by A. J. Cronin
“Would you—would you go to the length of £20?”
Daniel gazed at her, as much distressed as she—he knew nothing of the legal processes involved or of the validity of her claim upon the child, it never struck him that the threat of prosecution on the grounds of neglect would have quickly made her change her attitude. His nature was too mild for such a stratagem. And he wanted Robert. One look at that meagre face, at that crippled figure, had hardened his intention, driven him to most abandoned recklessness. The child must come out of here, if it cost him everything he had. He took a leap in the dark.
“I’ll give you £20. I haven’t got it now. But I’ll bring it to you—” He thought rapidly. “ The day after tomorrow. And then I’ll take the boy back to his mother.”
She stared at him, as in a trance. It was unbelievable, he was going to give her £20. Dear God! What could she not do with that—£20! It would make a new woman of her, bring her comfort and relief from drudgery, oh, it would last for ever. Suddenly, without warning, she burst into tears.
“Oh, dearie me,” she snivelled. “I don’t know what you’ll think of me. It’s like I was selling you the boy. But as God’s my judge I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t need the money. You’ve no idea what it is to be poor and helpless, and to have come down in the world.”
Daniel allowed her to exhaust her tears. Then, as she dried her eyes with the edge of her shawl, he said in a tone which he tried to keep from trembling:
“Will we have the boy in now? … Just so I can see him again?”
Daniel reached Levenford at eight o’clock that evening in a state of great elation. As the train swung round the curve of Dumbreck the last blink of the sunset caught him—it had cleared in the late afternoon to an unexpected brightness—and he felt as if he were travelling on buoyant waves of light.
His clothes had dried on him during the homeward journey, making his chest tight and his limbs stiff. There was a singing in his ears as he hastened along Church Street, in the gloaming, towards Gracie’s lodging. But Daniel did not mind. And although he had eaten scarcely anything all day long he did not dream of going home for supper until he had seen Gracie. He must tell her the great news at once.
But, alas! for his eagerness—Gracie was not at home. When he knocked at No. 3 College Row Mrs Glen came to the door, and, glancing over the top of his head, answered cautiously:
“She left the house at six o’clock.”
Daniel’s face fell.
“When will she be back?”
“Well,” the landlady spoke with due discretion “she didn’t mention when she’d be in. I shouldn’t think that she’d be late. Though, mind you, I wouldn’t like to say for certain.”
Daniel still lingered.
“You don’t know where she’s gone?”
“I haven’t the least idea.” After a momentary hesitation the landlady gave him her evasive, professional smile. “ I’m not one for inquiring where my boarders are going. That would never do at all, at all. What an awful day it’s been, though to be sure it’s finer now. Maybe we’ll get it warm again tomorrow. Good-night to you, Mr Nimmo, and safe home.”
With the door shut gently in his face Daniel had no alternative but to turn away. Yet he could not retreat tamely to the toll road. He must talk to someone. He must, he must. The thrilling news of his discovery, of all that he had done and now proposed to do, was more than his breast could humanly contain. The streets were quite dark now, the shops had closed a good half hour ago. And so he set off to call upon his friend the druggist.
Hay, at least, was not from home. He sat in his room above the shop with carpet slippers on his large feet and Mill’s Logic on his bony knees. Detached from his counter and at ease, he assumed even more completely an air of omniscient cynicism.
When Daniel appeared the druggist gazed at him—that ironic scrutiny which Hay termed “giving him a look”. Then, before Daniel could speak, he remarked satirically:
“So it’s you yourself, my bonny wee man! Come in. But don’t trip over yourself. By the law of gravity, you’re liable to fall down.”
Daniel was too elevated to be annoyed. He took a chair and exultantly exclaimed:
“I’ve found him!”
The druggist studied Daniel across his long nose.
“I guessed as much. Man, you’re the perfect example of homo eedioticus. Haven’t you got into enough trouble over that woman without bothering about her brat?”
“You mustn’t talk that way,” Daniel protested warmly. “I tell you, Apothecary, he’s made a powerful impression on me, this child. He’s only a little scrap of a thing. And the place he lives in—it’s just a sink of corruption. I don’t believe he‘s ever seen a green field or had a breath of pure air in all his life. And yet he never as much as lets out a whimper. It’s, oh man, it’s an inspiration.”
Hay laughed his most aggravating laugh.
“What kind of twaddle is this you’re giving me?”
“It’s gospel truth.” Daniel was not to be put down. “He’s an extraordinary boy. Seven years old and he faces up to things like a man. You ought to see the way he looks after the woman Lang—she’s been poorly lately—and the other children too. He ought to have a better chance. He should have had it long ago. We’ve got to get him out of that place. It is his only chance.”
“Go on with you! And when you have got him, what will you do with him?”
“Don’t you understand that the mother as well as the son will gain from this? Gracie will make him a home. You may laugh, but that will be the saving of her. I will find her a place a little way from Levenford, where everyone has been so unkind to her.”
He paused to regain his breath, and then continued: “I tell you, my friend, that, God willing, I will have brought mother and son together before the end of the week.”
“Those are your plans,” said the druggist pityingly. “Have you thought what plans the excellent young woman may have?”
“I am going to look for her. She has gone out.”
“Is that so? What an extraordinary coincidence! Where is she?”
“How should I know?” retorted Daniel, reddening.
“Obviously. How should you know?” Hay laughed loudly. “You never said a truer word in your life. How … ha! ha! … how should you know?”
Daniel looked puzzled.
“My poor friend,” resumed the druggist scornfully. “You really are a sad idiot! You have such a way of arranging things! Imagine the hornets’ nest you will stir up, the scandal, you will provoke in the good town of Levenford which is still resounding to the name of Gracie Lindsay. And you propose to bring her bastard here in front of everyone? Do you want to have the whole town on your heels and on Gracie’s?”
Daniel pressed his lips obstinately.
“I can’t leave him in that slum any longer. What else can I do?”
There was a silence. The druggist lay back in his chair inspecting the heel of his carpet slipper, which was almost, falling off, with the conscious air of a man of affairs.
“Well, I’ll tell you what you could do,” said he at length, drawing down the corners of his mouth. “Mind you, I haven’t a brass farthing’s worth of interest in your Gracie Lindsay or her—well—what I said before. But Heavens, I just hate to see you make a fool of yourself, ay, and maybe worse, for there’s folks in this town, Mowat, Waldie and a few others, who would put their knife into you, deep, deep, over this business.” He smiled scornfully. “Because of that, I’m half inclined to lend you a hand.”
There was a dramatic pause. Then, fortifying him self with a nugget of liquorice, Hay resumed.
“Maybe you’ll mind my houseboat on the loch, that’s to say if you have any mind at all. Well! This boy is half dead, according to your own statement, dyin’ for a breath of fresh air. As for his bonny mother, the sooner she’s out of this royal borough of Levenford the healthier for her and all concerned. If you knew a certain Mr Harmon as well as me, you might grasp the full
significance of that remark. So I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, my daft little man, I’ll give you my houseboat for the boy and Gracie, and they can have a holiday together there till they’re ready to go to the grand new place you’re finding for them.”
A little gasp broke from Daniel’s lips as the full worth of the idea dawned upon him. It was quite true what Hay said, he himself was a muddler, he had no head for detail or arrangement. He had worried himself to death over the complications of the situation, yet he could never have conceived an expedient so brilliant, so simple as this. Why, it solved the whole difficulty at once.
“Man,” he stammered, between admiration and gratitude. “It’s a master-stroke.”
Hay waved Daniel’s thanks away with the air of one superior to all the pettifogging emotions of humanity. Nevertheless he condescended, indeed he seemed anxious in a lordly fashion, to expound the merits of his own invention.
Thus, half an hour later, when Daniel took his leave, the thing lay plain between them. The Lord doth move in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. Who, thought Daniel, would dare to question the hand of Providence at such a moment and on such a night? Tears came to his eyes as he marched along.
And then, as he reached the end of College Road, he saw a woman turn the corner in front of him and mount the steps of No. 3. It was Gracie. Suppressing an impulse to call out, Daniel hurried after her, reaching the entrance as she was about to close the front door.
“Daniel!” she exclaimed, recognising him with a start. She pressed her side uncertainly, her key still in her hand. “What a fright you gave me! Why are you out at this time of night?”
“Why are you, Gracie?” he asked, an imperceptible doubt in his tone.
“Me?” she uttered the word as though discarding it. “I’ve been to an entertainment.”
“With whom, Gracie?”
“Oh, with my friend and employer, Frank Harmon.” She smiled with that new faint note of bitterness. Her cheeks were a trifle flushed, her eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Then, catching sight of his face, she relented suddenly, bending forward with a warm impulsiveness. “There, there! Do not look so doleful, you poor little man. There’s nothing between Frank and me. We only went to the concert at Overton’s, if you want to know. I cannot sit alone twiddling my thumbs all the evening. Can I now?”
For some reason he was conscious of a queer dismay. He had never seen her so brittle, so unlike herself. The lightness of her tone rang completely false. She seemed in some strange way to mock herself.
“Don’t stare at me so hard, Daniel dear. You make me feel quite giddy. But what am I doing keeping you standing here in the cold? Come away in. We’ll call up Mrs Glen. She’ll give us a glass of negus in her snug back-parlour.”
Her manner was so odd, so overwrought, it quite alarmed him, as also did the suspicious odour of her breath. He followed her into the passage, but stopped at the foot of the staircase where a gas jet, coldly moping in a yellow globe, cast a wavering light upon them.
“Wait, Gracie,” he whispered nervously. “I’ll go no farther. I only wanted you to know that I went to Kirkbridge today.” He drew a deep breath. “ I’ve—I’ve found the boy.”
There was a sudden silence, filled only by the faint splutter of the gas jet.
“Yes, my dear,” he nodded. “You can have him back now any time you choose.”
She turned slowly, steadying herself against the wall. Her expression, caught between that high, unreal gaiety and the sudden comprehension of his words, wore an arrested, a rigid look. Her hand was drawn back as if he had suddenly flashed a bright light upon her face.
“What did you say?” she murmured indistinctly.
He repeated what he had already said.
“So that’s it.” She rubbed her forehead slowly with her hand as though trying to erase disconnecting and confusing thoughts. “Tell me—tell me how you found him.”
Standing there in the lobby of the lodging-house he told her what he had done and what, with Hay’s help, he proposed to do.
When he had finished she gazed at him, her lower lip drooping moistly, her eyes so dark in her pale face their pupils seemed to have overflowed.
“What kind of woman am I?” She spoke in a distraught and helpless tone. “ I don’t know. I wish somebody would tell me.”
Then suddenly she leaned against the wall, buried her face in her arms, and began to cry. She cried silently, yet with such abandon that at last Daniel touched her arm in timid protest.
“Just let me cry,” she sobbed. “ I feel I could never cry enough. And, oh dear, oh dear, I have an awful headache.”
“Don’t take it so hard, Gracie,” he whispered, upset. “It’s not easy for you now. But you’ll find that it’ll all come right in the end.”
She stopped weeping at last. As she dried her eyes a dry, nervous spasm, a kind of shudder, shook her body. She faced him humbly.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Daniel. I’ll not be this way again.” Again that spasm, suppressed, almost hysterical. “ I’ve a feeling the concert didn’t agree with me.” She raised her head slowly. “ I must go up, I suppose. Thank you for all you’ve done for me. I’ll not stop any longer now. Somehow I’m half-dead with sleep.”
She gave him a wan smile, travesty of the joyous gratitude he had expected, and began, quite unsteadily, to mount the stairs. He gazed after her, standing there a minute after she had gone from sight, smoothing his little beard with a puzzled, deprecating, troubled gesture.
Gracie was strange tonight, yes, even before he had told her she had acted queerly. With a sense of vague distress he turned and quietly left the house, setting his steps towards home.
Across the Common his feet dragged upon the incline and his legs were stiff and weary. He became aware of himself as a sorely tired man with a sharp pain in his side. There might be difficulties with Kate, too, a demand for an explanation of his lateness he could not give.
Yet the thought of all that the day had brought was warm within him, a sense of accomplishment, of thanksgiving. And the dearest thought of all was that grave, that pallid little face as he had first seen it emerging from the shadow of the squalid staircase in Clyde Place.
Chapter Five
The following night David Murray, bridegroom-elect and rising young man of Levenford, sat at his supper with a set and brooding frown. Hovering about in the shadows of the clean, bare living-room, with its spotless hearth and shining fender, its varnished wallpaper and brass weighted clock, his mother studied him.
“You’ll have another cup, Davie dear?”
At first he hardly seemed to hear her, then with a start he lifted his head.
“No, no, mother. I can barely finish this one.” He stirred his cocoa and made pretence of drinking.
She gazed at him solicitously. All her life she had worked for him, denied herself food and clothing, forgone everything in order that he might have what was good for him—as a boy, as a growing lad, as a student, poring late over his books in this same room.
Now that he was successful she still clung to her habits of self-denial and effacement. Despite his remonstrances she would not even sit at table with him, but served him hand and foot throughout the meal.
Her joy lay not in what he could give her but in the treasured thought that she had helped to make him what he was. Every upward step which he had taken brought her a deeper satisfaction. The esteem in which he was held was sweeter to her than manna from heaven.
And now his marriage with Isabel Waldie, daughter of the richest, the most important man in Levenford—it would be the crowning glory of his career! Often, often, in these last few days, moving about the old-fashioned and rather ill-lit house that stood tucked away at the back of Skinners Wynd, she had raised her eyes and thought: “ Oh! If his father could only see him now!”
Tonight, however, she sensed that he was not his usual self and a worried line drew between her brows. She did not dream of presuming to question him direct, yet wh
en she had silently removed his cup, as if in the hope that he might speak, she murmured:
“You’ve had a hard day of it, son?”
He nodded absently. The Town Council’s monthly meeting had taken place that afternoon and settled the final plans for the new gasworks scheme. He had been complimented on his purchase of the Langloan property, then afterwards, as the Council members sat relaxed, with the customary refreshment of whisky before them, the Provost had jovially raised his glass.
“Gentlemen, there’s going to be a wedding soon … I’d like to propose the health of our friend David and his future bride, Miss Waldie.”
Recollection of that final toast made Murray wince. His silence increased his mother’s anxiety. Seeing that he would eat no more, she began disconsolately to gather up the dishes.
“You’ll be for Knoxhill tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he replied heavily. “I saw Waldie at the meeting. The house is full of dressmakers.”
“Then I’ll make up the fire for you,” she said quickly. “It’s turned chilly of a sudden.”
He rose abruptly.
“No! I think I’ll take a walk tonight, mother.”
“A walk!” Her eyes fluttered towards him with renewed anxiety. In his student days he had often taken long, solitary walks at night to clear his tired brain. But now, this was different, and strangely disturbing.
She watched him go into the little lobby, pull on his cloth cap, and take his stick from the cupboard under the stairs. Hardly aware of what she did, she followed him into the hall, her gaze imploring, her hand clutching the sleeve of his coat.
“Promise me—promise me you’ll not do anything foolish, Davie!”