Mamma looked miserably from his prone figure to the tray still in her hands, as though unable to comprehend his refusal or the full force of his abuse; then, moved by the thought that he might later reconsider his decision, she laid the tray down on a chair by the bedside, covered the cup warmly with the saucer, inverted the plate protectingly over the fresh bread, and turned disconsolately away.
He was on her mind all morning. The fire was kindled, the dishes were washed, the boots were brushed, the porridge bubbled; she took up her husband's shaving water, then began to lay the table whilst she thought of him, lamenting the words he had used to her, mourning the revealing odour of his breath, yet all the time excusing him in her mind. The shock of coming home, of his father's treatment, had upset him; as for his language, he had, poor boy, been in a rough land and had not been fully awakened when he spoke to her. Whilst she forgave him, the still house began to stir; light and heavy sounds vibrated through the ceiling, doors were opened and shut upstairs, and now, confronted by the fear that some further disturbance irneht arise between Brodie and her son, she listened anxiously for the noise of some sudden outburst, the clash of angry voices, even for the sound of a blow. To her intense relief none came, and, after Nessie had come downstairs and been hurriedly fed and packed off with her satchel of books, Brodie descended and began to breakfast in sombre, solitary silence. She had taken the utmost care that everything should be perfect for him this morning in order to lull him into a more amiable mood; was prepared, even,
to lie blatantly about Matt's coming in late: but although his mood seemed to her unpropitious, her fear proved to be unfounded and he departed without a single reference to his son.
When he had gone she breathed more easily and, her tranquillity further restored by a belated cup of tea, she prepared Grandma's breakfast and took it upstairs shortly before ten o'clock. When she had visited the old woman she tiptoed across the landing and listened with her ear to the door of Matt's room; hearing only the rise and fall of his breathing, she softly opened the door. She saw at once that nothing had been touched and, to her wounded feelings, it seemed as though the undisturbed tray mutely rebuked her, that the plate still investing the untouched bread and butter, and the saucer still uselessly covering the long since cold tea were like tokens of her folly and presumption. He still slept. Confusedly she wondered if his removal from what she considered to be an antipodean hemisphere might not have inverted the hours of his repose, and, in rendering him active at night and drowsy by day, have thus made it a necessity for him to sleep through certain hours of the forenoon. Unconvinced in mind but none the less eased a little in heart, feeling that if not this, perhaps some kindred reason existed for his behaviour, she did not disturb him and again passed quietly out of the room.
Hesitatingly she addressed herself to her household duties in an effort to divert her attention, but as the forenoon drew on, uneasiness gradually possessed her; she comprehended that if their son was still in bed when Brodie returned for dinner, a disastrous scene might take place. Anxiously she pricked her ears for the first evidence of his retarded activity and, towards noon, was rewarded by hearing the faint creak of his bed as it surrendered his body, the sound of his step upon the boards above. Hastily decanting water into a jug from the kettle which stood ready boiling, she rushed upstairs to leave it outside his door.
He was a long time dressing, but about quarter to one he carne slowly downstairs and entered the kitchen. She greeted him fondly.
"I'm that glad you've had a nice long sleep, dear, but you've had no breakfast. Will you have a bite before your dinner? Just say the word; it'll not be the least bother for me to get ye a " It had been on her tongue to offer him the universal panacea a cup of tea but mercifully she recollected his remark of the morning in time and added, "anything that's in the house."
"I never eat much in the morning." He was smartly dressed in a different suit from the day before, in a smooth, fawn hopsack with a puce shirt and natty brown tie to match; as he fingered the bow of his tie with white plastic fingers that trembled slightly, he eyed her doubtfully, judging erroneously from her adulatory manner that she could not fully have realised his discomfiture of the night before.
"I miss the fresh fruit my servants used to bring me," he asserted, feeling that some further explanatory remark might be required of him.
"You'll have some nice apples to-morrow, Matt," she replied eagerly. "Ill put in the order sure. If ye just tell me what you'd like, or the kind of food you've been used to outbye, I'll do my best to get it for ye."
His attitude repudiated the idea of such sour wizened apples as she might obtain for him in this unproductive land; he waved his hand eloquently and retorted shortly:
"I meant mangos, fairy bananas, pineapple. Nothing but the best is any use to me."
"Well, son, we'll do our utmost, anyway," she replied bravely, although somewhat out of countenance at the grandiloquence of his remark. "I've got a nice dinner for ye, now. Then, if ye feel like it afterwards, I was thinking maybe we might have a bit stroll together."
"I'm going out for tiffin" he answered coldly, as though her suggestion was ridiculous and to be seen walking with her decrepit, outlandish figure the last thought his superior mind woyld entertain,
Her face fell and she stammered:
"I I had such nice nourishin' broth for ye, boy, as sweet as anything."
"Give it to the old man," he retorted bitterly. "Give him a bucketful. He can stand it." He paused for a moment, then continued in a more ingratiating tone, "I wonder though, Mamma, if you would lend me a pound or two for to-day. It's such a confounded nuisance, but my bank drafts have not come through from Calcutta yet." He frowned at the annoyance of it all. "It's causing me no end of inconvenience. Here am I stuck up for a little ready cash all through their beastly delay. Lend me a fiver and you shall have it next week."
A fiver! She almost burst into hysterical tears at the word, at the painful absurdity of his request that she should lend him at a moment's notice five pounds she who was bleeding herself white to scrape together the monthly toll that would soon be levied on her, who had, apart from the three pounds she had laboriously collected for the purpose, only a few paltry copper and silver coins in her purse!
"Oh! Matt," she cried. "Ye don't know what you're askin'. There isna such a sum in the house!"
"Come on now," he replied rudely, "you can do it fine. Toll out. Where's your bag?"
"Don't speak to me like that, dear," she whispered. "I canna bear it. I would do anything for ye but what you're askin' is impossible."
"Lend me one pound then, seeing you're so stingy," he said, with a hard look at her. "Come on! give me a miserable pound."
"Ye can't understand, son," she pleaded. "I'm so poor now I can hardly make ends meet. Your father doesna give me enough for us to live on." A yearning desire took hold of her to tell him of the manner in which she had been obliged to raise the money to send to him at Marseilles but she stifled it, realising with a sudden pause that this moment, above all, was not propitious.
"What does he think he's doing? He's got his business and this precious wonderful house of his," Matthew sneered. "What is it he's spending the money on now?"
"Oh! Matt, I hardly like to tell ye' she sobbed, "but things seem to be in a bad way with your father in the business. I'm I'm feared the house is bonded. He hasna said a word to me but I saw some papers lyin' in his room. It's terrible. It's the opposition that's started against him in the town. I've no doubt he'll win through, but in the meantime I've got to make one shillin' do the work of two."
He looked at her in sullen amazement, but refused, none the less, to be diverted from the issue.