Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  In dismay Denis asked himself if he were not as contemptible in the eyes of his own kind as this grey-beard was in his. A tide of self-depreciation and condemnation rushed over him as he began to review the manner of his life. An unusual humility startled him by the rapidity and force of its onset, and in this despair he remained, subdued and silent, until the train clattered into the station of St Fort. Here his companion rose and got out of the compartment, remarking, as he did so: ‘We’ve got a good way to go yet I’ll just get out and see if I canna get haud o’ something to keep out the cauld. Just a wee dram to warm the inside o’ the stammack.’ In a moment, however, he came back, to say reassuringly: ‘I’ll be back! I’m not away, mind ye. I wouldna leave ye like that I’ll be back to keep ye company till we get to Dundee.’ Then he tramped off.

  Denis looked at his watch and saw that it was five minutes past seven. The train was up to time, yet, as he put his head out of the window, he found that the strength of the wind had increased beyond endurance. Passengers getting out of the open doors were bowled along the platform, and the heavy train, as it stood stationary, seemed to rock upon its wheels. Surrounding McBeath he saw a wind-beaten group clamouring:

  ‘Is it safe for us to gang on, guard?’

  ‘What a wind it is! Will the train stand it?’

  ‘Will it keep on the line?’

  ‘Lord, save us, what a night this is! What about the bridge? Oh! I wish we were a’ hame!’

  He thought his friend the guard looked perturbed and irritable, but although McBeath did indeed feel anxious, with the charge of a hundred people upon his mind, he maintained in his replies the even and imperturbable calm of officialdom.

  ‘Safe as the Bank of Scotland, Ma’am.’

  ‘Wind forsooth! Tuts, it’s only a bit breezie, man. Think shame o’ yourself.’

  ‘Ay, it’ll haud the line and ye’ll be hame wi’ your lassock in an hour, ma fine wumman!’ Denis heard him repeat placidly, composedly, impenetrably. His calmness seemed to reassure them completely, and at his comforting words the people broke up and entered their compartments.

  At length the all clear was given and the train again began to move. As it did so Denis observed the figure of his travelling companion staggering against the wind in an effort to attain the rearmost carriage, but in his anxiety and haste, the old shepherd slipped and fell prostrate upon the platform. The train drew away from him, he was irrevocably left behind, and, as they moved out of the station Denis caught a last glimpse, under the gusty flicker of the station lamp, of the perplexed, discomfited face, filled with almost ludicrous desolation. As he sat in his corner, while the train approached the southern edge of the Tay Bridge, Denis reflected with a sombre humour that the other would assuredly be late for his nuptials in the morning. Perhaps it was a lesson meant for him. Yes, he must profit by this strange, unpleasant coincidence. He would not fail Mary on Tuesday!

  The train moved on and, at thirteen minutes past seven, it reached the beginning of the bridge. At this point, before entering upon the single line of rails over the bridge, it slowed down opposite the signal cabin, to allow the baton to be passed. Without this exchange it was not permitted to proceed, and, still filled by a sense of misgiving, Denis again lowered his window and looked out, to observe that everything was correct. The force of the gale almost decapitated him but, in the red glare cast by the engine, he discerned, stretching dimly into the distance, the massive girders of the bridge, like the colossal skeleton of an enormous reptile, but of steel, strong and adamantine. Then, all at once, he saw the signalman descend the steps from his box with consummate care, clutching the rail tightly with one hand. He surrendered the baton to the stoker, and, when he had accomplished this, he climbed back into his cabin with the utmost difficulty, fighting the wind and being assisted up the last few steps by the hand of a friend held out to him from within.

  And now the train moved off again, and entered the bridge. Denis raised his window and sank back in his seat composedly, but, as he was carried past the signal-box, he received the fleeting impression of two pale, terrified faces looking at him from out of it, like ghostly countenances brushing past him in the blackness.

  The violence of the gale was now unbounded. The wind hurled the rain against the sides of the train with the noise of a thousand anvils, and the wet snow again came slobbering upon the window panes, blotting out all vision. The train rocked upon the rails with a drunken, swaying oscillation, and although it proceeded slowly, cautiously, it seemed, from the fury and rush of the storm, to dash headlong upon its course. Thus, as it advanced, with the blackness, the noise of the wheels, the tearing rush of the wind, and the crashing of the waves upon the pier of the bridge below, there was developed the sensation of reckless, headlong acceleration.

  As Denis sat alone, in the silent, cabined space of his compartment, tossed this way and that by the jactation, he felt suddenly that the grinding wheels of the train spoke to him. As they raced upon the line he heard them rasp out, with a heavy, despairing refrain: ‘God help us! God help us! God help us!’

  Amidst the blare of the storm this slow, melancholy dirge beat itself into Denis’ brain. The certain sense of some terrible disaster began to oppress him. Strangely, he feared not for himself, but for Mary. Frightful visions flashed through the dark field of his imagination. He saw her, in a white shroud, with sad, imploring eyes, with dank, streaming hair, with bleeding feet and hands. Fantastic shapes oppressed her which made her shrink into the obliterating darkness. Again he saw her grimacing, simpering palely like a sorry statue of the Madonna and holding by the hand the weazened figure of a child. He shouted in horror. In a panic of distress he jumped to his feet. He desired to get to her. He wanted to open the door, to jump out of this confining box which enclosed him like a sepulchre. He would have given, instantly, everything he possessed to get out of the train. But he could not.

  He was imprisoned in the train, which advanced inexorably, winding in its own glare like a dark, red serpent twisting sinuously forward. It had traversed one mile of the bridge and had now reached the middle span, where a mesh of steel girders formed a hollow tube through which it must pass. The train entered this tunnel. It entered slowly, fearfully, reluctantly, juddering in every bolt and rivet of its frame as the hurricane assaulted, and sought to destroy, the greater resistance now offered to it. The wheels clanked with the ceaseless insistence of the tolling of a passing-bell, still protesting endlessly: ‘God help us! God help us! God help us!’

  Then, abruptly, when the whole train lay enwrapped within the iron lamellae of the middle link of the bridge, the wind elevated itself with a culminating, exultant roar to the orgasm of its power and passion.

  The bridge broke. Steel girders snapped like twigs, cement crumbled like sand, iron pillars bent like willow wands. The middle span melted like wax. Its wreckage clung around the tortured train, which gyrated madly for an instant in space. Immediately, a shattering rush of broken glass and wood descended upon Denis, cutting and bruising him with mangling violence. He felt the wrenching torsion of metal, and the grating of falling masonry. The inexpressible desolation of a hundred human voices, united in a sudden, short anguished cry of mingled agony and terror, fell upon the ears hideously, with the deathly fatality of a coronach. The walls of his compartment whirled about him and upon him, like a winding-sheet, the floor rushed over his head. As he spun round, with a loud cry he, too, shouted: ‘ God help us!’ then, faintly, the name: ‘Mary!’

  Then the train with incredible speed, curving like a rocket, arched the darkness in a glittering parabola of light, and plunged soundlessly into the black hell of water below, where, like a rocket, it was instantly extinguished – for ever obliterated! For the infinity of a second, as he hurtled through the air, Denis knew what had happened. He knew everything, then instantly he ceased to know. At the same instant as the first, faint cry of his child ascended feebly in the byre at Levenford, his mutilated body hit the dark, raging water and lay
dead, deep down upon the bed of the firth.

  Book Two

  Chapter One

  The cutting cold of a March morning lay upon the High Street of Levenford. Large, dry snowflakes, floating as gently and softly as butterflies, insistently filled the air and lay deeply upon the frosted ground. The hard, delayed winter had been late of coming and was now tardy of passing, thought Brodie, as he stood in the doorway of his shop, looking up and down the quiet, empty street. Strangely, the quietness of the street consoled him, its emptiness gave him freer space to breathe. During the last three months it had been hard for him to face his fellow townsmen, and the lack of stir about him came as a respite to his suffering but unbroken pride. He could, for a moment, relax his inflexible front and admire his own indomitable will. Yes, his task had been difficult for the last three months but, by God, he had done it! The arrows they had launched at him had been many and had sunk deeply, but never by a word, never by a gesture, had he betrayed the quivering of his wounded and outraged pride. He had conquered. He pushed the square hat further back upon his head, thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, and, with his blunt nostrils doggedly sniffing the keen air, gazed aggressively down the silent thoroughfare. In spite of the biting cold he wore no overcoat or scarf; his intense satisfaction in the hardihood of his physique was such that he disdained this sign of weakness. What would I do with a coat, with MY constitution? was his contemptuous attitude, despite the fact that this morning he had been obliged to break a thin skin of ice upon the cold water in his ewer before he could sluice himself. The algid weather suited his disposition. He revelled in the iron frost, filled his chest invigoratingly with the chilled air, whilst the suction of his breath drew the white, sailing snowflakes on to his tongue, where they lay like melting hosts, filling him with a new refreshing force.

  Suddenly, he saw a man approaching. Only Brodie’s stimulated pride kept him at his door, for he recognised the figure as that of the glibbest, smoothest gossip in the Borough. ‘Damn his sleekit tongue,’ he muttered, as he heard the slow, muffled, steps approach and saw the other deliberately cross the roadway. ‘I would live to rive it from his mouth. Ay! he’s comin’ over. I thought he would.’

  Up came Grierson, wrapped to his blue ears. As Brodie had anticipated, he stopped.

  ‘Good morning to you, Mr Brodie,’ he began, stressing the ‘you’ with a nicety of accent that might have been interpreted as deferential, or merely as ironic.

  ‘Morning,’ said Brodie shortly. He had suffered acutely from the hidden venom of that tongue in the past, and he distrusted it profoundly.

  ‘The frost still holds firm, I fear,’ continued the other, ‘It’s been a hard, hard winter, but, man, it doesna seem to affect you a bit. I believe you’re made o’ steel, you can thole anything.’

  ‘The weather suits me weel enough,’ growled Brodie, eyeing the other’s blue nose contemptuously.

  ‘The trouble is, though,’ replied Grierson smoothly, ‘that a’ these hard frosts maun break some time. The ice has got to crack one day. There maun be a thaw, and the harder the frost the softer the thaw. There’ll be a big change in the condition here some day.’ He raised a guileless glance towards the other.

  Brodie fully understood the double significance of the words, but he was not clever enough to reply in kind. ‘Is that so?’ he said heavily, with a sneer. ‘Man, you’re clever, clever.’

  ‘Na, na, Mr Brodie. It’s juist fair intuition! What the Romans ca’ed takin’ the omens frae the weather.’

  ‘Indeed! ye’re the scholar as weel, I see.’

  ‘Man!’ went on Grierson, unperturbed, ‘this morning a wee robin-redbreast flew into my house – it was so perished like.’ He shook his head. ‘It must be awfu’ weather for the birds – and onybody that hasna got a home to go to.’ Then, before Brodie could speak he added: ‘How are all the family?’

  Brodie forced himself to reply calmly: ‘Quite well, thank ye. Nessie’s gettin’ on grandly at school as no doubt ye’ve heard. She’ll be runnin’ awa’ with all the prizes again this year.’ That’s one for you, thought Brodie, with your big, stupid son that’s always done out of first place by my clever lass.

  ‘I hadna heard! But it’s fine all the same.’ Grierson paused, then in a soft voice, remarked: ‘Have ye had ony word from the other daughter lately – Mary, I mean?’

  Brodie gritted his teeth, but he controlled himself and said slowly: ‘I’ll thank you not to mention that name again in my hearing.’

  Grierson manifested a great show of concern.

  ‘Deed, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Mr Brodie, but I had aye a bit regard for that lass o’ yours. I was gey upset at her lang illness, but I had heard tell the other day that she had gotten a post away in London, and I was wonderin’ if it was through these folks in Darroch – the Foyles, I mean. Still I’ve nae doubt ye ken as little as me.’ He screwed up his eyes and glanced sideways at the other as he continued: ‘Ay, I took great notice o’ the affair. In a human sort o’ way, ye ken. I was real touched when the wee, bit bairn died in the hospital.’

  Brodie eyed him stonily, but the torture continued.

  ‘They say it was a real bonny wean, and the doctor was much upset when it slipped through his fingers. He took a great interest in the mother’s case. I’m no’ surprised either, it was so unusual, with the complications o’ pneumonia and all.’ He shook his head, mournfully. ‘Man! what a calamity though, that the father wasna’ spared to make an honest woman o’ – ahem, ahem! Forgive me, Mr Brodie! I clean forgot! I was just lettin’ my silly tongue run away wi’ me.’ Grierson was abjectly apologetic. He had rubbed Brodie on the raw, made him wince, and was clever enough to know when to withdraw.

  Brodie looked right through the other. Inwardly he writhed, but in a low, strained voice he said: ‘Let your mealy-mouthed tongue run on like the Wellhall burn, it makes no odds to me.’

  It was a mistaken attitude, for it immediately offered an opportunity to renew the baiting which Grierson was not slow to seize. He laughed, with a soft, unctuous titter.

  ‘That’s richt, that’s richt! That’s the spirit that never flinches! I can’t but admire ye, Mr Brodie,’ he went on, ‘at the firm stand ye’ve taken amongst the disgrace o’ it all. A man that had such an important standin’ in the Borough might easily have been broken richt to bits by such a comedown, for there’s no doubt that for months the whole town has been ringin’ wi’ it.’

  ‘The gabble of the Cross is of no moment to me,’ retorted Brodie, with a heaving breast. He could have killed the other with his glance, but he could, with dignity, use no other weapons, and his pride forbade him to retreat.

  ‘Ay, ay,’ replied Grierson speculatively, ‘but it might shake up another man to be the butt o’ a’ these dirty divots, and the laughin’ stock o’ the place. Man!’ he added, in a low tone almost as an afterthought, ‘it would be enough to drive an ordinary man to the drink for consolation.’

  Brodie lowered at him from beneath his bushy eyebrows. Had they been calumniating him on that score, too? ‘Nothing like a wee droppie to cheer up a man, especially in this weather,’ drawled Grierson, in an insinuating tone.

  ‘Well, I maun be off. It’s cold work standin’ bletherin’. Good day to you, Mr Brodie.’ Grierson passed quickly out of range with meek, bowed head, without giving the other time to reply. Although he shivered from his stand in the freezing air, inwardly he warmed himself at a fire of delicious self-appreciation. He glowed at the thought of the quiver in Brodie’s fierce eye as his delicately pointed barbs had sunk home, and feasted his recollection on the great, heaving sigh that the cumulation of their poison had finally produced. He chuckled at the richness of the jest to relate at the club this evening; they would laugh till they burst at the story, as he would tell it. He tee-heed to himself in anticipation. And why shouldn’t he have lowered the stuck-up runt? What did he think he was, with his insolent, haughty airs? Besides, what man would have turned his own child
out, like a dog, on such a night? It had been the death of the bairn. Ay, he had nearly killed Mary by it too, if reports were to be believed! Pneumonia, and childbirth fever, and God only knows what she had suffered. It was scandalous, yes, even if she was a precious— He went on, and out of sight, still hugging his reflection closely.

  Brodie watched him down the road, his lips drawn into a thin, crooked line. That was the way of them, he thought. They would try to stone him, to kick him, to batter him to bits now that he was down. But at the very idea, he drew himself up proudly. He was not down! Let them that suggested it wait and see. The whole, damnable business would have blown over, would be only dimly remembered, in another month or two. His real friends, the gentry, the big people of the district, must feel for him only sympathy and regret. But, at the memory of what he had endured, his tense lips quivered slightly. All those weeks, whilst Mary had lain between life and death at the Cottage Hospital, he had stood with the hard, craggy indifference of a rock, immovable in his determination to outcast his daughter. By her own act she had outlawed herself, and he had proclaimed openly that he would let her rot beyond the bounds of decent society. Under the wordless wilting of his wife, under the loud-tongued gossip and hotly fluctuating opinion of the town, under pressure of a biting, private interview with Dr Renwick, under the contumely of public affronts and reproaches, he had remained immutable and unyielding. He had not looked near her, and the consideration of his inflexible resolution now soothed his ruffled spirit. But they did not know what he had suffered; the blow to his pride had been almost mortal. With a grim relief he diverted his thoughts to the solace which had comforted him through these bitter months, and he allowed his mind to dwell gloatingly upon the Tay Bridge disaster! He did not consider with any satisfaction the death of the bastard infant – he had from the first disowned it – but the thought of Foyle’s broken body – the pitiful remains of which had been recovered, and now lay putrefying in Darroch soil – had rarely been out of his thoughts. It was the salve for his wounded arrogance. His imagination had riotously indulged itself amongst a host of vivid, morbid details. He did not care that a hundred others had perished; the loss of the entire train was but the instrument of a just vengeance. This one man had wronged him, had dared to oppose him, and now he was dead. It was a sweet consolation!