Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  "Ay," she muttered to herself, "I've served that laddie hand and foot. Surely he can never forget me? I've taken the very bite out my mouth for him."

  All the toil she had expended upon her son, from the washing of his first napkins to the final packing of his trunk for India, rose up before her, and she was confronted with a sense of bewildering futility of all her love and service in the face of his present treatment of her. She blindly asked herself if it were her incompetence alone which had rendered her enormous and unremitting efforts useless, so that he now used her so indifferently and left her in such harassing suspense.

  Here, a sudden sound startled her, and she looked up wanly, to observe that Agnes had returned and was addressing her in an uneven tone of ill-repressed vindictiveness.

  "Mamma," she cried, "I'm going to marry Matt. I'm going to be his wife and I want to know what's going to be done about this. You've got to do something at once."

  Mamma regarded her humbly, with the mild, moist blue eyes that shone meekly from under the grotesque, bedraggled black hat.

  "Don't start on me, Agnes dear," she said submissively. "I've had enough to stand in my time without having a hard word from you. I'm not fit to answer ye back, ye can surely see," and she added feebly, "I'm just a done woman."

  "That's all very well," cried Agnes in a huff, "but I'm not going to have Matt taken away like this. He belongs to me as much as any one. I'm not going to give him up."

  "Aggie," replied Mamma, in a dead voice, "we don't know anything; we can't tell what's happening; but we can pray. Yes! That's what we can do. I think I would like us to put up a prayer in this very room. Maybe the Almighty, the same Lord God that looks down on Matt in India, will look down on us two anxious women here and show us a light to comfort us."

  Agnes, touched on her weakest side, was mollified, and the stiffness of her figure relaxed, the glitter faded from her eye as she said,

  "Maybe you're right, Mamma. It would be a comfort." Then, more as a polite formality than anything else, she asked, "Will you speak, then, or will I?"

  "You do it better than me," said Mrs. Brodie unassumingly. "You put up a word for us both."

  "Very well, Mamma," replied Agnes complacently.

  They knelt down in the small, stuffy room, amongst the jumbled clutter on the floor of bottles, boxes, tins, surrounded by the untidy litter of straw packing and sawdust, their altar a packing case, their ikon a framed advertisement upon the wall. Still, they prayed.

  Agnes, kneeling straight and upright, her thick, short body tense with an almost masculine vitality, and potent with the pressure of her restraint, began to pray in a loud, firm voice. Amongst the godly people in the church movements with which she was identified Miss Moir was noted for the power and richness of her spontaneous prayer, and now the words flowed from her lips in an eloquent stream, like the outpourings of a young and fervent priest supplicating for the

  sins of mankind. Yet she did not petition, she seemed indeed to demand, and her dark eyes glowed, her full bosom heaved with the intensity of her appeal. All the fire of her nature entered that passionate prayer. Her words were proper, modest, stereotyped, but in essence it was as though she throbbingly implored the Almighty not to cheat her of the man she had captivated and subdued by the meagre charms with which He had endowed her. No one had ever looked at her but Matt, she knew her attractions to be limited, and, if he failed her, she might never marry. All the suppressed feeling dammed within her had been restrained within bounds only by visions of the ioyous promise of the future and she now tacitly implored the Almighty not to defraud her of the fulsome fruition of these desires in the state of holy matrimony.

  Mamma, on the contrary, seemed to sink down in a supine mass, like a heap of discarded, draggled clothing; her head sagged with a pleading humility; the faint, speedwell blue of her pathetic eyes was washed with tears; her nose flowed with lacrymation. As the loud, fervent words fell upon her ears, the image rf her son rose before her and, while at first she applied her handkerchief furtively, soon she used it profusely, and at length she wept openly. All the time, her heart seemed to beat out the words, "Oh! God! If I did wrong over Mary, don't punish me too much. Don't take Matt away from me. Leave me, still, my son to love me."

  When the prayer was ended there was a long pause, then Agnes rose, extended her hand to Mamma and helped her to her feet; facing each other closely, amicably, the two women now regarded each other with a glow of understanding and sympathy. Mamma nodded her head gently, as if to say, "That'll do it, Agnes. It was wonderful."

  New life seemed to have possessed them both. This outpoured confession of all their hopes, fears and desires to the unknown heavens towards a Supreme, Omniscient and Omnipotent Being left them assured, comforted, and fortified. Now they were positive that all would be well with Matthew and, as Mamma at length turned to go, invigorated and refreshed, a look passed between them expressive of their sweet, secret cooperation and they kissed each other a sanguine affectionate good-bye.

  III

  TOWARDS the middle of March, the empty shop next door to Brodie's became the nucleus of a seething activity. Previously, when, in its unoccupied wretchedness, it had been to him a perpetual eyesore against the refinement of his establishment, he had viewed it with contemptuous disgust; but immediately after Dron's communication that it had been sold, he began to see it with a different, a peculiar and more intense disfavour. Every time he passed in or out of his own quarters he darted a furtive, antagonistic glance at the vacant, dilapidated premises, quickly, as if he feared to have that glance intercepted, yet vindictively, as though he vented his spleen upon the inanimate building. Its two empty windows were no longer vacuous, but became to him hateful, and each morning as he came along, fearing, yet hoping, that signs of the incoming of the new company would be evident, and still the same shabby, void aspect met his gaze, he experienced a compelling desire to hurl a heavy stone with all his force, to shiver the blank and glass panes. As day followed day for an entire

  week, and still nothing happened, this deferred action angered him he had been so strung up for battle and he began to ponder obtusely if the whole idea was not simply a spiteful invention of Dron's, concocted in order to irritate him. For the space of one full day he felt convinced that the shop had not been sold and, during that time, he scoffed openly, with a flaunting triumph, but immediately, a short announcement in the Levenford Advertiser, stating briefly that the Mungo Company would open a new branch at Number 62 High Street at the beginning of the month of April, and that the fullest details would be given in the following week's issue, destroyed this transitory illusion; the conflict, occurring solely in Brodie's own perverted mind, between himself and the inert building reopened more bitterly than before.

  Shortly after this pretentious announcement in the Advertiser, a dapper, urbane visitor had come into Brodie's shop and, with an agreeable yet deprecatory smile, presented his card in introduction.

  "Mr. Brodie, I am, as you see, the district manager of the Mungo Hat and Hosiery Company. I want us to be friends," he said, holding out his hand affably.

  Brodie was dumbfounded, but beyond ignoring the proffered hand, he gave no indication of his feelings and made no departure from his usual manner.

  "Is that all ye want?" he asked abruptly.

  "I understand your very natural feelings," the other began again. "You already consider us your enemies. That is really not strictly so. Although we are, in a sense, business opponents, we have found by experience that it is often mutually advantageous for two establishments of the same nature such as yours and ours to be together."

  "Do ye tell me, now," said Brodie ironically, as the other paused impressively, and, not knowing his man or the symptoms of his gathering wrath, expansively continued.

  "Yes, that is so, Mr. Brodie. We find that such a combination attracts more people to that particular centre, more shopping is done there, and this, of course, is advantageous to both shops. We multiply the t
rade and divide the profits! That's our arithmetic," he concluded, as he imagined rather neatly.

  Brodie looked at him icily.

  "You're talkin' a lot of damned lies," he said roughly. "Don't think ye can pull the wool over my eyes like that, and don't refer to my business in the same breath as your own gimcrack huckster's trade. You've come here to try and poach on my preserves and I'm goin' to treat you like a low poacher."

  The other smiled. "You surely can't mean that! I represent a reputable firm; we have branches everywhere, we are not poachers. I am going to open the new branch myself and I want to be with you. And you," he added flatteringly, "well you certainly don't look like a man who could fail to understand the value of cooperation."

  "Don't talk to me about your blasted cooperation," cried Brodie, "if that's the name ye give to stealing other folks' custom."

  "I hope you don't mean us to infer that you have the exclusive rights to monopolise the hat trade here," said the other, with some indignation.

  "I don't care about the right, I have the might, and I tell ye I'll smash you!" He flexed up his great biceps with a significant gesture. "Ill smash you to bits."

  "That surely is a childish attitude, Mr. Brodie! Cooperation is better than competition every time. Of course, if you choose to fight," he waved his hand deprecatingly, "we have large resources. We have had to cut our prices before, in similar circumstances, and we can easily do it again."

  Brodie threw a glance contemptuously at the pasteboard of the visiting card which lay crushed in his hand.

  “Man! Mr. whatever your name is you talk like a penny novelette. I don't intend to reduce my prices one farthing," he drawled pityingly. "I have the connection here, that's all, and I'm just man enough to keep it."

  "I see," the other had replied succinctly; "you are definitely going out of your way to demand open hostility."

  "By God!" Brodie thundered at him. "That's the only true word you've spoken yet an' I hope it's the last thing ye will say."

  At these final and unmistakable words the other had turned and walked quietly out of the shop; then, upon the following day the fifteenth of March a small corps of workmen had descended upon the place next door.

  They were working now, irritating him intensely by the sound of their labour, by each tap of their hammers which beat with exasperating monotony into his brain. Even in the intervals of silence he was harassed by their presence, kept anticipating the onset of the staccato tattoo, and, when it recommenced, a pulse within him throbbed dangerously in the same tapping rhythm. When the rending of saws on wood came through the dividing wall he winced, as if the saw had rasped his own bones, and at the cold steely sound of the chisels upon stone he frowned, as if they carved upon his brow, above and between his eyes, a deep, vertical furrow of hatred.

  They were gutting the shop. The men worked quickly and in the rush to complete their operations as rapidly as possible, worked also overtime; double wages apparently meant nothing to the Mungo Company! At the end of a week they had cleared out the old window frames, the doorway, the dilapidated shelves and counter, the whole worn wreckage of a bygone age, and now the denuded frontage leered at Brodie like a mask, its window spaces the sightless sockets of cyjs and its empty doorway the gaping, toothless mouth. Then the plasterers and decorators added their efforts to those of the joiners and masons, altering visibly, from day to day, by their combined exertions and skill, the entire aspect of the structure. Brodie hated every phase of its change and he encompassed within his growing aversion for the transformed building these workmen who, through their labours, were reconstructing it so admirably and making it the finest and most modern shop in the Borough. On an occasion when one of these had entered Brodie's establishment and, touching his cap, asked civilly if he might be obliged with a bucket of water to make tea for himself and his mates next door, as their own supply had been temporarily suspended at the main, Brodie had shot the astonished man out of his shop-

  "Water!" he had snarled. "Ye want water, and ye have the impertinence to come here for your favours. Ye'll get none of it. If the whole gang o' ye were fryin' in Hell I wouldna so much as put a drop on one o' your tongues. Get out!"

  But this animadversion had no effect upon their activities, serving only, or so it seemed to him, to stimulate these, and moodily he observed thick, scintillating plate-glass windows of a green translucency come into place, rich show cases appear like mushrooms in the space of a night, an ornately lettered signboard emerge glittering! Finally, under his eyes, in broad daylight the crowding anathema a nodel of a huge top hat, sumptuously and opulently gilt, was erected above the doorway, where it swung jauntily from its supporting pole with every breath of air. Brodie's demeanour to the town during this period gave, in general, no marked indication of the emotions which he repressed. He manifested outwardly only calm indifference, for his very pride forbade him to speak; and to his acquaintances who rallied him on the matter of the encroachment he exhibited an air of profound contempt towards the new company, met Grierson's gall- dipped witticisms at the Philosophical Club with the assumption of a careless and superior unconcern.

  The general opinion was that Brodie would undoubtedly carry the day against the invaders.

  "I give them six months," remarked Provost Gordon judiciously, to the select junta of the club one evening, in Brodie's absence, "before Brodie drives them out. He's an unco' deevelish man that, for an enemy. Dod, he's quite capable o' layin' a charge o' gunpowder under their braw new shop."

  " 'T would be a risky job wi' that sparky temper o' his," inserted Grierson.

  "He'll spark them out," replied the Provost. "He fair beats me, does James Brodie. I know of no man alive who would have come through a' that awf u' pother and disgrace about his daughter without turnin' a hair, or once hangin' his heid. He's a black deevil when his purpose is set."

  "I'm not so sure, Provost; na, na, I'm not just so sure," drawled the other, "that the very deliberateness o' him michtna thwart its ain purpose, for he's that obstinate he would try to outface a mule. Forbye, Provost, he's gotten so big for his shoes now that folks aye, even the county folks who liket it at first are beginnin' to get a wheen sick o' it. That grand style o' his is juist like the lordly salmon; a wee bittie is all right, but if ye get it served up a' the time, man, ye get awfu' scunnered by it."

  Seeing himself thus the object of their speculation and sensing its slightly favourable tone, Brodie began to feel that the public eye was turned encouragingly towards him as a defender of the old, solid order of the Borough against the invasion of the trumpery new, and he became, in his appearance, even more of the dandy, ordered two new suits of the finest and most expensive cloth, bought himself in the jeweller's at the Cross a smart, opal tie-pin which he now wore in place of his plain, gold horseshoe. This pin was immediately the object of criticism amongst the cronies and was passed from hand to hand in admiration.

  " 'Tis a bonnie stone although I'm no judge," tittered Gricrson. "I hope it hasna ruined you to buy it."

  "Don't judge my savings by yours. I know weel enough what I can afford," retorted Brodie roughly.

  "Na! Na! I wouldna dream o' doin' that. Ye're so lavish wi' your money ye maun be worth a mint o' it. I'll warrant ye'll have a wheen o' siller stowed away for a rainy day," lisped Grierson ambiguously, as his eye flicked Brodie's with ironic insight.

  "They say an opal's gey unlucky. The wife's sister had an opal ring that brought her a heap o' misfortune. She had an unco' bad slip the very month she got it," demurred Pax ton.

  "That'll no' happen to me," replied Brodie coarsely.

  "But are ye not feared to wear it?" persisted Paxton.

  Brodie looked at him fixedly.

  "Man," he said slowly, "you ought to know I'm feared of nothing on this God's earth."

  Curiously, although he directed the most scrupulous attention towards his own attire and personal appearance, he would not for an instant entertain the idea of sprucing up his business premises b
y renewing the drab aspect of his shop, but seemed actually to glory in its unalterable, but recently accentuated, dinginess. When Perry, who had cast a persistently envious eye upon the growth of the dazzling magnificence next door, remarked upon the contrast and timidly suggested that perhaps a touch of paint might benefit the exterior, he said, impressively, "Not a finger do we lay on it. Them that wants to buy their hats in a painted panopticon can do so, but this is a gentleman's business and I'm going to keep it so." In this attitude he waited the first attack of the enemy.

  With the final steps of restoration and reconstruction completed, at last the opening day of the rival establishment arrived. Astonishing progress had been made during the last week of March and a full blaring column in the Advertiser had announced that the first of April would mark the inauguration of the new establishment. Behind the thick, green blinds and shuttered entrance, a feeling of occult mysticism had prevailed during the whole of the previous day, and through this veil the district manager of the company, who had been deputed to take charge of the local branch for the initial months, had been observed flitting restlessly, like a shadow, symbolic of secrecy. Obviously the policy of the Mungo Company was to dazzle Levenford by their display in one sudden, blinding revelation; they would rend the cover from the windows and the Borough as a whole would be staggered by the vision of what it saw.

  Such, at least, were Brodie's ironic thoughts as, on the first of April, he left his house at 9.30 to the second, no sooner, no later, and began the usual walk to his business in exactly his usual manner. As he came down the High Street in perfect composure he looked, although his manner was perhaps a trifle over emphasised, the least perturbed man in Levenford. The satirical nature of his reflections fed his vanity and consolidated his rooted belief in himself, stifling the vague misgiving that had for days fluttered at the back of his brain. Now that the moody period of waiting was at an end and the fight actually begun, he became once more the master of his fate and his bearing now seemed to say, "Let me get at it. I've been waitin' on this. And now you're ready for me, by God, I'm ready for you." He loved a fight. Furthermore, he felt spurred in this incentive to contest by his additional anticipation that the heat of the battle would remove his mind from the dull depression into which the blow to his intimate family pride had recently plunged him. Already his heart lifted to the joy of the fight as he told himself that he would show them the stuff that James Brodie was made of, would demonstrate again to the town the spirit that was in him, would, by a crushing defeat to the Mungo up- starts, restore his prestige in the eyes of the Borough to even a higher level than before. With a stiff back and expanded chest, with his stick cocked over his shoulder an exultant mannerism he had not indulged in for months he strode confidently along the street. He reached the new shop, saw instantly that, at last, it was open.