"That's what she is," replied Renwick stubbornly. "A little white mouse, and it might go hard with her if she's not watched. I don't like that cowed look in her eye."
"I was more struck by the neglected look of her," replied Gibson. "She's getting to be conspicuous in the school by it. Did you mark the poorness of her dress ? There's been a difference there in the last year or so, I can assure you. Brodie can't have a penny now but his wages, and most of that he spends in liquor. Strictly between ourselves too, I hear it rumoured that he's behind with the interest on his mortgaged house that amazing chateau of nonsense of his. What's going to happen there, I don't know, but the man is rushing towards his ruin."
"Poor Nessie," sighed Renwick; but in his mind it was Mary that he visioned amidst the poverty and degradation of her home. It was impossible to judge from Gibson's expression if some vague glimmering of understanding regarding his friend's motive in the matter had dawned upon him; and indeed it might, for in the past he had heard him speak feelingly of the strange case of Mary Brodie; but now he patted him upon the shoulder and remarked encouragingly:
"Cheer up, you miserable sawbones! It's not going to kill anybody. I'll see to that. I'll keep my eye on Nessie."
"Well," said Renwick at length, "it'll do no good to sit glooming here." He looked at his watch and arose from his chair. "I'm keeping you back and I've got my own work to attend to. It's almost four."
"Rich old ladies queuing up for you, you sly dog!" said Gibson quizzically. "What they see in that ugly face of yours I can't imagine!"
Renwick laughed as he replied:
"It's not beauty they want, or I'd refer them to you." He held out his hand. "You're a good sort, Gibson! I'll miss you more than any one when I leave here."
"I wonder!" said the other as he pressed his friend's hand aflfectionately.
Renwick left the room quickly, but as he went down the shallow, stone steps, worn through the years by an endless succession of careless footsteps, and passed between the two, grey Russian guns, setting his course along the road for his home, his pace insensibly diminished and his thoughts again grew heavy. "Poor Nessie!" He now saw the shrinking figure before him, enveloped by the soft, protecting arms of her sister who, shielding the child's drooping form by
her own soft body, looked at him with brave, enduring eyes. As he passed along the street, the vision grew in intensity, oppressing him, rendering somehow unattractive the stimulating prospect which had lately filled his mind, dulling the glamour of his new work in Edinburgh, blotting out the freshness of Castle Gardens and the romantic fortress piled against the sky, blunting the ever keen savour of the wind as he felt it sweep to him from off the Calton Hill. It was with a sombre face that he entered his own house and set himself to work.
VII
THE mild April day had advanced for one hour beyond its noontide and, filled by the fresh odours and soft, stirring sounds of the budding spring, lay upon the town of Levenford like a benison. But to Brodie, as at his dinner hour he walked along the road towards his home, there was no blessing in the sweet burgeoning around him.
Filled with bitterness, he did not feel the caress of the gentle air or recognise in each new shoot the running sap within the trees; the yellow clumps of nodding daffodils, the white, elusive snowdrops, the glowing, mingled globes of crocuses which ornamented the front gardens of the road were by him unseen; the faint cawing of rooks as they circled around their new-built nests amongst the tall trees at the bend of the road was a jangle on his irritated ears.
Indeed, as he reached these trees and the sound came to him more loudly, he sent a venomous glance at the birds, muttering, "Damn their noise they ring the lugs off a man. I could take a gun to them," when suddenly, as if in answer to his threat, a low-flying crow swept over him and with a derisive "caw-caw" dropped its excrement upon his shoulder. His brow gathered like thunder as he considered that the very birds had turned against him and defiled him; for a moment he looked as though he could have felled each tree, torn apart the nests and destroyed every bird in the rookery; but with a wry twist of his lips he cleansed his coat with his handkerchief and, his mood set more bitterly, continued upon his homeward way.
The better conditions of his living since the return of Mary had made little difference in his appearance, for although she sponged and pressed his clothing, washed and starched his linen, and brushed his boots to a fine polish, he had now abandoned himself utterly at nights to the bottle, with the result that his face had grown more veined, more sallow and sunken, and his neater dress hung upon his gaunt frame with the incongruity of a new suit upon a scarecrow.
He looked, although he knew it not, a broken man, and since he had lost Nancy his disintegration had progressed at a more rapid pace. At first he had told himself fiercely that there were other fish in the sea as good as, and indeed, better than she, that he would quickly fill her place in his affections by another and a finer woman; but gradually, and with a cutting injury to his pride, he had been made to see that he was now too old and unattractive to compel the attention of women and, the lordly days of his overflowing purse being ended, that he had become too poor to buy their favour. He realised, too, after a short and resentful period of self-delusion, that it was his Nancy that he desired, that none other could replace her; she had wrapped herself around his flesh so seductively that in her absence he craved for her only and knew that no one else would do. He drank to forget her, but could not. The whisky soaked his brain, deadened his vivid appreciation of his loss, but still, and even when he was drunk, tormenting pictures floated before his numbed mind, haunting him with visions of Nancy and Matt as they would be together in their new life. As he saw them, they were always together, and, although he cursed himself for the thought, happy, forgetful of him and of his past bearing on their lives; Nancy's laugh, and it was the laugh of an Aphrodite, echoed in his ears, evoked, not by his, but by Matt's caresses, and as with an agonising lucidity he saw his son supplanting him in her affections, his eyes would close, his look become helpless and livid.
At present, however, he was engrossed by another matter, not, let it be said, the offence of the crow, which had merely thrown another coal upon the fire of his resentment, but a greater and more personal affront; and his air was less apathetic than was usual in the public street, his manner more intent as he moved with an unusual rapidity towards his house.
He had a grievance to air and, as Nessie was the only person whom he now addressed with any freedom, and as the affair in some manner concerned her, it was she whom he hastened to see. As he opened the front door and entered his home, his morose reticence was for the moment abandoned and he immediately called out:
"Nessie! Nessie!" He was in the kitchen before she could reply, and sternly regarded the startled eye that looked back at him from her half-turned head as she sat at table, a spoonful of her broth arrested in mid-air, her whole attitude indicative of sudden apprehension.
"Has that young whelp o' Grierson's said anything to you about the Latta?" he shot at her fiercely. She let the spoonful of soup splash back into her plate as, thinking that mercifully his question was not so bad as she had expected, she shook her head nervously, and replied:
"No, Father. At least nothing much."
"Think," he cried. "Think hard. What does nothing much mean?"
"Well, Father," she quavered, "he's always saying something or another that's not nice about about us. He sometimes sneers about me and the Latta."