Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  Silently she turned to the wall and to the mystery of her thoughts, leaving him standing with a sullen, glouting brow, behind her. For a moment he looked lumpishly at her flaccid figure, then, without a word, he went heavily out of the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  A sudden burst of vivid August sunshine, penetrating the diaphanous veil hung by the last drops of a passing shower, sprayed the High Street with a misty radiance, whilst the brisk breeze which had thrown the fleecy, wool-pack clouds from off the pathway of the sun, now moved the rain slowly onwards in a glow of golden haze.

  ‘Sunny-shower! Sunny-shower!’ chanted a group of boys, as they raced along the drying street on their way to bathe in the Leven.

  ‘Look,’ cried one of them, importantly, ‘a rainbow!’ and he pointed upwards to a perfect arc which, like the thin beribboned handle of a lady’s basket, spanned glitteringly the entire length of the street. Everyone paused to look at the rainbow. They lifted their eyes above the drab level of the earth and gazed upwards towards the sky, nodded their heads, smiled cheerfully, exclaimed with delight, shouted to each other across the street.

  ‘It’s a braw sight!’

  ‘Look at the bonnie colours!’

  ‘It puts auld Couper’s pole in the shade, richt enough.’ The sudden, unexpected delight of the phenomenon cheered them, elevating their minds unconsciously to a plane that lay above the plodding commonplace of their existence, and, when they looked downwards again, the vision of that splendid, sparkling arch remained, inspiring them for the day before them.

  Out of the Winton Arms into the bright sunshine came James Brodie. He saw no rainbow, but walked dourly, with his hat pulled forward, his head down, his hands deeply in his outside pockets, seeing nothing, and, though a dozen glances followed his progress, saluting no one. As he plodded massively, like a stallion, over the crest of the street he felt that ‘they’ – the peering inquisitive swine – were looking at him with prying eyes, knew, though he ignored it, that he was the focus of their attention. For weeks past it had appeared to him that he, and the moribund shop that he tenanted, had been the nidus of a strange and unnatural attention in the Borough, that townspeople, some that he knew and some whom he had never seen before, strolled deliberately outside his business to stare openly, curiously, purposely, into the depths within. From the inner obscurity he imagined that these empty, prying glances mocked him; he had cried out to himself: ‘Let them look then, the glaikit swine! Let them gape at me for all they’re worth. I’ll give them something to glower about’ Did they guess, he now asked himself bitterly, as he strode along, that he had been celebrating – celebrating the last day in his business? Did they know that, with a ferocious humour, he had just now swallowed a liberal toast to the wreck of his affairs? He smiled grimly to think that to-day he ceased to be a hatter, that shortly he would walk out of his office for the last time, and bang the door behind him finally and irrevocably.

  Paxton, from across the road, whispered to his neighbour:

  ‘Look, man, quick, there’s Brodie,’ and together they stared at the strong figure on the opposite pavement. ‘Man! I’m sorry for him somehow,’ continued Paxton; ‘his come down doesna fit him weel.’

  ‘Na!’ agreed the other, ‘he’s the wrong man to be ruined.’

  ‘For a’his strength and power,’ resumed Paxton, ‘there’s something blunderin’ and helpless about him. It’s been a fearfu’ blow to him. Do ye mark how his shoulders have bowed, as if he had a load on his back.’

  His neighbour shook his head.

  ‘I canna see it like that! He’s been workin’ for this for a lang, lang time. What I canna stand about the man is his black veecious pride that grows in spite o’ a’ things. It’s like a disease that gets waur and waur, and the source o’t is so downright senseless. If he could but see himself now, as others see him, it micht humble him a wee.’

  Paxton looked at the other peculiarly.

  ‘I wouldna talk like that about him,’ he said slowly, ‘it’s a chancy thing even to whisper like that about James Brodie, and at this time more than ordinar’. If he heard ye he would turn on ye and rend ye.’

  ‘He’s not listenin’ to us,’ replied the other, a trifle uncomfortably; then he added, ‘He has drink in him again, by the look o’ him. Adversity micht bring some men to their senses, but it’s drivin’ him the other way round.’

  They both turned again and glanced at the slowly retreating figure. After a pause Paxton said:

  ‘Have ye heard, lately, how his wife goes on?’

  ‘Not a word! From what I can make out not a body sees her. Some leddies from the kirk took up a wheen jellies and the like for her, but Brodie met them at the gate and sent them a’ richt about turn. Ay, and waur nor that, he clashed the guid stuff they had brought about their ears.’

  ‘Do ye say so! Nobody maun tamper wi’ him or his,’ exclaimed Paxton; then he paused and queried: ‘Tis cancer, is’t not, John?’

  ‘Ay! so they say!’

  ‘What a waesome affliction!’

  ‘Man!’ replied the other, as he moved away: ‘it is bad but to my mind ’tis no waur than for that puir woman to be bound body and soul to a man like James Brodie.’

  By this time Brodie had entered his shop, his footsteps echoing loudly through the almost denuded premises where only a tithe of his, stock remained, the rest having been disposed of through the interest and consideration of Soper. The evanescent boy had finally vanished and he was alone in the barren, unhappy, defeated place, where the faint gossamer of a spider’s web, spun across the remaining boxes on the shelves, mutely indicated the ebb to which his business had fallen. Now, as he stood in the midst of this dereliction, unconsciously he peopled it with the figures of the past, the past of those lordly days when he had walked with a flourish about the place, disdaining the humbler of his clients but meeting equally and agreeably all persons of importance or consequence. It seemed incomprehensible to him that they should now be merely shadows, entering only in his imagination, that he would no longer laugh and jest and talk with them in these precincts which had enclosed his daily life for twenty years. It was the same shop, he was the same man, yet slowly, mysteriously, these living beings had withdrawn from him, leaving only unhappy, unsubstantial memories. The few old customers, chiefly the country gentlepeople, who had still clung to him had seemed only to prolong the misery of his failure, and now that it was finished a vast surge of anger and sorrow invaded him. With his low forehead contracted he tried, abortively, to realise how it had been accomplished, to analyse how all this strange, unthinkable change had come about. Somehow he had permitted it! A convulsive, involuntary sigh shook his thick chest, then, as if in rage and disgust at such a weakness, he bared his lips over his pale gums, ground his teeth, and went slowly into his office. No letters, no daily paper now cumbered his desk, awaiting his disdainful attention; dust alone lay there, lay thickly upon everything. Yet, as he stood within the neglected office, like the leader of a hopeless cause when he has finally abandoned it, a faint measure of sad relief tinctured his regret, and he became aware that he now faced the worst, that the suspense of this unfair fight was at an end.

  The money he had raised by mortgaging his house was finished; though he had eked this out to the last driblet his resources were now entirely exhausted. But, he reflected, he had discharged his obligations to the utmost; he owed no man a penny, and if he were ruined, he had scorned the ignominious refuge of bankruptcy. He sat down upon his chair regardless of dust, scarcely noticing, indeed, the cloud that rose about him, unheeding of the powdery layer that settled on his clothing – he had grown so careless of his person and his dress. He was unshaven, and against the dark, unkempt stubble on his face the white of his eyes glared savagely; his finger nails were ragged and bitten to the quick, his boots were unbrushed, his cravat, lacking the usual pin, was partially undone as though, desiring suddenly more liberty to breathe, he had unloosed it with a single wrench. His clothes, too
, were flung untidily upon him as he had dressed that morning regardless of anything but despatch. Now, indeed, his main concern was to leave as quickly as possible a house pervaded with sudden and disturbing cries of pain, filled with disorder and confusion, with unwashed dishes and the foetor of drugs, a house wherein he was nauseated by ill-cooked and ill-served food, and irritated by a snivelling son and an incompetent old woman. Sitting there, he plunged his hand suddenly into his inside pocket and drew out carefully a flat, black bottle, then, still staring in front of him, without viewing the bottle, he sunk his strong teeth in the cork and with a quick jerk of his thick neck withdrew the cork. The sharp, plucking report filled the silence of the room. Placing the neck of the bottle between his cupped lips he raised his elbow gradually and took a long gurgling drink, then with a sharp intake of breath over his parted teeth, he placed the bottle in front of him on the table and fixed his glance on it. Nancy had filled it for him! His eye lit up, momentarily, as though the bottle mirrored her face. She was a good one, was Nancy, an alleviation of his melancholy, the mitigation of his depression; despite his misfortunes he would never let her go; he would stick to her whatever happened. He tried to penetrate the future, to make plans, to decide what he must do; but it was impossible. The moment he set himself to think deeply his mind wandered off into the remotest and most incongruous digressions. Fleeting visions of his youth revolved before him – the smile of a boy who had been his playmate, the hot sunny wall in the crevices of which, with other boys, he had hunted for bumble bees, the smoke about his gun-barrel when he had shot his first rabbit; he heard the swish of a scythe, the purling of cushatdoves, the sharp skirling laughter of an old woman in the village.

  With a shake of his head he banished the visions, took another pull at the bottle, considering deliberately the immense solace that spirits brought to him. His depression lightened, his lip curled sneeringly, and ‘they,’ the unheard critics, the antagonists ever present in his mind, became more contemptible, more pitiful than ever. Then suddenly, through this new mood, a sparkling idea struck him, which as he considered it more fully, forced from him a short, derisive laugh. With the eyes of the town upon him, peering sneakingly upon his misfortunes, expecting him to slink abjectly from the scene of his ruin, he would nevertheless show them how James Brodie could face disaster. He would provide a fitting climax for his exit with a spectacle that would make their spying eyes blink. Fiercely he drained the last of the whisky, pleased that his brain had at last given him an inspiration to spur him to motion, delighted to loose the confined brooding of his mind in a definite physical activity, no matter how inordinate it might be. He arose and, sending his chair sprawling on the floor, passed into the shop where, surveying with a hostile eye the remaining boxes stacked behind the counter, he advanced upon them and began rapidly to spill their contents upon the floor. Eagerly he tumbled out hats of all descriptions. Disdaining to open the boxes calmly, his huge hands gripped them fiercely and rent the cardboard like tissue paper, furiously ripping and tearing at the boxes as though in frantic avulsion they dismembered the bodies of his dead enemies. He flung the tattered debris from him in every direction with loose, whirling movements, till the fragmentary litter filled the room and lay about his feet like fallen snow. Then, when he had thus roughly shelled each box of its contents, he gathered the pile of hats from the floor into his wide arms and, massing them together in his colossal embrace, marched triumphantly to the door of his shop. A wild exultation seized him. As the hats were useless to him, he would give them away, distribute them freely, spite his enemies next door and spoil their custom, make this noble offering of largesse his last remembered action in the street.

  ‘Here,’ he bawled, ‘ who wants a hat?’ The whisky had broken down the restraining barriers of his reserve and the foolish extravagance of his act seemed to him only splendid and magnificent. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime,’ he shouted, with a curl of his lip. ‘Come up, all your braw honest bodies, and see what I’ve got for ye.’

  It was nearly noon and the street was at its busiest. Immediately a crowd of urchins surrounded him expectantly, and outside this ring an increasing number of passing townsfolk commenced to gather, silent, the incredulous, yet nudging and glancing at each other significantly.

  ‘Hats are cheap to-day,’ shouted Brodie at the pitch of his lungs. ‘Cheaper than you can buy them at the waxworks,’ he cried, with a ghastly facetiousness, hoping that they would hear the jibe next door. ‘I’m givin’ them away! I’ll make ye have them whether ye want them or no’’; and immediately he began to thrust hats upon the onlookers. It was as he had said, something for nothing, and dumbly, amazedly, they accepted the gifts that they did not desire and might never use. They were afraid to refuse, and, seeing his dominance over them he gloated, glaring at them the more, beating their eyes to the ground as they met his. A deep-buried, primitive desire in his nature was at last being fed and appeased. He was in his element, the centre of a crowd who hung upon every word, every action, who looked up to him gapingly and, he imagined, admiringly. The fearful quality in his eccentric wildness made them forbear to laugh, but gazing in awed silence, ready to fall back should he run berserk suddenly amongst them, they stood like fascinated sheep before a huge wolf.

  But now the mere handing out of the hats began to pall on him and he craved for less restrained, more ungoverned action. He began, therefore, to toss the contents of his arms to the people on the outskirts of the crowd; then, from merely throwing the hats, he commenced to hurl them violently at the onlookers in the ring, hating suddenly every one of the white, vacuous faces; they became his enemies, and the more he despised them the more mercilessly he pelted them, in a growing, turbulent desire to hurt and disperse them.

  ‘Here,’ he bellowed, ‘take them a’. I’m finished with them for good. I don’t want the blasted things although they’re better and cheaper than you’ll get next door. Better and cheaper!’ he howled over and over again. ‘If ye didna want them before, I’ll make ye take them now.’

  The mob retreated under the force and accuracy of his fusillade, and as they dispersed, with back-turned, protesting faces, he followed them with long, skimming shots.

  ‘Stop it?’ he shouted sneeringly. ‘I’ll be damned if I do. Do you not want them, that you’re runnin’ awa’? You’re missing the chance of a lifetime.’

  He gloated in the commotion he was causing, and, when they were out of range, he seized a hard hat by its brim and sent it bowling down the hill: where, with the full force of the following breeze, it rolled gaily like a ball in a bowling alley and finally skittled against the legs of a man walking far down the street.

  ‘That was a good one!’ cried Brodie, laughing with boisterous delight ‘I aye had a grand aim. Here’s another, and another.’ As he sent a further volley whizzing after the first shot, hats of all descriptions went madly leaping, whirling, dancing, swerving, bounding, as they pursued each other down the declivity. It was as though a hurricane had suddenly unbared the heads of a multitude; such an unparalleled and monstrous sight had never before been seen in Levenford. But at last his stock was almost exhausted, and with his final missile in his great paw, he paused selectively, weighing the last shot in his locker – a stiff, board-like strawbasher which, by reason of its shape and hardness, he felt dimly to be worthy of a definite and appropriate bullet. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he observed the pale, aghast face of Perry, his old assistant, peering from the adjacent doorway. He was there, was he, thought Brodie – the rat that had saved his own skin by leaving the sinking ship; the beautiful manager of the Mungo Panopticon! – In a flash he skimmed the flat projectile like a whirling quoit full at the sallow, horrified face. The hard serrated brim caught Perry full in the mouth, splintering a tooth and, as he saw the blood flow, and the terrified young man bolt back indoors, Brodie yelled with a roar of triumph at the success of his aim.

  ‘That’ll fit you to superintend the waxworks, you poor trash. That�
�s something I’ve been owin’ you a long time.’ It seemed to him the fitting and culminating achievement of a rare and remarkable display. Throwing up his arms into the air he waved them exultantly, then with an elated grin he turned again into the shop. Inside, as he gazed at the emptiness, complete but for the wreckage of the boxes, the smile on his lips stiffened slowly to a fixed, sardonic spasm; but he did not stop to allow himself to think. He walked through the scattered rubbish into his office where, in the continuance of his wild mood of destruction, he dragged out all the drawers in the desk, smashed the empty whisky bottle against the wall, and overturned the heavy desk with a single, powerful heave. Surveying the scene with a moody, wanton satisfaction, he picked up the door key from its hook beside the window, lifted his stick and, with his head in the air, went again through and out of the shop, closing the outer door behind him. This last, single action affected him, suddenly, with a sense of such absolute finality that the key in his grasp became a foolish redundancy; when he withdrew it from the lock he looked at it senselessly as it lay in his palm, then suddenly drew back, and hurled it far over the top of the building – listening intently until he heard the faint splash as it dropped into the river behind. They could get into the place how they liked, he thought bitterly; he, at any rate, was finished with it

  On his way home he still could not, or at least refused to, think, remaining without even a remote idea as to the conduct of his future. He had a fine stone house, heavily mortgaged, to maintain, an old decrepit mother, an invalid wife, and a useless son to support, and a young daughter who must be educated, but beyond the fact that he was strong, with a physique powerful enough to uproot a fair-sized tree, his assets towards these responsibilities were negligible. He did not actively consider in this fashion but, the abandon of his recent mood subsided, he felt dimly the uncertainty of his position and it weighed upon him heavily. He was affected chiefly by the lack of money in his pocket, and as he neared his house and saw standing outside a familiar, high gig and bay gelding, his brow darkened. ‘Damn it all,’ he muttered, ‘is he in, again? How does he expect me to pay the blasted long bill he’s runnin’ up?’ It pricked him with an irritating reminder of his circumstances to see Dr Lawrie’s equipage at his gate and, thinking to spare himself the necessity of a tedious encounter by entering the house unobserved, he was more deeply annoyed to meet Lawrie face to face at the front door.