by A. J. Cronin
“At least it would give us a chance to say goodbye. Now you’ve got your degree I’ve no doubt you’ll be only too glad to be rid of me. You probably know I’m at Eastershaws. Yes. The asylum. I’ve come down even more in the world.”
As I went on like this, causing the dark look of pain to deepen in her eyes, I suddenly saw a solid form advancing towards us. Quickly, I bent forward and, in a different tone, said:
“Jean. Come out and see me at Eastershaws … some afternoon … just once … for old time’s sake.”
I could see the struggle going on behind her pale, tormented brow then, even as I realized what it must mean to her, she barely whispered:
“Next Thursday, then … I may come.”
No sooner had she spoken than Malcolm Hodden was upon us, breathing a little rapidly from having bounded upstairs, curving his arm around Jean’s shoulders, as though to protect her from the jostling crowd, and at the same time giving me, with his steady blue eyes, a glance of quiet recognition.
“Come, Jean, dear,” he reasoned, but without reproach. “We’ve all been wondering what was delaying you.”
“Am I late?” she asked nervously.
“Oh, no.” He smiled with reassuring calm, escorting her towards the steps. “I engaged the table for one o’clock—we have plenty of time. But Professor Kennerly is with your father and asking for you.”
At the foot of the staircase, while Jean slipped away, without even a glance, to join her parents, who stood in a group near the quadrangle, Malcolm turned upon me his serious yet unhostile gaze.
“Don’t look at me like that, Shannon. We are not enemies. Since we have a few minutes together, let us talk things over sensibly.”
He led the way through the stone archway to the front terrace, where, at the University flagstaff, there stood, in an open space upon the summit of the hill, a circular iron bench. Seating himself, he made a sign for me to do likewise. His calm was admirable. He was, in fact, all that I was not. Strong, practical, dependable, with a clear eye and a fine physique, conscious of his own inner equilibrium, he showed no sensitive flinchings. There were no secret doubts or dark places in his soul. I envied him with all my imperfect, anguished heart.
“At least we have one thing in common,” he began, as though reading my mind. “We both want Jean to be happy.”
“Yes,” I said, my lips compressed.
“Then think, Shannon,” he argued, logically. “Don’t you see it is impossible? You and she are unsuited in every way.”
“I love her,” I said doggedly.
“But love isn’t marriage,” he answered quickly. “That is a serious undertaking. One simply cannot rush into it. You would be wretched, married.”
“How can you tell? We would take our chance. Marriage is something inevitable … a calamity, perhaps, from which there is no escape … but not a blueprint for a new mission hall.”
“No, no, Shannon.” He countered my jibe with greater earnestness. “Marriage should confirm, and not disrupt two lives. Before you met Jean everything was arranged … her work … her life. She was settled, contented in her mind. And now you are asking her to give up all this, to estrange her family, cut herself off from the very sources of her being.”
“None of these things need happen.”
“Ah, that’s what you think. Let me ask you a simple question. Would you like to attend service at Jean’s chapel?”
“No.”
“Exactly. Then how can you expect her to go to yours?”
“That’s just the point. I don’t. I have no wish to force her into anything. We should each have complete freedom of thought and action.”
He shook his head, unconvinced.
“It’s a pretty theory, Shannon. In practice it won’t work. There are scores of opportunities for friction. And what about the children? Ask your own priest. He will tell you that I’m right. Your Church has always frowned on mixed marriages.”
“Some have succeeded,” I maintained, with heavy stubbornness. “We would be happy together.”
“For a little while, perhaps,” he said, almost with pity. “But in five years’ time, just consider … a hymn tune overheard, a revival meeting in the street, some recollection of her childhood, the realization of what she has given up … she will look at you and hate you.”
The words fell upon my ears like a knell. In the silence which followed I could hear the heavy drumming of the flag, transmitted through the pole, as though the vibrant wood were striving to be alive.
“Believe me, Shannon, I am trying to think only of Jean. To-day she had almost regained happiness when you reappeared. Do you wish to hurt her always? Ah, I know you better than that! As man to man, Shannon, I am sure your better nature will prevail.”
He brought out his watch, encased in a horn guard, studied it, and, in a lighter key, declared:
“We are giving a little celebration for Jean. Lunch at the Windsor Hotel.” He paused. “If circumstances were different, I would wish you to be with us. Is there anything more that I can say?”
“No,” I said.
He stood up and, after a firm, forbearing pressure upon my arm, moved steadily away. And there I sat, hearing the drumming and singing of the flag, isolated by my own acts, trying not to hate Malcolm, feeling myself more and more an outlaw. A party of well-dressed visitors glanced at me curiously, in passing, then turned away polite eyes.
Chapter Four
Breaking the long spell of fine weather, Thursday dawned damp and misty. I watched anxiously for it to clear, but even at noon the sun was blanketed and, although it was not raining heavily, the lawns were drenched, and in the avenues a steady dripping came from the trees.
Immediately after lunch I walked to the Lodge, keyed, nervously, with longing. I was in good time, yet she had already arrived, and was sitting, neglected and distraught, in the waiting-room, which, since this was visiting-day, was noisy and steamy, crowded with the relatives of East Wing patients.
Concerned, I went forward and would have taken her hand had she not risen to her feet.
“Why didn’t you ask the porter to telephone me?”
“It’s my own fault.” She gave me a distant, wavering smile. “ I took an earlier train. It was a little difficult at home … and as I had nothing else to do, I just came out here.”
“If I’d only known.”
“It’s nothing. I didn’t want to disturb you. But they might have let me walk about the gardens.”
“Well,” I explained, “they have to take a few precautions here. It’s like crossing from one country to another. We’re an exclusive lot. But if you’d told Gunn you were a doctor, he’d have let you in right away.”
Although I was trying to win her from her depression, she remained silent and withdrawn, looking small and forlorn in her raincoat and a soft hat with a grey wing all beaded with raindrops.
My longing for her hurt me, yet I tried to force my stiff features to a semblance of composure.
“Well, never mind,” I said, making a fresh start. “You’re here … and we are together.”
“Yes,” she answered in a subdued voice. “ It’s a shame it’s turned so damp.”
In silence we walked up South Avenue, past the wet-roofed chalet, under the dripping trees, which stood silent, bent over the wet path as though cowed by the rain.
The misery of the weather hung over us, blurring all outlines in this lost and silent city. Would she never speak?
Suddenly as we approached the main building she raised her gaze slowly—then, at something visible behind me, gave a startled cry.
A body of men from the East Wing had loomed out of the mist, led by Scammon and his assistant Brogan, approaching in mass formation at the double. They were only exercising, but as the dark figures swung down on us, closely packed, their feet thudding rhythmically on the soft gravel, Jean closed her eyes, holding herself rigid until they had passed and the sound of their pounding footsteps was lost in the grey fog.
“I’m sorry,” she said, at last, miserably. “ I know it’s absurd of me: I’m all on edge.”
Everything was going wrong. Under my breath I cursed myself. The rain came on, quite heavy.
“Let’s go in,” I said. “ I want to show you the laboratory.”
After the raw outer air, it was comfortable in the laboratory, but although she removed her gloves she did not unbutton the collar of her raincoat. We stood side by side at the bench and, when her eyes had swept the place, she took up all the cultures, one by one, in a reminiscent way, as of something past, clouded by memory, never to be renewed.
“Careful,” I murmured, as she touched the stopper of the strongest culture.
She turned towards me, and her dark dilated pupils softened slightly. Yet she said nothing. No one was there, we were together, but we were not alone.
“I’ve made a vaccine,” I told her in a low voice. “But now I have a better idea. To extract and concentrate the nucleoprotein. Challis agreed it should be far more efficacious.”
“Have you seen him lately?”
“No. I’m sorry to say he’s laid up again, at Bute.”
There was a pause. Her apparent calmness, this pretence of normality, made everything unreal. We stood and looked at each other as though hypnotized. It was suddenly chilly.
“You’re cold,” I said.
We went to my sitting-room, where Sarah had already lit a good fire. I rang the bell, and almost at once she brought up the well-laden tray I had asked her to prepare.
Sunk in a wide chair and warming her hands at the blaze, Jean drank a cup of tea gratefully, and ate one of the petits fours which I had brought in specially from Grant’s. Her mood seemed flagging, as though the prospect of life were a load from which she shrank. I simply could not break this cold constraint which lay upon us. Yet, watching the colour flow back slowly to her pinched cheeks, I hoped that she was thawing out. She looked pathetically small and slight. As her fresh and tender bloom returned, a white heat burned in my breast. But my pride would not let me show it. In a stiff voice I said:
“I hope you feel better.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“This Place takes some getting used to.”
“I’m sorry I was so silly outside. But here … It’s as though someone never stops watching you.”
Again there fell a silence in which the slow tick of the clock sounded like fate. The room was beginning to darken. Except for a flicker from the hearth, there was barely enough light for me to see her face, so still, as if asleep. A quiver went over my nerves.
“You have barely spoken all afternoon. You cannot forgive me … for what happened …”
She did not raise her head.
“I am ashamed,” I said. “ But I could not have been different.”
“It is terrible to fall in love against one’s will,” she said at last. “When I am with you I no longer belong to myself.”
This admission gave to me a feeling of hope, that grew, gradually, into a strange sense of power. I gazed at her across the shadows.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Do you?” she said. Her face had a tense look, the look of someone expecting a blow.
“Let us get married. At once. At the registrar’s office.”
She seemed to feel, rather than to hear me, sitting silent and stricken, her head averted, as though trying to turn away.
Seeing her so helpless, a sudden exultation flamed over me.
“Why shouldn’t we?” I insisted softly, rapidly. “Say you’ll marry me. This afternoon.”
Breathless, I waited for her to answer. Her eyelids were lowered, her face half dazed, as though the world rocked about her and she were lost.
“Say yes.”
“Oh, I can’t,” she murmured, inarticulately, tormented, in the tone of one about to die.
“You can.”
“No,” she cried, facing round to me hysterically. “ It is impossible.”
A long, a heavy pause. That sudden cry had made of me an enemy, her enemy, the enemy of her people. I tried to collect myself.
“For God’s sake, don’t be so unloving, Jean.”
“I must be. We have suffered enough. And others too. My mother goes about the house, looking at me, simply saying nothing. And she is ill. I have to tell you, Robert. I am going away for good.”
The finality in her voice stunned me.
“It’s all arranged. There’s a party of us going out to West Africa on the maiden voyage of the new Clan liner the Algoa. We sail in three months’ time.”
“Three months.” I echoed her words—at least it was not to-morrow. But sadly, with enforced calmness, she shook her head.
“No, Robert … I shall be busy all that time … doing temporary work.”
“Where?”
She flushed slightly, but her gaze did not waver.
“At Dalnair.”
“The cottage hospital?” Surprise broke through my despair.
“Yes.”
I sat dumb and overcome. She went on:
“There is a vacancy there again. They want to try a woman doctor for a change … a short, experimental appointment. The matron recommended me to the Committee.”
Crushed by the news of her departure, I nevertheless kept trying, in a stupid sort of way, to picture her against the familiar background of the hospital, traversing the wards and corridors, occupying the very quarters that I had used. At last, I muttered brokenly:
“You did get on with Matron. You get on with everyone but me.”
Her breast heaved. She gave me a strange, unnatural smile.
“If we had never met … it would have been better. With us, there is a penalty for everything.”
I guessed her meaning. But although my eyes were smarting and my heart almost bursting, I struck back with a last, despairing bitterness.
“I won’t give you up.”
She was still calm, but tears were flowing down her cheeks.
“Robert … I’m going to marry Malcolm Hodden.”
I stared at her, frozen. I barely whispered:
“Oh, no … no … you don’t care for him.”
“Yes, I do.” Pale and tremulous, she defended herself with quivering distress. “He is a worthy, honourable man. We grew up together, went to school, yes, to Sunday school together. We worship in the same chapel. We have the same aims and objectives, he will be good for me in every way. In fact, when we are married we shall go out together on the Algoa, I as a doctor, Malcolm as head teacher in the settlement school.”
I swallowed the enormous lump which had risen in my throat.
“It can’t be true,” I muttered, inaudibly. “It’s all a dream.”
“You and I are the dream, Robert. We must go back to reality.”
I clenched my fist against my forehead and while, helplessly, I did so, she began in real earnest to cry.
It was more than I could stand. I got to my feet. At the same instant she rose, blindly, as though driven by the instinct to escape. We met. Then, for a moment, she was in my arms, weeping as though her heart would break, while my own heart was choked by a wild intoxication and delight. But as I held her more closely, she seemed suddenly to summon all her strength. Abruptly and passionately, she broke away.
“No … Robert … no.”
The anquish in her face, in every line of her fragile, flinching form, held me rooted to the spot.
“Jean.”
“No, no … never again … never.”
She could not stop the sobs which choked her, sobs which wrung my heart, and made me long to soothe her upon my breast. But that look in her glistening eyes, broken and tortured, yet fiercely unwavering, welling up from the depths of her soul, drained me slowly of all hope. The burning words of love I meant to speak died upon my lips. The arms I had raised towards her fell to my side. There was a dull and heavy beating in my head.
At last, stiffly, she brushed away her tears with the ba
ck of her hand, then wiped her lips. With a face hard as iron, I helped her to put on her raincoat.
“I’ll come with you to the gate.”
We walked to the entrance lodge without a single word. The rivulets which channelled the avenue had a sound almost living, but our steps were dead upon the sodden ground. We drew up at the gateway. I took her fingers, wet with rain and tears, but quickly she disengaged them.
“Goodbye, Robert.”
I looked at her as for the last time. A car rushed past in the road outside.
“Goodbye.”
She faltered at that, but recovered herself with a shiver and hurried off, her eyes wrinkled up against fresh tears, not looking back. The next minute the heavy gate clanged shut; she was gone.
I came up the drive, sullen and wretched. Twilight was falling and the rain at last had ceased. Above the western horizon the sky was livid, as though the sunset had committed bloody murder amongst the clouds. Suddenly, over the still Place, the evening bugle sounded and from the tall flagpole on the hill the flag descended, slowly, slowly, while outlined upon the ridge there stood, rigidly, in the tense attitude of salute, the erect and solitary figure of the inmate deputed to this task.
Long live Eastershaws, I thought bitterly.
Back in my room I found the fire almost dead. I gazed at the dull grey ashes.
Chapter Five
It was Sunday, and the bells of the ivy-clad church broke upon the Eastershaws air. As though to aggravate the darkness of my mind, the morning once again shone bright and warm. Fruit hung heavily on the orchard trees, and in the formal beds of the balustraded terrace geraniums and begonias traced out vivid arabesques.
From my window, as I finished dressing, heavy, and only half awake, I could see the inmates of the Place converging upon the holy building, a goodly sized Gothic structure of mellow brick, appropriately shaded by a cluster of tall elms.
The men of the East Wing came first, flanked by Brogan and three of Scammon’s staff, a large and solid body, dressed in workmanlike grey, with strong boots and serviceable caps, most of whom worked in the fields or craft shops. Some were cheerful and smiling, others silent, a few gloomy—for there were “bad” morons amongst the “ good” who were often at odds with the authorities. One group had a superior, though less hardy air, with darker suits and white starched collars—these were men who had risen and were entrusted with special tasks, such as checking cartloads of coal or wood at the weighbridge, or marking off the laundry, on paper sheets, with pen and ink. Palfrey, already in the porch, shepherded them in with a benign smile and pink nods of welcome.