed the subdued look and dark circles under her eyes to the shrewd attack he had launched on her on the previous night.

According to custom, when he had breakfasted, and that in silence, he left the house at nine-thirty precisely, and stood for a moment at his front gate, looking back appreciatively at his property. His proud glance swept the small domain, observing that not a weed sprouted in the gravelled yard, not a spot disgraced the paintwork, not a blemish marked the grim grey stone, and approving with intense complacency the work of his own creation. It was his! Five years ago he had bought the land and approaching Urie the builder, had spoken to him at length, drawn rough diagrams, and described fully the nature of the house he desired. Urie, a blunt man and a man of substance, had looked at him in astonishment, saying:

"Man alive! you're not a stone mason or you wouldna let your ideas run awa' wi' you like that. Your head must be in the clouds. Do ye realise what that sketch would look like in stone and mortar?"

"I'm going to live in it, Urie not you," Brodie had replied steadily.

"But there's so much unnecessary work on it. Just take the expense o' piercin' this wee piece o' parapet! What good is it?" and Urie flicked the pencilled outline before him.

"I'm payin' for it, Urie not you," again replied Brodie.

The builder had pushed his hat over his ears, scratched his head uncomprehendingly with his pencil, and expostulated: "You're not serious, Brodie! It would be all right if it were ten times as big, but you're only wantin' a six room and kitchen house. It's preposterous. You'll make yoursel' the laughin' stock o' the town."

"I'll attend to that," cried Brodie grimly. "God help the man that laughs at James Brodie to his face!"

"Come, come now, Brodie," the other had conciliated, "let me put you up a solid respectable bit villa, not this wee kind o' sham castle that you're haverin' about."

Brodie's eyes took on a strange expression, as though a dark fire flickered there, and he shouted out:

"Damn ye, Urie! Keep your tongue civil when ye speak to me. I want none o' your smug bandboxes. I want a house that befits me;" then in a flash he had recovered himself and in a normal, quiet tone added, "If you don't like it you needna touch it. I'm givin' ye the chance, but if ye don't wish to take it there are other builders in Levenford."

Urie stared at him and whistled.

"Sits the wind in that quarter. Well! Well! If you're set on it I'll get a plan and an estimate out for you. A wilful man maun have his way. But don't forget I warned ye. Don't come and ask me to take the house down again once it's up."

"No! No! Uric," Brodie had sneered. "I'll only come back to ye if ye don't give me what I'm askin' for, and then it'll not be pleasant hearin' for ye. Get ahead wi' it now and don't blabber so much."

The plans had been prepared, passed by Brodie, and the building begun. From day to day he had seen it grow, going along in the cool evenings to the slowly mantling building, observing the exact adherence to his design, gloating over the smooth, white stone, testing the mortar between his fingers, caressing the shining lead pipes, weighing and fingering approvingly the heavy square slates. Everything had been of the best materials, and though this had taken heavy toll upon his purse, had in fact drained it for he had always spent money freely upon himself, would indeed never have saved but for this one object he was proud to have achieved it, proud to have left the rented house in Levengrove Place, proud in the possession of the inmost desire of his heart. He was right too. Nobody

laughed openly. One night, shortly after the house had been completed, a loafer at the Cross stepped out from the toping gang that loitered there and accosted Brodie.

"Good evening, Mr. Brodie," he hiccoughed, looking round at his fellows for approbation, then back at Brodie. "And how is the castle to-night?"

Brodie looked at him calmly. "Better than you," he replied, and smashed his fist with terrific violence into the rowdy's face, then, taking the clean linen handkerchief from his pocket, and wiping the blood from his knuckles, he threw it contemptuously on the ground beside the fallen man and walked quietly away.

Certainly Brodie's position in the town had altered sensibly in these last five years, and since the building of his house he was regarded with more significance, detachment, and misgiving; his social value increased at the price of singularity and he became gradually a more notable figure, with many acquaintances and no friends.

Now he took a final look at his property, squared his shoulders, and set off down the road. He had not proceeded far before he caught a glimpse of a peering face from behind the front-room curtains of one of the semi-detached houses farther down, and he jeered inwardly to see that it was little Pettigrew, the grocer, who had recently moved into the select neighbourhood and had at first sought to establish himself by walking ingratiatingly to the town with Brodie. The big man had tolerated this liberty for the first day, but when on the second morning he found the diminutive, unimportant grocer again waiting for him, he had stopped short. "Pettigrew," he had said calmly, "I'm afraid I'm not seein' so weel this mornin'. You're kind o' wee and shilpet to me the day and to-morrow I mightna see you ava'. Besides, I'm a fast walker. Gang your own gait, man, but don't strain your bandy wee legs keepin' pace with me. Good morning to you." Now he smiled sardonically as he passed the house, reflecting that since then the nervous Pettigrew had avoided him like a plague and had formed the habit of watching him well out of sight before venturing into the street.

Soon he had traversed the quieter residential district and entered the town where, at the south end of Church Street, an artisan carrying his bag of tools touched his cap to him in passing. Brodie's chest expanded at this act of deference, accorded only to the most important figures in the town. "Good morning to you," he cried affably, setting his head farther back in a proud geniality, marching around the corner into the High Street with his stick over his shoulder, and tramping up the incline like a soldier until he reached the crest of this main thoroughfare. There he stopped opposite an inconspicuous shop. The shop was old and quiet, with a narrow, unostentatious front marked by a small single window that displayed no merchandise, but masked its face discreetly behind an interior screen of fine meshed wire, which, though it veiled the window revealed the hidden secret of the shop by bearing upon its drawn grey filigree, in faded gilt lettering, the one word Hatter. It was, then, apparently a hat shop, but although it held the most commanding situation in the town, it not only disguised its character but seemed to remove itself from public observation, receding slightly from the common frontage of the street and permitting the adjacent buildings to project beyond and above it, as though it wished to remain, despite the fixed solidity of its position, as unobserved and unobtrusive as it might, reserving its contents, and striving to conceal itself and all that lay within from vulgar, prying eyes. Above its doorway the sign, too, was bleached by age and weather, its paint finely cracked by sun and smoothly washed by rain; but, still distinguishable upon it in thin, sloped letters across its surface, was the name James Brodie. This was Brodie's shop. Each morning, as he regarded it, the fact that he should possess it never failed to amuse him, and for twenty years he had inwardly regarded his business with a tolerant derision. It was of course the sole means of his livelihood, the unimpressive source of his stately and inspiring habitation, its solid, steady business the origin of his fine clothes and the money he rattled so easily in his pockets; yet his attitude towards it was that of a man who views with

an indulgent yet contemptuous air some trifling and unbecoming foible within his own nature. He Brodie was a hatter! He was not ashamed of the fact, but gloried in its ridiculous incongruity, revelled in the contrast between himself and the profession of his adoption which he knew must continually present itself to the world at large. He turned and surveyed the street from his elevated position like a monarch offering himself freely to the public gaze. He was only a hatter! The richness of the absurdity of his position was always before him, inevitably appealed to him, and now an internal diversion shook him as he moved into his shop to start another day's work.

Inside, the shop was dark, neglected, and almost dingy, its dim interior bisected by a long counter which ran the length of the room, acting as a barrier between the public and the private divisions of the establishment and bearing upon its worn, indented surface at one end a graduated series of tarnished brass stands, each supporting a kat or cap of different style and colour. At the other distant end, the counter joined the wall as a ledge capable of elevation, thus permitting ingress to a short row of steps leading to a door with a ground-glass

window on which was inscribed the word Office. Running backwards, beside and underneath this elevated compartment, was a small L-shaped cupboard of a back shop that, deprived of its original dimensions by the more recent imposition of the Office, contained with some difficulty in its limited extent an ironing board and an iron stove which, with its perpetual blast, dried more thoroughly the already sapless and vitiated air. In the shop itself the walls were covered in a drab crimson paper upon which hung several old prints; although few hats were to be seen and upon these no prices were displayed, behind the counter stood a series of wide mahogany drawers for caps and a long line of shelves upon which stacks of cardboard boxes ranged from floor to ceiling.

Behind the counter, and in front of this abundant but hidden stock, stood a young man whose appearance suggested that his stock of virtues must also be concealed. He was thin, with an etiolated countenance which palely protested against the lack of sunlight in the shop and which was faintly pitted with honourable scars gained in his perpetual struggle against an addiction to boils, a disorder to which he was unhappily subject, attributed by his devoted mother to thin blood and against which she continually fortified him with Pepper's Quinine and Iron tonic.

The general engaging aspect of his features was not, however, marred to any extent by these minor blemishes, nor by a small but obtrusive wart which had most inconsiderately chosen its location upon the extremity of his nose, and was well set off by a shock of dark hair, feathered, despite its careful oiling, and so frosted with dandruff that it shed its surplus flakes and formed a perpetual rime upon his coat collar.

The remainder of his person was pleasing and his dress suited soberly his position; but about him clung a peculiar, sour odour occasioned by a tendency towards free perspiration, particularly from his feet, a regrettable but unavoidable misfortune that occasionally induced Brodie to fling him out of the back door, which abutted upon the Leven, together with a cake of soap and a profane injunction to wash the offending members. This was Peter Perry, messenger, assistant, salesman, disciple of the stove and ironing board, lackey of the master, and general factotum rolled in one.

As Brodie entered he inclined his body forward, his hands pressed deeply on the counter, fingers extended, elbows flexed, showing more of the top of his head than his face and, in a passion of obsequiousness, awaited his master's greeting.

"Mornin', Perry."

"Good morning, Mr. Brodie, sir," replied Perry with nervous haste, showing a little less of his hair and a little more of his face.

"A very beautiful morning again, sir! Wonderful for the time of year. Delightful!" He paused appreciatively before continuing, "Mr. Dron has been in to see you this morning, on business he said, sir."

"Dron! What the devil does he want?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say, sir. He said he'd come back later."

"Humph!" grunted Brodie. He strode into his office, flung himself into a chair and, disregarding the several business letters that lay on the desk, lit his pipe. Then he tilted his hat well back on his head it was a sign of personal superiority that he never removed it at his business and took up the Glasgow Herald, that had been placed carefully to his hand.

He read the leading article slowly, moving his lips over the words; although occasionally he was obliged to go over an involved sentence twice in order to grasp its meaning, he persisted tenaciously. At times he would lower the paper and look blankly at the wall in front, using the full power of his sluggish mentality, striving to comprehend fully the sense of the context. It was a stern, matutinal task which Brodie set himself to assimilate the Herald's political editorial, but he considered it his duty as a man of standing to do so. Besides, it was thus that he provided himself with weighty argument for his

more serious conversation, and to this purpose he never failed to accomplish the task, although by next morning he had completely forgotten the gist of what he had read.

Half a column had been battled with in this dogged fashion when a diffident tap upon the glass panel disturbed him.

"What is it?" shouted Brodie.

Perry, for only Perry could have knocked like that, replied through the closed door:

"Mr. Dron to see you, sir."

"What the devil does he want? Does he not know I'm at the Herald's leader and can't be disturbed?"

Dron, a dejected, insignificant individual, was standing close behind Perry and could hear every word, a fact of which Brodie was maliciously aware, and which induced him, with a satirical humour, to couch his replies in the most disagreeable terms and in the loudest tones he could. Now, with a faint grin upon his face, he listened over his lowered paper to the muffled consultation outside the door.

"He says, Mr. Brodie, he won't keep you a minute," insinuated Perry.

"A minute, does he say ! Dearie me, now. He'll be lucky if he gets a second. I havena the least desire to see him," bawled Brodie. "Ask him what he wants and if it's not important the little runt can save his breath to cool his porridge." Again there was a whispered colloquy, during which Perry, with vigorous pantomime more expressive than his words, indicated that he had done everything to further the other's interests compatible with his own safety and security.

"Speak to him yourself, then," he mumbled finally, in self-acquittal, seceding from the cause and backing away to his counter. Dron opened the door an inch and peered in with one eye.

"You're there, are you?" remarked Brodie, without removing his eyes from the paper, which he had again raised in a grand pretence of reading. Dron cleared his throat and opened the door a little further.

"Mr. Brodie, could I have a word wi' you just for a wee minute? I'll not keep ye more nor that," he exclaimed, working himself gradually into the office through the slight opening he had cautiously made.

"What is it, then?" growled Brodie, looking up in annoyance. "I've no dealings wi' you that I'm aware of. You and me are birds that don't fly together."

"I ken that well, Mr. Brodie," replied the other humbly, "and that’s the very reason I've come to see ye. I came more or less to ask your advice and to put a small suggestion before ye."

"What is't, then? Don't stand there like a hen on a hot griddle."

Dron fumbled nervously with his cap. "Mr. Brodie, I havena been doin' too well lately at my trade, and I really came in regarding that little property o' mine next door."

Brodie looked up. "You mean the tumble-down shop that's been empty these three months past. Who could help seeing it ? Man, it's an eyesore in the street."

"I ken it's been empty a long time," replied Dron meekly, "but it's an asset in a way in fact, it's about the only asset I've got now and what wi' gettin' a bit desperate one way and another, an idea struck me that I thocht might interest you."

"Indeed, now," sneered Brodie, "Is not that interestin'! Ye have the lang head on ye, sure enough, to get all these inspirations it'll be the Borough Council for ye next. Well! What is the great idea?"

"I was thinking," returned the other diffidently, "that with your grand business and perhaps a shop that was a little too small for ye, ye might consider extendin' by taking in my place and making one big premises with perhaps a plate-glass window or two."

Brodie looked at him cuttingly for a long moment.

"Dear, dear! And it was to extend my business you worked out all this and came in twice in the one mornin'," he said at last.

"Indeed, no, Mr. Brodie. I've just told ye things have been goin' rather ill with me lately, and what with one thing and another, and the wife expecting again soon, I must get a bend on to let my property."

"Now that's too bad," purred Brodie. "It's you small, snuffy men that will have the large families. I hope ye're not makin' me responsible for your latest addition, though. Ay, ye're fond o' the big family, I know. I've heard tell ye've that many weans ye can't count them. But," he continued in a changed voice, "don't make me responsible for them. My business is my own and I manage it my own way. I would as soon think of a cheap-lookin' plate-glass window as I would of giving away pokes o' sweeties with my hats. Damn you, man, don't you know I've the most distinguished people in the borough as my clients and my friends? Your empty shop's been a fester on my respectable office for months. Let it, for God's sake. Let it by all means. Let it to auld Nick, if ye like, but you'll never let it to me. Now get out and don't ever bother me like this again. I'm a busy man and I've no time for your stupid yammerin'!"

"Very well, Mr. Brodie," replied the other quietly, twisting his bat in his hands. "I'm sorry if I've offended ye, but I thought there was no harm in asking but you're a hard man to speak to." He turned disconsolately to depart, but at that moment an agitated Perry shot himself into the room.

"Sir John's gig is at the door, Mr. Brodie," he stammered. "I saw it drive up this very minute!"

The assistant might deal with the less important, with, indeed, the bulk of the customers, to whom it was his duty to attend without disturbing Brodie, but when a personage came into the shop he knew his orders and raced for his master like a startled greyhound.

Brodie lifted his eyebrows with a look at Dron which said, "You see!"; then, taking him firmly by the elbow, as he had no wish to be confronted by Sir John in the other's undistinguished company, he hurried him out of the office and through the shop, expediting his passage through the outer door with a final push. The indignity of this last, powerful, unexpected shove completely upset Dron, and, with a stagger, he slipped, his legs shot from under him, and he

landed full upon his backside at the very moment that Sir John Latta stepped out of his gig.

Latta laughed vociferously as he entered the shop and came close up to Brodie.

"It's the most amusing thing I've seen for ages, Brodie. The look on the poor man's face would have brought the house down at Drury's," he cried, slapping his thigh with his driving gloves. "But it's a blessing he wasn't hurt. Was he dunning you?" he asked slyly.

"Not at all, Sir John! He's just a bit blether of a man that's always making a public nuisance of himself."

"A little fellow like that?" He looked at the other appraisingly. "You know you can't realise your own strength, man! You're an uncommon powerful barbarian."

"I just flicked him with my pinkie," declared Brodie complacently, delighted to have so opportunely attracted the other's notice and feeling it sweet incense for his pride to receive attention from the distinguished principal of the famous Latta Shipyard. "I could whip up a dozen like him with one hand," he added carelessly "not that I would soil my fingers that way. It's beneath my consideration."

Sir John Latta was gazing at him quizzically along his finely chiselled nose. "You're a character, Brodie, you know! I suppose that's why we cherish you," he said. "The body of a Hercules and the mind of well " He smiled. "Shall we put a glove on it for you?

You know the tag, 'odi projanum vulgus et arceo'?"

"Quite so! Quite so!" replied Brodie agreeably. "You've a neat way o' puttin things, Sir John. There was something like that in the Herald this mornin'. I'm with you there!" He had not the least idea what the other was talking about.

"Don't let things run away with you though, Brodie," said Sir John, with a warning shake of his head. "A little of some things goes a long way. You're not to start knocking the borough about. And don't offer us too much baronial caviare. I hope you get my meaning. Well," he added, abruptly changing the subject and his manner, allowing the latter to become formal, more distant, "I

mustn't dally, for I'm in really a hurry I have a meeting but I want a Panama hat the real thing, you know. I haven't felt sun like this since I was in Barbados. Get some down from Glasgow if needs be. You have my size."

"You shall have a selection to choose from at Levenford House this very afternoon," replied Brodie complacently. "I'll not leave it to my staff. I'll see to it myself."

"Good! And by the by, Brodie," he continued, arresting himself on his way to the door. "I almost forgot that my agents write me from Calcutta that they're ready for your boy. He can leave on the Irrawaddy on June the fourteenth. She's a Denny-built packet, nineteen hundred tons, you know. Fine boat! Our people will look after his berth for him."

"That is more than kind of you, Sir John," purred Brodie, "I'm deeply grateful. I'm most indebted for the way you've put yourself about for me over that matter."

"Nothing! Nothing!" replied the other absently. "We've got plenty young fellows at this end, but we want them at our docks out there the right kind, that's to say! The climate's really nothing to speak of, but he'll need to watch the life out there. It sometimes knocks a young fellow off his feet. I'll have a word with him if I've time. I hope he docs well for your sake. By the way, how is that remarkably pretty daughter of yours?"

"Quite fair."

"And the clever little sprat?"

"Splendid, Sir John."

"And Mrs. Brodie?"

"Middling well, thank ye."

"Good! Well, I'm off now! Don't forget that hat of mine."

He was into his gig, a fine, spare, patrician figure of a man, had taken the reins from his groom and was off, spanking down the High Street, with the smooth, glossy flanks of the cob gleaming, and the high lights flashing on whirling spokes, gleaming metal, shining liveried cockade, and upon the rich lustre of varnished coachwork.

Rubbing his hands together, his eye dilating with a suppressed exultation, Brodie returned from the doorway, and to Perry, who had remained, a dropping, nebulous shadow in the background, he cried, with unwonted volubility:

"Did ye hear that conversation we had? Was it not grand? Was it not enough to make these long lugs o' yours stand out from your head? But I suppose the half of it was above ye. You'll not understand the Latin. No! But you heard what Sir John said to me gettin' that post for my son and sperin' all about my family. Answer me, ye puir fool," he called out. "Did you hear what Sir John Latta said to James Brodie?"

"Yes, sir," stammered Perry," I heard.”

“Did you see how he treated me?" whispered Brodie.

"Certainly I did, Mr. Brodie!" replied the other, with returning confidence, perceiving that he was not to be rebuked for eavesdropping. "I wasn't meaning to to overhear or to spy on you, but I did observe you both, sir, and I agree with you. Sir John is a fine man. He was more than good to my mother when my father died so sudden. Oh! Yes, indeed, Mr. Brodie, Sir John has a kind word and a kind action for everybody.”

Brodie eyed him scornfully.

"Faugh!" he said contemptuously. "What are you ravin' about, you witless creature! You don't know what I mean, you poor worm! You don't understand." Disregarding the other's crushed appearance as beneath his notice, he stepped upwards into his office once more, arrogantly, imperiously, and resumed his big chair; then, as he gathered together the sheets of his morning paper before his unseeing eyes, he muttered softly to himself, like one who dallies wantonly, yet seriously, with a profound and cherished secret: "They don't understand. They don't understand!"

For a full minute he remained staring blankly in front of him, while a dull glow lurked deeply in his eye; then, with a sudden toss of his head and a powerful effort of will, he seemed to thrust something violently from him as though he feared it might master him; shaking his body like a huge dog, he recollected himself, observed the paper in front of him, and, with a visage once more composed and tranquil, began again to read.




V


"MARY, put the kettle on the fire. We'll be back in time for me to give Matt some tea before he goes off to see Agnes," said Mrs. Brodie, drawing on her black kid gloves with prim lips and a correct air, adding, "Mind and have it boiling, now, we'll not be that long." She was dressed for one of her rare sorties into the public street, strangely unlike herself in black, flowing paletot and a plumed helmet of a hat, and beside her stood Matthew, looking stiff and sheepish in a brand-new suit, so new indeed that when he was not in motion his trouser legs stood to attention with edges sharp as parallel-presenting swords. It was an unwonted sight on the afternoon of a day in mid-

week, but the occasion was sufficiently memorable to warrant the most unusual event, being the eve of Matthew's departure for Calcutta. Two days ago he had, for the last time, laid down his pen and picked up his hat in the office at the shipyard and since then had lived in a state of perpetual movement and strange unreality, where life passed before him like a mazy dream, where, in his conscious moments, he became aware of himself in situations both unusual and alarming. Upstairs his case stood packed, his clothing protected by camphor balls, so numerous that they had invaded even the inside of the mandolin and so powerful that the entire house smelled like the new Levenford Cottage Hospital, greeting him whenever he entered the house with an odious reminder of his departure. Everything that the most experienced globe trotter could desire lay in that trunk, from the finest obtainable solar topee given by his father and a

Morocco-bound Bible by his mother to the patent automatic opening water bottle from Mary and the small pocket compass that Nessie had bought with the accumulation of her Saturday pennies.

Now that his leave-taking was at hand, Matthew had experienced during the last few days a well-defined sinking feeling in the vicinity of his navel, and though of his own volition he would willingly and self-sacrificingly have abandoned the thrill of such a disturbing emotion, like a nervous recruit before an action, the pressure of circumstances forbade his retirement. The lions which had arisen in his imagination and leapt glibly from his tongue a short week ago to engage the fascinated attention of Mary and Mamma now returned growling, to torment him in his dreams. Renewed assurances from people connected with the yard that Calcutta was at the least a larger community than Levenford failed to comfort him, and before retiring each night he cultivated the habit of searching for snakes which might be perfidiously concealed beneath his pillow.

For Mrs. Brodie the emotional influence of the occasion had provided a strong stimulus, as though she felt at last able to identify herself in a situation worthy of a leading character in one of her beloved novels. Like a Roman matron renouncing her son to the State with Spartan fortitude, or, more sensibly, a Christian mother sending out a second Livingstone on a mission of hope and glory, she forsook her meek despondency and, bearing up nobly, packed, repacked, devised, succoured, comforted, encouraged and exhorted, and sprinkled her conversation with text and prayer.

Brodie had not missed the change in her, gauging with a sardonic eye the explanation of the transient phase. "You're makin' a bonny exhibition o' yourself, my woman," he had sneered at her, "wi' your posing and posturin', and your runnin' after that big gowk o' yours, and your cups o' tea and snashters at a' hours. Ye would think ye were Queen Victoria to look at ye. Is it a general ye're sendin, out to the war or what that you're blowin' yerself out like a pig's bladder? I know well what will happen. Whenever he's away yell collapse, and we'll have ye back on our hands more o' a driech empty bag than ever. Faugh! Let some sense in that silly skull o' yours, for God's sake."

She had felt him cold, unfeeling, even callous, as she feebly expostulated, "But, Father, we maun give the boy his start. There's a great future in front of him;" and thereafter, concealing her endeavours from her husband, she had redoubled, with an outraged, conscious rectitude, these spirited efforts on behalf of her young, potentially illustrious pioneer.

Now, having adjusted her gloves to a smooth perfection, she remarked,

"Are you ready, Matt dear?" in a tone of such forced cheerfulness that it chilled Matthew's very blood. "We are going down, Mary, to the chemist's," she continued in a chatty manner.

"The Rev. Mr. Scott told Agnes the other day that the best remedy for malaria was quinine a wonderful cure he said, so we're off to get a few powders made up." Matthew said nothing, but visions of himself lying, fever-racked, in a crocodile-infested swamp rushed through his mind and, considering glumly that a few scanty powders seemed a paltry protection against such an evil, in his mind he sullenly repudiated the reverend gentleman's suggestion.

"What does he know about it, anyway? He's never been there. It's all very fine for him to talk," he thought indignantly, as Mrs. Brodic took his arm and led him, an unwilling victim, from the room.

When they had gone Mary filled the kettle and put it on the hob. She seemed listless and melancholy, due, no doubt, to the thought of losing her brother, and for a week had moved in a spirit of extreme dejection which might reasonably have been entirely attributed to sisterly solicitude. Curiously, though, it was just one week since she had been with Denis at the fair, and though she longed for him, she had not seen him since. That had been an impossibility, as she knew

him to be in the North, travelling on business, from a letter posted in Perth which, startlingly, she had received from him. It was an event for her at any time to receive a letter (which, on such rare occasions, was inevitably perused by the entire household) but fortunately she had been first down that morning and so no other had seen it or the sudden throbbing gladness of her face, and she had thus avoided detection, interrogation, and certain discovery.

What felicity it had been to hear from Denis! She realised with an inward thrill that he must have held this paper in his own hands, the hands which had touched her so caressingly, brushed the envelope with those lips which had sealed themselves upon hers, and, as she read the letter behind the locked door of her room, she flushed even in this privacy, at the impetuous, endearing words he wrote. It became evident to her that he desired to marry her and, without considering the obstacles which might be between them, took for granted apparently that she had accepted him.


Now, seated alone in the kitchen, she took the letter from her bodice and reread it for the hundredth time. Yes! He wrote fervently that he was pining for her, that he could not exist without her, that life to him was now an endless waiting until he should see her, be near to her, be with her always. She sighed, ardently, yet sadly. She, too, was pining for him. Only ten days since that night by the river's brink, and each day more piteous, more dolorous than the one before!

On the first of the seven she had felt ill physically, while the realisation of her boldness, her disobedience of her father, the defiance of every canon of her upbringing struck her in one concentrated blow; but as time passed and the second day merged into the third and she still did not see Denis, the sense of iniquity was swamped by the sense of deprivation and she forgot the enormity of her conduct in a straining feeling of his necessity to her. On the fourth day, in her sad bewilderment, when she had essayed so constantly to penetrate the

unknown and unrealised depths of her experience that it began to appear to her like a strange, painful unreality, his letter had come, raising her at once to a pinnacle of ecstatic relief. He did, then, love her after all, and everything became obliterated in the joy of that one dazzlhig fact; but on the succeeding days she had gradually slipped from the heights and now she sat realising the hopelessness of ever obtaining sanction to see Denis, asking herself how she could live without him, wondering what would become of her.

As she pondered, carelessly holding the letter in her hand, old Grandma Brodie entered unobserved.

"What's that you're reading?" she demanded suddenly, peering at Mary.

"Nothing, Grandma, nothing at all," Mary blurted out with a start, stuffing the crushed paper into her pocket.

"It looked to me gey like a letter and ye seemed in a big hurry to hide it. You're always mopin' and moonin' over something now. I wish I had my specs. I would soon get to the bottom o' it." She paused, marking the result of her observation malevolently on the tablets of her memory. "Tell me," she resumed, "where's that glaikit brother o' yours?"

"Gone to get quinine at the chemist's with Mamma."

"Pah! what he needs is gumption not quinine. He would need a bucket o' that to stiffen him up. Forbye, some strained castor oil and a drop of good spirits would be more useful to him outbye there. I've no time for sich a palaver that has been goin' on. Everything's upset in the house with the fiddle faddle of it a'. Tell me, is tea earlier to-night?" She clicked her teeth hopefully, scenting like a harpy the nearness of sustenance.

“I don't know, Grandma," replied Mary. Usually the old woman's unbashful eagerness for food left her indifferent, but to-night, in her own troubled perplexity, it nauseated her; without further speech she got up and, feeling that she must be alone and in a less congested atmosphere, went out into the back garden. As she paced back and forth across the small green she felt it strangely cruel that life should continue to move heedlessly around her in the face of all her sadness and confusion, that Grandma Brodie should still crave greedily for her tea, and the progress of Matt's departure march indifferently along. The current of her thoughts had never flowed so despondently as, with restless movements, she seemed dimly to perceive that the circumstances of her life were conspiring to entrap her. Through the back window she saw Matthew and her mother return, saw Mamma buslle to prepare the table, observed Matthew sit down and begin to eat. What did they care that her brain throbbed with perplexity behind a burning forehead, that she wished one word of compassionate advice but knew not where to seek it? The barren drabness of this back garden, the ridiculous rear view of the outlines of her home, enraged her, and she desired with bitter vehemence to have been born into a family less isolated, less exacting, less inhuman, or, better, not to have been born at all. She envisaged the figure of her father, bestriding, like a formidable colossus, the destiny of the Brodies and directing her life tyrannically with an ever watchful, relentless eye. His word it was which had withdrawn her at the age of twelve from school, which she loved, to assist in the duties of the household; he had terminated her budding friendships with other girls because this one was beneath her, or that one lived in a mean house, or another's father had incensed him; his mandate had forbidden her to attend the delightful winter concerts in the Mechanic's Hall on the grounds that she demeaned herself by going; and now he would destroy the sole happiness that life now held for her.

A torrent of rebellion swirled through her; as she felt the injustice of such unnatural restraint, such unconditional limitation of her freedom, she stared defiantly at the meek currant shoots which grew half-heartedly in the hard soil around the garden walls. It was easier, alas, to put them out of countenance than Brodie, as though they too, infected by the tyranny of their environment, had lost the courage to hold their slender tendrils erect.

A touch on her shoulder startled her, she who just had dared to show fight. It was, however, merely Matthew, who had come to speak to her for a moment before leaving to visit Miss Moir.

"I'll be home early to-night, Mary," he said, "so don't worry about you know, staying up. And," he added hastily, "now that I'm going abroad I know you'll never mention it to a soul I would never like it to be known and thank you a lot for what you've done for me."

This unexpected gratitude from her brother, although its origin lay in a premature wave of nostalgia and was fostered by the cautious instinct to safeguard his memory against his absence, touched Mary.

"That was nothing to do for you," she replied. "I was only too pleased, Matt. You'll forget all about that worry out there."

"I'll have other things to bother about, I suppose." She had never seen him so subdued, or less self-complacent, and a glow of affection for him warmed her, as she said, "You'll be oil to see Agnes now. I'll walk to the gate with you."

As she accompanied him around the side of the house, taking his arm in hers, she sensed the change from the modish young man about town of a fortnight ago to this uncertain, timorous youth now by her side.

"You'll need to cheer up a bit, Matt," she remarked kindly.

"I don't feel like going, now it's come to the bit," he ventured casually.

"You should be glad to get out of here," she replied. "I know I would gladly go. This house seems like a trap to me. I feel I'll never get away from it, as if I might wish to but could not." She paused a moment, then added, "But then, you're leaving Agnes behind! That's bound to make all the difference. That's what's making you sad and upsetting you."

"Of course," agreed Matthew. The idea had not occurred to him before in this particular light, but as he turned it over in his mind it was distinctly comforting, and, to his vacillating self-esteem, profoundly reassuring.

"What does Father think of Agnes and you ?" Mary asked suddenly.

He gazed at her with astonished eyes before he replied, indignantly:

"What do you mean, Mary? Miss Moir is a most estimable girl. No one could think a word against her. She's a remarkably fine girl! What made you ask that?"

“Oh! Nothing in particular, Matt," she replied vaguely, refusing to liberate the absurd conception which had arisen in her mind. Agnes Moir, worthy and admirable in every other way, was simply the daughter of a small and completely undistinguished confectioner in the town, and as Brodie himself, in theory at least, kept a shop, he could not repudiate Agnes on that score. But it was he who had obtained this position for Matthew, had insisted upon his going; and Matthew would be absent five years in India. She remembered like a flash the grim, sardonic humour in her father's eyes when he had first announced to his shrinking wife and his startled son his intention of sending the latter abroad, and for the first time a faint glimmering dawned upon her of her father's mentality. She had always feared and respected him, but now, at the sudden turn of her thoughts, she began almost to hate him.

"I'm off then, Mary," Matthew was saying. "Ta-ta just now."

Her lips opened to speak, but even as her mind grappled dimly with her suspicions, her eyes fell upon his weak, daunted countenance striving ineffectually against discouragement, and she let him go without a word.

When he left Mary, Matthew tramped along more confidently, warming his enervated self-assurance at the glow she had unconsciously kindled within him. To be sure, he was afraid of leaving Agnes! He felt that at last he had the reason of his dejection, that stronger men than he would have wavered for a slighter cause, that his despondency did him credit as a noble-hearted lover. He began to feel more like Livingstone again and less like the raw recruit, whistled aloud a few bars of "Juanita", recollected his mandolin, thought, rather inconsistently, of the ladies on the Irrawaddy, or possibly in Calcutta, and felt altogether better. He had regained a faint shadow of his normal dash by the time he reached the Moir domicile and he positively leaped up the stairs to the door, for as, unhappily, the Moirs were compelled to live above their shop, there were many stairs, and, worse, an entry by a close. He had, indeed, so far recovered that he used the knocker with considerable decision and his manner had the appearance of repudiating the slightly inferior aspect of his surroundings as unworthy of a man whose name might one day shine in the annals of the Empire. He gazed, too, with a superior air, at the small girl who helped in the shop and who, now lightly disguised as a maid, admitted him and ushered him into the parlour where Agnes, released from the bondage of the counter although business hours were not yet over sat awaiting her Matt; to-morrow she could not be spared from her post of duty and would be unable to accompany him to Glasgow, but to-night she had him for her own.

The parlour was cold, damp, unused, and formal, with large mahogany furniture whose intricate design lost itself in a voluptuous mystery of curves, with antimacassars veiling the sheen of horsehair, and wax-cloth on the floor that glittered like a wet street. From the walls Highland cattle, ominous in oils, looked down dispiritedly upon the piano, that hall-mark of gentility, which bore upon its narrow, crowded surface three stuffed birds of an unknown species, perched mutely under a glass case amidst a forest of photographs. Agnes as an infant, as a baby, as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, Agnes in a group at the bakers' and confectioners' annual trip, at the Band of Hope social, at the church workers' outing all were there!

Here, too, was Agnes in the flesh: literally, for although short in stature she was already inclined, like the furnishings of the room, to a redundancy of curves, which swelled particularly around her hips and bosom, that were full, with the promise of greater amplitude to come. She was dark, with sloe eyes under sable eyebrows, with olive cheeks, and red almost thick lips, and upon her upper lip was a smooth umber shadow that lay softly, but with a dark, threatening menace of the future.

She kissed him with great warmth. She was five years older than Matthew and she treasured him accordingly, and now, taking his hand, she led him forward and sat down with him upon the unsympathetic sofa which, like the parlour, was sanctified to their courtship.

"And this is the very last night," she mourned.

"Oh! Don't say that, Agnes," he replied. "We can always think of each other! We'll be with each other in spirit."

Ardent church worker though she was, Agnes, from her appearance, had potentialities for a closer communion than this. She was, of course, unaware of it and would have repudiated it hotly, but her sigh was heavy as she said, "I wish you were nearer than India!" and came closer to him now.

"The time will fly, Agnes. In no time 111 be back with plenty of rupees." He was proud of his knowledge of the foreign currency and added, "A rupee is about one shilling and fourpence."

"Never mind the rupees just now, Matt; tell me you love me."

"I do love you; that's why I'm so upset at going away, I haven't been myself at all these last few days quite off colour!" He felt truly noble to have laid the burden of his suffering at her feet.

"You won't even speak to any of these foreign ladies, will you, Matt? I wouldn't trust them as far as I could see them a pretty face may cover a wicked heart. You'll remember that, won't you, dear?"

"Certainly, Agnes."

"You see, dear, there must be great temptations for a handsome young man out in these hot countries. Women will go to such lengths to get hold of a man once they get their eye on him, especially if he's a good young man that excites them all the more, and your little Agnes won't be there to watch over you, Matt. I want you to promise to be careful for my sake."

It was delightful for him to feel that he was so ardently desired, that already she was jealous of him to desperation, and, with one eye fixed already upon his future conquests abroad, he murmured solemnly, "Yes, Agnes, I see the truth of what you say. The way may be hard for me, but I'll let no one spoil me for you. It'll not be my fault if anything comes between us."

"Oh! Matt, dear," she whispered, "don't even speak of that. I’ll hardly be able to sleep for thinking of all the hussies that might be after you. Of course, I am not unreasonable, dear. I would like you to meet good, earnest women, perhaps lady missionaries or workers in the Christian field out there. A few motherly women out there would be nice for you to know. They would take good care of you,

perhaps darn your socks for you. If you were to let me know, I could write to them."

"Of course, Agnes," he replied, unattractcd by her suggestion and with a strong conviction that such elderly ladies as she had just described would not constitute the society of his selection. "Of course, I can't say I'll meet any one like that. I'll have to see how things are first."

"You'll fall on your feet, all right, Matt," she assured him fondly. "You couldn't help it, the way you get around people. Then your music will be a great help to you socially. Have you got all your songs packed?" He nodded his head complacently, saying, "And the mandolin. I put a new pink ribbon on it yesterday!"

Her sable brows contracted at the thought of those who might receive the benefit of this decoration, knotted on such a romantic instrument, but she did not wish to press him too far; with an effort, she controlled her apprehension and, forcing a smile, deflected the conversation into a nobler channel.

"The church choir will miss you too, Matt. The choir practice won't be the same place without you." He protested modestly, but she would not permit his humility. "No!" she cried, "don't deny it, dear. Your voice will be missed in that church. Do you remember that night after the practice when you first walked home with me, dear? I'll never forget the way you spoke to me. Don't you remember what you said?"

"I can't think the now, Aggie," he answered inattentively. "Did you not speak to me first?"

"Oh! Matt," she gasped, widening her eyes at him reproachfully, "how can you! You know you smiled at me over your hymn book afl that night, and you did speak first. I only asked if you were going my way." He nodded his head apologetically, as he replied, "I remember now, Agnes! We ate all that big bag of liquorice candies you had with you. They were real nice too."

"I'm going to send you out a big tin box of sweets every month," she promised eagerly. "I wasn't going to mention it, but as you speak of it, I might as well tell you, dear. I know you're fond of a good sweet and you'll never get good confectionery out in those parts. They'll carry perfectly well if I send them in a tin." He thanked her with a satisfied smile but, before he could speak, she hurried on, striking on the heat of his gratitude.

"There's nothing your Agnes will not do for you, Matt, if you just don't forget her," she continued fervently. "You Ye never to forget me for a minute. You've got all my photographs with you! Put one in your cabin straight away, won't you, dear?" She laid her head more heavily on his shoulder and gazed up at him entrancingly. "Kiss me, Matt! That was nice. It's so delightful to feel that we are engaged. It's almost as binding as matrimony. No good girl could feel like I do without being affianced to her young man."

The couch being apparently without springs, Matt began to feel uncomfortable under the considerable weight he was supporting. His calf-love for Miss Moir, developed under the insidious flattery of her attentions, was not strong enough to stand the strain of this powerful amatory embrace.

"Would you permit me to smoke?" he suggested tactfully. Agnes looked up, her liquid eyes swimming beneath the inky tangle of her hair.

"On the last night?" she asked reproachfully.

"I thought it might pull me together," he murmured. "The last few days have been very heavy for me all that packing has been such a strain on a man."

She sighed and raised herself reluctantly, saying:

"All right then, dear! I can refuse you nothing. Have just a few puffs if you feel it will do you good. But you're not to over-smoke yourself in India, Matt. Remember your chest is not strong." Then, graciously, she added, "Let me light this one for you as it's the last time." She timidly ignited the slightly bent weed he withdrew from his waistcoat pocket and watched him fearfully as he blew out thick clouds in manful taciturnity. Now she could only love and admire him from a distance, but at arm's length she still fondled his watch chain.

"You'll miss your little Aggie, won't you, Matt?" she asked soulfully, but coughing slightly as she inhaled the noxious odour from his cigar.

"Most dreadfully," he replied solemnly. This was what he really enjoyed, himself smoking heroically, she at his feet in fond womanly admiration. "It will be unbearable." He would have liked to say, dashingly, "Hell", but out of respect he used the less manly expression, and he shook his head as if he doubted his ability to stand the strain of it all.

"We must suffer for each other's sake," said Agnes, with a sigh. "I feel it will make you do great and good work out there, Matt. You'll write and tell me all your doings."

"I'll write to you and Mamma every mail," promised Matthew.

"I'll be in close touch with Mamma, of course," responded Agnes, as if she were already a daughter of the house.

He felt that the prayers of two loyal adoring women would ascend in unison for him as he faced his stern task abroad, but the cigar, despite his efforts to prolong it, was burning his lips, and at length he regretfully discarded it. Immediately Agnes nestled her head upon his chest. "Kiss me again, dear!" she said. Then, after a pause, she whispered, suggesting alluringly, "You'll come back to me a big, strong, fierce man, won't you, Matt? I like to be crushed hard in your arms, as hard as -ever you like." As he placed a limp arm around her shoulders he felt somehow that too much was being demanded of a man who had to face the perils of an arduous and unknown journey in the morning.


"I'm really ashamed to show my feelings like this," she continued bashfully, "but there's no harm in it, Matt, is there? We'll be married whenever you come back. Indeed, it breaks my heart to think we couldn't have got married before ye left. I would willingly have gone out with you!"

"But, Agnes," he protested, "it's not the country for a white woman, at all."

"There's plenty go out there, Matt, plenty! Officers' wives, and what not! I'll go back with you if you've got to go out again when your time's up," she said firmly. "It's just the fact that you've got to make your way that has hindered us, dear."

He was silent, startled at the decision in her words, never having viewed himself as being so near the altar, nor having quite suspected the extent of her ascendancy over him, thinking, too, that the embrace was being protracted indefinitely. At length he said:

"I'm afraid I must be going now, Aggie."

"But it's so early yet, Matt," she asserted petulantly. "You never leave before ten o'clock as a rule."

"I know, Agnes, but I've got a big day ahead of me to-morrow," he replied importantly. "Got to get on the packet by noon."

"This separation is going to kill me," said Agnes dramatically, unwillingly releasing him.

As he stood up, straightening his tie, shaking down his trousers, and inspecting the damage to his creases, he felt that it was worth while, that it was good to know that women would die for him.

"Good-bye, then, Agnes," he exclaimed gallantly, straddling his legs and throwing out both hands towards her. "We shall meet again." She flung herself again into his proffered arms and buried her head against him, whilst the force of her sobs rocked them both.

"I feel I should never let you go," she cried brokenly, as he separated from her. "I should never give you up like this. You're going too far away. I'll pray for you, though, Matt! May God take care of you for me," she wept as she saw him down the stairs.

Out again in the street he felt consoled, uplifted, strengthened by her grief, as though the devastation he had wrought within her virgin heart ennobled him, added inches to his stature. But as he retired early to bed in preparation for the fatigues of the next day, he reflected in his more mature and worldly vein that perhaps Miss Moir had been lately a little pressing in her attentions upon him, and as he fell asleep, he realised that a man might as well think twice before tying himself up in a hurry, especially if that man were such a knowing blade as Matthew Brodie.

Next morning, although he awoke early, it was nine o'clock before Mamma let him get up.

"Don't rush! We'll take it easy. Conserve your strength, my boy," she said, as she brought him his morning tea. "We've plenty of time and you've a long journey ahead of you."

She apparently visualised him journeying to Calcutta without repose, and in consequence of his deferred rising he was only half-dressed when his father called to him from the foot of the stairs.

Brodie would not depart an inch from his habit; he would, indeed, have considered it a weakness to wait to sec his son away, and at half- past nine he was off to business in the usual fashion. As Matthew came scuttering down the stairs in his braces, a towel in his hand, his wet hair over his pallid brow, and came up to his father in the hall, Brodie fixed a magnetic eye upon his son and held for a moment the other's wavering glance. "Well, Matthew Brodie," he said, looking down at his son, "you're off to-day, and that means good-bye to your home for five years. I hope to God you are goin' to prove yourself in these years. You’re a sleekit, namby-pamby fellow and your mother has a' but spoiled ye, but there must be good in ye. There must be good," he cried, "because you're my son! I want that brought out in ye. Look a man between the eyes and don't hang your head like a dog. I'm sendin' you out there to make a man of ye. Don't forget that you're the son, ay, and the heir of James Brodie.

"I've got you everything you want," he continued. "A position of trust and of great possibilities. I've given you the best outfit money can buy, and best of all I've given you a name. Be a man, sir, but above all be a Brodie. Behave like a Brodie wherever you are, or God help you."

He shook hands firmly, turned and was gone.

Matthew finished dressing in a maze, aided by Mamma who continually darted in and out of his room ate his breakfast without tasting it, and was startled by the cab at the door before he could collect himself. Other farewells were showered upon him. Old Grandma Brodie, cross at being disturbed so early, called out from the head of the stairs as she clutched her long nightgown above her bare, bony feet, "Good-bye to ye, then, and watch you don't get drouned on the way over!' Nessie, in tears long before the time, from the very solemnity of the occasion, could only sob incoherently, "I'll write to you, Matt! I hope the compass will be useful to you." Mary was deeply affected. She clasped her arms round Matthew's neck and kissed him fondly. "Keep a stiff upper lip, Matt dear. Be brave, and nothing can hurt you, and don't forget your own, loving sister."

He was in the cab with Mamma, sitting in hunched apathy, being bumped unmercifully, on the way to the station, while Mrs. Brodie looked proudly out of the window. In her mind's eye she saw people nudging each other as they watched the swe^p of her spanking equipage, and saying, "That's Mrs. Brodie seein' her laddie off to Calcutta. She's been a good mother to that boy, ay, and a fine fellow, he is too, an' all, an' all." Indeed it was not every day that a mother in Levenford took her son to the boat for India, she reflected complacently, drawing her paletot more becomingly around her and sitting up grandly in the decrepit vehicle as though it were her private carriage.

At the station she paid the cabman with a conscious air, glancing sideways from under her hat at the few chance loungers under the archway, and to the man who carried the luggage she could not forbear to remark, casually, "This young gentleman is for India."

The porter, staggering under the heavy case and stupefied by the reek of camphor which emanated from it, twisted his red neck around the angle of the box and gaped at her obtusely, too overcome to speak.

Although they were now on the platform, the train of destiny was late, for the schedule of the Darroch and Levenford joint railway, never the object of public approbation, did not to-day belie its reputation and was apparently not working to any degree of accuracy.

Mamma tapped her foot restlessly, pursed her lips impatiently, looked repeatedly at the silver watch that hung around her neck by its chain of plaited hair; Matthew, filled with a despairing hope that there might have been a breakdown on the line, looked vaguely, disconsolately, at the porter who, in turn, gazed with open mouth at Mrs. Brodie. He had never seen her before and, as his oafish look

engulfed her brisk, nonchalant demeanour, so outside the scope of his local experience, he took her for a prodigy a traveller of at least European experience.

At last a clanking noise was heard in the distance, sounding the knell of Matt's last hope. The train smoked its way into the station and in a few minutes puffed out again with Mrs. Brodie and Matthew inside, facing each other on the hard wooden seats and leaving the porter looking incredulously at the penny piece which the lady had magnificently pressed into his palm. He scratched his head, spat disgustedly, dismissed the whole episode as a mystery beyond the powers of his comprehension.

In the train Mrs. Brodie utilised every lull in the din, when her voice might be audible, to utter some lively remark to Matthew, and between these parentheses she contemplated him vivaciously. Matthew squirmed in his seat; he knew he v/as the object of a cheering-up process and he loathed it. It's all right for her, he thought moodily; she hasn't got to go.

At length they reached Glasgow, after a journey that was, for Matthew, mournfully short. They made their way out of the station down Jamaica Street and along the Broomielaw to where the S.S. Irrawaddy was lying at Stobcross dock with steam up and two tugs in attendance. She seemed to them an enormous ship with paddles wide as the spread of a bat's wings and a funnel which dwarfed the masts of all the other shipping, and Mamma remarked admiringly: "My word! That's a great, big boat, Matt! I'll not be so feared for ye when I think on ye aboard o' that. That lum is as high as the town steeple. Look at a' these folks on deck too. I suppose we maun go on board." Together they advanced up the gangway and gained the deck, where the flurry of embarkation had begun and an exaggerated

bustle and confusion prevailed. Sailors leaped about the deck performing miracles with ropes; officers in gold braid shouted importantly and blew whistles loudly: stewards pursued passengers and passengers ran after stewards; Anglo-Indians % returning to the country of their selection glared passionately at all who got in their way; relatives on the verge of bereavement stubbed their toes over iron stanchions and piles of luggage.

In the face of this hustling activity Mrs. Brodie's spirit quailed. The superior look of the purser as he directed them below intimidated her and though she had intended at least to approach the captain of the vessel and turn over Matthew, in the appropriate manner, to his especial care, now she wilted; as she sat in the stuffy confines of the den which was to serve Matt as cabin for the next eight weeks and felt the gentle lift and fall of the boat against the fenders of the quay, she realised that the sooner she went ashore the better.

Now that the actual farewell was at hand, the spurious exaltation - derived from her romantic imagination collapsed, as her husband had sardonically foreseen, like a pricked bladder. She was herself again, the weak woman who had given birth to this child, suckled him at her breast, seen him grow to manhood, and now was about to see him leave her. A tear crept slowly down her cheek.

"Oh Matt," she cried, "I've tried to bear up well for ye, son for your own dear sake, but I'm sorry to lose you. I doubt if you're the man for these foreign parts. I would rather you stayed at home."

"I don't want to go either, Mamma," he implored eagerly, as though at the last moment she might stretch out her hand and pluck him from his awful predicament.

"You'll need to go now, my son. It's gane too far to be altered now," she replied sadly, shaking her head. "Your father has wished it all along. And what he says must be done. There's just no other way about it. But you'll do your best to be a good boy, won't you, Matt?"

"Yes, Mamma."

"You'll send home something of your pay for me to put in the Building Society for you?"

"Yes, Mamma."

"You'll read a chapter of your Bible every day?"

"Yes, I will, Mamma."

"And don't forget me, Matt."

Matthew burst into broken, uncouth sobs.

"I don't want to go," he blubbered, catching at her dress. "You’re all sending me away and I'll never come back. It's my death I'm goin' out to. Don't let me go, Mamma."

"Ye maun go, Matt," she whispered. "He would kill us if we came back thegither."

"I'll be sick on the boat," he whined. "I feel it comin' on already. I'll get the fever out there. You know I'm not strong. I tell ye, Mamma, it’ll finish me."

"Wheesht, son!" she murmured. "Ye maun calm yoursel'. I'll pray to the Lord to protect ye."

"Oh, well, Mamma, if I'm to go, leave me now," he wailed. "I can't stand any more. Don't sit there and mock me. Leave me and be finished with it!" His mother stood up and drew him into her arms; at last she was a woman.

"Good-bye, son, and God bless you," she said quietly. As she left the cabin with streaming eyes and shaking head, he flung himself impotently upon his bunk.

Mrs. Brodie stepped off the gangway and set out for Queen Street station. As she retraced her steps through the docks her feet dragged along the very pavements over which she had advanced so airily, gradually her body drooped forward, her dress trailed behind heedlessly; her head inclined itself pathetically; a mantle of resignation descended upon her; she had emerged completely from her dreams and was again the hapless and handless wife of James Brodie.

In the train homewards she felt tired, exhausted by the rapid flight of emotions that had traversed her being. A drowsiness crept over her and she slept. In the shadows of her sleeping brain spectres sprang from their lurking places and tormented her. Some one was thrusting her downwards, crushing her with stones; square grey stones were all around, compressing her. Upon the earth beside her lay her children, their cadaverous limbs relaxed in the inanition of extreme debility, and, as the walls slowly drew in nearer upon them, she awoke with a loud shriek, which mingled with the blast ot the engine's whistle. The train was entering the outskirts of Levenford. She was home.






ON the following morning about ten o'clock, Mrs. Brodie and Mary were together in the kitchen, according to their custom of consulting together to discuss the household plans for the day when the master of the house had departed after breakfast. This morning, however, they sat without reviewing the possibilities of their cleaning or mending, without debating whether it should be stew or mince for the day's dinner, or considering whether father's grey suit required

pressing, and instead remained silent, somewhat subdued, with Mrs. Brodie mournfully sipping a cup of strong tea and Mary gazing quietly out of the window.

"I feel good for nothing, to-day," said Mamma at length.

"No wonder, Mamma, after yesterday," Mary sighed. "I wonder how he's getting on? Not homesick already, I hope."

Mrs. Brodie shook her head. "The seasickness will be the worst, I'm gey afeared, for Matt was never a sailor, poor boy! I remember only too well when he was just twelve, on the steamer to Port Doran, he was very ill and it wasna that rough either. He would eat green-gages after his dinner, and I didna like to stop him and spoil the day's pleasure for the wee man, but he brought them up and the good dinner too, that had cost his father a salt half crown. Oh! But your father was angry with him, and with me too, as if it was my fault that the boat turned the boy's stomach."

She paused rcminiscently, and added, "I'm glad I never gave Matt a hard word, anyway, now that he's away far, far. No! I never gave him a word in anger, let alone lifted my hand to him in punishment."

"You always liked Matt best," Mary agreed mildly. "I'm afraid you'll miss him sorely, Mamma!"

"Miss him?" Mrs. Brodie replied. "I should just think I would. I feel as weak as if as if something inside of me had gane away on that boat and would never come back. But he'll miss me too, I hope." Her eye glistened, as she continued, "Ay, grown man though he is, he broke down in his cabin like a bairn when he had to say good-bye to his mother. It's a comfort to me, that, Mary, and will be, until I get the consolation of his own dear letters. My! But I'm lookin' forward to those. The only letter he's ever written me was when he was nine years old and was away for a holiday at Cousin Jim's farm, after he had been poorly with his chest. It was that interestin' too all about the horse he had sat on and the wee trout he had caught in the river. I've got it in my drawer to this very day. I maun redd it out for mysel'. Ay!" she concluded, with a melancholy pleasure, "I'll go through all my drawers and sort out a' the things of Matt's that I've got. It'll be a wee crumb o' comfort till I hear from him."

"Will we do out his room to-day, then, Mamma?" asked Mary.

"No, Mary that's not to be touched. It's Matt's room, and we'll keep it as it is until he wants it again if ever he does." She drank a mouthful of tea appreciatively. "It was good of you to make me this, Mary; it's drawing me together. He ought to get good tea in India, anyway; that's the place for tea and spices. Cold tea should be refreshin' to him in the heat," she added. Then, after a pause, "Why didn't you take a cup yourself?"

"I feel upset a bit myself this morning, Mamma."

"You've been looking real poorly these last few days. You're as pale as paper too."

Mary was the least beloved by Mrs. Brodie of all her children, but in the deprivation of the favourite, Matthew, she drew closer to her.

"We'll not do a bit of cleaning in the house to-day, either of us; we both deserve a rest after all the rush we've had lately," she continued. "I might try and ease my mind in a book for a wee, and you'll go out this morning for your messages to get a breath of air. It'll do ye good to get a walk while it's dry and sunny. What do we need now?"

They conned the deficiencies of the larder, whilst Mary wrote them down on a slip of paper against that treacherous memory of hers. Purchases at various shops were involved, for the housekeeping allowance was not lavish, and it was necessary to buy every article in the cheapest possible market.

"We maun stop our order o' the wee Abernethies at the baker's now that Matt's away. Your father never looks at them. Tell them we'll not be requirin' any more," said Mamma. "My! But it's an awfu' emptiness in the house to think on the boy bein' away; it was such a pleasure for me to give him a nice, tasty dish."

"We'll not need so much butter either, Mamma! He was fond of that too," suggested Mary, with her pencil reflectively tapping her white front teeth.

"We don't need that anyway this morning," retorted Mamma, a trifle coldly, "but I want you to get this week's Good Thoughts when you're out. It's the very thing for Matt, and I'm going to send it to him every week. It'll cheer him up to get it regularly and do his mind a world o' good."

When they had examined and weighed up all the requirements of the household and carefully estimated the total cost, Mary took the money counted out from her mother's thin purse, slipped on her bonnet, picked up her fine net reticule, and set out upon her errands.

She was happy to be in the open, feeling, when she was out of doors, freer in her body and in her mind, less confined, less circumscribed by the rooted conformity of her environment. Additionally, each visit to the town now held for her a high and pulsating adventure and at every turn and corner she drew a deep, expectant breath, could scarcely raise her eyes for the hope and fear that she might see Denis. Although she had not had another letter, mercifully, perhaps, for she would then surely have been detected, an inward impression told her that he was now home from his business circuit; if he in reality loved her, he must surely come to Levenford to seek her.

An instinctive longing quickened her steps and made her heart quicken in sympathy. She passed the Common with a sense of embarrassment, observing, with one quick, diffident glance, that nothing remained of the merry-making of last week but the beaten track of the passage of many feet, blanched squares and circles where the booths and tents had stood, and heaps of debris and smoking ashes upon the worn, burned-out grass; but the littered desolation of the scene gave her no pang, the departure of its flashing cohorts no regret, for in her heart a memory remained which was not blanched, or trampled, or burned out, but which flamed each day more brightly than before.

Her desire to see Denis intensified, filled her slender figure with a rare aether, setting a mist upon her eyes and a freshness upon her cheeks like the new bloom upon a wild rose; her aspiration rose into her throat and stifled her with a feeling like bitter grief.

Once in the town, she lingered over her shopping, delaying a little by the windows, hopeful that a light touch upon her arm might suddenly arouse her, taking the longest possible routes and traversing as many streets as she dared, in the hope of encountering Denis. But still she did not see him, and now, instead of veiling her glance, she began to gaze anxiously about her, as though she entreated him to come to her to end the unhappiness of her suspense. Slowly the list of her commissions dwindled and, by the time she had made her last purchase, a small furrow of anxiety perplexed her smooth brow, while her mouth drooped plaintively at its corners as her latent longing now took possession of her. Denis did not love her and for that reason he would not come to her! She had been mad to consider that he could continue to care for her, a creature so little fitted to his charm and graceful beauty; and, with the bitter certainty of despair, she became aware that he would never see her again, that she would be left like a wounded bird, fluttering feebly and alone.

Now it was impossible to delay her return, for, with a sudden pathetic dignity, she felt she could not be seen loitering about the streets, as though she lowered herself commonly to look for a man who had disdained her; and she turned quickly, with the reticule of parcels dragging upon her arm like a heavy weight as she moved off towards home. She now chose the quiet streets, to hide herself as much as possible, feeling miserably that if Denis did not wish her, she would not thrust herself upon him; and in a paroxysm of sad renunciation, she kept her head lowered and occupied the most inconsiderable space possible upon the pavement which she traversed.

She had so utterly resigned herself to not seeing Denis that when he suddenly appeared before her from the passage leading out of the new station, it was as if a phantom had issued from the unsubstantial air. She raised her downcast eyes as though, startled and unbelieving, they refused to allow the sudden transport of the vision to pass into her being, to flood it with a joy which might be unreal, merely the delusive mirage of her hopes. But no phantom could hurry forward so eagerly, or smile so captivatingly, or take her hand so warmly, so closely, that she felt the pulse of the hot blood in the ardent, animate hand. It was Denis. Yet he had no right to be so gay and elated, so care-free and dashing, his rapture untouched by any memory of their separation. Did he not understand that she had been forced to wait through weary days of melancholy, had only a moment ago been plunged in sad despondency, even to the consideration

of her abandonment?

"Mary, it's like heaven to see you again, and you've the look of one of the angels up above! I only got back home late last night and I came the first moment I could get away. How lucky to catch you like this!" he exclaimed, fervently fixing his eye upon hers.

Immediately she forgave him. Her despondency melted under the warmth of his flow of high spirits; her sadness perished in the gay infection of his smile; instead, a sudden, disturbing realisation of the sweetly intimate circumstances of their last meeting seized her and a mood of profound shyness overtook her.


She blushed to see in the open day this young gallant who, cloaked by the benign darkness, had pressed her so closely in his arms, who had been the first to kiss her, to touch caressingly her virgin body.

Did he know all that she had thought of him since then? All the throbbing recollections of the past and the mad, dancing visions of the future that had obsessed her? She dared not look at him.

"I'm so delighted to see you again, Mary, I could jump for joy! Are you glad to see me again?" he continued.

"Yes," she said, in a low, embarrassed voice.

“I’ve so much to tell you that I couldn't put into my letter. I didn't want to say too much for fear it would be intercepted. Did you get it?"

"I got it safely, but you mustn't write again," she whispered. "I would be afraid for you to do that."

What he had said was so indiscreet that the thought of what he had left unsaid made a still higher colour mantle in her cheeks.

“I won't need to write again for a long time," he laughed meaningly. "Sure, I'll be seeing you ever so often now. I'll be at the office for a month or two until my autumn trip; and speaking of business, Mary dear, you've brought me the luck of a charm I've twice as many orders this time. If ye keep inspirin' me like that, you'll make a fortune for me in no time. Bedad! You'll have to meet me if only to share the profits!"

Mary looked around uneasily, feeling already in the quiet street a horde of betraying eyes upon her, sensing in his impetuosity how little he understood her position.

"Denis, I'm afraid I can't wait any longer. We might be seen here."

"Is it a crime to talk to a young man, then in the morning, anyway," he replied softly, meaningly. "Sure, there's no disgrace in that. And if ye'd rather walk I could tramp to John o' Groats with you! Let me carry your parcels for a bit of the way, Ma'am."

Mary shook her head. "People would notice us more than ever," she replied timidly, already conscious of the eyes of the town upon her, during that reckless promenade.

He looked at her tenderly, protectingly, then allowed his resourceful glance to travel up and down the street with what to her devoted eyes, seemed like the intrepid gaze of an adventurer in a hostile land.

"Mary, my dear," he said presently, in a jocular tone, "you don't know the man you're with yet. Toyle never knows defeat;' that's my motto. Come along in here!" He took her arm firmly and led her a few doors down the street; then, before she realised it and could think even to resist, he had drawn her inside the cream-coloured doors of Bertorelli's cafe. She paled with apprehension, feeling that she had finally passed the limits of respectability, that the depth of her dissipation had now been reached, and looking reproachfully into Denis' smiling face, in a shocked tone she gasped:

"Oh, Denis, how could you!"

Yet, as she looked around the clean, empty shop, with its rows of marble-topped tables, its small scintillating mirrors, and brightly papered walls, while she allowed herself to be guided to one of the plush stalls that appeared exactly like her pew in church, she felt curiously surprised, as if she had expected to find a sordid den suited appropriately to the debauched revels that must, if tradition were to be believed, inevitably be connected with a place like this.

Her bewilderment was increased by the appearance of a fat, fatherly man with a succession of chins, each more amiable than the preceding honest one, who came up to them, smilingly, bowed with a quick bend of the region which had once been his waist, and said:

"Good-day, Meester Foyle. Glad to see you back."

"Morning, Louis!"

This, then, was the monster himself.

"Had a nice treep, Meester Foyle? Plenty business, I hope."

"Plenty! You old lump of blubber! Don't you know by this time I can sell anything? I could sell a ton of macaroni in the streets of Aberdeen."

Bertorelli laughed and extended his hands expressively, while his chuckle wreathed more chins around his full, beaming face.

"That woulda be easy, Meester Foyle. Macaroni is good, just the same as porreedge; makes a man beeg like me."

"That's right, Louis! You're a living example against the use of macaroni. Never mind your figure, though. How's all the family?"

"Oh! Just asplendeed! The bambino weel soon be as beeg as me Already he has two chins."

As he rolled with laughter, Mary again gazed aghast at the tragic spectacle of a villain who concealed his rascality under the guise of a fictitious mirth and a false assumption of humanity. But her conflicting thoughts were interrupted by Denis, as he tactfully enquired:

"What would you like, Mary a macallum?"

She had sufficient hardihood to nod her head; for although she would not have known a macallum from a macaroon, to have confessed her ignorance before this archangel of iniquity was beyond her.

"Very good, very nice," agreed Bertorelli, as he ambled away.

"Nice chap, that," said Denis, "straight as a die; and as kind as you make them!"

"But," quavered Mary, "they say such things about him."

"Bah! He eats babies, I suppose! Pure, unlovely bigotry, Mary dear. We'll have to progress beyond that some day, if we're not to stick in the Dark Ages. Although he's Italian he's a human being. Comes from a place near Pisa, where the famous tower is, the one that leans but never falls. We'll go and see it some day we'll do Paris and Rome too," he added casually.

Mary looked reverently at this young man who called foreigners by their Christian names and who toyed with the capitals of Europe, not boastingly like poor Matt, but with a cool, calm confidence, and she reflected how pulsating life might be with a man like this, so loving and yet so strong, so gentle and yet so undaunted. She felt she was on the way to worshipping him.

Now she was eating her macallum, a delicious concoction of ice cream and raspberry juice, which, cunningly blending the subtly acid essence of the fruit with the cold mellow sweetness of the ice cream, melted upon her tongue in an exquisite and unexpected delight. Under the table Denis pressed her foot gently with his, whilst his eyes followed her naive enjoyment with a lively satisfaction.

Why, she asked herself, did she enjoy herself always so exquisitely with him ? Why did he seem, in his kindness, generosity, and tolerance, so different from any one she had known? Why should the upward curl of his mouth and the lights in his hair, the poise of his head, make her heart turn with happiness in her breast?

"Are you enjoying this?" he asked.

"It really is nice here," she conceded, with a submissive murmur.

"It's all right," he agreed. "I wouldn't have taken you, otherwise. But anywhere is nice so long as we are together. That's the secret, Mary!"

Her eyes sparkled back at him, her being absorbed the courageous vitality which he radiated, and, for the first time since their meeting, she laughed spontaneously, happily, outright.

"That's better," encouraged Denis. "I was beginning to worry about you." He leant impulsively across the table and took her thin, small fingers in his.

"You know, Mary dear, I want you so much to be happy. When I first saw you I loved you for your loveliness but it was a sad loveliness. You looked to me as if you were afraid to smile, as if some one had crushed all the laughter out of you. Ever since our wonderful time together, dear, I've been thinking of you. I love you and I hope that you love me, for I feel we are just made for each other. I couldn't live without you now and I want to be with you, to watch you unfold out of your sadness and see you laugh at any silly stupid joke I make to you. Let me pay my court to you openly."

She was silent, moved immeasurably by his words, then at last she spoke:

"How I wish we could be together," she said sadly. "I I've missed you so much, Denis. But you don't know my father. He is terrible. There is something about him you don't understand. I'm afraid of him, and he he has forbidden me to speak to you."

Denis' eyes narrowed.

"Am I not good enough for him?"

Mary gripped his fingers tightly, involuntarily, as though he had wounded her.

"Oh! Don't say that, dear Denis. You're wonderful and I love you, I'd die for you; but my father is the most domineering man you could ever imagine; oh! and the proudest man too."

"Why is he like that? He has nothing against me? I've nothing to be ashamed of, Mary. Why do you say he is proud?"

Mary did not reply for a moment. Then she said slowly, "I don't know! When I was little I never thought about it; my father was like a god to me, so big, so strong; every word that he uttered was like a command. As I grew older, I seemed to feel there was some mystery, something which makes him different from ordinary people, which makes him try to mould us into his own fashion, and now I almost fear that he thinks " She paused and looked up at Denis nervously/

"What?" he urged.

"I'm not sure, oh! I can hardly say it." She blushed uncomfortably as she haltingly continued, "He seems to think we are related in some way to the Winton family."

"To the Wintons," he exclaimed incredulously. "To the Earl himself! How on earth does he make that out?"

She shook her head sadly, miserably. "I don't know. He never lets himself speak of it, but I know it's in the back of his mind all the time. The Winton family name is Brodie, you see Oh! but it's all so ridiculous."

"Ridiculous!" he echoed. "It does seem ridiculous! What does he expect to get out of it?"

"Nothing," she exclaimed bitterly. "Only the satisfaction to his pride. He makes life miserable for us at times. He compels us, makes us live differently from other people. We're apart in that house of ours that he built himself, and like him it oppresses us all." Carried away by the expression of her fears, she cried out finally, "Oh ! Denis, I know it's not right for me to talk like this about my own father, but I'm afraid of him. He would never never allow our engagement."

Denis set his teeth. "I'll go and see him myself. I'll convince him in spite of himself and I'll make him let me see you. I'm not afraid of him. I'm not afraid of any man living."

She jumped up in a panic. "No! No, Denis! Don't do that. He would punish us both dreadfully." The vision of her father, with his fearful, brute strength, mauling the beauty of this young gladiator, terrified her. "Promise me you won't," she cried.

"But we must see each other, Mary. I can't give you up."

"We could meet sometimes," said Mary.

"That leads nowhere, dear; we must have some definite understanding. You know I want to marry you." He looked at her closely; he knew her ignorance to be such that he was afraid to say any more. Instead, he took up her hand, kissed the palm softly, and laid his cheek against it.

"Will you meet me soon?" he asked inconsequently. "I would like to be in the moonlight with you again to see it shining in your eyes, to see the moonbeams dancing in your hair." He lifted his head and looked lovingly at her hand, which he still held in his. "Your hands are like snowdrops, Mary, so soft and white and drooping. They are cool like snow itself against my hot face. I love them, and I love you."

A passionate longing seized him to have her always with him. If necessary he would fight; he would be stronger than the circumstances that separated them, stronger than fate itself; in a different voice he said firmly:

"Surely you will marry me, even if we've got to wait, won't you, Mary?"

While he sat silent against the garish background of the empty shop, his hand lightly touching hers, awaiting her answer, she saw in his eyes the leaping of his kindred soul towards her, in his question only the request that she be happy with him always, and, forgetting instantly the difficulty, danger and total impossibility of the achievement, knowing nothing of marriage but only loving him, losing her fear in his strength and sinking herself utterly in him, her eyes looked deeply into his, as she answered:

"Yes."

He did not move, did not cast himself upon his knee in a passion of protesting gratitude, but in his stillness a current of unutterable love and fervour flowed from his body into hers through the medium of their touching hands and into his eyes there welled up such a look of tenderness and devotion that, meeting hers, it fused about them like an aura of radiance.

"You'll not regret it, dear," he whispered, as he leaned across the table and softly kissed her lips. "I'll do my utmost to make you happy, Mary! I've been selfish, but now you will always come first. I'll work hard for you. I'm making my way fast and I'm going to make it faster. I've got something in the bank now and in a short time, if you? I’ll wait, Mary, we'll just walk off and get married."

The dazzling simplicity of the solution blinded her, as, thinking how easy it would be fpr them to run away suddenly, secretly, without her father knowing, to loose themselves utterly from him, she dasped her hands together and whispered:

"Oh! Denis, could we? I never thought of that!"

"We can and we will, dear Mary. Ill work hard so that we can manage soon. Remember my motto! We'll make that our family crest Never mind the Wintons! Now, not another word or another worry for that little head of yours. Leave everything to me and remember only that I'm thinking of you and striving for you all the time. We may have to be careful how we meet, but surely I can see you occasionally even if it's only to admire the elegant little figure of you from a distance."

"I'll have to see you sometimes; it would be too hard to do without that," she murmured, and added ingenuously, "Every Tuesday I go to the Library to change Mamma's book, and sometimes my own."

"Didn't I find that out for myself, you spalpeen!" smiled Denis. "Sure enough I'll know all about your mother's taste in literature before I'm finished. And don't I know the Library! I'll be there, you may be sure. But can you not give me a photo of your own dear self to keep me going, in between times?"

She hung her head a little, conscious of her own deficiencies and the oddity of her up-bringing, as she replied, "I haven't got one. Father didn't approve of it."

"What! Your parents are behind the times, my girl. We'll have to waken them up. To think that you've never been taken is a shame; but never mind, I'll have your sweet face before the camera the moment we're married. How do you like this?" he enquired, as he produced a misty brown photograph of a jaunty young man stand-

ing with cheerful fortitude, mingled with an inappropriate air of hilarity, amongst what appeared to be an accumulation of miniature tombstones.

"Denis Foyle at the Giants' Causeway last year," he explained. "That old woman that sells shells there, you know, the big curly ones that sing in your ear, told my fortune that day. She said I was going to be the lucky, lucky gossoon, and indeed she must have known I was going to meet you."

"Can I have this, Denis?" she asked shyly. "I think it's lovely."

"It's for you and no other, provided you wear it next your heart."

"I must wear it where nobody sees it," she answered innocently.

"That'll suit me," he replied, and smiled teasingly at the sudden rush of colour and understanding which flooded her modest brow. But immediately he amended honourably:

"Don't mind me, Mary. As the Irishman said, Tm always puttin' me foot in it with me clumsy tongue."

They both laughed, but as she dissolved in gaiety, feeling that she could have listened to his banter for ever, she saw the purpose behind it and loved him for the attempt to hearten her against their separation. His courage made her valiant, his frank but audacious attitude towards life stimulated her as a clear cold wind might arouse a prisoner after a long incarceration in stagnant air. All this rushed upon her as she said involuntarily, simply:

"You make me glad and free, Denis. I can breathe when I'm with you. I did not know the meaning of love until I met you. I had never thought of it did nor understand but now I know that, always, for me, love is to be with you, to breathe with the same breath as you."

She broke off abruptly, covered with confusion, at her boldness in speaking to him like this. A faint recollection of her previous existence, of her life apart from him, dawned upon her, and, as her eye fell upon the heap of parcels beside her, she remembered Mamma who would be wondering what had become of her; she thought of her already appalling lateness, of the necessity for prudence and caution, and starting up abruptly, she said, with a short sigh:

"I'll really need to go now, Denis."


Her words burdened him suddenly with the imminence of her departure, but he did not plead with her to stay, and he stood up, like a man, at once, saying:

"I don't want you to go, dear, and I know you don't want to go either, but we've got the future straightened out better now. We've only got to love each other and wait."

They were still alone. Bertorelli, in vanishing irrevocably, had, monster though he might be, betrayed none the less a human understanding and a tactful appreciation of their situation which might weigh in the balance however lightly against the atrocities that had been imputed to him. They kissed quickly, when her lips swept his like the brush of a butterfly's wing. At the door they shared one last look, a silent communion of all their secret understanding, confidence and love, which passed between them like a sacred talisman before she turned and left him.

Her reticule, now a featherweight, her steps rapid, fluent to her dancing heart, her head in the air, her curls straying and sailing buoyantly behind her, she was home before the rapture of her thoughts had abated. As she swept into the kitchen Mrs. Brodie looked at her questioningly from around the inclination of her nose.

"What kept you, girl ? You took a long time to get that pickle of messages. Did you meet any one you knew? Was anybody speirin' ‘bout Matt?"

Mary almost giggled in Mamma's face. For a ridiculous instant she considered the effect upon her mother were she to tell her she had just eaten an ambrosial sweetmeat, served by an outrageous ruffian, who tortured bambinos with macaroni, in a forbidden haunt of iniquity, and in company with a young man who had virtually proposed a honeymoon in Paris. It was well that she refrained, for had she yielded to this absurdity in the exhilaration of her spirits Mrs. Brodie, if she had not doubted her daughter's sanity, would certainly have swooned immediately.

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