by A. J. Cronin
“You’ll drink a dish of tea with me?”
“I’m obliged to you,” Mrs Mowat shook her head. “ But I am here for another reason. Is your niece at home?”
“No, she’s out.”
“Hmm!” Again that same portentous sound escaped Susan Mowat’s lips. “She’s out a good deal, I should fancy.”
“Gracie likes getting about,” explained Kate.
“Indeed.” A cold smile twisted Susan Mowat’s lips. “Provided she has somebody to get about with.”
Kate felt herself losing her presence of mind. Her heart, which often bothered her, and which in fact she knew to be weak, began to thump heavily in her side. She wished, all at once, that she were upstairs quietly lying down, that she had pretended to be out, that she had not let Susan Mowat into the house at all. She said, weakly:
“That’s just the old story they hold against Gracie.”
“The old story!” exclaimed Susan Mowat disdainfully. She drew herself accusingly erect. “ Kate Nimmo, unpleasant though it may be, I have something I find it my duty to tell you. It’s a matter of common knowledge all over the town that your niece Gracie has been misconducting herself with David Murray, trying to break up his engagement with Isabel Waldie.”
Kate’s labouring heart gave an extra jump. “I can’t believe it,” she protested.
“Indeed!” The minister’s wife answered with the utmost scorn. “But the whole town believes it. They were seen at Markinch, and several times at Dumbreck. And I myself heard Davie, poor lad, showing her the door.”
She paused triumphantly, head thrown back, elbows squared. “You surely know that Gracie Lindsay always was a bold brazen hussy, from her earliest days at the Academy. And now she’s come back she’s worse by far. I could tell you a thing or two if I chose to open my mouth, what she’s up to now, for instance, but I’ll never have it said of me that I spread scandal, no, no, but only that I stopped it, and that’s why I’m here today, Kate Nimmo.”
All out of breath she made another pause, for one shuddering inspiration, before rushing on.
“You know yourself that your husband has always doted on Gracie Lindsay, mooning over her at the Bible Class when her skirts were hardly below her knees. Baillie Waldie was recalling it to the minister only yesterday. It’s all very well to say she was a schoolgirl then. She’s not a schoolgirl now. Ever since she’s been back he’s been moonstruck, letting her run in and out of his studio at all hours, taking her arm as they come across the common.”
The last insinuation was, Kate knew, completely false. And yet it crushed her. Daniel was such a fool anyone might draw damaging conclusions from his actions. Kate could not think coherently, and for the moment, at least, the fight had gone out of her. All the colour had vanished from her face, leaving it quite grey. She sat helplessly while the minister’s wife rose and, pulling on her gloves with sharp forceful tugs, delivered herself of her final words.
“I’m sorry I’ve had to speak my mind this way, Kate Nimmo, but my duty was clear to me. Maybe you can still do something about it. That remains to be seen. But I’ll tell you one thing plain. We have young people to think of and protect, decent God-fearing young men like my son and his companions. So if you don’t take steps to stop this open scandal in the town, then believe me, others will!”
Kate made no reply. Still in a kind of daze she saw Susan Mowat throw her a last pitying look, then turn and sweep majestically from the room. Not, to save her life, could Kate have moved. Only when the front door slammed did she comprehend fully that her visitor had gone.
That sound brought her out of her stupefaction. She shivered as though an icy shower had struck her, and a slow wave of indescribable emotion passed over her. For perhaps the first time she realised exactly what had been said.
That she should be so spoken to in her own house, and by Susan Mowat of all people! Wave after wave swept upon her—pain, bitterness and humiliation—oh, humiliation most of all!
It was not that she believed the accusation levelled against Daniel. She knew him too well—indeed, she loved him too well—to believe him capable of that! But it was enough that in his fondness he had given occasion for the clacking of slanderous tongues. And was it merely fondness? He had “ doted” on Gracie all her life, the minister’s wife had said. A pang of jealousy tore at Kate’s breast.
As for Gracie—coming here uninvited with her pretty, wheedling ways and her smooth, smiling face— she was the root and branch of all the trouble. Dark anger rose up in Kate’s heart, forcing glittering tears into her eyes. She rose and went into the kitchen. She would show Gracie, yes, and Daniel too. She was not a woman to be used in such a fashion.
“Gracie!” she called out suddenly in an unnatural voice.
There was no answer. Gracie was not back yet.
Going to the window, Kate seated herself there, her bosom rising and falling. Her hands clenched nervously as she waited.
The twilight was falling when Gracie returned. She came through the gate. The front door opened with scarcely a sound and she stood in the lobby, her expression pensive, her figure relaxed, as though she were fatigued.
She remained an instant there, then removed her light coat and silently advanced along the passage with the intention, it seemed, of reaching her own room unobserved. But she had taken only a few paces before she drew up, aware that Kate stood at the foot of the staircase blocking her way.
“It’s you, Aunt Kate. You quite startled me.”
Kate did not answer. She stood there, one hand gripping the stair banister, the other pressed hard against her side. Her face was indistinct, yet it looked stony amongst the shadows of the lobby, and her body was oddly rigid.
Preoccupied by her own melancholy thoughts, Gracie did not notice the strangeness of Kate’s manner. She took a step forward.
“I’ll go up, Aunt Kate. I shan’t want any supper.”
Kate took a tighter grip of the banister. Her voice, struggling out of the raging tumult of her bosom, sounded smothered.
“No supper! What a pity! Wouldn’t you like me to fetch something to your room? Perhaps some chicken and a glass of sherry?”
At first the unaccustomed irony fell short—Gracie gazed at Kate with a vague bewilderment.
“It wouldn’t be the slightest trouble, you understand. Why shouldn’t you have all your orders? It’s a privilege to serve you.” Kate was trembling violently now. Unable to maintain her satire any longer, she burst out:
“Where have you been?”
There was a pause. Gracie answered slowly: “ I went for a motor run to the loch.”
“Who were you with?”
“Frank Harmon. But really, Aunt Kate…” There was pain and astonishment in Gracie’s voice.
“Don’t answer me back,” Kate shrilly cut her short. “ I’ve listened to you long enough. You, with your big eyes and your would-be pretty ways. There’s not room for both of us in this house any longer. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Go up to your room tonight with or without your supper. But tomorrow you must find another lodging.”
A throbbing silence. Gracie could see Kate’s face now, and the sight of it made her pass her hand over her eyes as though to brush away an image that could not be real. Suddenly a thought struck her.
“If you think I’m not giving you enough, I could pay two pounds a week.”
Wounded where she was vulnerable, Kate’s expression became more bitter.
“So you think it’s the money? Well, you’re wrong. You might have stayed here for nothing if only you’d behaved yourself. But now… now I wouldn’t have you if you offered me a fortune.”
Gracie’s face had hardened. She said rigidly:
“Perhaps you’ll tell me what I’ve done.”
It was too much for Kate. Blind with wretchedness and anger the last of her control broke.
“Done! As if you didn’t know. You’ve brought shame and humiliation on Daniel and me, with your scandalous gallivant
ing ways. The whole town is talking of you … and of us.”
For a moment Gracie made no answer. Her face, in the half light, seemed strangely pale. Her eyes, dark and wide in that pale face, were like the eyes of a hurt bird. At last, quietly, she said:
“In that case, Aunt Kate, I’d better leave now.”
Without looking at her aunt, who unconsciously made way for her, she went upstairs and along the passage to her room.
With her face still distorted, Kate walked unsteadily into the parlour, where she could hear the sound of drawers being opened and closed on the floor above.
In her heart she felt that her attitude towards Gracie bad been unjust and harsh. In a sense she hated herself, and she had to fight down a warm desire to soften, to take Gracie in her arms and tell her that she was sorry, to link up with Daniel and her niece against Susan Mowat’s calumnies. But no, because she suffered she had to make others suffer too.
She heard a cab drive up to the gate, heard the cabman enter and help Gracie with her luggage. Then there was silence.
But only for a few moments. Almost at once steps sounded in the hall and Daniel entered the parlour, his face drawn, despondent, and strained by travel.
“Kate,” he exclaimed, “who was it that passed me in the street?”
She ground her teeth in impotence. The sight of him, with his woebegone and flustered face, at this crisis, drove her finally to distraction. No matter that she had upheld him to Susan Mowat, no matter that in her heart she loved him. Aloud she shouted:
“It was Gracie Lindsay. A worthless hussy who gets your wife belittled and insulted before the whole town. I’ve sent her packing.”
“No, Kate,” he faltered, aghast.
“But I have. And I’d do it again and again to serve you back. When I think on what I’ve had to put up with I could sink for shame.”
She took a sudden step forward and, seizing him by the shoulders, shook him till his teeth rattled. Then suddenly she let him go. Back he went through the open door, staggering giddily until he crashed against the hard oak lintel.
Hysterically, Kate burst into tears, then, turning, fled to her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Her heart was labouring frightfully in her bosom, sending a pain down the inside of her left arm. Why, oh why, did she let herself get upset like this? She wasn’t cut out for such scenes, indeed she wasn’t. With fingers that trembled she fumbled in the drawer for the heart pills that the doctor had given her and somehow managed to swallow two of them. Then she fell upon her bed and shook with bitter sobs.
Daniel straightened himself up slowly and remained, head clownishly tilted, listening to his wife’s smothered weeping upstairs. His rosy mouth was open with a kind of infantile wonder, his clear blue eyes were narrowed by a muddled distress. Kate had never been more incomprehensible to him than at this dreadful moment.
Outside, on the way to the town, Gracie sat in the swaying cab, her burning cheek resting in her palm. The moon, now risen high in the dark, pearly sky, burned with a soft radiance. A tear trickled from beneath Gracie’s eyelids and tasted salt in her mouth. Never had she felt so wretched, so desolate and lost. What was her life? How had she deserved this tribulation?
Fifteen minutes later the cab reached the town, drew out of Church Street into College. Row, and stopped before Mrs Glen’s apartment house, a grey-fronted dwelling rising above its neighbours in the narrow row with an air of dingy respectability.
Here, at No. 3, the widow Glen had earned her livelihood for more than 20 years by taking in lodgers. Apart from her two permanent boarders, the French mistress at the Academy and the librarian of the Institute, Mrs Glen’s lodgers were usually young men who did not belong to Levenford, yet came to work, or learn a trade, in the shipyard. Indeed, it was at Glen’s that Nisbet Vallance had put up when taking his engineering course at Ralston’s eight years before.
But now, perhaps, No. 3 College Row was less superior than it once had been. A general air of seediness hung about the place, and there were those who said that in recent months Margaret Glen had been losing her grip, that lately she had fallen more and more into the weakness which had long afflicted her—an addiction to the bottle.
It was dark when Gracie knocked at the door, and the street lamp opposite threw a pallid light about her.
“Have you a room to let?”
Margaret Glen stood in the doorway, a full-bosomed woman with a very red face and a humid eye. She was dressed in black, her skirt grease-spotted, her blouse gaping where a button was off. She had a warm voice, with an out-of-health catch in it.
“Who are you inquiring for?”
“For myself.”
The landlady, making her inspection, peered closer and suddenly let out an exclamation of discovery.
“Goodsakes alive! If it’s not Gracie Lindsay! Bless my soul, what fetches you here at this time of night? Are you not staying with your aunt?”
“Not now.”
“So that’s the way of it.” The warm-hearted widow, rendered more sympathetic by her Saturday night potations, nodded her head in complete understanding. “Blood’s thicker than water with Kate Nimmo, till it comes to the reckoning. But wait a bit, my dear, Margaret Glen is not like that. No, no. I’ll never let it be said that you knocked at my door in vain. Your father was a good friend of mine, and Nisbet Vallance too. Come away in. You can have a room and welcome.” She raised her voice suddenly to the waiting cabman. “ Bring in the gear, Tom. And look sharp if you want a dram.”
Thus, despite what Levenford might say, the widow Glen took Gracie in from the simplest motive in the world, an impulse of kindness: while Gracie came to Mrs Glen because she could think of nowhere else to go.
The room towards which the landlady led the way was on the top floor, a high, flower-papered bed-sitting-room at the back of the house.
“Here you are, my dear. And now I’m going to fetch you up some negus. It’s turned chilly of a sudden, and you’re looking pinched.”
The widow retreated and presently returned with a large steaming glass of hot spirits and water, which Gracie drank gratefully. Then, tired out by the scene with Aunt Kate, perplexed and harassed by the difficulties which had so suddenly come upon her, she washed her hands and face, undressed and slid between the sheets, where the fumes of the grog rising to her head sent her quickly to sleep.
Next morning, after the first surprise of awaking in a strange room had passed, Gracie felt mysteriously tranquil. Of course, she still had troubles, but she felt that they would pass.
Lying on her bed with hands behind her head, she was day-dreaming when the sound of bells reminded her that it was Sunday. A sudden impulse formed in her mind to go to morning service, as she had when she was a girl.
“Ding, dong,” went the bells, and the sound uplifted her heart. She felt a poignant desire to face the town, and humbly and bravely to regain the good opinion of those who had condemned her. Rapidly, she got dressed.
Outside it was a brisk morning, and already from all parts of the town a steady stream of decent folks, all solidly conscious of their own worth, moved towards the parish church. The women gloved and bonneted, the men in sober black, all ready to recognise and acknow-ledge their neighbours according to their station.
“Ding, dong! Ding, dong!” At the corner of Church Street, awaiting her friend Robina Stott, the Provost’s wife, and garbed with righteous decorum, stood Miss Paton.
“Good morning.” She joined her stately tread with that of Robina. “There’s a fine turnout for the church today! There’s the Waldies across the road, with Davie Murray.” She bowed low. “ Will that be a new suit Murray has on? He cuts a pretty dash for a janitor’s son.”
“Isabel looks well pleased, at any rate,” said the Provost’s wife. “She’s not a bad figure of a lass.”
“She’ll be fat like her mother.” Miss Paton sniffed. “Mark my words, a house side before she’s forty.”
“Ding, dong! Ding, dong!” pealed the parish c
hurch bells, calling the kindly, the charitable, to prayer. Suddenly Miss Paton let out an exclamation so arresting it drew Robina up.
“Look!” she ejaculated. “ For mercy’s sake.”
There was a pause while the eyes of the two women strained through the gathering worshippers towards a figure emerging from College Row.
“As God is my Maker,” said Robina solemnly, “it’s Gracie Lindsay!”
Walking alone, Gracie gradually became conscious of the stir she was creating. People looked at her, then looked away. With an outraged air Mrs Waldie drew her daughter more closely to her side. Murray did not seem to see her. Miss Gregg, of the Sewing Guild, indignantly tossed her head.
Gracie coloured, then paled. She had forgotten the power of scandal in a small community, had not dreamed that the town’s hostility could be so dark, so bitter, a thing as this. She hesitated, indeed, but it was too late to draw back: mounting the wide stone steps she entered the church.
She went up the aisle, wondering where she should sit, since the place was more crowded than she had expected. Eventually she slipped into one of the side pews not far up, which held only one woman, Miss Isa Dunn.
It was then that the spinster Dunn, hitherto regarded as of no account, wrote her name forever in Levenford history. The moment Gracie entered her pew Miss Dunn drew herself up, lifted her belongings, hymn book, gloves and all, then marched deliberately across the aisle to another pew. A ripple passed over the congregation, silent yet approving.
Gracie sat very still in the deserted pew, a dull pain burning in her heart. She felt that every eye was fixed upon her. She saw that she had made a frightful mistake. She would have given much to be out of the church and back in her room, but now she could not move. With downcast gaze she remained while the church filled up and the minister finally took the pulpit.
The Reverend Douglas Mowat was a great pappy man with rolls of fat behind his collar—indeed, his corpulence had become such a byword in the town that his wife was reported to tie his bootlaces. Certainly he himself could never have reached so far beyond his bulging paunch. “Creishy Mowat” the irreverent named him, though perhaps this was due, in part, to the quality of his sermons, which, particularly when the rich members of his congregation attended at the kirk, were unsurpassable in unctuousness. Creishy had no real goodness, but he had a gift, rare in a taciturn race, of glibness. “When he opens his big blabbing mouth,” Apothecary Hay had sardonically declared, “ the words come gushing out like lard from a pig’s bladder.” In more refined Levenford society the Reverend Douglas was admiringly deemed both “ready” and “ eloquent”.