"The doctor didna say much," she continued propitiatingly, "beyond that it was a kind of inflammation. When that goes down, I'm sure I'll get my strength up in no time. I cianna bear this lyin' in bed. I've got so many things to think of." She was worrying about the payment of her debt. "Just wee bits o' things that nobody would bother about but me," she added hastily, as if she feared he might read her mind.
He looked at her gloomily. The more she glossed over her illness the more he became convinced that she would not survive it; the more she spoke of the future the more futile she became in his eyes. Would she be as inept when confronted by death as she had been in the face of life? He tried desperately to find something to say; what could he say to this doomed but unconscious woman?
And now his manner began to puzzle her. At first she had assumed gratefully that his quiet had betokened a forbearance in the face of her sickness, a modification of the same feeling which made her move throughout the house on tiptoes when she had nursed him, on such rare occasions as he had been ill. But a curious quality in his regard now perturbed her, and suddenly she queried:
"The doctor didna say anything about me to you, did he? He didna tell you something that he keepit from me? He seemed a long time downstairs before I heard him drive away."
He looked at her stupidly. His mind seemed, from a long distance off, to consider her question slowly, detachedly, without succeeding in arriving at an appropriate answer.
"Tell me if he did, James," she cried apprehensively. "I would far rather know. Tell me." The whole of her appearance had altered, her demeanour, from being calm and sanguine, had become agitated, disturbed.
He had come into the room with no fixed motive as to how he should deal with her. He had no sympathy, no tact, and now no ingenuity to lie to her. He felt confused, trapped, like a blundering animal before the frail, raddled creature on the bed. His temper flared suddenly.
"What do I care what he thinks!" he found himself saying harshly. "A man like him would say ye were dyin' if ye had a toothache. He knows nothing less than nothing. Haven't I told ye I'm goin' to get Lawrie to ye!" His angry, ill-chosen words struck her like a thunderbolt. Instantly she knew, knew with a fearful conviction, that her illness was mortal. She shivered, and a film of fear clouded her eyes like a faint, shadowy harbinger of the last, opaque pellicle of dissolution.
"Did he say I was dying then?" she quavered.
He glared at her, furious at the position into which he had been forced. Angry words now poured from his mouth.
"Can ye not shut up about that runt?" he cried. "Ye wad think he was the Almighty to hear you. He doesna ken everything. If he canna cure ye, there's other doctors in Levenford! What's the use o' makin' such a fuss about it a'?"
"I see. I see now," she whispered. "I'll no' make any more fuss about it now." Quiescent upon the bed she gazed at him and behind him; her gaze seemed to transcend the limits of the narrow room and focus itself fearfully upon a remoteness beyond. After a long pause she said, as though to herself, "I'll not be muckle loss to you, James! I'm gey and worn out for you," Then she whispered faintly, "But, oh! Matt, my own son, how am I to leave you?"
Silently she turned to the wall and to the mystery of her thoughts, leaving him standing with a sullen, glouting brow, behind her. For a moment he looked lumpishly at her flaccid figure, then, without a word, he went heavily out of the room.
XII
A SUDDEN burst of vivid August sunshine, penetrating the diaphanous veil hung by the last drops of a passing shower, sprayed the High Street with a misty radiance, whilst the brisk breeze which had thrown the fleecy, wool-pack clouds from off the pathway of the sun, now moved the rain slowly onwards in a glow of golden haze.
"Sunny-shower! Sunny-shower!" chanted a group of boys, as they raced along the drying street on their way to bathe in the Leven.
"Look," cried one of them importantly, "a rainbow!" And he pointed upwards to a perfect arc which, like the thin beribboned handle of a lady's basket, spanned glitteringly the entire length of the street. Every one paused to look at the rainbow. They lifted their eyes above the drab level of the earth and gazed upwards towards the sky, nodded their heads, smiled cheerfully, exclaimed with delight, shouted to each other across the street.
"It's a braw sight!"
"Look at the bonnie colours!"
"It puts auld Couper's pole in the shade, richt enough."
The sudden, unexpected delight of the phenomenon cheered them, elevating their minds unconsciously to a plane that lay above the plodding commonplace of their existence, and, when they looked downwards again, the vision of that splendid, sparkling arch remained, inspiring them for the day before them.
Out of the Winton Arms into this bright sunshine came James Brodie. He saw no rainbow, but walked dourly, with his hat pulled forward, his head down, his hands deeply in his outside pockets, seeing nothing, and, though a dozen glances followed his progress, saluting no one. As he plodded massively, like a stallion, over, the crest of the street, he felt that "they" the peering inquisitive swine were looking at him with prying eyes; knew, though he ignored it, that he was the focus of their atention. For weeks past it had appeared to him that he and the moribund shop that he tenanted had been the nidus of a strange and unnatural attention in the Borough, that townspeople, some that he knew and some whom he had never seen before, strolled deliberately outside his business to stare openly, curiously, purposely, into the depths within. From the inner obscurity he imagined that these empty, prying glance mocked him; he had cried out to himself, "Let them look then, the glaikit swine! Let them gape at me for all they're worth. I'll give them something to glower about." Did they guess, he now asked himself bitterly, as he strode along, that he had been celebrating celebrating the last day in his business? Did they know that, with a
ferocious humour, he had just now swallowed a liberal toast to the wreck of his affairs? He smiled grimly to think that to-day he ceased to be a hatter, that shortly he would walk out of his office for the last time and bang the door behind him finally and irrevocably. Paxton, from across the road, whispered to his neighbour:
"Look, man, quick, there's Brodie." And together they stared at the strong figure on the opposite pavement. "Man! I'm sorry for him somehow," continued Paxton; "his comedown doesna fit him weel."
"Na!" agreed the other, "He's the wrang man to be ruined."
"For a' his strength and power," resumed Paxton, "there's something blunderin' and helpless about him. It's been a fearfu' blow to him. Do ye mark how his shoulders have bowed, as if he had a load on his back."
His neighbour shook his head.
"I canna see it like that! He's been workin 1 for this for a lang, kag time. What I canna stand about the man is his black, veecious pride that grows in spite o' a' things. It's like a disease that gets waur and waur, and the source o't is so downright senseless. If he could but see himself now, as others see him, it micht humble him a wee."
Paxton looked at the other peculiarly.
"I wouldna talk like that about him," he said slowly; "it's a chancy thing even to whisper like that about James Brodie, and at this time more than ordinar'. If he heard ye he would turn on ye and rend ye."
"He's not listenin' to us," replied the other, a trifle uncomfortably; then he added, "He has drink in him again, by the look o' him. Adversity micht bring some men to their senses but it's drivin' him the other way round."
They both turned again and glanced at the slowly retreating figure. After a pause Paxton said:
"Have ye heard, lately, how his wife goes on?"
"Not a word! From what I can make out not a body sees her. Some leddies from the kirk took up a wheen jellies and the like for her, but Brodie met them at the gate and sent them a' richt-about turn. Ay, and waur nor that, he clashed the guid stuff they had brought about their ears."