Hatter's Castle

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘Nancy,’ he shouted, in astonishment not unmixed with annoyance, ‘what are ye playin’ at? I don’t want a game o’ blind man’s buff. I want none o’ these fancy tricks, woman! I want you. Come out from wherever ye be.’ Still there was no response, and, advancing awkwardly to the gas-bracket above the mantelpiece he lit this gas, turned to survey the room, and to his amazement observed that the table was not laid, that no preparation for tea had been begun. For a moment he remained quite still, fixing the bare table with an astounded gaze, compressing his lips angrily, until suddenly a light seemed to break in upon him and he muttered slowly, with a loosening of his frown: ‘She’s awa’ to the station with that aunt of hers. Has not she the nerve though? She’s the only body that would dare to do it. Sends me out for my dinner and then keeps me waitin’ for my tea.’ A faint thrill of amusement ran through him, deepening to a roar of laughter as he contemplated, almost proudly, her hardihood. Gad, but she was a fit mate for him! Yet when his mirth had subsided he did not quite know what to do, presumed eventually that he must await the pleasure of her return and, standing with his back to the fireplace, he allowed his gaze to wander idly round the room. To him, the very atmosphere breathed of her presence; he saw her flitting airily about sitting nonchalantly in his armchair, smiling, talking, even flighting him. Yes! the very hat-pin sticking into the dresser was an indication of her own saucy, impudent, inimitable indifference. But something else lay upon the dresser, held in place by that pin, a letter – that presumptuous communication which he had received at breakfast-time from his daughter – and moving forward he took it up disdainfully in his hands. Suddenly his expression changed, as he observed that it was not the same envelope but another, addressed to him in his son’s sloping clerkly hand, a penmanship so like Matt’s own smooth plausibility that it had always irritated him. Another letter! and from Matthew! Was the sly, sneaking coward so afraid of him now that he must write his messages instead of delivering them face to face like a man? Filled by a profound contempt he gazed at the neat writing on the envelope which, however, became modified as, tilting his head to one side he considered inconsequently how well his own name looked – almost as well as in print – in these precise characters now before him. James Brodie, Esquire! It was a name to be proud of, that one! Smiling a little, a large and lordly appreciation swept over him, restoring him again to complacency and, in the excess of his own satisfaction, he carelessly tore open the letter and pulled out the single sheet within.

  ‘Dear Father,’ he read, ‘You were too high and mighty to hear about my new post or you would have learned that it was a position for a married man. Don’t expect Nancy back. She’s come to see that I don’t fall off my horse! You loving and obedient son, Matt.’

  Seized by a vast stupefaction he read over the scanty words twice, looked up, unseeingly, as he muttered incredulously: ‘ What does he mean? What has Nancy got to do with the fool’s horse? Your loving and obedient son – the man must be mad!’ Then suddenly, blindingly, he felt that he too was mad, as the purport of the note penetrated his dull, fuddled brain, as he observed upon the back of the paper, scrawled in Nancy’s childish, illiterate hand these words: ‘Matt and me are off to be married and have a high old time. You were too fond of your bottle to marry me so you can take it to bed with you the night. You auld fool!’

  A great cry burst from his lips. At last he understood that she had left him. The letter faded from his sight, the room swung round and away from him, he was alone in a vast immensity of blackness. Out of his distorted face his wounded eyes gazed dumbly from below his brow, now corroded by the full knowledge of his loss. Matt, his own son, had taken Nancy from him! In the shock of his despair he felt it would have been better far had he been killed outright by that pistol bullet in the house in the Vennel, that this blow his son had delivered was more frightful, more agonising than death! His weakling and despised son had triumphed over him. Complete understanding of the deception to which he had been subjected in the past week flashed upon him – Nancy’s indifference, followed by her assumed yet restrained affection, the locking of her door, the fictitious relation at Overton, the complete obliteration of Matthew from the house – he understood all, remembered, too, the scene where he had surprised them in the kitchen, when she had broken the cup at the very moment that he questioned his son about the post. God! what a fool he had been. ‘An auld fool!’ – that was what she called him, and how she must have laughed at him, how they must both be mocking him now. He knew nothing, neither how they had gone nor where they had gone. He was powerless, knowing only that they were together, powerless except to stand and think of them in an inconceivable intimacy which made him writhe with anguish.

  He was recalled from his dark oblivion, like an insensible man to whom consciousness momentarily returns, by the voice of Nessie who, entering the kitchen, gazed fearfully at him and murmured, timidly:

  ‘Will I make some tea for you, father? I’ve not had any tea of any dinner either.’

  He lifted his tortured face, looked at her stupidly, then cried, thickly:

  ‘Go away! Go to the parlour. Go to your lessons. Go anywhere, but let me alone!’

  She fled from him and he sank again into the torment of his thoughts, filled by a profound self-pity as he realised that there was now no one to look after him or Nessie but his dotard and incapable mother. She would have to come back – Mary, his daughter! He would have to allow her to return and keep the house, if only for Nessie’s sake. Mary must now come back! The full significance of his discussion of this matter with Nancy struck him like a fresh blow as he recollected how he had coaxed her to write the letter of refusal. And she had known all the time she was leaving him. He had been too late with his offer of marriage; and now, how would he ever do without her? A piercing anguish took him as he thought of her, even now, in his son’s arms, opening her lips to his kisses, offering her firm, white body gladly to his embrace. As though vainly to obliterate the torture of the vision, he raised his hand and pressed it upon his throbbing eyes, whilst his lips twisted painfully and a hard, convulsive sob burst from his swelling breast and echoed through the quiet of the room.

  Chapter Five

  The three-twenty train from Glasgow to Ardfillan, the first half of the journey accomplished successfully, had left Overton behind, and traversing the low, dripping, smoke-filled arches of Kilmaheu Tunnel, emerged into the breezy March afternoon with a short, triumphant whistle, that sent a streamer of steam swirling behind the engine like a pennant, and presently began to coast gently down the slight incline of the track, which marked the approach to Levenford Station. The train was lightly laden, having many of its carriages empty and several with but one passenger in each and, as though conscious of having achieved the sharp ascent of Poindfauld and traversed the dark, grimed caverns of Kilmaheu, it now proceeded at an easier and more leisured pace through the soft, dun countryside across which the railway track advanced like a long, narrowing furrow.

  Within the train, alone in a compartment, in a corner facing the engine, and with the small portmanteau that constituted her entire luggage beside her, sat a girl. Dressed in a plain, grey costume of serviceable, inexpensive serge, shaped to a neat yet unfashionable cut, and wearing upon her dark, close-coiled hair a grey velvet hat relieved only by a thin, pink ribbon gathered at one side into a simple bow, she remained upright yet relaxed, directing her gaze out of the window, viewing eagerly, yet wistfully, each feature of the fleeting landscape. Her face was thin, the nose straight and fine, the nostrils delicate, the lips sensitive and mobile, the smooth, pale sweep of the brow accentuated by the dark, appealing beauty of her eyes; and upon the entire countenance lay a melancholy sweetness, a pure and clarified sadness, as though some potent, sorrowful experience had stamped upon every lineament the subtle yet ineradicable mark of suffering. This faint, sombre shadow which lightly touched, accentuating even, the dark beauty of the face, made her seem more mature than her actual age of twenty-two years
and gave to her an appearance of arresting delicacy, of refined sincerity which was intensified by the severe simplicity of her apparel. Like the face, but in a different sense, her hands too, immediately engaged attention, as, denuded of gloves, which lay upon her knee they rested lightly, palm upwards, passive upon her lap. The face was that of a madonna but the hands, red, conspicuous, coarse-grained, and slightly swollen, were the hands of a servant; and if it was suffering which had sublimated the face to a more exquisite beauty, the hands spoke eloquently of bitter toil that had blemished them into this pathetic, contrasting ugliness.

  As she gazed intently out of the window she remained quiescent, passive as her own work-worn hands, yet across her sensitive features a faint excitement quivered which betokened the inner agitation of her turbulently beating heart. There, she thought, was the Mains Farm, its brown, furrowed fields lapped by the wind-beaten, crested waters of the Estuary, its stack-yard a square, yellow patch against the low, white-washed huddle of the homestead; there, too, was the weathered pile of the Linten Lighthouse, and, equally unchanged, the blue, massive outlines of the Rock itself; there, against the sky, the long, skeleton tracery of the Latta Shipyards, and now, swinging into view, the sharp, stippled steeple of the Borough Hall. Affected by the touching familiarity of all that she saw she considered how unaltered everything was, how permanent, secure, and solid. It was she, Mary Brodie, who had changed, and she now longed wistfully to be as she had been when she had lived in these surroundings, before the branding iron of circumstances had set its seal upon her. As she meditated thus, with a sudden, wrenching pang like the tearing open of a wound, she observed the Levenford Cottage Hospital where for two months she had lain facing death, where, too, her infant child had died; and, at the sudden poignant reminder, the serenity of her countenance broke and though no tears flowed – they had all been shed before – her lips quivered painfully. She marked the window through which her fixed eyes had ceaselessly sought the sky, the gravel walk flanked by laurel bushes along which she had directed the first, flagging steps of her convalescence, the very gatepost to which she had then clung, fluttering and exhausted from the feebleness of her state. She willed the train to stop that she might linger with her memories, but it bore her quickly away from this sad reminder of the past and, circling the last bend, gave to her spasmodic, transient glimpses of Church Street, a line of shops, the Public Library, the Cross, then swept her into the Station itself.

  How small the platform seemed, with its diminutive waiting-rooms and insignificant wooden ticket office, yet when she had once stood in this same station to take the train for Darroch she had in the agitation of her adventure, trembled at its very magnitude; and, indeed, she trembled now as she realised that she must leave the solitary seclusion of her compartment and venture forth into the public gaze. She stood up firmly, gripping her portmanteau, and although a faint colour tinged her cheeks, she set her soft lips into the mould of fortitude and stepped bravely out upon the platform. She was back again in Levenford after four years!

  To the porter who approached, she surrendered her bag with instructions that it should be delivered to her at the next round of the station van and, having given up her ticket, she descended the short flight of steps to the street and set out with a throbbing bosom for her home. If she had been beset by memories in the train, now they rushed in upon her with an overpowering force, and it seemed to her as if each step she took brought before her some fresh remembrance to further strain her already bursting heart. There was the Common, fringed in the distance by the Leven; here was the school she had attended as a child; and, as she passed the portals of the Public Library, still guarded by the same swing doors, she became aware that it was here, on this very spot, that she had first met Denis. The thought of Denis brought no pang, no bitterness, but now merely a sad regret, as though she felt herself no longer his beloved nor yet the victim of his love, but only the helpless puppet of an irresistible destiny.

  While she proceeded along Railway Road she observed coming towards her a woman whom she had known in the days before her banishment, and she settled herself for the wound of a sharp, contemptuous glance; but no glance came, no sharp wound, for the other drew near and passed her with the placid countenance of complete unrecognition. How much I must have changed, thought Mary sadly, as she entered Wellhall Road, and, coming upon Dr Renwick’s house, she wondered with a curious detachment if he, too, might find her changed, should she ever encounter him. He had been so good to her, that even to pass this dwelling moved her strangely. While she did not consider the fact that he had saved her life, as though this were of slight importance, she remembered vividly the letters he had written her – first when she had gone to London and later to inform her of her mother’s illness, and subsequently of her death – all filled with a kind and unmistakable sympathy. She might never have returned to Levenford but for these letters, for, had she not received the second, she would not have written home and Nessie would never have known her address to send her that frantic appeal. Poor, frightened Nessie! Thoughts of her sister and of her father now invaded her, and as she drew near to her home, with the memory of the night on which she had left it stamped like an indelible background upon her mind, she became outwardly agitated; the calm, long-set tranquillity of her appearance was at last melted by the warm, surging currents set racing by the unwonted action of her fast-beating heart.

  Again she felt herself tremble at the prospect of meeting her father, she shuddered slightly as, of her own volition, she moved towards the oppressive influence of the dwelling which had once contained her like a prisoner.

  When, finally, she reached her home, it was with a shock that she observed the outer aspect of the house, wondering, in her first bewilderment, if it were she who viewed it with different eyes, but in a moment, noting more intently the subtle, individual alterations which gave it an appearance at once slovenly and sordid. The windows were dirty, with such curtains as veiled them soiled and draggled, with blinds hanging unevenly; in the turret one small window was open and uncovered, the other completely shuttered, like a closed eye, so that the face of the tower winked at her with a fixed, perpetual leer. The clean, grey stone of the frontage was stained by a long, irregular, rusty smear, drawn by the rash of water from a broken gutter, and straggling across the house face like a defilement; the gutter sagged, a slate drooped drunkenly from the straight line of the eaves, whilst the courtyard in front was empty, unraked, and green with weeds.

  Startled by these slight but revealing variations which so transfigured the exterior of the house, and stirred with a sudden fear of what she might discover within, Mary moved quickly up the steps and rang the bell. Her trepidation increased as she stood for a long time waiting, but at last the door opened slowly and she beheld, against the dimness beyond, the thin, unformed figure of Nessie. The sisters looked at each other, exclaimed together ‘Nessie!’ ‘Mary!’ then, with a mingling cry, rushed into each other’s arms.

  ‘Mary! Oh, Mary!’ Nessie cried brokenly, unable in her emotion to do more than repeat the name, and clinging to her sister in utter abandon. ‘My own, dear Mary!’

  ‘Nessie! dear Nessie!’ whispered Mary, herself overcome by an excess feeling, ‘I’m so happy to see you again. I’ve often longed for this when I’ve been away.’

  ‘You’ll never leave me any more, will you, Mary?’ sobbed Nessie. ‘I’ve wanted you so much! Hold me tight and never let me go.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you, dearie! I’ve come back just to be with you!’

  ‘I know! I know!’ wept Nessie. ‘It’s good of you to do it, but oh! I’ve needed you sorely since Mamma died. I’ve had nobody! I’ve been frightened!’

  ‘Don’t cry, dearest,’ whispered Mary, drawing her sister’s head against her breast and gently stroking her brow. ‘You’re all right, now. Don’t be frightened any more.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’ve come through,’ cried Nessie frantically. ‘It’s like heaven to see you back;
but it’s a wonder I’m here at all.’

  ‘Hush! dearie, hush; I don’t want you to upset yourself and be ending up with a sore, wee head.’

  ‘It’s my heart that’s been sore,’ said the younger sister, turning up her red-lidded, burning eyes. ‘I didn’t love you enough when I had you, Mary, but I’ll make up for it. Everything’s so different now. I need you so much I’ll do anything, if you’ll just bide with me.’

  ‘I’ll do that, dear,’ replied Mary consolingly. ‘Just dry your eyes and you can tell me all about it. Here’s my handkerchief for you!’

  ‘It’s just like old times for you to give me this,’ sniffed Nessie, releasing her sister’s arm, taking the proffered handkerchief, and applying it to her wet face. ‘ I was aye losing mine.’ Then as her sobs subsided and she regarded her sister from a slight distance she exclaimed, suddenly: ‘How bonnie you’ve got, Mary! There’s a look about your face that makes me want never to take my eyes off you.’

  ‘It’s just the same old face, Nessie.’

  ‘No! you were always bonnie, but now there’s something seems to shine out of it like a light’

  ‘Never mind about me,’ replied Mary tenderly. ‘It’s you I’m thinking of, dear. We’ll need to see about putting some flesh on these thin arms of yours. You’ve been needing someone to look after you.’