by A. J. Cronin
Chapter Seven
Mrs Brodie was resting on the parlour sofa, an unwonted indolence on her part, more especially at this early hour of the afternoon when she should have been industriously occupied in washing the dinner dishes. To-day, however, her forces had spent themselves sooner than usual and she had felt that she must rest before nightfall.
‘I’m so knocked up,’ she mentioned to Grandma Brodie, ‘I feel ready to drop. I think I’ll lie down a wee.’
The old woman had eyed her reprovingly and, moving hastily out of the room for fear she herself might be asked to wash up, she replied:
‘It surely doesna take much to upset you, you’re always moanin’ and groanin’ about your health they days. When I was your age I did twice your work and never blinked an eye ower it.’
Nevertheless, on her departure, Mamma had gone quietly into the parlour and lain down, and now, feeling better, refreshed and restored, she reflected idly that if only she had made a habit of this short afternoon repose earlier in her life she might have worn better, still, she felt thankful that, for the past ten days she had suffered no recurrence of her excruciating pain but merely that dragging ache which, through long familiarity, she now almost ignored.
Nearly three weeks had elapsed since the dispatch of the money to Matt, and for all the acknowledgment which she had received, the forty pounds might still have rested securely in the coffers of McSevitch. To think, even, of that ridiculous, hateful name made her shiver slightly, it was costing her so dear to scrape together the first instalment of her debt, to stint and save parsimoniously so that, from time to time, she might thankfully place some coins in the tin box specially put aside, hidden in her own drawer for this not to be forgotten purpose. It seemed to her, from the painful difficulty of her accumulation, as if this debt would hang threatening above her head for the next two years, like a perpetually suspended sword.
Here, of course, she made no allowance for Matt, and now, amidst the harassing thoughts of her present position, the mere consideration of his return caused a pallid smile to enliven her features. She was firmly assured in her inmost heart that the moment he came back he would stretch out his hand lovingly, compassionately, and with one word relieve her of this racking responsibility. The corners of her drawn lips relaxed as she reflected that it would not be long before her son was once more in her arms, comforting her, rewarding her a hundredfold for the superhuman effort she had made on his behalf. She pictured the last stages of his journey, saw him, an impatiently manly figure, pacing the deck of the ship, disembarking impetuously, now driving hurriedly through crowded, thronging streets, sitting restlessly in the corner of his railway compartment, and finally flinging himself eagerly into the cab which would restore him to her.
The vision of his return hung before her, dazzled her with its imminence, yet as she looked idly out of the window and gradually observed that a cab, loaded with luggage, had driven up at the gate, her brow became furrowed incredulously, as if she failed to believe what she saw. It could not be Matt – her boy – her own son – and yet, miraculously, it was he, home to her at last, stepping out of the cab nonchalantly, as though he had not traversed three thousand miles of sea and land to come to her. With an incoherent cry she raised herself, stumbled to her feet, ran precipitately out of the house, and had enveloped him in her arms almost before he was out of the cab.
‘Matt!’ she panted, overcome by the excess of her feelings. ‘Oh! Matt!’
He started back a little, protesting.
‘Half a chance, Mamma. Take it easy. You’ll smother me if you go on like that.’
‘Oh! Matt! my dear boy!’ she whispered, ‘you’re back to me at last.’
‘Whoa up, Mamma!’ he cried. ‘Don’t weep all over me. I’m used to a dry climate. There now! Don’t make a handkerchief of my new tie.’
At his protests she at last relinquished her embrace, but would not altogether let him go, and clutching his sleeve fondly, as though fearful that she might again lose him, exclaimed fervently:
‘I can hardly believe I’ve got you back again, son. It’s a sight for my tired eyes to see you, for I was thinking about you the minute you drove up. I’ve missed you wearily, wearily!’
‘Well, we’re certainly here again, old girl,’ he quizzed her; ‘back to the same old Levenford, same old ancestral home, and same old Mamma!’
Mrs Brodie looked at him dotingly. Everything here might be the same, but he had altered, was profoundly different from the raw youth who had left her only two years ago.
‘My! Matt!’ she cried, ‘ you’ve got a real smart look about you. There’s an air about you that fair takes my breath away. You’re a man now, my son!’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed, surveying his surroundings rather than her. ‘I’ve learned a thing or two since I saw you last. I’ll show them some style in this old Borough before very long. Gad! but everything here seems poky compared with what I’ve been used to.’ Then, turning commandingly to the cabby he shouted:
‘Bring in my luggage you! jilde!’
She observed proudly that he, who had departed with one small, brass-bound chest, now returned with a galaxy of bags and trunks; and could he, on that memorable day when she had let him go fluttering from under her wings, have addressed a cabman in terms of such autocratic disdain? She could not forbear from expressing her fond admiration at the change as she followed his swaggering figure into the hall.
‘Oh! that’s nothing,’ he exclaimed carelessly; ‘I’ve been used to a retinue of servants out there – blacks you know – and a man gets so accustomed to ordering them about, ’tis no trouble to make this old gharry wallah jump to it. Pay him, though, will you, Mamma! I happen to have run out of change at the moment.’ His look conveyed a sense of superiority to the task of paying a mere cabman, and with a final condescending survey, he moved off and entered the house. Mamma ran for her purse and at once settled with the man, and as she returned, closing the front door securely lest her son might suddenly be taken from her again, the pile of boxes in the hall gladdened her, her heart sang joyously the words: ‘He’s back! Matt’s back for good!’
She rejoined him in the kitchen where he was reclining in the armchair, his legs extended, his arms drooping over the sides of the chair, his whole pose indicative of fashionable ennui.
‘Rather fatiguing journey!’ he murmured, without moving his head. ‘I find the trains in this country very noisy. Give a man a confounded headache.’
‘Rest ye – rest ye then, my boy,’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re home now, that’s the main thing.’ She paused, having so many things to say that she did not know where to begin, yet realising that, before she could permit herself to indulge her selfish curiosity, she must restore his strength with some honest food prepared by her own loving hands. ‘I’m dying to hear all about it, Matt,’ she said, ‘ but let me get you a bite of something first.’
He waved the suggestion of food aside.
‘Yes! dear – a little cold ham or a cup of lentil soup. You could surely take that. You mind that nice nourishing soup I used to make for you. You were always fond of it.’
Matt shook his head definitely, saying: ‘I don’t want to eat just now. I’m used to a late dinner at night now – besides I had a snack in Glasgow.’
She was slightly disheartened, but still insisted: ‘You’ll be thirsty after your journey, son. Have a cup of tea. There’s nobody can make it like me.’
‘All right, then,’ he assented. ‘ Go ahead if that’s the best you can do!’
She did not quite grasp his meaning, but rushed in a passion of love to get him the tea and, when she brought him the large steaming cup, she seated herself upon a low stool before him watching with hungry eyes his every gesture. He was not discomposed by her eager stare but, as he sipped his tea, he casually drew a bright leather case from his pocket and, extracting a thick cheroot, withdrew the straw from it and fit up, demonstrating more plainly than words could tell that he was m
aster of himself, a finished man of the world.
Whilst she studied his easy gestures and admired the fashionable negligence of his suit of smooth, light cloth, she became aware with some concern that his face had altered, grown older than she had expected. His eyes, particularly, had aged and seemed darker than before, with a fine network of wrinkles besetting the corners of the lids; his features had sharpened, his complexion turned to a more sallow, even yellowish tinge, whilst his cheeks seemed to be tightly stretched upon the framework of his jaws. She felt convinced now that some harsh and bitter experience had marred his separation from her and, deeming him to have recovered somewhat, her tone was gentle as she said:
‘Tell me, Matt, all about it.’
He regarded her from beneath his half-closed eyes, and replied abruptly:
‘About what?’
‘Oh! about everything, son! Ye can’t deceive your mother’s eyes. Somebody’s been hard on you – unjust too. But I know so little. Tell me how you left India and what – what happened on the way back?’
His eyes opened more fully and, waving his cigar, he immediately grew voluble.
‘Oh! that!’ he said, ‘that’s soon explained. There’s nothing to tell there. I simply threw up my job because it got on my nerves! To be quite honest, Mamma, I couldn’t stand the damned dock wallah who ran the office. Everything was a fault with him. If a man were a bit late in the morning, after an evening at the club, or if there happened to be a day taken off work – just for a little social engagement you know – he was simply unbearable.’ He contemplated her with an injured air as he drew at his cigar, and added indignantly: ‘You know how I could never abide being put upon. I was never the one to endure being bossed about by anyone. It’s not my nature. So I told him in plain language what I thought and walked out on him.’
‘Did ye not speak to Mr Waldie about it, Matt?’ she queried, sharing his resentment. ‘He’s a Levenford man and a good man. He has a great name for fairness.’
‘It’s him I mean, the soor!’ retorted Matthew bitterly. ‘He’s the very one that tried to drive me like a coolie. Not a gentleman!’ he added. ‘Nothing but a damned, psalm-singing slave driver.’
Mamma’s expression grew vaguely troubled and confused.
‘Was that the reason of it, son? It wasna right if he did that to you.’ She paused, then ventured timidly: ‘We thought it might be your health?’
‘Health’s as sound as a bell,’ said Matthew sulkily. ‘ It was the blasted job. I liked everything else out there. It was a fine life if I had been left alone. But he won’t cook me, the old swine. I’ll go abroad again – Burma! or Malay this time. I’ll never stay in this rotten place after what I’ve seen.’
Mrs Brodie’s heart sank. Here was her son barely home, restored only this moment to her arms, and in the next breath he talked of leaving her, of returning, like Alexander, to attempt fresh conquests in these wild foreign lands which terrified her.
‘Ye’ll not be thinkin’ of that for a bit, dear,’ she quavered. ‘ Maybe you’ll get a post at home that would suit you better. Then you wouldna need to leave me again.’
He laughed shortly.
‘Do you believe I could live in a hole like this after the kind of life I’ve had out there? What can you offer me here to make up for it? Think of it,’ he cried. ‘I had the club, dinners at the mess, dances, the races, polo matches, servants to wait on me hand and foot – every single thing I could want.’
He dazzled her with his romantic mendacity so that she saw him mixing in exclusive Society, at regimental dinners, rubbing shoulders with officers in their red mess jackets, with ladies in gleaming satin, and, overcome by the inadequacy of anything that she could offer in return, she could only say weakly:
‘I know there’s not much of that at home, son. But I’ll – I’ll do my best to attend to you, to make you comfortable here.’ He made no reply and, at his eloquent silence, she hesitated, dismayed that the conversation should languish in this fashion, as though after two years he had nothing to tell her, no eagerness to discover how she had fared in his absence. ‘ Did ye have a good voyage home?’ she ventured at last.
‘Tolerable! Quite tolerable,’ he admitted. ‘Weather was good but I got bored towards the end. I left the ship at Marseilles.’
‘That was where I sent ye the – your money,’ she remarked haltingly. ‘ Ye got it safe?’
‘Yes, I got it all right,’ he replied, negligently. ‘ Took a devilish age to come through though. Long to come and quick to go.’
‘I suppose ye had some grave need of a’ that siller, Matt?’
‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘I needed it – that was enough, wasn’t it?’
‘True enough, Matt,’ she answered. ‘I knew from your wire you had sore need of it. But it was such a sum of money!’
‘Sum of fiddlesticks,’ he retorted angrily. ‘You would think it wasn’t my own the way you talk. I worked for it, didn’t I? I didn’t rob ye for it. It was mine to spend as I liked.’
‘Spend,’ she echoed; ‘ye needed it for something more than just the spendin’ of it.’
He burst into a high laugh.
‘Mamma! you’ll be the death of me! You know I came back overland. How could a man get along without a little pocket money?’ He broke off and regarded her with mock solemnity. ‘I tell you what I did, Mamma. I went around all the blind beggars in Paris and shared out the cash amongst them. That was the last little fling I had in gay Paree before getting home to this excitin’ spot.’
She was totally submerged, and the vision of Paris rose before her, indicating clearly that she had demeaned herself, thrust herself into the clutches of unchristian moneylenders for the sole purpose of sending him with a full purse into the unchaste delights of a wicked city. For what wild and reckless extravagances on his part would she be compelled to pay tribute over the next two years? Despite her burning love she said reproachfully, and at the grave risk of offending him:
‘Oh! Matt, I would rather ye hadna visited such a like place. I’m not saying you did wrong with the money, dear, but that – that city must be full of temptations for a young man. I’m afraid it was a mistaken thing to do, and I’m sure Agnes would think the same.’
Again he laughed rudely.
‘What Agnes thinks or says means as much to me now as the squeak of an old boot. I know what she would think all right, and as for her talk there’s too much hymn book about that for my taste. I’ll never sit on her sofa again. No! She’s not the woman for me, Mamma! I’m finished with her.’
‘Matt! Matt!’ burst out Mamma. ‘Don’t talk like that Ye can’t mean what you say. Agnes is devoted to you.’
‘Devoted!’ he retorted. ‘Let her keep that for them that wants it. What else has she got? Nothing! Why,’ he continued expansively, ‘I’ve met women with more in their little finger than she has in her whole body. Charm! Vivacity! Life!’
Mrs Brodie was horrified and, as she gazed at her son appealingly, a sudden thought struck her.
‘Ye havena broken the pledge, have ye, son,’ she quavered anxiously.
He looked at her queerly, asking himself if the old girl thought he was still at her apron strings. Perhaps he had been too unguarded with her.
‘Just a spot of Hollands occasionally,’ he replied smoothly. ‘We have to take it out there, you know, for the good of the liver.’
She immediately visioned his liver as a dry, absorbent sponge driving him to imbibe spirits to saturate it, and feeling the mercy of his return to what was, in a double sense, a more temperate climate, she returned bravely to the charge.
‘Agnes is a good girl, Matt! She would be the salvation of any man. She’s waited on you faithfully. It would break her heart if ye gave her up now.’
‘All right, Mamma,’ he replied suavely. ‘Don’t worry! Don’t get excited! I’ll see her if you like.’ It suddenly occurred to him that, imbued with his more potent worldly experience, it might be amusing to see Miss Moir
again.
‘That’s good of you, son. You go and see her. I knew you would do that for me.’ She was at once relieved, feeling the power of her love over him, knowing that when the young people came together everything would be right again. If he had strayed, Agnes would bring him back to the narrow pathway, and now, hastily, for fear he might suddenly take back his promise, she passed on, reclaiming him further.
‘I’m afraid you hive had a very gay life out there, Matt I don’t blame ye, my boy, but it would be difficult to keep your mind fixed on the more godly matters of life.’ His vague allusions had shocked her, she must know more, be at all costs reassured. And she continued interrogatively: ‘Still you did read your chapter every day, didn’t you, son?’
He moved restlessly in his chair, glanced at her resentfully.
‘That sounds just like old Waldie, Mamma,’ he replied impatiently. ‘You’ll be asking me if I walked down Chowringee Road with a text slung round my neck, or thumped a bible out on the maidan in the evenings.’
