"Hats are cheap to-day," shouted Brodie at the pitch of his lungs. "Cheaper than you can buy them at the waxworks," he cried, with a ghastly facetiousness, hoping that they would hear the jibe next door. "I'm givin' them away! I'll make ye have them, whether ye want them or no'." And immediately he began to thrust hats upon the onlookers. It was, as he had said, something for nothing, and dumbly, amazedly, they accepted the gifts that they did not desire and might never use. They were afraid to refuse, and, seeing his dominance over them he gloated, glaring at them the more, beating their eyes to the ground as they met his. A deep-buried, primitive desire in his nature was at last being fed and appeased. He was in his element, the centre of a crowd who hung upon every word, every action, who looked up to him gapingly and, he imagined, admiringly. The fearful quality in his eccentric wildness made them forbear to laugh, but gazing in awed silence, ready to fall back should he run berserk suddenly amongst them, they stood like fascinated sheep before a huge wolf.
But now the mere handing out of the hats began to pall on him and he craved for less restrained, more ungoverned action. He began, therefore, to toss the contents of his arms to the people on the outskirts of the crowd; then, from merely throwing the hats, he commenced to hurl them violently at the onlookers in the ring, hating suddenly every one of the white, vacuous faces; they became his enemies and the more he despised them the more mercilessly he pelted them, in a growing, turbulent desire to hurt and disperse them.
"Here," he bellowed, "take them a'. I'm finished with them for good. I don't want the blasted things, although they're better and cheaper than you'll get next door. Better and cheaper!" he howled over and over again. "If ye didna want them before, I'll make ye take them now."
The mob retreated under the force and accuracy of his fusillade, and as they dispersed, with back-turned, protesting faces," he followed them with long, skimming shots.
"Stop it?" he shouted sneer ingly. "I'll be damned if I do. Do you not want them, that you're runnin' awa'? You're missing the chance of a lifetime."
He gloated in the commotion he was causing, and, when they were out of range, he seized a hard hat by its brim and sent it bowling down the hill where, with the full force of the following breeze, it rolled gaily like a ball in a bowling alley and finally skittled against the legs of a man walking far down the street.
"That was a good one!" cried Brodie, laughing with boisterous delight. "I aye had a grand aim. Here's another, and another." As he sent a further volley whizzing after the first shot, hats of all descriptions went madly leaping, whirling, dancing, swerving, bounding, as they pursued each other down the declivity. It was as though a hurricane had suddenly unbared the heads of a multitude; such an unparalleled and monstrous sight had never before been seen in Levenford. But at last his stock was almost exhausted, and with his final missle in his great paw, he paused selectively, weighing the last shot in his locker a stiff, boardlike straw basher which, by reason of its shape and hardness, he felt dimly to be worthy of a definite and appropriate billet. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he observed the pale, aghast face of Perry, his old assistant, peering from the adjacent doorway. He was there, was he, thought Brodie the rat that had saved his own skin by leaving the sinking ship; the beautiful manager of the Mungo Panopticon! In a flash he skimmed the flat projectile like a whirling quoit full at the sallow, horrified face. The hard serrated brim caught Perry full in the mouth, splintering a tooth and, as he saw the blood flow, and the terrified young man bolt back indoors, Brodie yelled with a roar of triumph at the success of his aim.
"That'll fit you to superintend the waxworks, you poor trash. That's something I've been owin' you a long time." It seemed to him the fitting and culminating achievement of a rare and remarkable display. Throwing up his arms into the air he waved them exultantly, then with an elated grin he turned again into the shop. Inside, as he gazed at the emptiness, complete but for the wreckage of the boxes, the smile on his lips stiffened slowly to a fixed, sardonic spasm; but he did not stop to allow himself to think. He walked through the scattered rubbish into his office where, in the continuance of his wild mood of destruction, he dragged out all the drawers in the desk, smashed the empty whisky bottle against the wall and overturned the heavy desk with a single, powerful heave. Surveying the scene with a moody, wanton satisfaction, he picked up the door key from its hook beside the window, lifted his stick and, with his head in the air, went again through and out of the shop, closing the outer door behind him. This last, single action affected him, suddenly, with a sense of such absolute finality that the key in his grasp became a foolish redundancy; when he withdrew it from the lock he looked at it senselessly as it lay in his palm, then suddenly drew back and hurled it far over the top of the building listening intently until he heard the faint splash as it dropped into the river behind. They could get into the place how they liked, he thought bitterly; he, at any rate, was finished with it.
On his way home he still could not, or at least refused to think, remaining without even a remote idea as to the conduct of his future. He had a fine stone house, heavily mortgaged, to maintain; an old decrepit mother, an invalid wife and a useless son to support, and a young daughter who must be educated, but beyond the fact that he was strong with a physique powerful enough to uproot a fair-sized tree, his assets towards these responsibilities were negligible. He did not actively consider in this fashion but, the abandon of his recent mood subsided, he felt dimly the uncertainty of his position and it weighed upon him heavily. He was affected chiefly by the lack of money in his pocket, and as he neared his house and saw standing outside a familiar high gig and bay gelding, his brow darkened.
"Damn it all," he muttered, "is he in, again? How does he expect me to pay the blasted long bill he's runnin' up?" It pricked him with an irritating reminder of his circumstances to see Doctor Lawrie's equipage at his gate and, thinking to spare himself the necessity of a tedious encounter by entering the house unobserved, he was more deeply annoyed to meet Lawrie face to face at the front door.
"Just been having a peep at the good wife, Mr. Brodie," said the doctor, with an affectation of heartiness. He was a pompous, portly man with blown-out cheeks, a small, red mouth and an insufficient chin inadequately strengthened by a grey, imperial beard, "Trying to keep her spirits up, you know; we must do all we can."
Brodie looked at the other silently, his saturnine eyes saying, more cuttingly than words, "And much good ye have done her, ye empty windbag."
"Not much change for the better, I'm afraid," continued Lawrie hurriedly, becoming a trifle more florid under Brodie's rude stare. "Not much improvement. We're nearing the end of the chapter, I fear." This was his usual stereotyped banality to indicate the nearness of death, and now he shook his head profoundly, sighed, and smoothed the small tuft on his chin with an air of melancholy resignation.
Brodie gazed with aversion at the finicking gestures of this pompous wiseacre and, though he did not regret having brought him into his house to spite Renwick, he was not deceived by his bluff manner or by his great display of sympathy.
"Ye've been tellin' me that for a long time," he growled. "You and your chapters! I believe ye know less than onybody what's goin' to happen. I'm gettin' tired of it."
"I know! I know! Mr. Brodie," said Lawrie, making little soothing gestures with his hands; "your distress is very natural very natural! We cannot say definitely when the unhappy event will occur. It depends so much on the reaction of the blood that is the crux of the question the reaction of the blood with regard to the behaviour of the corpuscles! The corpuscles are sometimes stronger than we expect. Yes! The corpuscles are sometimes marvellous in their activities," and satisfied with his show of erudition, he again stroked his moustache and looked learnedly at Brodie.