by A. J. Cronin
He studied the faces of the hurrying men and women and it seemed that each wore a queer intentness, as if each face were absorbed by the intimate and special life behind the face and by nothing else. This man was absorbed by money, this other by food, and the next by women. The first had taken fifty pounds from some other man on the Stock Exchange that afternoon and he was pleased, the second reviewed the mental images of lobster and pâté and asparagus and puzzled his brain as to which would gratify him the most, while the third balanced in his mind his chances of seducing his partner’s wife, who had smiled at him in a significant manner at dinner on the previous night.
The terrible thought struck David that each man in this vast hurrying stream of life was living for his own interest, for his own satisfaction, for his own welfare, for himself. Each man was conscious only of himself, and the lives of other men stood merely as the adjuncts of his own existence—they did not matter, it was he who mattered, he, the man himself. The lives of all other men mattered only in so far as they affected the man’s own happiness, and the man would sacrifice the happiness and the lives of other men, cheat and swindle, exterminate and annihilate, for the sake of his own welfare, his own interest, for the sake of himself.
The thought crushed David; he turned from it and from the mad circling rush of the traffic. Abruptly he walked away. He went up the Haymarket. In the Haymarket at the corner of Panton Street some men were singing in the street, a group of four men, he could see that they were miners. They stood facing each other, all young men, and all bent together with their foreheads nearly touching. They sang a song in Welsh. They were young Welsh miners and they were destitute—singing in the streets while all the wealth and luxury of London rolled past them.
The song finished, and one of the men held out a box. Yes, he was a miner, David saw. He was well shaved and his clothing though poor and ill assorted was clean—as though he wanted to keep himself up and not let himself go down into those depths which waited for him. David could see the tiny blue pit scars on his clean well-shaven face. David put a shilling in the box. The man thanked him without obsequiousness and with an even greater sadness. David thought, has that shilling helped more than all my work and striving and speaking in the last five years?
He walked on slowly towards the Piccadilly tube.
He crossed over to the tube, took his ticket and got into the next train. Sitting opposite was a workman reading the evening paper, reading an account of David’s speech which was already in the late editions. The man read slowly with the paper folded very small while the train thundered through the dark reverberating tunnels of the underground. David had a great impulse to ask the man what he thought about the speech. But he did not ask.
At Battersea Station David left the train and walked towards Blount Street. He felt tired as he let himself into No. 33, and he ascended the worn carpeted stairs with a certain relief. But Mrs. Tucker stopped him before he had gone half-way up. He turned to face her as she spoke from the open door of her sitting-room below.
“Dr. Barras was on the telephone,” she said. “She rang up several times but wouldn’t leave a message.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Tucker,” he said.
“She said to ring up whenever you came in.”
“Very well.”
He imagined Hilda had rung up to condole with him, and while he was grateful he was not yet in the mood for her condolences. But Mrs. Tucker persisted:
“I promised Dr. Barras you’d ring up the minute you came in.”
“Oh, very well,” he said again and he turned to the telephone which was on the half landing behind him. As he called Hilda’s number he heard the satisfied click of Mrs. Tucker’s door.
He was some time in getting Hilda’s number but the moment he got through Hilda answered. There was one second of ringing tone and then Hilda’s voice. Hilda had been sitting at the ’phone, waiting.
“Hello, Hilda, is that you?” He could not help his voice being dull and tired.
“David,” she said, “I’ve been trying to get you all the afternoon.”
“Yes?”
“I want to see you, now, at once.”
He hesitated.
“I’m sorry, Hilda, I’m rather tired just now; would you mind very much…”
“You must,” she broke in. “It’s important. Now.”
There was a silence.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I can’t say, oh, I can’t say over the wire.” A pause. “But it’s your wife.”
“What!”
“Yes.”
He stood with the receiver in his hand galvanised out of his tiredness, his inertia, everything.
“Jenny,” he said, as if to himself.
“Yes,” she repeated.
There was another momentary silence, then speaking rapidly, almost incoherently:
“You’ve seen Jenny. Where is she? Tell me, Hilda. Do you know where Jenny is?”
“Yes, I know.” Hilda’s voice came back and stirred him anew.
“Tell me, then. Why can’t you tell me?”
“You must come over,” she answered flatly. “Or if you wish I’ll come over to you. We can’t go on talking over the ’phone.”
“All right, all right,” he agreed quickly. “I’ll be over with you now.”
He hung up the receiver and ran down the stairs which he had ascended so slowly. He hailed a passing taxi-cab in Bull Street and drove in a great hurry to Hilda’s flat. Within seven minutes he was ringing the bell of Hilda’s door.
The maid was out and Hilda let him in herself. He looked at Hilda eagerly, feeling his heart thumping from eagerness and hurry; he searched Hilda’s face.
“Well,” he said quickly. He almost hoped that Jenny might be at Hilda’s flat; perhaps that was Hilda’s reason for asking him to come to the flat.
But Hilda shook her head. Her face was pale and sad as she took him into the room which overlooked the river and he sat down without looking at him.
“What is it, Hilda?” he said. “There’s nothing wrong?”
She sat very still and upright in her severe dark dress with her black hair drawn back from her pale brow and her beautiful pale hands resting in her dark lap. She looked afraid to speak and she was afraid. She said:
“Jenny came to my clinic to-day.”
“She’s ill?” Concern flooded his face.
“Yes, she’s ill.”
“In hospital?”
“Yes, in hospital.”
A silence. All the quick gladness in him changed to quick pain. A lump came in his throat.
“What is it?” he said. “Is Jenny very ill?”
“Yes, she’s rather ill, David, I’m afraid.” And still she did not look at him. “She came to my out-patients’ this afternoon. She doesn’t know how ill she is. But she just came in, asking for me, because she knew of me…”
“But is it serious?” he said anxiously.
“Well, yes… internal trouble…. I suppose in a way it is.”
He stared at Hilda not seeing Hilda but seeing Jenny, poor little Jenny, and there was trouble and a great tenderness in his eyes.
He made an instinctive gesture, exclaiming:
“I’ll go to the hospital now. Don’t let’s waste another minute. Shall you come with me or shall I go myself?”
“Wait,” she said.
He paused half-way to the door. Even her lips were pale now; she was dreadfully distressed. She said:
“I couldn’t get Jenny admitted to St. Elizabeth’s. I did my very utmost, but I couldn’t; there’s something behind it, you see, the cause—Oh! I had to arrange, I had to send her… I had to get her into another hospital… first.”
“What hospital?” he asked.
She looked at him at last. He had to know, some time he had to know, and so she said:
“The Lock Hospital in Canon Street.”
At first he did not understand and he stared at Hilda’s distressed face in a kind of wonder; but only for a
few seconds did he stare like that. A cry of pain came out of him, inarticulately.
“I could not help myself,” Hilda said; and she withdrew her eyes because it hurt her to see him suffer. She stared out of the window towards the river which flowed in full stream beneath her. The river flowed silently and there was silence in the room. The silence in the room lasted a long time, lasted until he spoke.
“Will they let me see her?”
“Yes. I can arrange that. I’ll ring up now.” She hesitated, eyes still averted. “Or would you like me to come?”
“No, Hilda,” he muttered. “I’ll go myself.”
He stood there while she used the telephone and spoke to the house surgeon and when she said it was all right he thanked her hurriedly and went out. He felt faint. He thought for a moment that he was going to faint and he hung on to the spiked railings round the block of flats. It was hateful to do this; he was afraid Hilda would be watching from the window and see him, but he could not help himself. A gramophone was playing in one of the bottom flats; it was playing You are my heart’s delight. Everyone was playing and singing that song just now—it was the rage of London. He remembered he had eaten nothing since lunch-time. He thought, I’d better eat something or I shall make a scene at the hospital.
He let go of the cold iron spikes and went along the Embankment to a coffee-stall which was there. The coffee-stall was really a cabmen’s shelter, but the man in charge must have seen that he was ill for he gave him hot coffee and a sandwich.
“How much?” David said.
“Fivepence,” the man said.
While David drank the coffee and ate the sandwich the gramophone tune kept going in his head.
The Lock Hospital. It was not so far from the coffee-stall and a taxi took him there quickly. He sat hunched up in the taxi, which was clean and new with a bunch of yellow paper flowers stuck in a chromium vase. There was a faint lingering of scent in the taxi, scent and cigarette smoke. The yellow paper flowers seemed to exhale a perfume of scent and smoke.
The doorkeeper of the Canon Street Lock Hospital was an old man with spectacles; he was old and slow and in spite of Hilda’s having ’phoned there was some delay. David waited outside the old man’s box while the old man spoke to the ward upon the house telephone. The mosaic floor had a pattern of red and blue and the edges of the floor were curved towards the walls to prevent the accumulation of dust.
The lift whined up slowly and he stood outside the ward. Jenny, his wife, was inside that ward. He heart began to beat with suffocating rapidity. He followed the sister into the ward.
The ward was long and cool and white and on either side were the narrow white beds. Everything was beautifully white and in each beautifully white bed was a woman. You are my heart’s delight the gramophone kept playing, on and on, inside his head.
Jenny. At last it was Jenny, his wife Jenny in the end bed, in the last beautifully white bed of all, behind a beautiful white screen. The known and loved face of his wife Jenny came into his sight among the beautiful and strange imposing whiteness of the ward. His heart turned over inside of him and beat more suffocatingly. He trembled in every part of his body.
“Jenny,” he whispered.
The ward sister took one look at him and left him. The ward sister’s lips were pursed and her hips swaggered.
“Jenny,” he whispered again.
“I thought you’d come,” she said, and she smiled at him faintly with the old questioning and propitiating smile.
His heart broke within him, he could say nothing, he sank into the seat beside the bed. Her eyes hurt him the most, they were like the eyes of a beaten dog. Her cheeks were netted with fine red veins. Her lips were pale. She was still pretty and she did not seem old, but her prettiness was faintly bloated. She had the tragic look of one who has been used.
“Yes,” she said, “I thought you’d come. It was funny like me going in to see Dr. Barras, but when I got sick I didn’t want a stranger. And I’d heard of Hilda Barras. And us being friendly in Sleescale with her and that… Oh, well, there it was! And oh, I thought you’d come.”
He saw that she was pleased to see him. Nothing of the terrible emotion which consumed him. Faintly, apologetically pleased to see him. He struggled to speak.
“Are you comfortable here?” he asked.
She flushed, a little ashamed of what in the old days she would have called her position. She said awkwardly:
“Oh yes, ever so comfortable. I know it’s the public ward, but sister’s ever so nice. Quite the lady.” Her voice was slightly husky. One of the pupils of her beaten eyes was wide and black and larger than the other.
“I’m glad you’re comfortable.”
“Yes,” she said. “I never was one for hospitals though. I remember when dad broke his leg.” She smiled at him again and her smile lancinated him—again the cringing of the beaten dog. In a low voice he said:
“If you’d only written to me, Jenny!”
“I read about you,” she said. “I read about you ever so much in the papers. Do you know, David”—her voice took on a sudden animation—“do you know once you passed me in the street? In the Strand it was; you passed me as close as close.”
“Why didn’t you speak to me?”
“Well—I thought I would, then I thought I wouldn’t.” She coloured slightly again. “I was with a friend, you see.”
“I see,” he said.
A silence came.
“You’ve been in London,” he said at last.
“That’s right,” she agreed humbly. “I got to like London something terrible. The restaurants and the shops and that like. I’ve been getting along all right, very well in fact. I wouldn’t like you to think I’ve been down on my luck all the time. I’ve had a lot of good times.” She paused. She stretched out her hand for the drinking-cup that stood beside her bed. He reached quickly for the cup and gave it to her.
“Funny,” she said. “Like a little tea-pot.”
“Are you thirsty?”
“Well, no, it’s just in my stomach. It oughtn’t to take long to put right. Dr. Barras is going to operate on me when I’m strong enough.” She said it almost proudly.
“Yes, Jenny,” he agreed.
She handed him back the drinking-cup and looked at him. Something in his eyes made her own eyes fall. There was a silence.
“I’m sorry, David,” she said at last. “I’m sorry if I didn’t treat you right.”
Tears started into his eyes. He could not speak for a moment, then he whispered:
“You get better, Jenny, that’s all I want you to do.”
She said dully:
“You know what this ward is?”
“Yes,” he said.
There was a silence. She said:
“They’ll give me treatment before my operation.”
“Yes, Jenny.”
Another silence, then all at once she began to cry. She cried silently into her pillow. Out of her eyes, that were like the eyes of a beaten dog, the tears welled silently.
“Oh, David,” she gasped, “I’m ashamed to look at you.”
The sister came up.
“Come, come now,” she said. “I think that should be all for to-night.” And she stood there, dispassionate, formidable.
David said:
“I’ll come again, Jenny. To-morrow.”
She smiled through her tears:
“Yes, come to-morrow, David, do.”
He rose. He bent forward and kissed her.
The sister saw him to the swing doors. She said coldly:
“You ought to know, it’s hardly wise to kiss anyone in this ward.”
He did not answer. He went out of the hospital. In Canon Street outside a barrel organ was playing You are my heart’s delight.
TWENTY
Towards ten o’clock Aunt Caroline looked out at the fine October day from the window of her room in Linden Place and decided pleasurably that she would take “a little walk.” Twice a d
ay now, forenoon and afternoon, when the weather was favourable, Aunt Caroline took a little walk. Foremost amongst the pleasures of being in London were these little walks which Aunt Caroline so quietly and gently took.
Yes, Aunt Caroline was in London. Strange indeed to find herself in that mighty hub of Empire which had always puzzled and intimidated her from afar! Yet was it so strange? Richard was dead, the Neptune sold, reclaimed and restarted by Mawson, Gowlan & Co. The Law, alas, was gone too, for Mr. Gowlan had himself taken up residence in the house and was reported to be spending enormous sums upon its reconstruction and its gardens. Oh dear, oh dear! Aunt Caroline winced at the thought of rude hands laid upon her asparagus bed. How could she have borne these changes and have still remained in Sleescale? Nor had she been invited to remain. Arthur, turned sullen and morose, engaged as underviewer at the pit, had not invited her to share the small house he had rented in Hedley Road. Indeed, she would never forget that dreadful night when he returned from Tynecastle the worse for drink and harshly told her she must now “shift for herself.” Poor fellow! He little knew how his words had cut her. Not, mind you, that she would have dreamed of dragging on, the victim of odious sympathy, within the ambit of her former dignity. She was only sixty-four. She had £120 a year. It was independence—and London, city of intellect and culture, lay waiting. Gasping at her audacity, she had nevertheless reasoned it out in her own careful fashion. In London she would be near Hilda, who had lately been kind to her, and not far distant from Grace, who had always been kind to her. Dear Grace—thought Aunt Carrie—still simple and unassuming and poor, living a carefree life with her husband and her brood of children, careless of money and all material things, but happy, healthy and happy. Yes, she would certainly spend a month or two at Barnham every year. And there was Laura, too, Laura Millington, settled through all those years with her invalid husband at Bournemouth. She must certainly look Laura up. Altogether prospects in the South of England looked bright for Aunt Carrie. The last thirty years of her life she had lived chiefly in the sick-rooms of Harriet and Richard. Perhaps in her secret heart Aunt Carrie was a little tired of sick-rooms and the turning of dirty linen therein.