"Do ye say so! Nobody maun tamper wi' him or his," exclaimed Paxton; then he paused and queried, " Tis cancer, is't not, John?"
"Ay! So they say!"
"What a waesome affliction!"
"Man!" replied the other, as he moved away, "it is bad, but to my mind 'tis no waur than for that puir woman to be bound body and soul to a man like James Brodie."
By this time Brodie had entered his shop, his footsteps echoing loudly through the almost denuded premises where only a tithe of his stock remained, the rest having been disposed of through the interest and consideration of Soper. The evanescent boy had finally vanished and he was alone in the barren, unhappy, defeated place, where the faint gossamer of a spider's web, spun across the remaining boxes on the shelves, mutely indicated the ebb to which his business
had failed - Now, as he stood in the midst of this dereliction, unconsciously he peopled it with the figures of the past, the past of those lordly days when he had walked with a flourish about the place, disdaining the humbler of his clients but meeting equally and agreeably all persons of importance or consequence. It seemed incomprehensible to him that they should now be merely shadows, entering only in his imagination; that he would no longer laugh and jest and talk with them in these precincts which had enclosed his daily life for twenty years. It was the same shop, he was the same man, yet slowly, mysteriously, these living beings had withdrawn from him, leaving only unhappy, unsubstantial memories. The few old customers, chiefly the county gentlepeople, who had still clung to him, had seemed only to prolong the misery of his failure, and now that it was finished a vast surge of anger and sorrow invaded him. With his low forehead contracted he tried abortively to realise how it had been accomplished, to analyse how all this strange, unthinkable change had come about.
Somehow he had permitted it! A convulsive, involuntary sigh shook his thick chest, then, as if in rage and disgust at such a weakness, he bared his lips over his pale gums, ground his teeth and went slowly into his office. No letters, no daily paper now cumbered his desk, awaiting his disdainful attention; dust alone lay there, lay thickly upon everything. Yet, as he stood within the neglected office, like the leader of a hopeless cause when he has finally abandoned it, a faint measure of sad relief tinctured his regret, and he became aware that he now faced the worst, that the suspense of this unfair fight
was at an end.
The money he had raised by mortgaging his house was finished; though he had eked this out to the last driblet his resources were now entirely exhausted. But, he reflected, he had discharged his obligations to the utmost; he owed no man a penny, and if he were ruined, he had scorned the ignominious refuge of bankruptcy. He sat down upon his chair, regardless of dust, scarcely noticing, indeed, the cloud that rose about him, unheeding of the powdery layer that settled on his clothing he had grown so careless of his person and his dress. He was unshaven, and against the dark, unkempt stubble on his face the white of his eyes glared savagely; his finger nails were ragged and bitten to the quick, his boots were unbrushed, his cravat, lacking the usual pin, was partially undone as though, desiring suddenly more liberty to breathe, he had unloosed it with a single wrench. His clothes, too, were flung untidily upon him, as he had dressed that morning regardless of anything but despatch. Now, indeed, his main concern was to leave as quickly as possible a house pervaded with sudden and disturbing cries of pain, filled with disorder and confusion, with unwashed dishes and the odor of drugs, a house wherein he was nauseated by ill-cooked and ill-served food, and irritated by a snivelling son and an incompetent old woman.
Sitting there, he plunged his hand suddenly into his inside pocket and drew out carefully a flat, black bottle; then, still staring in front of him, without viewing the bottle, he sunk his strong teeth in the cork and with a quick jerk of his thick neck withdrew the cork. The sharp, plucking report filled the silence of the room. Placing the neck of the bottle between his cupped lips he raised his elbow gradually and took a long gurgling drink, then with a sharp intake of breath over his parted teeth, he placed the bottle in front of him on the table and fixed his glance on it. Nancy had filled it for him! His eye lit up, momentarily, as though the bottle mirrored her face. She was a good one, was Nancy, an alleviation of his melancholy, the mitigation of his depression; despite his misfortunes he would never let her go; he would stick to her whatever happened. He tried to penetrate the future, to make plans, to decide what he must do; but it was impossible. The moment he set himself to think deeply, his mind wandered off into the remotest and most incongruous digressions. Fleeting visions of his youth revolved before him the smile of a boy who had been his playmate, the hot sunny wall in the crevices of which, with other boys, he had hunted for bumblebees, the smoke about his gun barrel when he had shot his first rabbit; he heard the swish of a scythe, the purling of cushat doves, the sharp, skirling laughter of an old woman in the village.
With a shake of his head he banished the visions, took another pull at the bottle, considering deliberately the immense solace that spirits brought to him. His depression lightened, his lip curled sneeringly, and "they", the unheard critics, the antagonists ever present in his mind, became more contemptible, more pitiful than ever. Then suddenly, through this new mood, a sparkling idea struck him, which as he considered it more fully, forced from him a short, derisive laugh.
With the eyes of the town upon him, peering sneakingly upon his misfortunes, expecting him to slink abjectly from the scene of his ruin, he would nevertheless show them how James Brodie could face disaster. He would provide a fitting climax for his exit with a spectacle that would make their spying eyes blink. Fiercely he drained the last of the whisky, pleased that his brain had at last given him an inspiration to spur him to motion, delighted to loose the confined brooding of his mind in a definite physical activity, no matter how inordinate it might be. He arose and, sending his chair sprawling on the floor, passed into the shop where, surveying with a hostile eye the remaining boxes stacked behind the counter, he advanced upon them and began rapidly to spill their contents upon the floor. Eagerly he tumbled out hats of all descriptions. Disdaining to open the boxes calmly, his huge hands gripped them fiercely and rent the cardboard like tissue paper, furiously ripping and tearing at the boxes
as though in frantic avulsion they dismembered the bodies of his dead enemies. He flung the tattered debris from him in every direction with loose, whirling movements, till the fragmentary litter filled the room and lay about his feet like fallen snow. Then, when he had thus roughly shelled each box of its contents, he gathered the pile of hats from the floor into his wide arms and, massing them together in his colossal embrace, marched triumphantly to the door of his shop. A wild exultation seized him. As the hats were useless to him, he would give them away, distribute them freely, spite his enemies next door and spoil their custom, make this noble offering of largess his last remembered action in the street.
"Here," he bawled, "who wants a hat?" The whisky had broken down the restraining barriers of his reserve, and the foolish extravagance of his act seemed to him only splendid and magnificent.
"It's the chance of a lifetime," he shouted, with a curl of his lip. "Come up, all you braw honest bodies, and see what I've got for ye."
It was nearly noon and the street was at its busiest. Immediately a crowd of urchins surrounded him expectantly, and outside this ring an increasing number of the passing townsfolk commenced to gather, silent, incredulous, yet nudging and glancing at each other significantly.