The Northern Light

by A. J. Cronin

  ‘Don’t you dare. Come in and give me your news.’

  Although she came seldom to the office, held back by her natural diffidence, her visits always lightened the day for Henry. Now, especially, he was glad to see her, so bright and with such unusual vivacity.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, me … I’m never anything but well.’

  ‘You’ve quite got over your faintness at the concert?’

  ‘It was nothing. I’m not used to crowds any more. And the hall was warm.’ There was a pause, then she said. ‘The question is … how are you?’

  ‘Pretty spry, considering.’

  ‘When did you see the doctor last?’

  ‘A week or so ago … I really forget. As a rule, I go once a month.’

  ‘You still have to take your little pills?’

  ‘Well, yes … they’re a great help.’

  As though deploring his reliance upon the nitroglycerine tablets, she shook her head, not at all in her ordinary manner, but like a bad actress trying to simulate regret. Then she came over to the arm of his chair. Her eyes, unusually large, seemed to beg his consideration.

  ‘David and I had a long talk about you last night.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said indulgently, gazing up at her. The dark brown dress, matching her eyes, set off the soft texture of her cheek, which now seemed slightly flushed. Under her bright affection he felt an odd sense of strain as she said, with a little rush:

  ‘You know how fond of you we are … and we’re both ever so worried. We think you’ve been doing too much, far more than you didn’t ought to. In fact, we think that for your own sake’ – she drew a quick breath – ‘ you should have a long rest.’

  ‘How long?’ He smiled.

  ‘Well’ – again that pained and nervous pause. – ‘that you should retire.’

  Sheer surprise silenced him. Then he said:

  ‘My dear … at this late stage … are you advising me to give up the paper?’

  ‘It would mean that, I suppose.’

  ‘But I have just put up the fight of my life to keep it.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve won. That’s just it. You’ve proved yourself. You didn’t give in. It was wonderful. And now you’re in a position to take advantage. They’d give you ever so much more money now … ever so.’ She took his hand with a caressing smile that ended prematurely in a slight trembling of the lips. ‘Do give over … it really would be best … for the sake of your health … and everything.’

  The hidden urgency in her voice, even more than the complete unexpectedness of her appeal, suddenly caused Henry a distinct misgiving. Could some connection exist between her visit and Smith’s letter? He looked away, worried. He could not bring himself to speak of the letter, nor would he think ill of Cora, yet he had to put this question:

  ‘You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you?’

  She started – it might have been from surprise.

  ‘No … not me, I’m not.’

  ‘If so, I wish you’d tell me.’

  ‘Of course I’d tell you. But I’m not … not me.’ A frightened smile came to her lips. ‘How could I be?’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Henry said stiffly. ‘As for my giving up, I mean to take a holiday fairly soon. And I dare say I shall retire one of these days and David will take over. But it won’t be for quite a while.’

  There was a constrained silence. The situation was saved for both of them by Moffatt, who, according to her usual routine, brought in the five o’clock mail. Although she apparently found little to admire in her own sex, from the beginning she had been predisposed in Cora’s favour. She greeted her warmly and they talked for a few minutes, then Cora said that she must go.

  Henry’s mood was still disturbed as he came back from seeing her to the door, where, in a few hurried words, she pressed him to reconsider what she had said to him. Her last glance, charged with silent pleading, subdued, pitiful almost, so troubled him that he could not settle to the work in hand. Outside in the street they were relaying the pavement. The noise of the pneumatic drill went through his head, preventing all his efforts to reason things out. At half past five he left the office, hoping to find peace for reflection at home.

  But here, immediately he passed through the front door, Alice met him in the hall.

  ‘How clever of you, Henry, to be so early!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are just the man I want – just in time, before the light goes.’

  She was choosing a new distemper for the spare bedroom and, distrustful of the local painter, proposed to create the colour scheme herself. Unable to resist, Henry permitted her to lead him upstairs, where for the next three-quarters of an hour, wearing a blue overall with a raffish air, she mixed and demonstrated a range of colours upon which he was called to offer comment. In the end, after much discussion and ingenuous indecision, having traversed the full circle, she decided on the first shade she had shown him.

  Yet this interlude, which might well have aggravated Henry’s mood, produced instead the opposite effect. In his wife’s preoccupation with the colour of a room there was something familiar and reassuring which soothed him, made his disquiet of the afternoon seem fanciful. Why must he always seek out trouble? Smith was just trying to make a nuisance of himself; Cora had come because she and David were concerned for his health. Between these two events there could be no connection whatsoever.

  Next morning at the office everything seemed normal – no defamatory messages, no further communication from Smith. Henry was congratulating himself that his attitude in ignoring the letter had proved effective when, at eleven o’clock, another note, more peremptory than before, was delivered to him.

  If we do not hear from you within twenty-four hours we shall be forced to make public certain information of a most damaging nature concerning your daughter-in-law which is now in our possession.

  Henry stared at it rigidly, holding it at a distance, as though it burned his hand, repeating to himself, ‘Concerning your daughter-in-law.’ He might have been dismayed if the tone of the thing had not made his blood boil. The more he studied it, the worse it became. Unsigned, it was of a nature so divorced from the normality of life, at least of his life, that he could barely credit it. That he, Henry Page, should reecive such a threat, in his own office, in the town of Hedleston – it was infamous.

  Now, indeed, he could not hesitate; strong and, immediate action was imperative. After some reflection he instructed Moffatt to telephone Smith that he would see him at three o’clock that afternoon. Then he thought of Cora: she must, of course, in fairness to herself, be on hand. The cottage was without a telephone; it was not easy to reach her. He wired her to come to the office at the same hour.

  Chapter Nine

  It took all Henry’s strength of mind to get through the day, so completely were his thoughts dominated by the coming meeting with Smith. Sustained by a sense of outrage, he was impatient, even eager for it to take place. He did not go out for lunch but instead ate a few biscuits from the tin he kept in his drawer. Restlessly he watched the hands of the office clock move slowly towards the afternoon.

  Cora was the first to appear; she came early, at quarter to three. Her look of strained expectancy suggested to him that she had misconstrued his summons. Did she imagine that on reflection he favoured her suggestion of the day before? He gave her no opportunity to reopen the matter. Nor, since he had no wish to alarm her, did he mention why he wished her to be here. Under the pretext of being busy he asked her to wait in Miss Moffatt’s room, adding that Moffatt would certainly wish to make her a cup of tea.

  The next fifteen minutes passed with intolerable slowness. Although Henry steeled himself to remain composed, he felt his heart beginning to thud … harder and harder. He tried to avoid having recourse to the amyl nitrate Bard had given him, the doctor having warned him that its repeated use diminished the effect, yet he was forced to crush one of the ampoules that he carried now, for emergencies, in the little ca
se at the end of his watch chain.

  He had barely finished inhaling it, and his face was still flushed from the drug, when Smith arrived, accompanied not only by Nye but by another younger man whom Henry had never seen before. The unlooked-for appearance of this stranger, although he seemed quiet, affable, and altogether presentable, was for some obscure reason a shock to Page – it seemed to invest the proceedings with new and unknown complexities. They stood there, all three, looking down at him, with Fenwick, who had shown them upstairs, remaining in the background. Smith broke the silence.

  ‘You had my letters.’ His voice sounded strange, hoarse and almost slurred; he appeared to speak with an effort.

  ‘Both of them,’ Henry answered. Then, as he had resolved, above everything, to be calm: ‘Will you sit down?’

  They sat down, like three automatons, the stranger with a disconcerting impassiveness, Nye with his usual insolent air. He glanced at Fenwick, who had found them chairs.

  ‘Do we need him?’

  Page told Fenwick he might go.

  ‘You’ll thank me later,’ Nye said. He lit a cigarette, adding as a polite afterthought, ‘You don’t mind?’

  A short pause followed, then Smith cleared his throat. His face, normally the shade of suet, had a sweaty pallor, accentuated by his blue unshaven chin and a dark puffiness under the eyes. He seemed acutely ill at ease; his collar was soiled, his necktie loose, his general appearance indicated a kind of feverish disorder. Henry had never before seen him in such a state.

  ‘Mr Page,’ he began haltingly, yet as if rehearsed, ‘I have no personal animus against you. I respect you and wish to cause you no distress. I even hope that you entertain similar feelings towards myself. At the same time, circumstances can arise in which a man in my position is obliged to take certain steps in his own interest. Mr Page, it’s a painful thing to say … but information has come into our possession which we feel we must put before you.’

  ‘If I am to believe your letters, it concerns my daughter-in-law.’

  ‘You’ve said it,’ Nye threw in, flicking the ash off his cigarette.

  ‘In that case, though it may strike you as too fine a point of honour, if you have anything to say against her I prefer you to say it in her presence.’

  ‘Wait, Mr Page. You’d better hear us first. We don’t want to hurt a woman.’

  ‘Oh, cut it out, Smith,’ Nye said. ‘For God’s sake, come to the point.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll hear you. But I hope you are conversant with the law of slander.’

  ‘Mr Page, it’s a difficult thing to say …’

  ‘Look here,’ Nye broke in. ‘Let me take over.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and fixed Page with a cold, protruding eye. ‘ You print a pretty pure paper, don’t you? You stand for a clean press, a clean community, a clean everything. You’re so lily white inside and out you’ve probably never heard the word abortion?’

  ‘I … I know the word,’ Page said, taken aback.

  ‘I hoped you might,’ Nye sneered. ‘ It makes things easier. Then you probably know that when a young woman gets in trouble, and isn’t married, and wants to save her pretty face, she hies herself to some old bag in a back street who relieves her of her encumbrance. Unfortunately, however, there’s a nasty little law known as Offences Against the Person Act, 1861, which says that if a woman unlawfully permits the use of any instrument or other means to procure her own miscarriage she is guilty of a felony, for which the offence is penal servitude for life or not less than three years, or imprisonment for not more than two years … a pity, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Smith said thickly. ‘Mr Page, it’s painful to have to tell you. In August three years ago your daughter-in-law, then Cora Bates, was convicted under that act at the Northern Assizes.’

  Henry stared at him, petrified. His entire body seemed fixed and frozen. All sense of his surroundings vanished and nothing remained but the blurred, wavering vision of Smith’s somehow misshapen face.

  ‘No … no … I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true. And we can prove it.’

  ‘No,’ Henry said again, with mechanical insistence. ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Oh, pipe down,’ Nye said. He pointed to the third man. ‘Haines here was on the case … followed it from first to last. Isn’t that so, Jack?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Haines looked at Page with a vague apology, or at least an assumption of regret. ‘ I was in court all through the trial. I must say the magistrate was very lenient, under the special circumstances. It was a light sentence.’

  ‘Sentence?’ Gripping the arms of his chair, Henry could barely speak the word.

  ‘Six months.’

  Henry’s heart failed him; for a long moment it halted in its beat. He had believed some accusation possible, the raking up and magnifying of some foolish mistake she had made, perhaps a silly affair with this young man Haines, or something having regard to her impoverished background and early struggles, but never this fatal thing, so far beyond the worst of his imaginings that suddenly everything within him rose up in revolt … he could not, and would not, accept it.

  ‘It’s impossible … a lie. She’s here … she’ll deny it.’

  ‘Fetch her in, then,’ Nye said, with a cool, off-hand assurance that chilled Page. ‘We’ll see who’s the liar.’

  Henry rose to summon her, then sank back in his chair. He could not have her in to answer this horrible accusation.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Nye urged. ‘Let’s settle this once and for all. Ask the little lady how she got in the jug.’

  Frozen by doubt, Henry could not decide what to do. While he still hesitated, the side door giving access to Moffatt’s room opened. Tired of waiting, Cora had come to see if he were free. Never would he forget her face as, in an instant of comprehension, she took in the scene before her. A mortal stillness fell upon the room, then, terrified, she gasped:

  ‘Excuse me … I didn’t know …’ and started to back out.

  ‘Wait a bit,’ Nye said. ‘There’s a gentleman here has come quite a way to see you.’

  She stopped, as if she had no power to resist.

  ‘I think you remember me?’ Haines said.

  ‘No … I never seen you before.’ The reply was so indistinct as to be barely audible.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Miss … at least you were Miss Bates then … I have the press clippings on me, with the photographs, and the statement you signed in the hospital.’

  He felt in his inside pocket. Page thought Cora would fall. She began to cry, a hard, dry sobbing without tears that shook all of her body. He could not bear it.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he said to Smith. ‘For God’s sake, leave us.’

  ‘Are you convinced?’ Nye said as he got up.

  Smith also had risen. He stood by the desk, not looking at Page, his despatch case in his hand, perspiration beading his forehead.

  ‘Now look, Mr Page. Nobody need know a thing about this. We’ll keep it as secret as the grave. No harm done. None whatever. The solution’s quite simple. I’ve drafted a little agreement here, all perfectly open and above-board.’ He fumbled, opened the despatch case. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to accept it. Then we’ll never print a word of your little bit of trouble. And believe me, my dear Mr Page, there need be no hard feelings on either side.’

  ‘Go, please, all of you. I’ll talk with you later.’

  Smith put a long Manilla envelope on the desk and led the way towards the door.

  When they had gone Page turned towards Cora. He could find nothing to say, absolutely nothing; the words withered in his throat. She was still crying and, with her arms across her face, had leaned blindly against the wall. He tried to find a consoling word, but he could not. It was she who broke the silence. Through her tears, still in that same abandoned attitude, she began to speak.

  ‘It’s true … true … what they told you. But perhaps they didn’t tell you everything … th
at ever since I was sixteen, I’ve been on my own, working mostly in cheap over-the-counter stores. One summer I took a seven-day trip to Blackpool; so help me, I’d saved up for it for months. I went dancing at the Palley. The manager saw me and offered me a job. I took it. He was nice to me and I was lonely. I’d always been lonely. It made me soft, made me want to find somebody to love. I never knew he was married … not at first, I didn’t. He didn’t care about me really, not him; he was a rotter, all right. When he found out I was that way he was furious at me. He treated me real bad. He was afraid his wife would find out. He said he knew what to do. I didn’t care much, the way he’d treated me; I let him take me to that place. A woman there did things to me. I was sick, proper sick, I thought I was going to die and I wanted to. She got frightened and fetched a doctor. He put me in the hospital and then it all came out.’ She almost broke down but forced herself to go on. ‘ I was in the hospital for eight weeks. I had the fever and everything. When they let me out the police took me. They had to, I suppose. They wanted me to turn Queen’s evidence, against the woman. But she was poor like me, hadn’t no friends; somehow I couldn’t do it. When my case come up that went bad against me, but the judge let me off with six months. I think he was sorry for me. I wasn’t much to look at. They’d cut my hair in the hospital and I was just skin and bone. I didn’t care. It wouldn’t have made no difference if they’d sent me away for the full stretch. Nothing made any difference. I just couldn’t be myself again.’

  ‘Don’t Cora …’ Pity made him rise and go to her. ‘You’ve said enough.’

  ‘I got to tell you, if it kills me. When I came out they wanted me to get a job in Blackpool – the aid society. But I’d had enough of that place. It was summer again. I saw an advert for my sort of job in Scarborough. I went there. The work was easy. It was selling doughnuts and that like, in a stall on the front. But I couldn’t get back to myself. I didn’t belong anywhere. I had no feeling, except I felt like I was really dead. Every evening when I closed up at six, I’d go for a walk by the harbour. And there, on the end of a bench, I’d usually see him. It was David. There was something about him. One night I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and spoke to him.’