Mrs. Brodie shook her pathetically inclined head sadly, and, filled with a vague, uncomprehending foreboding, gathered up the messages; with a more melancholy inclination of her head, like an incarnate presage of misfortune and ill-omen, she passed slowly out of the room.
VI
"NESSIE! Mary!" shrilled Mrs. Brodie, in a fine frenzy of service, as she skittled about, helping Brodie to dress, "come and put on your father's gaiters."
It was the morning of Saturday the twenty-first of August, and one of the red-letter days in James Brodie's calendar. In a large-patterned, black-and-white check, knickerbocker suit he sat, his face like a full red sun, trying to struggle into his gaiters, which had not been used since a year that day, when, though he now chose to forget the fact, he had experienced the same difficulty in assuming them.
"What kind o witless trick was it to put a man's gaiters away damp?" he girned at his wife. "They'll not meet on me now. Desh it all, can't a man keep a thing decent in this house? These have shrunk."
Inevitably, when anything went wrong, the onus was thrust upon his wife's narrow shoulders.
"A man can't leave a thing about, but some senseless creature wastes it for him. How am I to go to the Show without gaiters? Ye'll be askin' me to go without my collar and tie next."
"But, Father," meekly replied Mrs. Brodie, "I think you must be wearing a shade larger boot this year. This new pair I ordered for you myself were something broader than the others."
"Nonsense!" he grunted. "You'll be saying that my feet have got bigger next."
Here Nessie burst into the room like a young foal, followed more slowly by Mary.
"Quick, girls," urged Mamma, "do up your father's gaiters for him. Look sharp now, he's behind time!" The young handmaidens launched themselves upon their knees, applying their nimble fingers with dexterity and strength to the task before them, whilst Brodie lay back, simmering, darting black glances at the apologetic figure of his wife. The catastrophe was the more unfortunate for Mrs. Brodie as, upon this day in particular, he might reasonably be relied upon to be in a good temper, and the thought of spoiling for herself the rare chance of a day without a rage, of having activated the passive volcano, was more humiliating to her than the actual insults of the moment.
It was the day of the Levenford Cattle Show, an outstanding agricultural event, which drew the pedigree of the county as regards both its stock and its human inhabitants. Brodie loved the show and made his attendance of it an unfailing annual institution. He loved the sleek cattle with their swollen udders, the full-muscled Clydesdale stallions, the high-stepping cobs in the ring, the fat-flanked porkers and thick, close-knit sheep, and he prided himself on his judgment of a best.
"I, a hatter!" he seemed to say, as he stood close to the judges, one hand gripping his famous ash plant, the other deep in his front pocket, "I'm more fitted for the job than them."
He was in his element, in the forefront of the judging, prominent amongst the best of them. Then, sauntering around the marquees with his hat well back on his head, he would slice with his penknife a sliver from this cheese and a sliver from that, tasting them critically; savour the different butters, the cream, the buttermilk; rakishly chaff the sonsiest of the dairymaids, who stood behind their exhibits.
That part of him which lay close to the soil flourished on days like these. From his mother's family, the Lumsdens, who had for generations farmed in the Barony of Winton, he drew that deeply rooted inheritance of the love of the land, its produce and beasts. His body craved the hardy exercise of the farm, for in his youth he had driven his team through the loam of Winton and had known also the thrill of the feel of the gun butt against his cheek. From his father, James Brodie, that bitter, morose, implacable man, of whom he was the sole child, he had derived a pride which nourished itself upon a desire to possess the land. Only the vicissitudes following his impoverished father's death, when the latter had killed himself by falling from his horse, had driven him, as a young man, into the abomination of trade.
But another, and a stronger reason existed which impelled him tothe Show, namely, the craving to associate on equal terms with the gentry of the county and the borough. Conducting himself there not obsequiously, but rather with a trace of arrogance, nevertheless a nod of recognition, a word of greeting, or a few moments' conversation with a notability of rank or distinction gratified him inwardly and intoxicated him with delight.
"I've done it, Father. I've finished first!" cried Nessie triumphantly. With her small fingers she had succeeded in buttoning up one of the refractory spats.
"Come along, Mary," implored Mrs. Brodie. "You're such a slow-coach. Your father hasn't got all day to wait."
"Let her take her time," said Brodie sardonically. "I might as well be late, now I'm about it. In fact, you might like to keep me here all day between you."
"She is never as quick at a thing as Nessie," sighed Mamma.
"That's it," at last said Mary, standing up with benumbed fingers.
Her father eyed her critically.
"You know you're getting lazy, that's what's wrong with you, my girl. Good sakcs, now I look at you you're getting as big as the side of a house. You should eat less and work more."
He stood up, contemplating himself in the mirror, whilst Mamma led the girls from the room, and, as his reflection gazed back at him from the glass with gradually increasing approval, his self-complacency was eventually restored. His thick muscular legs were set off to perfection by the rough knickerbockers, and under the fleecy homespun stockings his calves swelled nobly; his shoulders were as broad and straight as a wrestler's; not an ounce of fat marred his body; his skin was as unblemished as a child's. He was the perfect figure of a country gentleman and, as the fact which he already knew was borne in upon him more forcibly by the glamour of his image, he twirled his moustache and smoothed his chin with satisfied vanity.
At this point the door of his room slowly opened and Grandma Brodie put her head around the door jamb insinuatingly, espying how his mood lay before she spoke.
"Can I have a look at you before you go, James?" she wheedled, after a cautious pause. This day produced upon her decaying sensibility an emotion akin to excitement, sponsored by the almost forgotten memories of her youth which rushed incoherently in upon her. "You look real grand. Ye're the fine figure o' a man," she told her son. "Losh! But I wish I was going with ye."
"You're too old in the tooth for me to show you, Mother," jibed Brodie. "although ye might get a ribbon for toughness."
Her dull ears prevented her from hearing properly, her distant thoughts from understanding the full import of his remark. "Ay, I'm gettin' a trifle old to go," she lamented, "but I've seen the day I would have been among the foremost there at the milkin', and the showin', and the jiggin' after, and then the tig-taggin' on the lang drive hame in the cool o' the night air. It a' comes back to me." Her dull eyes glistened. "What grand scones and bannocks we used to have there, though I paid but little heed to them in they days." She sighed regretfully at her lost opportunities.
"Tuts, woman, can ye not keep you mind off your meat? You would think you were starved to hear you," Brodie chided her.
"No! No! James. I'm very grateful for all that you give me, and that's plenty. But maybe to-day if you were to see a nice, wee bit Cheddar cheese, no too dear there's a wheen o' bargains to be had at the end o' the day perhaps you might pick it up for me." She leered at him ingratiatingly.
Brodie burst into loud laughter. "Gad! You'll be the death of me, woman. Your god's in your belly. I expect to be seeing Sir John Latta to-day. Do you want me to be carrying pokes and parcels when I meet him," he shouted uproariously at her as he strode out of the room.