The mere step to the Wellhall Green he accomplished with hardly a falter and soon he was inside the trim enclosure where the smooth square of reen lay vivid in the sunshine, marred only by the dark, blurred figures of the players wavering across it before his eye. What a game for grown men, he thought contemptuously; to roll a few balls about like a gang of silly bairns. Could they not take out a gun or a horse, like he had once done, if they wanted their exercise or amusement.
His gaze, however, did not remain long upon the green but, lifting quickly, sought the small group that sat upon the veranda of the pavilion at the further end of the ground, and he smiled with a sardonic gratification as he observed that, even as he had foretold, they were all there from simple John Paxton to the Lord High Provost of the Borough. He gathered himself together again and advanced deliberately towards them.
For a moment he proceeded unobserved by this small gathering for they were all concentrating upon the game before them but suddenly Paxton looked up, observed him, and gasped in amazement:
"Guidsakes Just look what's coming!" His tone drew their attention at once, and following his startled gaze, they too regarded the strange, uncouth, strutting figure as it bore down upon them, and they exclaimed variously:
"Good God! It's Brodie. I ha vena seen him for months!"
"He's as fou as a lord, by the looks o' him."
"Losh! It's the drunken earl himsel'."
"Look at the face o' him and the clothes o' him."
"Ay, but look at the swagger o' the thing!"
They were silent as he drew near, directing their eyes away from him towards the green, disowning him, but still failing to perturb him as, oscillating slightly, he stood encompassing them with his sneer.
"Dear, dear," he snickered, "we're very engrossed in watching the wee, troolin' balls. It's a grand, excitin' pastime. We'll be lookin' on at a game o 1 peever next if we're not careful, like a band o' silly lassies." He paused and queried pertinently, "Who has won, Provost? Will ye tell me you that's such a grand spokesman for the town?"
"This game's not finished yet," replied Grierson after a moment's hesitation, and still with his eyes averted. The spite which he had once entertained against Brodie now found nothing in the other's wretched condition with which to justify itself and seemed suddenly to have evaporated. Besides, was he not the Provost? "Nobody has won yet," he added more affably.
"This game's not won yet," echoed Brodie sardonically. "Well, well! I'm sorry to hear it. But I can tell ye a game that is won!"
He glared round them all and, his anger rising at their indifference, shouted:
"It's the Latta I'm talkin' about. Maybe ye think it's like this rotten game of bowls that you're watchin' not finished yet. But I tell you it is finished finished and done wi' and it's my Nessie that's won it!"
"Hush, man, hush!" exclaimed Gordon, who sat immediately confronted by Brodie. "I can't see the play for ye. Sit down or stand aside and don't blatter the ears off us."
"I'll stand where I like. Shift me if ye can," retorted Brodie dangerously. Then he sneered : "Who are you to talk, anyway? You're only the ex-provost you're not the king o' the castle any more it's our dear friend Grierson that's got your shoes on now and it's him I'm wantin' to speak to." He directed his sneering gaze at Grierson and addressed him: "Did you hear what I said about the Latta,
Provost? No! Dinna start like that I havena forgotten about that braw son o' yours. I know well that he's gone up for it. Provost Grierson's son is up for the Latta. God! It must be as good as in his pocket."
"I never said that yet," replied Grierson, provoked in spite of himself. "My boy can take his chance! It's not as if he was needin' the money for his education, onyway."
Brodie ground his teeth at the sharp implication in the other's careless words and tried fiercely to force his brain to contrive some devastating reply, but as always, when opposing Grierson, he could find no suitable expression of his wrath. The thought that he, who had advanced a moment ago in lordly indifference, had been rendered impotent by a word, goaded him, and, sensing also that he was not creating the impression upon them which he had wished, his temper overcame him and he shouted:
"Why did ye ask me to withdraw my daughter if ye didna want your whelp to win it? answer me that, you sneakin' swine! You stopped me at the Cross and asked me to keep back my Nessie."
"Tuts! Don't shout like that at my ear, man," retorted Grierson coolly. "I don't like the reek o' your breath. I told ye before I was thinkin' of your Nessie. Somebody that's qualified to speak asked me to mention it to ye. I wasna wantin' to do it and now I'm sorry I did mention it."
"You're a liar!" bawled Brodie. "You're a damned mealy-mouthed liar!"
"If ye've come here to force a quarrel on me, I'll not let ye do it," returned Grierson. "There's no lying about the matter and no secret either. Now that your daughter has gone up, I don't mind tellin’ you it was Doctor Renwick asked me to speak to ye."
"Renwick!" exclaimed Brodie incredulously. He paused; then, as a light dawned upon him, he shot out, "I see! I see it plain. You put him up to it. He's hand in glove with you against me. He hates me just as much as do as much as ye all do." He swept his arm blindly around them. "I know you're all against me, you jealous swine, but I don't care. Ill win through. Til trample over ye all yet. Have any of ye got a daughter that can win the Latta? Answer me that!"
"If your daughter does win the Latta," cried some one, "what the de'il does it matter to us? Let her get it and good luck to her. I don't give a tinker's curse who wins it."
Brodie gazed at the speaker.
"Ye don't care?" he replied slowly. "Ye do care you're leein' to me. It'll spite the faces off ye if a Brodie wins the Latta."
"Away home, man, for God's sake," said Gordon quietly. "You're not yourself. You're drivelin'. You can't know what you're sayin'.”
"I'll go when I like," mumbled Brodie. The stimulation of the drink suddenly left him, his fierceness waned, he no longer desired to rush upon Grierson and tear him apart, and, as he gazed at their varying expressions of unconcern and disgust, he began to feel profoundly sorry for himself, to ask himself if this could be the same company which he had dominated and overawed in the past. They had never liked him but he had controlled them by his power, and now that they had escaped from out his grasp, his sympathy towards himself grew so excessive that it reached the point of an exceeding sorrow which sought almost to express itself in tears.
"I see how it is," he muttered gloomily, addressing them at large. "Ye think I'm all over and done wi'. I'm not good enough for ye now. God! If it didna make me laugh, it would make me greet. To think that ye should sit there and look down your noses at me at me that comes of stock that's so high above ye they wouldna even use ye as doormats." He surveyed them each in turn, looking vainly for some sign of encouragement, some indication that he was impressing them. Then, although no sign came, he still continued, more slowly and in a dejected, unconvincing tone:
"Don't think that I'm finished! I'm comin' up again. Ye can't keep a good man down and ye'll not keep me down, however much ye may try. Wait and see what my Nessie will do. That'll show ye that stuff that's in us. That's why I came here. I don't want to know ye. I only wanted to tell ye that Nessie Brodie would win the Latta, and now that I've done it, I'm satisfied!" His moody eye swept them, then finding that he had nothing more to say, that they too were silent, he moved off; yet after a few paces he arrested himself, turned, opened his mouth to speak; but no speech came and at length he lowered his head, swung around, and again shambled off. They let him go without a word.
As he left the confines of the Green and proceeded along the road, nursing bitterly his wounded pride, he suddenly perceived in the distance the dim figures of his two daughters approaching him from the station. He stared at them almost stupidly, at Nessie and Mary Brodie, both of them his children, as though the strange sight of them together in the public street confused him. Then all at once he realised that Nessie was returning from her examination, that Mary had disobeyed him by meeting the train. No matter! He could deal later with Mary, but now he desired urgently to know how Nessie had fared, to appease his wounded vanity in the knowledge of her success, and walking forward quickly, he met them, confronted them in the middle of the pavement. There, absorbing eagerly every detail of the younger girl's tired face, he cried: