When her daughter had gone, Mrs. Brodie unrolled the ball into which the telegram had been crumpled within her contracted fingers, and although the message had seared itself upon her memory, unconsciously she gazed at it again, whilst her quivering lips slowly framed each individual word "Wire my forty pounds Poste Restante Marseilles immediately. Matt."
He wanted his money! He wanted the savings that he had sent home to her, the forty pounds that she had invested for him in the Building Society! She saw immediately that he was exiled in Marseilles, in trouble in some desperate strait, and that the money was a vital and immediate necessity to remove him from the meshes of a dreadful and dangerous entanglement. Some one had stolen his purse, he had been sandbagged and robbed, the vessel had sailed and left him stranded, without any of his belongings, in Marseilles. Marseilles the very name unknown, foreign, sinister, chilled her blood and suggested to her every possible evil that might befall her beloved son, for, on the sole evidence of this cryptic and appalling demand, she conceived him to be, definitely, the innocent victim of deplorable and harrowing circumstances. Sifting the available facts to the uttermost, she observed that the wire had been handed in at Marseilles that morning how soon had travelled the unhappy tidings! which indicated to her that he had been in a fit state to dispatch the message, that he should be, at least, in no immediate physical danger. He had recovered, perhaps, from the effects of the vicious assault upon him, and now merely awaited patiently and anxiously the arrival of his own money. As her thoughts ran through these innumerable winding channels of her supposition, they converged inevitably, despite a dozen deviations in their courses, to the one common, relentless termination, to the conclusion that she must send this money. A pitiful shudder shook her at the very thought. She could not send it; she could send nothing. She had spent every penny of his forty pounds.
During the past nine months her financial struggles had been desperate. Brodie had progressively cut her allowance until he had at length reduced it by half, yet he expected the same excellent food supplied, where he was concerned, in the same excessive quantities; and did she manifest the slightest indication of economy upon the table she became the object of a fierce sarcastic tirade, in which he vituperated her as an incompetent bungler who lacked the ability even to manage adequately the petty exchequer of the home. He taunted her with the superior ability of his old mother, producing specious evidence of the old woman's housewifely efficiency, relating in detail the delicious, inexpensive meals she had prepared for him before his marriage, threatening, despite his mother's age, to transfer the management of the house into her more competent hands. It had been useless for Mamma to protest weakly that he gave her insufficient money, that food prices were rising, that the growing Nessie required more clothes, new boots, more expensive school books, that Grandma Brodie would not relinquish one single item of the comforts and luxuries to which custom had habituated her. It would have been equally ineffective, had she attempted it, to convince him that she spent not one farthing upon her own personal expenses, that she had not bought herself a new garment for three years, that in consequence she was the epitome of bedraggled inelegance, exposing herself, by the very unselfishness of this economy, to his gibes and sneers. Seeing her thus, despite a few feeble, ineffective initial protests, accept the reducted amount and apparently manage with it, he concluded that he had been too lavish in the past and, as money was so tight with him that he exulted in the opportunity to economise at her expense, he had tightened his purse strings to the limit and ground her further under the pressure of his heel.
Although she struggled to make one shilling do the work of two by buying in the cheapest markets, by bargaining and wheedling until she had achieved a reputation for mean shrewishness, it could not continue. Bills had become overdue, tradesmen had become impatient and finally, in despair, she had chosen the path of least resistance and drawn upon Matthew's money. Immediately, matters became easier. Brodie's growls about the food became less frequent, the old woman's whining, senile recriminations abated, Nessie had a new coat, the school fees were paid, and the long-suffering butcher and grocer were appeased. She herself obtained nothing, no clothing, no trivial trinket, no indulgence of her fancy, nothing but a transient immunity from the reproaches of her husband and the worries of her debts. She had consoled herself for her action by telling herself that Matt had really meant the money for her, that he loved her so that he would desire her to take it; again, she had reasoned that she had not spent it upon herself, that she would undoubtedly save and collect it for him in better times and fairer financial weather.
Forty pounds! It was a ruinous sum! Although she had expended it so easily, the thought of obtaining it again was incredible. Under her former circumstances, and by the most penurious thrift, she might achieve this amount in, perhaps, the long term of a year; but the sum was required immediately. Her lips quivered as her heart quailed within her, but immediately she rallied herself, bracing herself to be brave for Matt's sake. She set her mouth firmly and looked up as Nessie returned to the room.
"Grandma was tidying up hei drawer," whispered Nessie to her mother, with the air of a conspirator. "She didn't hear the bell and she doesn't know a thing about it. I found out ever so carefully!"
"That's a good, clever girl," said Mamma. "Nobody's to know about that telegram, Nessie. You're not to open your mouth yourself, about it. That was for me and nobody else. I trust you now! And I'll give ye something nice if ye don't tell." Then she concluded vaguely, feeling that some form of explanation was expected of her, "It was just from an old friend in the country an old friend of Mamma's who is in some slight distress."
Nessie placed her left forefinger on her closed lips, delighted to share in a confidence of her mother's, implying by this precocious gesture that she was worthy to be trusted with the most private and mysterious secrets of the universe.
"That's right, now. Don't forget that you've given your word, Your father need know nothing about it," said Mrs. Brodie, as she got up. She desired to remain passively considering the situation, but it was nearly noon, and she had the dinner to prepare. No matter what anxiety affected her, the work of the house must go on, meak must appear upon the table with an inexorable punctuality, the master must be propitiated, fed adequately and succulently. As she began to peel a large potful of potatoes she tried to reach some decision as to what she should do.
At the outset she realised that she would obtain no help from her husband. She would have steeled herself to anything for Matt's sake, but it was an impossibility for her to face her husband and demand a sum of the absurd magnitude of forty pounds, realising with certainty, as she did, beforehand, that he would infallibly refuse to send the money. To bring the matter uselessly, in this manner, to his knowledge would be to reveal to him her own culpability, arouse his prodigious wrath, and yet obtain no tangible result. Even as she reasoned thus, she could visualise him sneering, "He's in Marseilles, is he ? Well, let him walk or swim back. It'll do the poor dear a heap o' good."
She next considered the possibilities associated with Agnes Moir. There was no doubt but that Agnes, who, like Mamma, could refuse him nothing, would be instantly willing to send money to Matthew, despite the shameful coldness and neglect she had suffered from him during the last few months, but it was, unhappily, an equal certainty that she did not possess forty pounds. The Moirs, although respectable, were poor; privation lay very near to their door and it was unthinkable, even if they wished Agnes to have the money, that they could suddenly produce a large sum like this. Additionally, there had been a strong hint of reproach in Miss Moir's attitude to her lately which contained a justifiable suggestion of suffering and injured innocence. How could she then, in the face of such wounded purity of conscience, confess herself the thief of her own idolised son's money. The impeccable Miss Moir would condemn her immediately, would perhaps repudiate her before the eyes of the entire town.