Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘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 ways 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, 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 snow-drops, 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 arch 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’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 for them to run away suddenly, secretly, without her father knowing, to loose themselves utterly from him, she clasped her hands together and whispered:

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

  ‘We can and we will; dear Mary. I’ll 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 standing 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 see 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, “I’m 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 not 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 s
traightened 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 anyone you knew? Was anybody speirin’ about 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 no doubted her daughter’s sanity, would certainly have swooned immediately.

  ‘The air must have done you good, anyway,’ continued Mamma, somewhat suspiciously. ‘You’ve got quite a colour.’

  Credulous as she was, the maternal instinct that was in her doubted such immediate efficacy in the usually impotent Levenford air.

  ‘Yes! I feel much better now,’ replied Mary truthfully, without twitching lips and sparkling eyes.

  ‘Grandma was saving something when you were out about a letter she had seen you reading,’ persisted Mrs Brodie, trailing after her nebulous idea. ‘ I hope you’re not up to any mischief your father would disapprove of. Don’t set yourself up against him, Mary. Them that has tried it have aye regretted it. There’s only one finish to that!’ She sighed reminiscently, and added: ‘He finds out eventually, and he’ll be at you in the end, ay, and make it a bitter, bitter end.’

  Mary shook off her mantle with a shrug of her shoulders. In the space of the last hour her slim figure had regained its youthful and imperious vitality. She stood erect, filled with a fierce and confident joy.

  ‘Mamma,’ she said gaily, ‘don’t worry about me. My motto is now, “ Mary never knows defeat!”’

  Mrs Brodie shook her pathetically inclined head sadly, and, filled with a vague, uncomprehending foreboding, gathered up the messages; with a more melancholy inclination of her head, like an incarnate presage of misfortune and ill-omen, she passed slowly out of the room.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Nessie! Mary!’ shrilled Mrs Brodie, in a fine frenzy of service, as she skittled about helping Brodie to dress, ‘come and put on your father’s gaiters.’

  It was the morning of Saturday the twenty-first of August, and one of the red-letter days in James Brodie’s calendar. In a large-patterned, black and white check knickerbocker suit he sat, his face like a full red sun, trying to struggle into his gaiters, which had not been used since a year that day, when, though he now chose to forget the fact, he had experienced the same difficulty in assuming them.

  ‘What kind of witless trick was it to put a man’s gaiters away damp?’ he girned at his wife. ‘They’ll not meet on me now. Desh it all, can’t a man keep a thing decent in this house? These have shrunk.’

  Inevitably, when anything went wrong, the onus was thrust upon his wife’s narrow shoulders.

  ‘A man can’t leave a thing about, but some senseless creature wastes it for him. How am I to go to the Show without gaiters? Ye’ll be askin’ me to go without my collar and tie next.’

  ‘But, father,’ meekly replied Mrs Brodie, ‘ I think you must be wearing a shade larger boot this year. This new pair I ordered for you myself were something broader than the others.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ he grunted. ‘ You’ll be saying that my feet have got bigger next’

  Here Nessie burst into the room like a young foal, followed more slowly by Mary.

  ‘Quick, girls,’ urged Mamma, ‘do up your father’s gaiters for him. Look sharp now, he’s behind time!’ The young handmaidens launched themselves upon their knees, applying their nimble fingers with dexterity and strength to the task before them, whilst Brodie lay back, simmering, darting black glances at the apologetic figure of his wife. The catastrophe was the more unfortunate for Mrs Brodie as, upon this day in particular, he might reasonably be relied upon to be in a good temper, and the thought of spoiling for herself the rare chance of a day without a rage, of having activated the passive volcano, was more humiliating to her than the actual insults of the moment.

  It was the day of the Levenford Cattle Show, an outstanding agricultural event, which drew the pedigree of the country as regards both its stock and its human inhabitants. Brodie loved the show and made his attendance of it an unfailing annual institution. He loved the sleek cattle with their swollen udders, the full-muscled Clydesdale stallions, the high-stepping cobs in the ring, the fat-flanked porkers and thick, close-knit sheep, and he prided himself on his judgment of a beast.

  ‘I, a hatter!’ he seemed to say, as he stood close to the judges, one hand gripping his famous ash plant, the other deep in his front pocket, ‘I’m more fitted for the job than them.’

  He was in his element, in the forefront of the judging, prominent amongst the best of them. Then, sauntering round the marquees with his hat well back on his head, he would slice with his penknife a sliver from this cheese and a sliver from that, tasting them critically; savour the different butters, the cream, the buttermilk; rakishly chaff the sonsiest of the dairymaids, who stood behind their exhibits.

  That part of him which lay close to the soil flourished on days like these. From his mother’s family, the Lumsdens, who had for generations farmed in the Barony of Winton, he drew that deeply rooted inheritance of the love of the land, its produce and beasts. His body craved the hardy exercise of the farm, for in his youth he had driven his team through the loam of Winton, and had known also the thrill of the feel of the gun butt against his cheek. From his father, James Brodie, that bitter, morose, implacable man, of whom he was the sole child, he had derived a pride which nourished itself upon a desire to possess the land. Only the vicissitudes following his impoverished father’s death, when the latter had killed himself by falling from his horse, had driven him, as a young man, into the abomination of trade.

  But another, and a stronger reason, existed which impelled him to the Show, namely, the craving to associate on equal terms with the gentry of the county and the borough. Conducting himself there not obsequiously, but rather with a trace of arrogance, nevertheless a nod of recognition, a word of greeting, or a few moments conversation with a notability of rank or distinction gratified him inwardly, and intoxicated him with an aberrant delight.

  ‘I’ve done it, father. I’ve finished first!’ cried Nessie triumphantly. With her small fingers she had succeeded in buttoning up one of the refractory spats.

  ‘Come along, Mary,’ implored Mrs Brodie. ‘You’re such a slowcoach. Your father hasn’t got all day to wait.’

  ‘Let her take her time,’ said Brodie sardonically. ‘I might as well be late now I’m about it. In fact, you might like to keep me here all day between you.’

  ‘She is never as quick at a thing as Nessie,’ sighed Mamma.

  ‘That’s it,’ at last said Mary, standing up with benumbed fingers.

  Her father eyed her critically.

  ‘You know you’re getting lazy, that’s what’s wrong with you, my girl. Good sakes, now I look at you you’re getting as b
ig as the side of a house. You should eat less and work more.’

  He stood up, contemplating himself in the mirror, whilst Mamma led the girls from the room, and, as his reflection gazed back at him from the glass with gradually increasing approval, his self-complacency was eventually restored. His thick muscular legs were set off to perfection by the rough knickerbockers, and under the fleecy homespun stockings his calves swelled nobly; his shoulders were as broad and straight as a wrestler’s; not an ounce of fat marred his body; his skin was as unblemished as a child’s. He was the perfect figure of a country gentleman, and as the fact which he already knew was borne in upon him more forcibly by the glamour of his image, he twirled his moustache and smoothed his chin with satisfied vanity.

  At this point the door of his room slowly opened and Grandma Brodie put her head round the door jamb, insinuatingly, espying how his mood lay before she spoke.

  ‘Can I have a look at you before you go, James?’ she wheedled, after a cautious pause. This day produced upon her decaying sensibility an emotion akin to excitement, sponsored by the forgotten memories of her youth which rushed incoherently in upon her. ‘You look real grand. Ye’re the fine figure o’ a man,’ she told her son. ‘Losh! but I wish I was going with ye.’

  ‘You’re too old in the tooth for me to show you, mother,’ jibed Brodie, ‘ although ye might get a ribbon for toughness.’

  Her dull ears prevented her from hearing properly, her distant thoughts from understanding the full import of his remark. ‘Ay, I’m gettin’ a trifle old to go,’ she lamented, ‘but I’ve seen the day I would have been among the foremost there at the milkin’, and the showin’, and the jiggin’ after, and then the tig-taggin’ on the lang drive hame in the cool o’ the night air. It a’ comes back to me.’ Her dull eyes glistened. ‘What grand scones and bannocks we used to have there, though I paid but little heed to them in they days.’ She sighed regretfully, at her lost opportunities.