by A. J. Cronin
Supporting himself on the window ledge he raised himself slowly—this was the worst of all but it was done at last—then he got into his dressing-gown. It took him quite five minutes to get into his dressing-gown; the arms were so difficult and he began by putting it on back to front, but eventually the dressing-gown was on and corded over his underwear. He did not put on shoes for shoes make a noise. He stood triumphant in his dressing-gown and underwear and socks, then very cautiously he went out of his room and started to descend the stairs.
There was only one way to descend the stairs. The banister was useless, the banister held and hindered. No! The only way to descend the stairs was to stand accurately on the top stair of all and look straight ahead like a diver and then suddenly let the feet go. The feet went down the stairs with quite a rush that way, but it was important not to look at the feet nor to think about them either.
Richard got down to the hall in this manner and he stood in the hall very pleased with himself and listening. They were in the dining-room; he could hear the voices plainly, and he advanced slyly to the door of the dining-room. Yes, they were in there, he could hear them talking and he was listening. Good, very good! Richard got down, and sprawled on the tiled floor with his eye to the keyhole. Observation Post No. 2, Richard thought, oh, very, very good—Richard saw and heard everything.
They were all seated round the dining-room table with Mr. Bannerman, the lawyer, at the head and Arthur at the foot. Aunt Carrie was there and Hilda and Adam Todd and the man Teasdale. Mr. Bannerman had a great many papers and Arthur had papers too, and Adam Todd had one single paper but Hilda and Aunt Carrie and Teasdale had no papers at all. Mr. Bannerman was speaking.
“It is an offer,” Mr. Bannerman said. “That’s how I regard it. It is an offer.”
Arthur answered:
“It’s not an offer; it’s contemptible, it’s an insult.”
Richard heard the trouble in. Arthur’s voice and he was pleased. Arthur looked bowed and hopeless, he spoke with his forehead resting in one hand. Richard chuckled within himself.
Mr. Bannerman scrutinised a paper he did not need to scrutinise. He looked lean and dried up and tight about the collar. He balanced his monocle which had a broad black ribbon and said smoothly:
“I repeat that it is an offer, the only offer we have received, and it is tangible.”
Silence. Then Adam Todd said:
“Is it impossible to arrange to dewater the pit? To rebuild the bank? Is it quite impossible?”
“Who is going to put up the money?” Arthur exclaimed.
“We’ve been over all this before,” Mr. Bannerman said, pretending not to look at Arthur yet looking at him all the time.
“It seems a pity,” Todd murmured dejectedly. “A great pity.” He raised his head suddenly. “What about the pictures, your father’s pictures? Can’t you raise the money on them?”
“They’re worthless,” Arthur answered. “I had young Vincent out to value them. He just laughed. The Goodalls and Copes you couldn’t give away. Nobody wants them now.”
Another silence. Then Hilda spoke decisively.
“Arthur must have no more worry. That’s all I have to say. In his present state he’s not fit to stand it.”
Arthur’s shoulders sagged, and he shielded his face more with his hand. He said heavily:
“You’re decent, Hilda. But I know what you’re all thinking, what a hopeless mess I’ve made of it. I did what I thought was right and best. I couldn’t help anything. It just came. But you’re all thinking this would never have happened if my father had been here.”
Outside the door Richard’s face became suffused with satisfaction. He did not really understand, of course, but he saw that there was trouble and they wanted him to set the trouble right. They would call him in.
Arthur was talking again. Arthur said dully:
“I was always moaning about justice. And now I’ve got it! We squeezed the men and flooded the mine and finished the men. And now when I try to do everything for them the men turn round and flood the mine and finish me.”
“Oh, Arthur, my dear, don’t talk that way,” Aunt Carrie whimpered, putting her hand tremulously towards Arthur’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur said. “But that’s the way I see it.”
“Suppose we confine ourselves to business,” Mr. Bannerman said very drily.
“Go on, then,” Arthur said heavily. “Go on and settle the damned thing and let’s be done with it.”
“Please!” Mr. Bannerman said.
Hilda intervened.
“What is this offer then, Mr. Bannerman? How does it work out?”
Mr. Bannerman adjusted his monocle and looked at Hilda.
“The position is precisely this. We are faced on the one side with a dislocated pit, flooded workings and burnt-out gear. On the other side you may place this offer to take over the Neptune, purchase the whole non-producing concern, lock, stock and barrel, and if I may respectfully say so, flood water as well.”
“They know very well they can get rid of the water,” Arthur said bitterly. “I’ve spent thousands on these underground roads. It’s the finest pit in the district and they know it. They’re offering not one-tenth of the value of the pit. It’s sheer insanity to take it.”
“Times,” Mr. Bannerman said, “are difficult, Arthur. And the particular circumstances are more difficult still.”
Hilda said:
“Suppose we accepted this offer?”
Mr. Bannerman hesitated. He removed his monocle, studied it.
“Well,” he said, “we should be clear of our liabilities.” He paused. “Arthur, if I may venture to say so, was reckless in his expenditure. We must remember the liabilities in which we are involved.”
Hilda looked at Mr. Bannerman darkly. That we particularly exasperated Hilda for Mr. Bannerman was not involved and Mr. Bannerman had no liabilities whatever. Rather sharply Hilda said:
“Can’t you get an increase on the offer?”
“They are keen people these,” Mr. Bannerman answered. “Very keen people indeed. This offer is their final offer.”
“It’s sheer robbery,” Arthur groaned.
“Who are they?” Hilda asked.
Mr. Bannerman fitted back his monocle delicately:
“They are Mawson & Gowlan,” he said. “Yes! Mr. Joseph Gowlan is the negotiating party.”
There was a silence. Arthur lifted his head slowly and looked across at Hilda. His voice was savagely ironic.
“You know the fellow, don’t you?” he said. “These new offices in Grainger Street. All black and marble. The site alone cost them forty thousand. He’s the Joe Gowlan who worked as a hand-putter in the Neptune.”
“He does not work there now,” Mr. Bannerman said precisely. Inspecting the heading of the notepaper before him he declared: “Messrs. Mawson & Gowlan have now the controlling interest in Northern Steel Industries Ltd., in United Brassfounders Ltd., in the Tyneside Commercial Corporation, in Corporation and Northern Securities Ltd., and in the Rusford Aeroplane Co.”
There was another silence. Adam Todd seemed very unhappy and he chewed a clove as if the flavour of the clove was not good.
“Is there no other way?” he said, shifting restlessly on his seat. “I know the stuff that’s in the Neptune. Wonderful stuff. It’s always been Barras’s Neptune. Isn’t there any other way?”
“Have you any suggestion?” Mr. Bannerman inquired politely. “If so be kind enough to let us have it.”
“Why don’t you go to this Gowlan,” said Todd suddenly, turning to Arthur, “and try to get in with him?… Bargain with him. Tell him you don’t want to sell for cash. You want to amalgamate with him. You want a seat on the board, shares, just to be in with him, Arthur. If only you get in with Gowlan you’d be absolutely made!”
Arthur reddened slowly. “That’s a grand idea, Todd. But unfortunately it’s no use. You see, I’ve tried it.” He faced them all and with a sudden outburst of
bitter cynicism he cried: “I went up to Gowlan two days ago, up to his damned new offices. God! You ought to see them—solid bronze doors, Carrara marble, teak and tapestry elevator. I tried to sell myself to him. You know what he is. He began by swindling Millington out of the foundry. He swindled his shareholders in the boom. He’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. Everything he’s got has come crookedly—from sweating his workmen, corruption on contracts, that big munitions ramp. But I swallowed all that, tried to sell my soul.” Trembling, he paused. “It would have made you laugh. He played with me like a cat with a mouse. He began by telling me how honoured he was but that our ideas seemed to be slightly different. He went on about the new aeroplane works at Rusford where he’s turning out military aeroplanes by the hundred and selling them to every country in Europe. He enlarged on the prospects of the Rusford ’plane because it has what he called greater killing power than any other line. He took me on bit by bit, putting out a hint here and a promise there, until I’d sworn away everything I’d ever believed in. And when he’d got me stripped naked he laughed at me and offered me a job as underviewer at the Neptune.”
Yet another silence, a long silence. Dan Teasdale moved restively, and for the first time spoke.
“It’s a damned shame.” His ruddy face was alive with indignation. “Why don’t you chuck the whole thing up, Arthur, and come down with us? We don’t make money. But we don’t want it. And we’re perfectly happy without it. There’s better things—that’s what Grace has taught me. Health, and working in the fresh air, and seeing your children grow up strong. You come down, Arthur, and start fresh with us.”
“I should look well,” Arthur said in an agony of dejection, “among the chickens.”
Bannerman made another gesture of impatience. “Might I ask what your instructions are, then?”
“Haven’t I told you to sell?” The words came with a terrible disillusionment, and Arthur rose abruptly as though to terminate the whole affair. “Sell the Law too. Gowlan wants that as well. Let him take the whole damn lot. He can have me as underviewer too, for all I care.”
Outside the door, sprawling on his knees, Richard Barras gaped and stared. Richard’s face was very red now, and terribly confused. He did not fully gauge what was happening within. But he grasped with his poor muddled brain that there was trouble at the Neptune which he alone could readjust. Moreover, they had all forgotten about him and his power to achieve the impossible. It was splendid. He sat back on his haunches on the tiled floor of the hall. They were not talking any more inside now and he was a little tired from sprawling and he wanted greater comfort to enable him to think.
Suddenly, as he squatted there, the door of the dining-room opened and they all came out. The unexpectedness of it slumped Richard over upon his back. His dressing-gown flew up exposing his lean shanks, his underwear, his very person. The whole pitiful travesty of the man was there, shrunken yet distorted, cunning yet inane. But Richard did not mind. He sat there, as he was, on the cold tiles of the vestibule, and he looked very sly and he laughed. He sniggered.
Every face expressed concern and Hilda ran forward crying:
“My poor father!”
Teasdale and Hilda helped him to his feet and assisted him upstairs to his room. Bannerman, one eyebrow lifted, shrugged his shoulders and took a formal good-bye of Arthur.
Arthur remained standing in the hall, his eyes fixed on the yellowish eyes of Adam Todd who, all those years before, had implored him not to swim against the stream. He said suddenly:
“Let’s go into Tynecastle, Todd. I think I want to get drunk.”
SEVENTEEN
For the next few days Richard lay very low. After the incident entered in his writing-book as Discovery at Observation No. 2, Hilda had spoken gravely upon the advisability of keeping him in bed. He was so feeble now and so uncertain upon his legs that Hilda insisted, before she left for London, he must at least remain in his bedroom. That alarmed Richard for Richard was aware that he could not conduct operations from his bedroom. So he feigned most exemplary behaviour, was good and docile and did whatever Aunt Carrie told him.
All his thoughts were now concentrated upon his great new idea for regenerating his Neptune pit. The whole of that Friday forenoon he was so excited by his idea he could not contain himself. As he sat in his room a hammer kept beating in his head, and his scalp was tight like the skin of a drum. Once he almost thought the electricity had got him but he lay back and closed his eyes until at last they turned it off.
When he came round he found Arthur in the room standing before him.
“Are you all right, father?” Arthur asked and he looked at his father with sadness filmed over the fixity of his face. Arthur could not behold this poor shrunken silly old man, nor feel that sly and bloodshot eye wavering across his, without sadness. He said:
“I thought I’d come up and have a word with you, father. Can you understand what I say?”
Could he understand!—the insolence sent the blood bursting again through Richard’s head. He drew within himself at once.
“Not now.”
“I’d like to straighten things out for you, father,” Arthur said. “It might make it easier for you. You’re restless and so excited. You do not realise that you’re not well.”
“I am well,” Richard said angrily. “I was never better in my life.”
“It struck me, father,” Arthur went on, wishing to break as gently as he could the impending disruption, “that it mightn’t be a bad thing if we gave up the Law and took a smaller place. You see—”
“Not now,” Richard interrupted. “To-morrow, perhaps. I won’t listen. Some other time. I simply won’t listen. Not now.” He lay back again in his chair with closed eyes and would not listen to Arthur until Arthur at last gave up and went out of the room. It was not his intention to talk to Arthur yet. No, indeed! He would dictate his terms to Arthur later, when the regeneration of the Neptune was complete. Here he opened his eyes with a start, his remote yet feverish stare transfixing the blank ceiling vacantly. What was it? Ah, he remembered. The vacancy left his face, the dull eye watered and gleamed; why had he not thought of it before, why not, why? The pit, of course, his Neptune pit! It was superb, his terrible yet brilliant idea. He must defy them all by going to the Neptune in person.
Tremulous with agitation and excitement, he rose and went downstairs. So far so good. There was no one about; everyone was occupied and worried and distressed. He slunk into the hall, where, hurriedly, he took his hard hat and pressed it upon his head. His hair had not been cut for some time and it stuck out behind his hard hat in a tangled fringe. But Richard did not mind. With great secrecy he let himself out by the front door and stood balancing upon the steps. The drive lay before him with the gate open and unguarded beyond. It was all forbidden ground, dangerous ground, far away from the lawn and the laburnum tree. Both Hilda and Dr. Lewis had made it seriously forbidden and dangerous. The whole thing was a terrible undertaking. But Richard did not mind that either. He compassed the steps and the drive in one stuttering rush and was out, at last, and free. He staggered, it is true, and almost fell; but what did that matter, his staggering, when he was so soon to be rid of it, staggering, hammering, electricity, the whole horrible conspiracy against him?
He walked up the drive towards the top of Sluice Dene. He was much too clever to take the ordinary road to the Neptune, for that road would certainly be watched and he would be intercepted. No, no! he knew better than that. He took the long way round, the way which went behind the woods of Sluice Dene and across the fields and the Snook and into the Neptune from the back. He exulted in the brilliance of his counterstroke. Wonderful, wonderful!
But it had been raining heavily and the road he took was muddy and bad. The heavy rain had left big puddles in the ruts and Richard could not lift his feet. Soon he was splashed with water and mud. He floundered along through the water and the mud with his little starts and staggers until he reached the stile a
t the top of Sluice Dene.
At the stile he drew up. The stile presented an unconsidered difficulty. Richard saw that he would have to climb the stile. But Richard could not raise his foot more than six inches at the utmost and the height of the step upon the stile was at least eighteen. Richard could not climb the stile and tears came trembling into his old dazed eyes.
Tears and fury; oh, a terrible fury. He was not defeated, he was not. The stile was merely part of the conspiracy; he must defeat it too, the stile, the conspiring stile. Trembling with rage Richard raised his arms and fell upon the stile. His belly hit the top bar of the stile, for a second he was balanced, as though swimming, upon the top bar of the stile, then he toppled and was over. Wonderful, wonderful, he was over! He fell heavily on his face and head into a puddle of slush and he lay panting and stunned and slobbering while the hammer and electricity worked at him through the slush and the mud.
He lay quite a long time there, for the big hammer seemed to have burst something inside his head, and the mud was cool against the outside of the burst place in his head. But he got up at last, oh yes, he got up, elbow, knees and a dreadful clamber to his feet. The earth swayed slightly and he had lost his hat and his face and clothes and hands were terribly daubed with mud. But never mind, never mind all that. He was up again and walking. He was walking to the Neptune.
Walking was not so easy now. The hammer had hit so hard, his right leg was dull and dead, he had to drag it along with him, like a sort of supercargo. That was peculiar, for usually both hammer and electricity worked upon his left leg, but now they had got his right leg and his right arm too. His whole right side was paralysed.
On he went, behind the wood and along the path towards the Snook, staggering and dragging the leg, bareheaded and bedaubed with mud, his red-injected eye fixed feverishly upon the headstock of the Neptune which showed above the last row of houses that bordered the Snook. Although he wished to go quickly he went very slowly; he was all bound and clogged; he knew that he was going slowly and this infuriated him. He tried to make himself go quicker and could not; he had the idea that something was happening at the Neptune, a conspiracy or a catastrophe, and that he would not get there in time. This drove him frantic.