The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  “We shall be able to bring out those ten men,” he said gravely. “That pleases me, Caroline.”

  “Yes, Richard.”

  “There must be a public funeral. I’ll arrange it. A token of respect.”

  Aunt Carrie inclined her head. A pause. She moved towards the door.

  “I was going to cut some asparagus for your dinner. The first of the season.” And she waited eagerly: Richard had always praised her for the excellence of her asparagus.

  He nodded.

  “By the bye, leave out some sandwiches to-night, Caroline. I may be late coming back. I’m taking Hetty to the theatre.”

  Aunt Carrie coloured and her heart sank from her faded tussore blouse right into her old cracked gardening boots. She answered in a tremulous voice:

  “Yes, Richard.” Then she went out to the garden.

  But she cut her asparagus with an uneasy mind. Coming on top of Arthur’s misfortune—it was like Aunt Carrie to soften his prison sentence to this ambiguity—the situation between Hetty and Richard distressed her frightfully. Richard, of course, was beyond reproach. But Aunt Carrie was not so sure about Hetty now; she viewed with misgiving these recent presents; at times Aunt Carrie almost hated Hetty.

  All that evening Aunt Carrie worried and worried and would not go to bed until Richard should return.

  It was, in fact, nearly eleven when Barras came back to the Law. And Hetty came with him. He had suggested that they take the cool drive together, after the heat of the theatre. Bartley would drive her home later.

  They entered the drawing-room in good spirits.

  “I can’t stay, you know,” Hetty declared brightly. She took the cigarette he offered her and perched on the arm of a chair, her legs crossed, one neat ankle swinging.

  “You’ll have a sandwich?” he suggested with a sheepish smile. And he went into the dining-room to find the tray Aunt Carrie had prepared.

  There was no doubt about it, he was reluctant to let her go. He did not ask himself why. He had always held himself a moral man, mechanically content to satisfy his physical needs at the legitimate fount of love upstairs. But since the disaster he was different. The state of tension in which he lived had accelerated his functions, infused a fever through his blood. He was experiencing the Indian summer of his ductless glands. Sometimes the sense of his own physical well-being was extraordinary. It is true that once or twice he had experienced a sharp attack of giddiness, almost of vertigo, which had made him reel and clutch at the nearest article of furniture to save himself from falling. But this, he knew, was nothing, nothing whatever; he had never felt better in his life.

  He went back into the drawing-room.

  “Here you are, my dear.”

  She accepted a chicken sandwich in silence.

  “You’re very quiet all of a sudden,” he observed, after several side glances towards her small, appealing profile.

  “Am I?” she answered, averting her eyes.

  The fixed admiration in his face made her suddenly uneasy. It was impossible not to realise the change in him. For some weeks past, indeed, his manner, attentions and repeated presents had suggested the possibility of a climax approaching, and this did not suit Hetty at all. She did not like it. She wanted to keep on receiving the advantages without giving anything in exchange. To begin with, Hetty was, in her own phrase, a good girl. Actually she had no morality; she was pure by design, saved from sin by the marketable value of her virginity. Her fixed idea was to make a good match, a marriage which would give her money and position, and to this end she knew perfectly how important it was to maintain her maiden state. This was easy, for though her effect was aphrodisiac, in herself she had no sexual impulses—Laura, her sister, had received the double supply. At the outset Barras’s attentions had flattered and soothed her. Arthur’s imprisonment had fallen as a dreadful blow upon her vanity, removing Arthur at one stroke from her pleasant plannings for the future. She could never marry him now, never, never. It was natural for her to accept Barras’s sympathy; the mere fact of being seen with him in public helped tremendously to “save her face”; they were united against a weakling who had wretchedly let them down.

  The drawing-room was lit by several of the new shaded lamps, which cast soft pools of light upon the carpet and left the ceiling mysterious and dark.

  “How pretty!” she exclaimed, arising and moving towards the shades and fingering their fringes. Then she turned brightly.

  “Why don’t you smoke a cigar?”

  She had the idea that he would be safer if engaged with a cigar.

  “I don’t want a cigar,” he replied ponderously, his eyes dwelling on her face.

  She laughed lightly, as if he had made a joke, and remarked:

  “I’ll have another cigarette then.”

  When he had lit her cigarette she moved over to the gramophone and set Violet Lorraine to sing: If you were the only girl in the world.

  “I’m having tea with Dick Purves and his sister at Dilley’s to-morrow,” she remarked inconsequently.

  His face altered. He had now reached the stage of jealousy; he detested this young Purves. Flight-Lieutenant Dick Purves, the comparatively undistinguished companion of Hetty’s childhood, was now the hero of the hour. During the last air raid upon the North-East counties he had flown solo above the wind-driven Zeppelin and released the bomb out of the high darkness which had brought down the dirigible in flames. Tynecastle had gone mad about Dick Purves; it was rumoured he was to have the V.C., and in the meantime he had only to show himself in a restaurant to be greeted by wild demonstrations of hero-worship.

  All this recurred to Barras and he said quite sulkily:

  “You seem to do a good deal of running after this Purves fellow.”

  “Oh no,” she protested. “You know I don’t. It’s just that he’s so much in demand just now. You know what I mean. Everyone’ll be looking at our table and envying us. It makes the party quite exciting.”

  He moved impatiently, seeing the vapidly handsome youth with his baby blue eyes, the flaxen hair parted in the middle and plastered smooth as wax upon his head, the conceited smile playing about his lips as he smoked his cigarette and continually looked round in search of admiration. He smothered his irritation with difficulty. He had returned to the settee, flushed and breathing rather thickly. And in a moment he said:

  “Come and sit here, Hetty.”

  “I like moving about,” she replied airily, “after sitting in the theatre.”

  “But I want you to sit beside me.”

  A pause. She saw that it was impossible to refuse without seriously offending him, and unwillingly she came over and sat down on the far corner of the settee.

  “You’re bullying me to-night,” she said.

  “Am I?”

  She nodded her head archly, at least, she tried to be arch again, but it was not very successful. She was too conscious of his presence beside her, his congested face, thick-set shoulders, even the fleshy creases of his waistcoat.

  “You like the bracelet I gave you?” he asked at length, fingering the thin platinum strip on her wrist.

  “Oh yes,” she said quickly. “You spoil me, really you do.”

  “I’m a pretty rich man,” he said. “I can give you a number of things.” He was extremely clumsy and inexperienced: his emotion mastered him, almost choked him.

  “You’ve always been kind to me,” she said, casting down her eyes.

  He reached up to take her hand, but just then the gramophone stopped, and with the sense of being saved she jumped up and went to the machine.

  “I’ll play the other side,” she remarked, and started the record.

  He watched her heavily from under his brows with that fixed and vaguely ogling smile. His breathing was more difficult than ever, his under lip protruded.

  “It’s pretty, that,” she went on, “terribly smart and catchy.”

  She snapped her fingers to the time, resolved not to be led back to the sett
ee again, moving about to the rhythm of the music. But as she passed him, he stretched out suddenly, caught her thin wrist and drew her on to his knees.

  It happened so spontaneously, both of them were taken by surprise. She did not know whether or not to scream. She did not struggle. She simply stared at him.

  And then, while they remained in this attitude, the door opened behind them suddenly, and Aunt Carrie entered the room. The unusual noise so late at night had caused her to come down, but at the spectacle upon the settee she paused as though turned suddenly to stone. Her eyes dilated with horror. She went absolutely grey. It was the most awful moment of her life. For one dreadful instant she felt she was going to faint, but with a supreme effort she recovered herself, and swinging round she almost fell out of the room. Then, like a haunted spirit, she fled and went stumbling upstairs.

  Neither Barras nor Hetty had observed the incident. Barras was blind to all but Hetty, her nearness, her perfume, the pressure of her thin hip bones upon his thighs.

  “Hetty,” he said thickly, “you know that I’m fond of you.”

  His words brought her out of that queer, trance-like state.

  “Don’t,” she said, “please don’t hold me like that.”

  He relaxed his hold and put his palm upon her knee.

  “Oh no,” she cried, resisting vigorously. “You mustn’t do that. I don’t like it.”

  “But, Hetty—” he panted.

  “No, no,” she cut him short. “I’m not that kind of girl, not that kind of girl at all.”

  She hated him suddenly for putting her in this position, for spoiling everything, ending his protection and his presents by this horrible anti-climax. She hated his heavy, congested face, the lines under his eyes, his fleshy nose. She thought, with sudden contrast, of Purves’ clear-cut, youthful features, and she cried:

  “Let me go, will you. Let me go, or I’ll scream.”

  He answered by pressing her to him and burying his mouth into her neck. She did not scream, but she tore herself free, like a little cat, and banged her hand against his cheek. Then she jumped up, adjusting her dress and her hair, and spat out the words:

  “You’re a horrid, beastly old man. You’re worse than your wretched son. I hate you. Don’t you know I’m a good girl. I’m a good girl, I tell you, a good girl. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I’ll never look at you again as long as I live.”

  He rose up excitedly, trying to speak, but before he had time she dashed out of the room and left him there. He stood for a moment, with his hand outstretched, as if still trying to detain her. His heart was hammering in his side, his brain dazed, his ears buzzing. He had a crushed sense of prostration, of his age, which had defeated his attempt to ravish her. He remained upon his feet, swaying slightly in the empty, softly lighted room, almost overcome by an attack of vertigo. He thought for a second that he was going to have a stroke. Then he raised his hand to his bursting head and sank down limply upon the settee.

  SIXTEEN

  Meanwhile, seated in the darkness of her own room Aunt Carrie heard the sound of the car setting out for Tynecastle with Hetty. She saw the two soft beams of the headlights slide terrifyingly round the room and in the darkness and the silence which succeeded she trembled wretchedly. What Aunt Carrie had seen in the drawing-room tore at the very roots of her most sacred belief. To think that Richard—Richard! Aunt Carrie’s trembling increased; she shook in all her limbs with a simply pitiful agitation and the two huge tears which had formed in her eyes were shaken from her eyes by the palsied shaking of her inclined head. Oh dear, of dear, thought Aunt Carrie in a paroxysm of grief.

  Aunt Carrie’s belief was Richard. For fifteen years she had served Richard with hand and foot and soul. She had served Richard at a distance but that had not prevented her from adoring Richard and locking her adoration jealously in the centre of her being. No other man existed for Aunt Carrie. True, she had at one time entertained an affection for the memory of the late Prince Albert whom she rightly regarded as a good man, but it was a pale moon beside the sun of her adoration for Richard. Aunt Carrie existed for that sun, basked in it, warmed her whole cramped life at it. And now after fifteen years of sunshine, after fifteen years of putting out his slippers, arranging his meals, sorting his laundry, cutting his asparagus, filling his hot-water bottle, religiously keeping the moth out of his woollen underwear, knitting his socks, stockings and scarves—after fifteen years of slavish heavenly servitude Aunt Carrie had seen Richard fondling Hetty Todd upon his knee. In an access of pity and pain Aunt Carrie buried her shaking head in her shaking hands and sobbed bitterly.

  Suddenly, while she sat weeping and overcome, she heard Harriet’s stick. Whenever Harriet wanted attention she lifted the walking-stick which lay beside her bed and thumped on the wall for Aunt Carrie to come in. It was the recognised procedure and Aunt Carrie knew at this moment that Harriet was thumping for her medicine. But she had not the heart to go in. She could not move for the thought of Richard, this new Richard, this poor Richard, both terrifying and terrible.

  Aunt Carrie did not understand that the new Richard was an exfoliation of the old Richard; she did not dream that these new propensities which shocked her were sprouting from the old propensities. She fancied Richard, poor Richard, the victim of some strange calamity. She had no knowledge of what the calamity might be. She simply saw a god turned clown, an archangel become a satyr, and her heart was broken. She cried and cried. Richard with Hetty Todd upon his knee. She cried and cried and could not bear it.

  Then with a start she was once again aware of Harriet’s knocking. Harriet had been knocking for a full five minutes now and though dimly conscious of that knocking Aunt Carrie had not moved to answer the summons. She could not go in to Harriet with blind and swollen eyes and trembling hands and this insufferable choking in her breast revealing the obvious fact that something was seriously wrong. And yet she must go. Harriet must have her medicine. If Harriet did not have her medicine she would go on knocking louder and louder and bring the house down and there might be some fresh and terrible development which would finish Aunt Carrie for good and all.

  Mastering her sobbing as best she could Aunt Carrie wiped her blind and swollen eyes and went fumbling along the corridor to Harriet’s room. It was dark in the corridor for it was a dark night and Aunt Carrie in her agitation had not switched on the electric light at the head of the stairs. Harriet’s room was dark too, a dim darkness which the green glow of the bedside lamp did little to dispel. Because of her headaches Harriet was averse to a glare and now Aunt Carrie was tremblingly glad of that fact because the dim darkness hid her tear-stained face. She did not offer to switch on the light.

  Upon Aunt Carrie’s entry Harriet quivered upon the bed where her pale, cow-like outlines were obscurely visible. She was trembling with temper and she bared her false teeth at Aunt Carrie with a click.

  “Why didn’t you come, Caroline?” she cried. “I’ve been knocking for a good half-hour.”

  Aunt Carrie stifled a big sob. Controlling her voice the best way she could she said:

  “I’m sorry, Harriet dear, I can’t think what came over me. Shall I—shall I give you your medicine now?”

  But Harriet was not going to let it go so easily as that. She lay there on her back in the bed in the dim darkness of the room surrounded by her bottles and her flat moon face was pale with passion and self-pity.

  “It’s becoming a disgrace,” she said, “the way I’m neglected. I’m lying here with a splitting headache. I’m dying for my medicine and not a soul looks near me!”

  Sad and shamefaced, her head bent, blinking her timid swollen eyes, Aunt Carrie gulped:

  “I’m sure I beg your pardon, Harriet. Shall I give you your medicine now?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Yes, Harriet.” And hiding her face Aunt Carrie moved blindly to the little table, thinking, oh, dear goodness, let me give Harriet her medicine and get out of this room quickly before I
break down completely.

  “Your valerian, Harriet?” she asked.

  “No,” Harriet said peevishly. “I want my old bromide tonight, the old aromatic bromide that Dr. Lewis gave me. I think that does best with me after all. On the shelf there at the corner.”

  “Yes, Harriet.” Aunt Carrie turned obediently to the shelf and began to grope and fumble amongst the bottles. There were so many bottles too. “Where did you say, Harriet?”

  “There,” Harriet snapped. “You’re a perfect fool to-night. There under your hand. I put it there myself the last time I was up. I remember perfectly.”

  “This one?” Aunt Carrie knew she would break down again. Oh, dear goodness, she thought again, let me get out of here before I give way completely. “This one, Harriet?”

  “No! The one next to it, that green bottle there. What on earth is the matter with you? Yes, that one, that’s right.”

  Aunt Carrie lifted the bottle dazedly and went to the little table. Her hand shook so much she could hardly pick up the measuring glass.

  “How much do you take, Harriet?”

  “Two tablespoonfuls! Don’t you know that much? Can’t you even read?”

  But Aunt Carrie could not read, Aunt Carrie was blind and dumb and desolate. Her movements were automatic, her mind far away in a grotesque and horrible land where Richard held Hetty Todd upon his knee. She could only do as she was told and then all that she wanted was to get back into her own room and give way to the floods of tears which welled within her. She fumbled out two tablespoonfuls of the medicine she thought Harriet had indicated. Dimly, through the dim darkness of the room, and the confusion of Harriet’s nagging, and the terrible desolation of her own heart, she thought the medicine had a queer smell. But it must be the saltness of her shed and unshed tears which made her think the medicine smelled queer, and Harriet was asking for the medicine and for her to hurry and not be a fool.

  She advanced to the bed, drooping, her head averted, her hand outstretched. Harriet sat up and snatched the medicine glass crossly.

  “You’ve been very stupid and slow to-night, Caroline,” she said sharply. “Just when you saw I was dying for my medicine.”