"Oh! Just everything, son! Ye can't deceive your mother's eyes. Somebody's been hard on you unjust too. But I know so little. Tell me how you left India and what what happened on the way back!"
His eyes opened more fully and, waving his cigar, he immediately grew voluble.
"Oh! That!" he said. "That's soon explained. There's nothing to tell there. I simply threw up my job because it got on my nerves! To be quite honest, Mamma, I couldn't stand the damned dock wallah who ran the office. Everything was a fault with him. If a man were a bit late in the morning, after an evening at the club, or if there happened to be a day taken off work just for a little social engagement you know he was simply unbearable." He contemplated her with an injured air as he drew at his cigar, and added indignantly, "You know how I could never abide being put upon. I was never the one to endure being bossed about by any one. It's not my nature. So I told him in plain language what I thought and walked out on him."
"Did ye not speak to Mr. Waldie about it, Matt?" she queried, sharing his resentment. "He's a Levenford man and a good man He has a great name for fairness."
"It's him I mean, the soor!" retorted Matthew bitterly. "He's the very one that tried to drive me like a coolie. Not a gentleman!" he added. "Nothing but a damned, psalm-singing slave driver."
Mamma's expression grew vaguely troubled and confused.
"Was that the reason of it, son? It wasna right if he did that to you." She paused, then ventured timidly, "We thought it might be your health?"
"Health's as sound as a bell," said Matthew sulkily. "It was the blasted job. I liked everything else out there. It was a fine life if I had been left alone. But he won't cook me, the old swine. I'll go abroad again Burma! Or Malay this time. I'll never stay in this rotten place after what I've seen."
Mrs. Brodie's heart sank. Here was her son barely home, restored only this moment to her arms, and in the next breath he talked of leaving her, of returning, like Alexander, to attempt fresh conquests in these wild foreign lands which terrified her.
"Yell not be thinkin' of that for a bit, dear," she quavered. "Maybe you'll get a post at home that would suit you better. Then you wouldna need to leave me again."
He laughed shortly.
"Do you believe I could live in a hole like this after the kind of life I've had out there ? What can you offer me here to make up for it? Think of it," he cried. "I had the club, dinners at the mess, dances, the races, polo matches, servants to wait on me hand and foot every single thing I could want."
He dazzled her with his romantic mendacity so that she saw him mixing in exclusive Society, at regimental dinners, rubbing shoulders with officers in their red mess jackets, with ladies in gleaming satin, and, overcome by the inadequacy of anything that she could offer in return, she could only say weakly:
"I know there's not much of that at home, son. But I'll I'll do my best to attend to you, to make you comfortable here." He made no reply and, at his eloquent silence, she hesitated, dismayed that the conversation should languish in this fashion, as though after two years he had nothing to to tell her, no eagerness to discover how she had fared in his absence.
"Did ye have a good voyage home?" she ventured at last.
"Tolerable! Quite tolerable," he admitted. "Weather was good but 1 got very bored towards the end. I left the ship at Marseilles."
"That was where I sent ye the your money," she remarked haltingly. "Ye got it safe?"
"Yes, I got it all right," he replied negligently. "Took a devilish age to come through though. Long to come and quick to go."
"I suppose ye had some grave need of a' that siller, Matt?"
"That's right," he replied. "I needed it that was enough, wasn't it?"
"True enough, Matt," she answered. "I knew from your wire you had sore need of it. But it was such a sum of money."
"Sum of fiddlesticks," he retorted angrily. "You would think it wasn't my own the way you talk. I worked for it, didn't I? I didn't rob ye for it. It was mine to spend as I liked."
"Spend," she echoed; "ye needed it for something more than jus’ the spendin' of it."
He burst into a high laugh.
"Mamma! You'll be the death of me! You know I came back overland. How could a man get along without a little pocket money?" He broke off and regarded her with mock solemnity. "I tell you what I did, Mamma. I went around all the blind beggars in Paris and shared out the cash amongst them. That was the last little fling I had in gay Paree before getting home to this excitin' spot."
She was totally submerged, and the vision of Paris rose before her, indicating clearly that she had demeaned herself, thrust herself into the clutches of unchristian money-lenders for the sole purpose of sending him with a full purse into the unchaste delights of a wicked city. For what wild and reckless extravagances on his part would she be compelled to pay tribute over the next two years? Despite her burning love she said reproachfully, and at the grave risk of offending him:
"Oh! Matt, I would rather ye hadna visited such a like place. I'm not saying you did wrong with the money, dear, but that that city must be full of temptations for a young man. I'm afraid it was a mistaken thing to do and I'm sure Agnes would think the same."
Again he laughed rudely.
"What Agnes thinks or says means as much to me now as the squeak of an old boot. I know what she would think, all right, and as for her talk, there's too much hymn book about that for my taste. I'll never sit on her sofa again. No! She's not the woman for me, Mamma! I'm finished with her."
"Matt! Matt!" burst out Mamma. "Don't talk like that. Ye can't mean what you say. Agnes is devoted to you."
"Devoted!" he retorted. "Let her keep that for them that wants it. What else has she got? Nothing! Why," he continued expansively, "I've met women with more in their little finger than she has in her whole body. Charm! Vivacity! Life!"
Mrs. Brodie was horrified and, as she gazed at her son appealingly, a sudden thought struck her.
"Ye havena broken the pledge, have ye, son?" she quavered anxiously.
He looked at her queerly, asking himself if the old girl thought he was still at her apron strings. Perhaps he had been too unguarded with her.
"Just a spot of Hollands occasionally," he replied smoothly. "We have to take it out there, you know, for the good of the liver."
She immediately visioned his liver as a dry, absorbent sponge, driving him to imbibe spirits to saturate it, and feeling the mercy of his return to what was, in a double sense, a more temperate climate, she returned bravely to the charge.
"Agnes is a good girl, Matt! She would be the salvation of any man. She's waited on you faithfully. It would break her heart if ye gave her up now."
"All right, Mamma," he replied suavely. "Don't worry! Don't get excited! I'll see her if you like." It suddenly occurred to him that, imbued with his more potent worldly experience, it might be amusing to see Miss Moir again.
"That's good of you, son. You go and see her. I knew you would do that for me." She was at once relieved, feeling the power of her love over him, knowing that when the young people came together everything would be right again. If he had strayed, Agnes would bring him back to the narrow pathway, and now hastily, for fear he might suddenly take back his promise, she passed on, reclaiming him further.
"I'm afraid you have had a very gay life out there, Matt. I don't blame ye, my boy, but it would be difficult to keep your mind fixed on the more godly matters of life." His vague allusions had shocked her; she must know more, be at all costs reassured. And she continued interrogatively: "Still, you did read your chapter every day, didn't you, son?"
He moved restlessly in his chair, glanced at her resentfully.
"That sounds just like old Waldie, Mamma," he replied impatiently. "You'll be asking me if I walked down Chowringee Road with a text slung round my neck or thumped a Bible out on the maidan in the evenings."