by A. J. Cronin
Actually, it was not a bad Social, an intimate informal affair rather like the annual gathering of a large and happy middle-class family. At one end of the hall were tables set out with the supper: cakes, sandwiches, biscuits, green jellies, lots of small hard oranges that looked full of pips and were, bright red bottles of kola and two huge brass urns for tea and coffee. At the other end on a very high platform, screened by two aspidistras and a palm, was the orchestra, a grand orchestra, it had a full bass drum, used without stint, and Frank McGarvie at the piano. No one could put in more wonderful “twiddley-bits” than Frank. And the time? Impossible to put a foot wrong with Frank McGarvie’s time, it was so wonderful, as though bunged out with a hammer—La de dee, La de dee, La de dee—the floor of the Oddfellows’ Hall went up on the la and down, reverberating, on that final dee.
Every one was matey, there was no side, no nonsense of pencil and programme. Two foolscap sheets—beautifully written out by Frank McGarvie’s sister—were pasted on opposite walls indicating the number and order of the dances! Valse… Nights of Gladness, 2 Valetta… In a Gondola with You, and so on. Much companionable crowding took place round the lists, giggling, craning of necks, linking of arms, commingling of perfume, perspiration and exclamations: “Hey, Bella, hinny, can ye do the military two-step?”: in which fashion partners were achieved. Or a young husky, having scanned the list, might take a gallant slide across the slippy powdered floor, his impetus carrying him straight on to the bosom of his beloved. “It’s the lancers, lass, diddent ye know? Come on an’ dance it wi’ us.”
Jenny took a look at the assembly. She saw the poor refreshments, the pasted programmes on the steamy walls, the cheap and gaudy dresses, bright red, blue and green, the ridiculous dress suit of old Mike McKenna, the honoured master of ceremonies; she saw that gloves and slippers were considered by many to be non-essential; she saw the coterie of fat elderly puddlers’ wives seated in a corner, conversing amicably while their offspring skipped and hopped and slid upon the floor before them. Jenny saw all this in one long look. Then she turned up her pretty nose.
“This,” she sniffed to Joe, “gives me the pip.”
“What?” he gaped.
She snapped at him then, “It’s not nice, it’s not classy, it’s low.”
“But aren’t you going to dance?”
She tossed her head indifferently.
“Oh, we might as well, I suppose, take the benefit of the floor. The tickets are paid for, aren’t they?”
So they danced, but she held herself well away from him, and well apart from all the hand-clapping and stamping and screeches of merriment round about.
“Who’s that?” said she disdainfully as they two-stepped past the door.
Joe followed her eyes. That was an inoffensive looking fellow, a middle-aged man, with a round head, a compact figure and slightly bandy legs.
“Jack Lynch,” Joe said. “He’s a blacksmith in the shop. Seems to have a notion of you.”
“Him!” Jenny said, smirking stiffly at her own wit. “I’ve seen better in a cage.”
She lapsed into her monosyllabic mood, lifting her eyebrows, keeping her head well up in the air, condescending. She wanted it to be seen that she was, in her own phrase, above all this.
Yet Jenny was a little premature. Gradually, as the evening wore on, people began to drop in: not the workpeople, the plain members of the Club who had crowded to the Social at the start, but the honorary members, a few draughtsmen from the drawing office, Mr. Irving, the accountant, and his wife, Morgan, the cashier, and actually old Mr. Clegg, the works manager. Jenny unbent slightly; she even smiled at Joe:
“It seems to be improving.”
No sooner had she spoken than the doors swung open and Stanley Millington arrived, Mr. Stanley himself, our Mr. Stanley. It was a great moment. He entered genially, crisp and well-groomed in a very smart dinner suit, bringing his fiancée with him.
This time Jenny really sat up, fixing her shrewd noticing stare upon the two smart young people as they smiled and shook hands with several of the older members of the Club.
“That’s Laura Todd with him,” she whispered breathlessly. “You know, her father’s the mining engineer in the Groat Market, I see her about plenty I can tell you. They got engaged last August, it was in the Courier.”
Joe stared at her eager face. Jenny’s burning interest in the “smart” society of Tynecastle, her delight in being posted to the last detail, left him quite nonplussed. But she now unbent completely towards him.
“Why aren’t we dancing, Joe?” she murmured, and rose to twirl languorously in his arms near Millington and Miss Todd.
“That frock of hers… a model… straight out of Bonar’s,” she whispered confidentially in Joe’s ears as they swept past. Bonar’s was, of course, the last word in Tynecastle. “And that lace…” she lifted her eyes expressively… “well…”
The gaiety increased, the drum thundered, Frank McGarvie put in more twiddley-bits than ever, the pace got fast and furious. Every one was so glad that young Mr. Stanley had found “time to come.” And to bring Miss Laura with him, too! Stanley Millington was “well thought of” in Yarrow. His father had died some years before while Stanley was seventeen and still at school at St. Bede’s. Stanley had therefore come hot foot to the works—athletic, upstanding, very fresh complexioned, with the small beginnings of a moustache—to learn the business under old Henry Clegg. Now, at twenty-five, Stanley was in command, enthusiastic and indefatigable, always extremely eager to do what he called the correct thing. Every one agreed that Stanley had the right spirit, it was the advantage of having been “at a good school.”
Founded fifty years before by a group of rich northern nonconformist merchants, St. Bede’s, in the short span of its existence, had achieved the true public school tradition. Prefects, fags, tuck shop, esprit de corps, inspiring school song, St. Bede’s has them all and more, as though Dr. Fuller, the first head master, had gone round all the ancient schools of England with a butterfly net, capturing skilfully from each the choicest of its customs. Sport bulks largely at St. Bede’s. Colours are awarded freely. They are pretty colours; purple, scarlet and gold. Stanley, passionately devoted to his old school, was naturally devoted to its colours. Usually he wore something on his person—tie, cuff links, braces or suspenders, emblazoned in the famous purple, scarlet and gold—a kind of testimony to the true sportsmanship for which St. Bede’s has always stood.
In a manner of speaking, Mr. Stanley’s sportsmanship was the reason of his coming to the Social. He wanted to be decent, to do the decent, the correct thing. And so he was here, extremely agreeable, shaking horny hands, interspersing his waltzes with Laura with several dances with the heavier wives of the old employees.
As the evening wore on, Jenny’s bright smile, which had developed upon the entry of our Mr. Stanley and Laura Todd, became a trifle fixed; her laughter, which always seemed to ripple out, as she wheeled past either the one, or the other, or both, a trifle forced. Jenny was burning to be “noticed” by Miss Todd, dying simply for our Mr. Stanley to ask her to dance. But, no, nothing happened, it really was too bad. Instead Jack Lynch kept staring at her, following her about, trying to get the chance to ask her for a dance.
Jack was not a bad lad, the trouble was that Jack was drunk. Everybody knew that Jack was fond of a bead and to-night, nipping in and out of the Hall to the adjacent Duke of Cumberland, Jack had strung a good few beads on his alcoholic rosary. In the ordinary way Jack would have stood by the Hall door, nodding happily to the music and at the end gone home unsteadily upon his bandy legs to bed. But to-night Jack’s bad angel hovered near.
The last dance before supper Jack straightened his tie, and swaggered over to Jenny.
“Come awa’, hinny,” he said in his broad Tyneside. “You an’ me’ll show them.”
Jenny tossed her head and looked pointedly across the room. Joe, sitting beside her, said:
“Away you go, Jack. Miss Sunl
ey’s dancing with me.”
Jack swayed on his feet:
“But aw want her to dawnce wi’ me.” He reached out his arm with rough gallantry. There was not an ounce of harm in Jack but he staggered, so that his big paw fell accidentally on Jenny’s shoulder.
Jenny screamed dramatically. And Joe, rising in a sudden heat, planted a right hook dexterously on the point of Jack’s chin. Jack measured his length on the floor. Hubbub broke.
“I say, what’s all this?” Mr. Stanley, thrusting his way forward, came through the crowd to where Joe stood gallantly with his chest stuck out and his arm round the pale-faced, frightened Jenny. “What’s happened? What’s the trouble?”
The manly Joe, with his heart in his boots, replied virtuously:
“He was drunk, Mr. Millington, rotten drunk. A fellow’s got to draw the line somewhere.” Joe had been out on a beautiful blind with Lynch the Saturday before, they had both been chucked out of the Empire Bar, but he forgot, oh, he rose above that now. “He was drunk and interfered with my friend, Mr. Stanley. I only protected her.”
Stanley took in the pair of them—the clean-limbed young fellow… beauty in distress; then, with a frown, the figure of the fallen drunkard.
“Drunk,” he exclaimed. “That’s too bad, really too bad. I can’t have any of that here! My people are decent people and I want them to enjoy themselves decently. Carry him out, will you. Attend to it, Mr. Clegg, please. And let him come and see me at the office to-morrow. He can have his ticket.”
Jack Lynch, the obscenity, was carried out. Next day he was sacked. Stanley turned again to Joe and Jenny; smiled in answer to Joe’s grin and Jenny’s melting winsomeness.
“That’s all right,” he nodded reassuringly. “You’re Joe Gowlan, aren’t you? I know you perfectly. I know all you chaps, make a point of it. Introduce me to your girl, Joe. How do you do, Miss Sunley? You must dance with me if you will, Miss Sunley, take that little unpleasantness away if we can. And you, Joe, let me introduce you to my girl. Perhaps you’ll dance with her, eh?”
So Jenny floated away ecstatically in the arms of Mr. Stanley, holding herself very, very properly, elbow fashionably straight, conscious that every eye in the room was fixed upon her. And Joe pranced heavily with Miss Todd, whose eyes seemed to find amusement in him and a certain interest.
“That was a lovely punch,” she said with the little humorous twist to her lips that was her mannerism.
He admitted the punch to be a superior punch, feeling virtuous and painfully ill at ease.
“I like a chap,” she casually commented, “to be able to take care of himself.” She smiled again. “But don’t look as if you’d suddenly joined the Good Templars.”
Stanley, Miss Todd, Jenny and Joe took supper together. Jenny was in heaven. She smiled, showed her pretty teeth, cast her dark lashes down entrancingly; she ate jelly with her fork; left a little of everything upon her plate. She was a little shaken when Laura Todd, lifting an orange, bit into the skin off-handedly with her white teeth. She was even more shaken when Laura nonchalantly borrowed Stanley’s handkerchief. But it was rapture, rapture, all of it, every moment. And to crown all, when it was over, and the Social breaking up, Joe, in atonement for that earlier sin of omission, magnificently commandeered a cab.
The last compliments were exchanged; good-byes called, much waving of hands. In a flutter of petticoats and excitement Jenny stepped into the greenish mildewed vehicle which smelt of mice, funerals, weddings and damp livery stables. The little woolly balls of her fascinator dangled deliriously. She sank back in the cushions.
“Oh, Joe,” she gushed. “It’s been perfectly lovely. I didn’t know you knew Mr. Millington so well. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d no idea. He’s very nice. She is too, of course. Not good-looking, mind you, a bit of a one to go, I should say. Real style, though. That dress she had on cost pounds and pounds let me tell you, the last word, and I should know. Did you notice when she bit that orange, though? and the hanky?… I could have dropped. My! I wouldn’t have done a thing like that. Not at all ladylike. Do you hear me, Joe, listen!”
He assured her tenderly that he heard. Alone with her in the dark cab, the longing he had for her rose suddenly to fever heat. His whole body flamed, swelled with that longing. All the evening he had held her in his arms, felt her thinly covered body against his. For months she had staved him off. Now he had her, here, alone. Burning, he shifted his position, carefully edged nearer to her, as she lay back in the corner of the cab, and slipped his arm round her waist. She was still talking nineteen to the dozen, excited, lifted out of herself, gay.
“Some day I’ll have a dress like hers, Miss Todd’s I mean. Satin it was and real lace edging. She knows what’s what I’ll be bound. She’s got the look of a real fast one, too, you can always tell.”
Gently, very gently he drew her close to him, murmured, making his voice caressing:
“I’m not wanting to talk about her, Jenny. I didn’t notice her at all. It’s you I noticed. I’m noticin’ you now!”
She giggled, well pleased.
“You’re far, far better lookin’ than her. And your dress looked a heap prettier an’ all.”
“Two and four the material cost, Joe… I got the pattern out of Weldon’s.”
“By gum, you’re a wonder, Jenny…” He continued skilfully to flatter her. And the more he flattered, the more he fondled her. He could feel she was excited, strung up, letting him do little things he had never been allowed to do before. Elation swelled in him. Thirsting for her, he moved ever so cautiously.
Suddenly she called out sharply:
“Don’t, Joe! Don’t! You got to behave.”
“Ah, what’s your worry, my dear,” he soothed her.
“No, Joe, no! It’s wrong. It isn’t right.”
“It isn’t wrong, Jenny,” he whispered piously. “Don’t we love each other?”
Tactically it was perfect. Whatever his status in the billiards handicap, Joe certainly was no novice in the seducer’s gentle art. Flustered, feeling him close to her:
“But, no, Joe… well, not here, Joe.”
“Ah, Jenny…”
She struggled.
“Look, Joe, we’re nearly there. See, Plummer Street. We’re nearly home. Let me go, Joe. Let me go.”
Sullenly he lifted his hot face from her neck, saw that she was right. Burning with disappointment, he almost gave way to loud profanity. But he got out, helped her to alight, flung a shilling to the scarecrow of a jarvie, followed her up the steps. The curve of her figure from behind, her simple act of taking the key and sliding it into the keyhole maddened him with desire. Then he remembered that Alf, her father, was away for the night.
In the kitchen, lit only by the firelight, she faced him: for all her offended maidenhood she seemed reluctant to go to bed. The excitement, the unusualness of it all worked in her, and her triumph at the Social still buzzed in her head. She postured a little coyly.
“Will I light the gas and make you some cocoa, Joe?”
With an effort he mastered his sullenness, his frantic desire to seize her. Plaintively he said:
“You don’t give a fella a chance, Jenny. Come on and sit on the sofa a bit. I haven’t had a word with you all night.”
Half-awakened, half-afraid, she stood undecided; it was so dull to say good night and go to bed; and Joe really looked awful handsome tonight; taking that cab, too, he had behaved handsome. She giggled again:
“Well… it won’t hurt us to talk.” She moved to the sofa.
On the sofa he took her close in his arms: it was easier now that he had done it before; she tried only half-heartedly to snatch herself away. He felt the excitement, the unusualness of the whole evening vibrating through her body.
“Don’t Joe, don’t. We got to behave.” She kept on repeating it, not knowing what she said.
“Ah, Jenny, you must. You know I’m mad about you. You know we love each other.”
Fascinated, terrif
ied in one breath, resisting, yielding, lost in fear, pain and something unknown:
“But, Joe… You’re hurting me, Joe.”
He knew he had her now, knew with a wild delicious knowledge that this, at last, was Jenny.
The fire was going out. The grate empty. Now that it was long over and her period of snivelling done, she whispered:
“Hold me tight, Joe… tighter, Joe dear.”
God! Could you beat it, and him lying there uncomfortable as the devil, with some of her hair getting in his mouth. As she snuggled up to him, offering her pale, tear-stained, pretty face—now shorn of all silly affectation—for his kiss she was for once simple and beautiful like one of her father’s little pearly doves. Yet now he almost, yes, he almost could have kicked her. There was, of course, the extenuating circumstances; this was, as he had said, Joe’s first real love.
TWELVE
Saturday night had its routine at the Law. After cold supper Hilda played to her father upon the organ. And to-night, the last Saturday of November 1909, at eight o’clock, Hilda was playing the first movement of Handel’s Water Music while Barras sat in his chair supporting his forehead in his hand, listening. Hilda did not like playing to her father. But Hilda played. It was part of Barras’s routine that Hilda should play.
Richard Barras held closely to his routine. This did not stamp Barras as a creature of habit. In stature he was above habit. And routine was not his master but the echo rather, the constantly resounding echo of his principle. To comprehend Richard Barras it is necessary to begin by admitting this principle. He was a man of principle and not, be it understood, of hypocritical principle. He was sincere.
He was, too, a moral man. He despised those weaknesses into which humanity is so frequently and unhappily betrayed. He was incapable, for example, of thinking of any woman but his wife. Though Harriet was an invalid she was in effect his wife. His wife. He despised the grosser appetites of men; rich food and wines, overeating, overdrinking, oversleeping, luxury, sensuality, all the excesses of bodily indulgence were abhorrent to him. He ate plainly and usually drank water. He did not smoke. Though his suit was always well made and of good material, he had few clothes and no vanity for dress.