"Yes, Grandma! I wrote and said I was coming," replied Mary.
"Is he goin' to let you bide here?" croaked the other. "Maybe he'll put ye out again. When was that? Was it before Marg'et deed? I canna think. Your hair looks unco' bonnie that way." Her gaze then faded and she seemed to lose interest, murmuring disconsolately as she turned towards the fire, "I canna eat so weel without my teeth."
"Would you like a hot pancake and butter?" asked Mary in a coaxing tone.
"Would I no'!" replied the other instantly. "Where is't?"
Mary gave the old woman her pancake, saw her seize it avidly and, crouch ing over the fire, begin eagerly to suck it to its destruction. Suddenly she was aroused from her contemplation by a whisper in her ear:
"Please, I would like one too, Mary dear!" Nessie had come in and was now presenting a flatly suppliant palm, waiting to have it covered by the warm solace of a new-made pancake.
"You'll not have one; you'll have two," cried Mary recklessly. "Yes! As many as you like. I've made plenty."
"They're good," exclaimed Nessie appreciatively. "Good as good! You've made them so quick too; and my word, what a change you've made in the room! It's like old times again! As light as a feather! That's the way my mother used to make them, and these are just as good, ay, better than we used to get. Yum yum they're lovely!"
As Mary listened whilst Nessie talked on in this fashion and watched her quick, nervous gestures as she ate, she began to study her more intently than she had hitherto done, and slowly an impression of vague but deep uneasiness stole in upon her. The facile, running speech of her sister, the jerky and slightly uncontrolled movements perceptible now on her closer observation, seemed to betoken a state of unconscious nervous tension which alarmed her, and as she traced the thin contours of the other's growing body and noted her faintly hollowed cheeks and temples she said involuntarily:
"Nessie dear, are you sure you're feeling all right?"
Nessie stuffed the last of the pancake into her mouth before she replied expressively:
"I'm getting better and better especially since I've had that. Mary's pancakes are good but Mary herself is better." She chewed for a moment then solemnly added, "I've felt real bad once or twice, but I'm right as the mail now."
Her sudden idea was, of course, mere nonsense, thought Mary, but nevertheless she determined to use every effort in her power to obtain for Nessie some respite from the studies which seemed, at last, to be overtaxing the inadequate strength of her immature frame. A strong feeling, partly from love of her sister, but chieflv from a strong maternal impulse towards the other's weakness, gripped her, and she laid her arm protectingly round Nessie's narrow shoulders,
drew her close and murmured warmly, "I'll do my best for you, dear. I really will. There's nothing I wouldn't do to see you look happy and well."
Whilst the sisters stood together thus the old woman raised her head from the fire and, as she considered them, a sudden, penetrating insight seemed to flash through the obscurity of her senile mind, for she remarked sharply:
"Don't let him see ye like that. Don't hing thegither and show you're so fond o' one another in front of him. Na! Na! He'll have no interference wi' Nessie. Let her be, let her be." The edge in her voice was blunted as she uttered these last words, her gaze again became opaque and, with a slow, unconcealed yawn she turned away, muttering,
"I'm wantin' my tea. Is it not tea time yet? Is't not time for James to be in?"
Mary looked interrogatively at her sister and the shadow fell again on Nessie's brow as she remarked moodily:
"You can infuse the tea. He'll be in any minute now. Then you'll see for yourself the minute I've finished a cup it'll be the signal for me to be shoved off into the parlour. I'm tired to death of it."
Mary did not reply but went into the scullery to infuse the tea, and filled now by a sudden, private fear at the immediate prospect of meeting her father, the unselfish consideration of her sister slipped for the moment from her mind and she began to anticipate, tremblingly, the manner of his greeting. Her eyes, that were fixed unseeingly upon the steamy clouds issuing from the boiling kettle, flinched as she recollected how he had kicked her brutally as she lay in the hall, how that blow had been in part responsible for the pneumonia which had nearly killed her, and she wondered vaguely if he had ever regretted that single action; if he had, indeed, even thought of it during the four years of her absence. As for herself, the memory of that blow had lived with her for months; the pain of it had lasted during the long delirium of her illness, when she had suffered a thousand savage kicks from him with each stabbing repiration; the indignity had remained until long afterwards, when she would lie awake at night, turning in her mind the outrage upon her body of the inhuman impact of his heavy boot.
She thought again of these thick-soled boots which she had so often brushed for him, which she would, in her voluntary servitude, brush for him again, and as she remembered, too, the heavy tread which had habitually announced his entry, she started, listened, and once again heard his foot in the hall, slower, even sluggish, less firm, almost dragging, but still her father's step. The moment which she had foreseen, had visualised a thousand times, which, though she dreaded it, was of her own seeking, was upon her and, though she shook in all her limbs, she turned and advanced bravely, but with a fluttering heart, to meet him.
They came face to face in the kitchen, where the man who had come in looked at her silently, swept the room, the table, the brightly burning hearth with his dark eye, then returned his glance to her. Only when he spoke did she know actually that it was her father, when his old bitter sneer distorted his furrowed visage and he said:
"You've come back then, have ye?" and walked without further speech to his chair. The devastating change in him, such a change that she had failed almost to recognise him, shocked her so profoundly that she was unable to speak. Could this be her father, this old, shrunken man with his unkempt hair, his stained, untidy clothing, his morose unshaven face, his wild, wretched, malignant eye. Nessie had been right! She could not have believed the magnitude of this change until she had seen it, and even now she could scarcely credit the evidence of her eyes. In a dazed manner she moved herself forward and began to pour out and hand around the tea and, when she had accomplished this, she did not sit down with the others, but remained standing, waiting to serve them, still filled with an incredulous dismay at her father's dreadful appearance. He, on his part, continued to ignore her and to partake of his meal silently, with a careless, almost slovenly manner of eating, apparently regardless of what he consumed or the fashion in which he consumed it. His glance was distrait, oblique, and when it assumed a cognisance of his surroundings, it fell not upon her but always upon Nessie, as though some rooted conception of his brain was centred upon her,
making her the focus of his conscious attention. The others ate without speaking and, although she had not yet had the opportunity to address her father, to break that period of silence now four years long, she passed quietly out of the kitchen into the scullery, where she remained intent, listening and perturbed. When she had determined to sacrifice herself for Nessie's sake and return home, she had pictured herself in combat with an oppression of a different nature, loud, hectoring, even savage, but never with such a strange, inhuman preoccupation as this which she now felt to have possessed her father. His strong and virile character seemed, like his flesh, to have crumbled from him, leaving a warped structure of a man engrossed with something, she knew not what, which had mastered him and now controlled each thought, each action of his body.