Back in his office he continued to drink. His brain clarified with each glass, grew more dominant, more compelling; his body responded more quickly and more perfectly to his movements; he now sanctioned with an intense approval all his recent actions.
The empty bottle stood on the table before him, bearing on the label the words: "Mountain Dew", which struck his bemused fancy as notably appropriate; for now he felt as powerful as a mountain and as sparkling as dew.
"Yes," he muttered, addressing himself to the bottle, "you mark my words; they can't down me. I'm more than a match for them. I can master them. Everything I did was right. I wouldna draw back a step o' the road I took wi' her. Just you wait and see how I'll go ahead now. Everything will be forgotten and nothing will stop me! I'll get the whip hand o' them."
Actually he did not know whom he was indicting, but he included largely and indeterminately in that category all whom he imagined had opposed him, slighted him, or failed to recognise him as the man he was. He did not now think of the threatened opposition to his business, which became, in the swollen magnitude of his disdainful pride, too petty, too ridiculously ineffectual to affect him adversely.
The opposition which he recognised was universal, intangible, yet crystallised in the feeling that any man's hand might be raised against his sacrosanct dignity; and now this obsession, always latent within him, strengthened and become more corrosive in his mind. And yet conversely, whilst the danger to his position loomed the more largely before him, his faith in his ability to conquer such a menace was augmented and exalted in such a manner as to render him almost omnipotent.
At last he started, took out his watch and looked at it. The hands, which appeared larger and blacker than usual, showed ten minutes to one.
"Time for dinner," he told himself agreeably. "Time to see that braw, tidy wife o' mine. It's a grand thing for a man to have such a bonnie wife to draw him hame." He got up impressively, but with a slight, almost imperceptible sway, and walking solidly out of his office, disregarding the awestruck, cringing Perry absolutely. He stalked through the shop and into the street, gained the middle of the street, and held it like a lord. Along the crown of the causeway he swaggered, head erect, shoulders thrown back, planting his feet in front of him with a magnificent sense of his own importance. The few people who were abroad gazed at him in amazement, and as, from the corner of his eye, he saw them glance, their astonishment fed his vanity, his intoxicated assurance battened on their wonder. "Take a good look," his attitude seemed to say. "It's Brodie you're lookin' at James Brodie, and, by God, he's a man!" He walked through the snow the whole way home as though he headed a triumphal procession, keeping so exactly in the centre of the road, and holding so undeviatingly to his course that such traffic as traversed the streets had perforce to go around him, leaving him the undisputed king of the causeway.
Outside his house he paused. The white envelope of snow vested it with an unreal and delusive dignity, softening the harsh lines, relieving the squat and rigid contours, blending the incongruous elements with its clinging touch so that, before his fuddled eyes, it reared itself in massive grandeur, looming against the opaque, slate-coloured sky with an illusion of infinite dimensions. He had never liked it so well or admired it so much and a sense of elation that he should possess it held him as he marched to the front door and entered his home.
In the hall he removed his hat and, with wide extravagant gestures, scattered in all directions the thick snow that had caked upon it, amusedly watching the mushy gobbets go slushing against the roof, the walls, the pictures, the chandelier; then, wildly, he stamped his heavy boots upon the floor, dislodging hard, pressed lumps of ice and snow. It would give that handless slut of his something to do to clean up his mess, he thought, as he walked into the kitchen with the air of a conqueror.
Immediately, he sat down and delved into the huge steaming bowl of broth, sweet with the essence of beef and bones, and stiff with the agglutination of barley, that stood on the table anticipating his arrival, the ignored reminder of his wife's devotion and forethought. Just the thing for a cold day, he thought, as he supped greedily with the zest of a ravenous animal, lifting huge, heaped spoonfuls rapidly to his mouth and working his jaws incessantly. The meat and small fragments of bone that floated through the pottage he rent and crushed between his hard teeth, revelling in the fact that for weeks his appetite had not been so keen or the taste of food so satisfying upon his tongue.
"That was grand," he admitted to Mrs. Brodie, smacking his lips coarsely at her, "and a good thing for you. If ye had singed my broth on a day like this I would have flung it about your lugs." Then, as she paused at the unusual praise, he bellowed at her, "What are ye gawkin' at; is this all I've to get for my dinner?"
At once she retreated, but, as she hastily brought in the boiled beef and platter of potatoes and cabbage, she wondered fearfully what had drawn him from out his perpetual, grim taciturnity to this roaring, devilish humour. He hacked off a lump of the fat beef and thrust it upon his plate; he then loaded it with potatoes and cabbage, and began to eat; with his mouth full, he regarded her derisively.
"My, but you are the fine figure of a woman, my dear," he sneered, between champing mouthf uls. "You're about as straight as that lovely nose o* yours. No, don't run away." He raised his knife, with a broad, minatory gesture, to arrest her movement, whilst he finished masticating a chunk of beef. Then he went on, with a fine show of concern, "I must admit ye ha vena got bonnier lately; all this worry has raddled ye; in fact, you're more like an old cab horse than ever now. I see you are still wearin' that dish clout of a wrapper." He picked his teeth reflectively with a prong of his fork. "It suits you right well."
Mamma stood there like a wilted reed, unable to sustain his derisive stare, keeping her eyes directed out of the window, as though this abstracted gaze enabled her better to endure his taunts. Her face was grey with an ill, vitreous translucency, her eyelids retracted with a dull, fixed despondency; her thin, work-ugly hands played nervously with a loose tape at her waist.
Suddenly a thought struck Brodie. He looked at the clock. "Where's Nessie?" he shouted.
"I gave her some lunch to school, to save her coming back in the snow."
He grunted. "And my Mother," he demanded.
"She wouldna get up to-day for fear of the cold," she whispered. A guffaw shook him. "That's the spirit you should have had, you fushionless creature. If ye'd had that kind o' gumption ye would have stood up better, and no' run down so quick." Then, after a pause, he continued, "So it's just you and me together. That's very touchin', is't not? Well! I've grand news for ye! A rich surprise!"
Immediately her look left the window; she gazed at him with a numb expectation.
"Don't excite yourself, though," he scoffed, "it's not about your fine, bawdy daughter. You'll never know where she is! It's business this time. You're always such a help and encouragement to a man that I must tell ye this." He paused importantly. "The Mungo Clothing Company have taken the shop next door to your husband ay next door to Brodie the Hatter." He laughed uproariously. "So maybe ye'll find yourself in the poorhouse soon!" He howled at his own humour.