by A. J. Cronin
Agnes did not seem to take kindly to this train of thought and she arrested it by a pause, after which she said, slowly:
‘I’ve been wondering, Mamma, if some of these black persons have not been exerting an evil influence over Matt. There’s people called Rajahs – rich heathen princes – that I’ve read awful things about, and Matt might be led away. He might be easily led,’ she added solemnly – recollecting, perhaps, her own enticement of the receptive youth.
Mrs Brodie instantly had visions of all the potentates of India luring her son from grace with jewels, but indignantly she repudiated the sudden, baleful thought.
‘How can ye say that, Agnes?’ she cried. ‘He kept the best of company in Levenford. You should know that! He was never the one for bad companions or low company.’
But Agnes who, for a Christian woman, had an intensive knowledge of her subject, which must necessarily have come to her through the marvellous intuition of love, continued relentlessly:
‘Then, Mamma, I hardly like to let the words cross my lips, but they have wicked, wicked attractions out there – like dancing girls that – that charm snakes and dance without –’ Miss Moir, with downcast eyes, broke off significantly and blushed, whilst the down on her upper lip quivered modestly.
Mrs Brodie gazed at her with eyes as horrified as if they beheld a nest of those snakes which Agnes so glibly described; demoralised by the appalling suddenness of a suggestion which had never before entered her mind, she wildly visualised one of these shameless houris abandoning the charming of reptiles to charm away the virtue of her son.
‘Matt’s no’ a boy like that!’ she gasped.
Miss Moir compressed her lips delicately and bridled, then raised her heavy eyebrows with an air of one who could have revealed to Mrs Brodie secrets regarding the profundities of Matthew’s passionate nature which had hitherto been undreamed of. As she sipped her cocoa her attitude seemed to say: ‘You ought to know by now the propensities of your children. Only my inviolate and virtuous maidenhood has kept your son pure.’
‘Ye’ve no proof, have ye, Agnes?’ wailed Mrs Brodie, her apprehension strengthened by the other’s strange air.
‘I have no definite proof, of course, but I can put two and two together,’ replied Miss Moir coldly. ‘If you can read between the lines of these last letters of his he’s always at that club of his, and playing billiard matches, and out at night with other men, and smoking like a furnace.’ Then, after a moment’s silence she added, petulantly: ‘He should never been allowed to smoke. It was a step in the wrong direction. I never liked the idea of these cigars; it was downright fast!’
Mrs Brodie wilted visibly at the obvious insinuation that she had countenanced her son’s first step on the road to ruin.
‘But, Aggie,’ she blurted out, ‘you let him smoke an’ all, for I mind well he persuaded me by saying ye thought it manly.’
‘You’re his mother. I only said to please the boy. You know I would do anything for him,’ retorted Agnes with a sniff which verged almost into a sob.
‘And I would do everything for him, too,’ replied Mrs Brodie hopelessly, ‘but I don’t know what’s going to come of it at all.’
‘I’ve been seriously wondering,’ pursued Agnes, ‘if you ought not to get Mr Brodie to write a strong letter to Matt, sort of, well, reminding him of his duties and obligations to those at home. I think it’s high time something was done about it.’
‘Oh! that wouldna do at all,’ cried Mamma hastily. ‘It would never do. I could never approach him. It’s not in me, and besides it’s not the kind of thing his father would do.’ She trembled at an idea so antagonistic to her invariable line of conduct towards Brodie, so contrary to her usual concealment of everything that might provoke that imperial wrath, and she shook her head sadly, as she added: ‘We maun do what we can ourselves, for his father wouldna stir his finger to help him. It may be unnatural, but it’s his style. He thinks he’s done a’ he should do.’
Agnes looked grieved. ‘I know Matt was always afraid – always respected his father’s word,’ she said, ‘and I’m sure you don’t want any more discredit on the family.’
‘No, Agnes, I don’t like to contradict you to your face, but I’m certain you’re not on the right track. I would never believe wrong of my boy. You’re anxious, like me, and it’s put you on the wrong idea. Wait a bit and you’ll have a grand, big budget of good news next week.’
‘It can’t come quick enough for me,’ replied Miss Moir, in a frigid tone which coldly indicated her grievance’ against Mrs Brodie in particular, and her growing resentment, fed by the recollection of Mary’s recent disgrace, against the name of Brodie in general. Her breast heaved and she was about to utter a bitter, contumacious reproach when suddenly the shop door bell went ‘ping,’ and she was obliged, with heightening colour, to rise servilely to answer the call, and to serve a small boy with an inconsiderable quantity of confectionery. This supremely undignified interruption did nothing towards restoring her equanimity but, instead, activated her to a lively irritation and, as the penetrating voice of her client demanding a halfpennyworth of black-striped balls clearly penetrated the air, the obstinate perversity of her temper deepened.
Unconscious of the working of this angry ferment in Miss Moir’s exuberant bosom Mrs Brodie, in her absence, sat huddled in her chair before the stove, her thin chin sunk in the scraggy wetness of the sealskin coat. Surrounded externally by struggling currents of steamy vapour, there struggled also, within her mind, a dreadful uncertainty as to whether she might not be responsible for some vague and undetermined weakness in Matt, through a fault in his upbringing. A frequent expression of Brodie’s a decade ago flashed into her mind, and she now saw vividly, in her anguish, her husband’s contemptuous face as, discovering her in some fresh indulgence towards Matthew, he snapped at her: ‘You’re spoiling that namby-pamby brat of yours. You’ll make a braw man o’ him!’ She had, indeed, always attempted to shield Matt from his father, to protect him from the harshness of life, to give him extra luxuries and privileges not accorded to her other children. He had never had the courage to play truant from the Academy, but when he had desired, as he frequently did, a day off or had been for some reason afraid to attend school, it was to her that he had come, limping and whining: ‘Mamma, I’m sick. I’ve got a pain in ma belly.’ Whenever he had feigned illness, of whatever kind, he had affected always that limping, hobbling, lame-dog gait, as though the agony arising in any organ of his body flew immediately to one leg, paralysing it and rendering him incapable of locomotion. She had seen through him, of course, but though undeceived by his pretences, a wave of her foolish maternal love would rush over her and she would compliantly answer: ‘Away up to your room then,’ son, and I’ll fetch ye up something nice. Ye’ve got a friend in yer mother, anyway, Matt.’ Her stultified affections were obliged to find an outlet, and she had lavished them upon her son, feeling the imperative need, in that harsh household, of binding him to her by bonds of love. Had she spoiled his manhood by her indulgence? softened her son into a weakling by lax, tolerant fondness? Immediately her mind formulated the idea, her heart indignantly repudiated it, telling her that she had shown him nothing but kindness, gentleness, and lenience, had wished for him nothing but what was good; she had slaved for him, too, washed, darned, knitted for him, brushed his boots, made his bed, cooked the most appetising meals for him.
‘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 the 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 lef
t 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 anyone. 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 damned within her had been restrained within bounds only by visions of the joyous promise of the future, and she now tacitly implored the Almight 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 of 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: ‘O 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 co-operation and they kissed each other a sanguine, affectionate good-bye.
Chapter Three
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 business 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 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 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 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 & 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 trade 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 co-operation.’
‘Don’t talk to me about your blasted co-operation,’ 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. ‘I’ll smash you to bits.’
‘That surely is a childish attitude, Mr Brodie! Co-operation 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 the eyes, a deep, vertical furrow of hatred.
