Hatter's Castle

by Арчибальд Джозеф Кронин

  A light, he observed, still burned in the kitchen, a manifestation at once unusual and disturbing, as, when he came in late, all lights had been extinguished save that which burned faithfully in the hall, waiting to illuminate his return. He looked at his watch, saw the time to be half-past eleven, then viewed again the light which winked at him in the dim hall as it shone from beneath the closed door. With a frown he replaced his watch, stalked along the lobby, and seizing the door handle firmly, with one push burst into the kitchen; there he stood erect, surveying the room and the figure of his wife, as she sat crouching over the dull embers of the fire. At his entry she started, oppressed, although she awaited him, by the sudden intrusion into her dejected reverie of his frowning, unspoken disapproval. As she looked around in trepidation, showing red, inflamed eyes, he glared at her more angrily.

  "What's the matter with you?" he said, emphasizing the last word like a gibe. "What are ye doin' up at this hour wi' your bleary, baggy een like saucers?"

  "Father," she whispered, "ye'll not be angry, will ye?"

  "What in God's name are ye snivelling for?" Was this the kind of homecoming that he merited and on such a night as this had been?

  "Can ye not be in bed before I come in," he gnashed at her. "I don't have to look at ye there, ye auld trollop. You're a beautiful specimen o' a thing to come hame to, right enough. Did ye expect me to tak' ye out courtin' on this braw, moonlight nicht ? You, that's got as much draw in ye as an auld, cracked pipe."

  As she looked upwards into his dark, disgusted face she seemed to shrink more into herself, her substance became less than a shadow, coherent speech failed her, but tremblingly, indistinctly, she articulated one word: "Matt!"

  "Matt! Your dear, wee Matt! What's wrong wi' him next?" he fleered at her. "Has he swallowed another plum stane?"

  "This letter," she faltered. "It it came for me this mornin'. I've been feared to show you it all day," and, with a shaking hand, she handed him the crushed sheet of paper which she had all day hidden against her terrified, palpitating breast. With a derisive growl he rudely snatched the letter from her fingers and slowly read it, whilst she rocked herself to and fro distractedly, wailing with a tongue which was now loosed in the defence of her son:

  "I couldna keep it to myself a minute longer. I had to sit up for ye. Don't be angry wi' him, Father. He doesna mean to vex you, I'm sure. We don't know the facts and it must be a terrible country out there. I knew something must be wrong wi' the boy when he stopped writin' regular. He’ll be better at hame."

  He had finished reading the few scrawled lines.

  "So your big, braw, successful son is comin' hame to ye," he snarled. "Hame to his loving mother and all her loving care."

  "Maybe it's for the best," she whispered. 'Til be glad to have him back and to nurse him back to strength if he needs it."

  "I ken you'll be glad to have him back, ye auld fool but I don't give a damn for that." He again considered the crushed sheet with aversion before compressing it into a ball within his shut fist and jerking it furiously into the fireplace.

  "What's the reason o' him throwin' up his good job like this?"

  "I know no more nor yourself, Father, but I think he must be poorly in himself. His constitution was aye delicate. He wasna really fitted for the tropics."

  He showed his teeth at her.

  "Fitted, your silly, empty head. 'Twas you made him a milk-and- water softie, with all your sapsy treatment o' him. 'Matt dear,' he mimicked, 'Come to your mother and she'll gie ye a penny. Never mind your father, Iambic dear, come and Mamma will pet ye, dearie.' Is't that what brings him fleein' back to your dirty apron strings? If it is, I'll string them round his neck. P.S. Please tell father," he sneered, quoting the burnt letter. "He hasna even the gumption to write to me himself, the washy, pithless pup. He's got to get his sweet, gentle mother to break the guid news. Oh! he's a right manly whelp."

  "Oh! James, would ye no' comfort me a little?" she implored. "I'm that downright wretched. I dinna ken what has happened and the uncertainty is fair killin' me. I'm feared for my bairn."

  "Comfort ye, auld wife!" he sang at her. "I would look well, would I not, puttin' my arm around a bag like you?" Then, in a harsh tone of repugnance, he continued, “U I canna thole ye! Ye know that! Ye're as much good to me as an empty jeely jar. Ye're just about as much a success o' a wife as ye are o' a mother. One o' your litter has made a bonnie disgrace o' ye and this one seems to be on his way. Ay, he seems well on his way. He's a credit to your upbringing o' him." Then his eyes darkened suddenly. "Take care, though, ye don't interfere wi' my Nessie. She belongs to me. Don't lay a finger on her. Keep your soft fiddle-faddle away from her or I'll brain ye."

  "Ye'll give him a home, Father," she moaned, "Ye'll not show him the door?"

  He laughed hatefully at her.

  "It would kill me if ye turned him out like like " She broke down completely.

  "I'll have to think about it," he replied, in an odious tone, revelling in the thought of keeping her in suspense, diverting against her all his indignant displeasure at Matthew's sudden defection and thrusting the entire blame of this failure of her son upon her. Hating her already in his defeated desire for the pleasure she could not give him, he loathed her the more inordinately because of this failure of her son, and he would, he told himself, let her pay for it dearly, make her the chopping block for the keen blade of his wrath. The fact that Matthew should have given notice and be sailing for home was entirely her offence; invariably the faults of the children made them hers, their virtues his.

  "You're too just a man not to hear what he's to say or what he wants, Father," she persisted, in a ridiculous, wheedling voice. "A fine, big man like you wouldna do onything like that. Ye would give him a hearin', let him explain there's bound to be a reason."

  "There'll be a reason, right enough," he sneered at her. "He'll want to come and live off his father, I've no doubt, as if we hadna enough to do without feedin' his big, blabby mouth. That'll be the reason o' the grand home-comin'. I've no doubt he thinks he's in for a grand soft time here, wi' me to work for him and you to lick the mud off his boots. Damn it all It's too much for a man to put up wi'." A gust of passion mixed with a cold sleet of antipathy caught him.

  "It's too much," he yelled at her again. "Too blasted much."

  Raising up his hand as though to menace her with its power, he held it there for one tense moment, then with a sudden gesture he directed it towards the gas, turned out the light and, throwing the effacing darkness around her, went heavily out of the room.

  Mrs. Brodie, left in the obliterating blackness, the last dying spark of the cinders of the fire barely silhouetting the amorphous outlines of her contracted figure, sat cowed and still. For a long time she waited, silent and reflective, while her sad thoughts flowed from her like dark waves, oppressing and filling the room with a deeper and more melancholy obscurity. She waited whilst the embers grew cold, until he would be undressed, in bed, and perhaps asleep; then she moved her set, unwilling frame, crept out of the kitchen, like a hunted animal from its cave, and crawled warily upstairs. The boards which had groaned and creaked when Brodie ascended were noiseless under her frail weight, but, though her movements were soundless, a faint sigh of relief emanated from her as, at the door of the bedroom, the heavy sound of her husband's breathing met her. He slept, and, feeling her way into and about the room she shed her shabby, spotted garments; laying them on a heap on her chair, ready for the morning, she crept cautiously into bed, fearfully keeping her wilted body away from his, like a poor weak sheep couching itself beside a sleeping lion.

  "MAMMA," said Nessie, on the following Saturday, "what is Matt coming back for?"

  She was playing about the house and dragging after her mother in the desultory, querulous manner of a child to whom a wet Saturday morning is the worst evil of the week.

  "The climate wasna suitable to him," replied Mrs. Brodie shortly.

  It was deeply rooted in the mind of
Mamma as an essential tenet of the Brodie doctrine that from the young must be kept all knowledge of the inner workings of the affairs, relationships, and actions of the house, the more so if they were disagreeable. To questions concerning the deeper and more abstract aspects of Brodie conduct and, indeed, of life in general, the consoling answer was, "You'll know some day, dear. All in good time!" And, to divert interrogations, the issue of which could not be avoided, Mamma considered it no sin to lie whitely and speciously to maintain inviolate the pride and dignity of the family.

  "There's dreadful fevers out there," she continued; and a vague idea of improving Nessie's natural history made her add, "and lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes, and all manner o' curious beasts and insects."

  "But, Mamma!" persisted Nessie. "Jenny Paxton said it was all through the Yard that our Matt had got the sack for not attendin' to his work."

  "She told a wicked untruth then. Your brother resigned his position like a gentleman."

  "When will he be back, Mamma ? Will he bring me anything, do you think? Will he bring me a monkey and a parrot? I would like a parrot better than a monkey. A monkey would scratch me but a parrot would talk to me and say, 'Pretty Polly', and that's more than a canary can do, isn't it?" She paused meditatively, then resumed,

  "No; I'll not have that. I would have to clean its cage. I think I would like a pair of honky-tonky, Morocco slippers or or a bonnie, wee string o' coral beads. Will ye tell him, Mamma?"

  "Be quiet, girl! How can I write to him when he's on his way home? Besides, Matt has more to think of than beads for you. You'll see him soon enough."

  "Will he be here soon, then?"

  "You'll know all in good time, Nessie." Then, voicing her own hopes, she added, "It might be in about ten days, if he left soon after his letter."

  "Ten days! That's fine," Nessie chanted, and began to skip about with a more lively air. "I'll maybe have some fun when Matt comes back, forbye the wee string o' beads. It's been terrible since "

  She stopped abruptly against the blank, forbidding wall of a subject absolutely interdicted, looked timidly at her mother, paused for a moment in confusion, then, as she saw that she was not to be reprimanded, began again, by a childish association of ideas, "What does it mean to be in deep water, Mamma?"

  "What are ye talkin' about now, Nessie. Ye run on like a spoutin' waterfall. Can ye not let me get my work done!"

  "One of the girls in the class asked if my father could swim, because she heard her father sayin' that James Brodie was gettin' into deep water."

  "Will you stop tormentin' me with your silly nonsense, Nessie," cried Mamma. "Your father can look after himself without your help. It's an impertinence for his name to be lifted like that." Nevertheless, the childish question touched her with a sharp, sudden misgiving, and, as she picked up a duster and went out of the kitchen, she wondered vaguely if there was any intrinsic reason for the

  exacerbation of Brodie's meanness with her, for the whittling and paring of her house-keeping allowance which had for months past made it impossible for her to make ends meet.

  "Oh! It's not me, Mamma," replied Nessie, narrowing her small mouth virtuously and following her mother into the parlour. "It's what the other girls in the class say. You would think there was something funny about us the way they go on. Ym better than them, amn't I, Mamma? My father could beat all theirs tied together."

  "Your father's a man in a million." It cost Mrs. Brodie an effort to say these words, but she uttered them heroically, unconscious of the ambiguous nature of her phrase, striving only to maintain the best traditions of the house. "Ye must never listen to a thing against him. Folks say bitter things when they're jealous o' a man."

  "They're just a lot of cheeky, big things. I'm going to tell the teacher if they say another word about us," concluded Nessie, pressing her nose against the window like a small blob of putty. "It's still raining, coming down heavy as heavy hang it!"

  "Nessie! Don't say hang it! It's not right. You're not to use bad words," reprimanded Mamma, interrupting her polishing of the brass candlesticks on the walnut front of the piano. She would take no chances with Nessie! The first sign of error must be corrected!

  "Remember, now, or I'll tell your father," she threatened, addressing her heated face again towards the piano which, open for the nonce, smiled at her in fatuous agreement, its exposed keys grinning towards her like an enormous set of false teeth.

  "I wanted to go out and play that was all," came the plaint from the window, "but there's puddles everywhere, even if it does go off. I've got to work so hard at these old lessons through the week, it's a shame if a girl can't get a little bit of playtime on a Saturday."

  Disconsolately, she continued to view the dismal prospect of the wet December landscape, the wet roadway, the rain-drenched fields, the still, dripping branches of the birches opposite, the melancholy lack of movement save for the steady fall of water. But her facile prattle did not cease for long and, despite the depressing scene, in a moment she had recommenced:

  "There's a sparrow sittin' on our cannon. Oh! There's another that's two wee sparrows cowriein' down in the rain on our brass cannon. What do we keep a cannon like that for? It doesn't shoot and it always needs cleanin'. I've never noticed how funny it looked till the now. Mamma!" she pestered insistently. "What is it there for? Tell me."

  "A kind of ornament to set off the house, I suppose that was your father's idea," came the harassed voice from the back of the piano.

  "It would have been better to have had a plot of pansies, or a wee monkey-puzzle tree like Jenny Paxton has in front o' her house," replied Nessie; then, continuing slowly, voicing her idle thoughts aloud, she chattered on: "There's not a breath in these trees across the fields. They're standin' like statues in the rain. 'Rain, rain, go to Spain! Never more come back again!' That'll not put it away, though. That's only a story like Santa Claus. He's got a white beard. What is a Spaniard like, I wonder. Has he a black face ? The capital of Spain is Madrid. Correct. Up to the top of the class, Nessie Brodie. Good for you! That'll please Father. What a day for a Saturday holiday. Here am I doin' geography on it. Not a body on the street. No! I'm wrong, I believe there's a man. He's comin' up the road.

  It's not a man, it's a telegraph boy!" It was a rich and unusual discovery in the dull, uninteresting prospect, and she fastened upon it delightedly. "Mamma! Mamma! somebody's going to get a telegram.

  I see the boy in the road. He's comin' right up here. Oh! Look, look!" she called out in a rapturous effervescence of expectation and excitement. "He's comin' into our house!"

  Mrs. Brodie dropped her duster and flew to the window, through which she saw the boy coming up the steps, and immediately she heard the door-bell peal with such violence that it sounded in her startled ears like a sound of alarm. She stood quite still. She feared telegrams with a dreadful intensity as the harbingers of swift, unexpected calamity; they spoke not to her of happy births or joyous weddings but of the sudden, unconceived disaster of death. As she stood motionless a second, ominous ring of the bell fell upon her ears, and, as though the powerful pull tugged at the cords of her memory, reminded her of that previous solitary occasion in her life when she had received a telegram, the message which had announced the death of her mother. Without looking at Nessie she said, hoarsely,

  "Go to the door and see what it is."

  Yet when Nessie, bubbling with anticipation, had run out of the room, she sought to calm herself; she reflected that perhaps the messenger had come only to collect information regarding an unknown name or an indecipherable address, as, living in the last house in the road, such inquiries were not infrequently addressed to them.

  She strained her hearing to the utmost, essaying to catch some hopeful sounds that might indicate a colloquy at the door, but vainly, for immediately Nessie was back, waving an orange slip with all the triumph of her own personal discovery.

  "It's for you, Mamma," she announced breathlessly; "and is there an answer?"


  Mamma took the telegram into her hand as though she touched a poisonous viper and, turning it over fearfully, inspected it with the profound horror with which she might have viewed this dangerous reptile. "I can't FZC without my glasses," she murmured, afraid to open the telegram and trying feebly to gain time.

  In a flash Nessie had gone and in a flash returned, bearing the steel-rimmed spectacles. "Here you are, Mamma! Now you'll manage to read it. Open it."

  Mrs. Brodie slowly put on her glasses, again looked timorously at the dreadful thing in her hand and, turning to Nessie in a panic of indecision and fear, faltered:

  "Perhaps I better leave it to your father. It mightna be my place to open a thing like this. It's a job for your father, is't not, dear?"

  "Oh, come on, Mamma, open it," urged Nessie impatiently. "It's addressed to you and the boy's waiting for the answer."

  Mrs. Brodie opened the envelope with stiff, ungainly fingers, tremblingly extracted the inner slip, unfolded it, and looked at it. For a long time she looked at it, as though it had contained, not nine words, but a message so lengthy and complicated that it passed her comprehension. As she gazed, gradually her face became dead, like grey ashes, and seemed to shrink into a smaller and more scanty compass; her features became pinched and drawn, as though some sudden icy blast had extinguished the feeble glow which animated them and frozen them into a strange, unnatural immobility.

  "What is it, Mamma?" asked Nessie, on her tiptoes with curiosity.

  "Nothing," repeated Mrs. Brodie in a dull, mechanical voice. She sat down limply upon the sofa with the rustling slip of paper fluttering between her shaking fingers.

  Outside in the porch, the waiting boy, who had for some moments been moving impatiently, now began to whistle restlessly and to kick his toes noisily against the step, thus informing them in his own fashion that it was no part of his duty to wait upon this doorstep for the duration of an entire day.