by AJ Cronin
‘Then gradual-like Bob’s letters home turned less regular. Soon they hardly came ava’, and, finally, they stoppit a’ thegither. Then, sure enough, to crown a’, accounts o’ Bob’s wild doin’s were brocht home from India by folks coming and going between the North-Eastern Company and the yard.
‘At the start Chrissie flat refused to believe the stories, but a’e day, about a year after Bob had gone, she got a letter frae the bla’guard breakin’ off the engagement. He wasna comin’ hame at the end o’ five years. The climate wasna suitable for her. He wasna good enough for her. These, and a hale pack o’ excuses, were put forrit by Bob as the cause o’ his decision, but Chrissie kenned, and everybody in the town o’ Levenford kenned, that the real cause was the wicked life which Bob had ta’en till abroad.
‘Weel, when she cam’ at last to see Bob had failed her, Chrissie was fair struck down. She said nothing, answered nothing, took not a single step. But from that day a change cam’ over the braw, douce lass. She turned quieter, more self-contained; she held herself awa’ frae the life o’ the toun.
‘Douce and gentle as ever she was – ay, mair so – but somehow she come like to a solitary way o’ leevin’, takin’ long walks by her lone, as though she couldna thole the company o’ others o’ her own age.
‘Weel, time went on, and the long silence, the gap between Bob Hay and Levenford, widened. Nae mair was heard of him except at odd times, shamfu’ stories o’ his deevilries. He cam’ to be a kind o’ legend in the town for a’ that was bad. Fair brokenhearted and unable to hold up her head i’ the toun, Bob’s mother just withered away. And, ’deed, his father was laid i’ the graveyard not so long after.
‘But Chrissie still kept up her heid. Off and on she had offers; some o’ the best men i’ the town spiered her, but she refused them a’. Faith, though she’s bonny still and nae mair than thirty-twa, I’m thinkin’ Chrissie has had enough o’ men to last her for a lifetime.’ A pause; then Janet concluded grimly – ‘Now that he’s back, if ever Bob Hay and Chrissie should meet again, as God’s my Maker, I’d like to hear the way she’d speak to him!’
When Janet slipped out eventually and left him to his supper, Finlay reflected sombrely on what he had just heard. He knew Chrissie Temple, though up till the present, he had not known her story, and the combination of beauty and sadness which had always struck him about her now stood explained.
Aware of the tragedy that was Chrissie’s life, Finlay felt an added loathing of this man who had come back; broken, debauched, and dying, but brazen to the last. Unlike Janet, he prayed with all his heart that Chrissie, for her own sake, might never see him.
Time went on, and Bob Hay continued to remain in Levenford.
The townspeople spurned him as they would have spurned a dog, meeting all his advances, all his attempts to recall himself to memory, with stony hostility. Yet Bob did not seem to care. Far from disheartening him, each rebuff seemed merely to encourage him the more.
He showed himself a great deal in public, stood at the Cross, paraded the High Street, forenoon and evening, dressed in his pinchbeck finery, swinging his cane, whistling carefree, shameless.
And every month, jaunty and disreputable, but irrepressible as ever, he appeared at the surgery for the certificate which entitled him to draw his pension.
Having explained that he preferred to pay his medical accounts annually, he always betook himself jauntily away without demeaning himself to offer a fee to Finlay.
Already it was rumoured that he was in debt all over the town. He seemed, indeed, to have no means of support but the allowance made him by the company, though this, he implied in a high-handed fashion, was a handsome, a magnificent sum.
On the first of September, however, Hay did not make his customary appearance at the surgery, and Finlay, who had somehow come to anticipate these visits with a mixture of aversion and interest, wondered what could have befallen the unfortunate reprobate.
He was not long in doubt. A message arrived the following day asking him to visit Hay at the Inverclyde Hotel. Moved by a queer curiosity, Finlay complied.
He found Hay occupied a small back room in the hotel, which, despite its grand-sounding name, was a mean, disreputable tavern lying behind Quayside. He was in bed in considerable distress, unshaven, pallid, and apparently in pain. Yet his demeanour was as careless and defiant as before.
‘Sorry to trouble you, doctor sahib,’ he croaked, ‘Can’t quite seem to get on the old pins today.’ And then, reading the distaste in Finlay’s eyes, he added – ‘Not much of a place here. When I’m up and about I’ll damn well give them notice. I’m going to stay with some friends, as a matter of fact, at the end of the next month.’
Finlay sat down quietly on the edge of the bed, drawing his own conclusions.
‘You’ve been drinking, I suppose?’ he asked.
For a moment it looked as though a hot denial were on Hay’s lips; then his face changed, and instead he laughed lightly.
‘Why not? A bit of a scatter does a fellow good once in a while. Shakes up the liver. Eh, doc?’
Finlay was silent, shocked, in spite of himself, by the sham, the pitiable travesty stretched upon the bed before him. He was not a man given to religious exhortations; he hated all display of sanctimony and righteousness, but now something, he knew not what, came over him, and he exclaimed –
‘In the name of God, Hay, why do you go on this way? It would be bad enough at the best of times. But don’t you realise – don’t you understand—’ he lowered his voice ‘—you’ve only got a few months to live?’
‘Huh, humbug, doctor sahib,’ wheezed Hay. ‘You go and tell that to the horse marines.’
‘I’m telling it to you,’ persisted Finlay in that low, pleading voice. ‘And I mean every word of it. Why don’t you take yourself in hand, Hay?’
‘Take myself in hand? Ha! Ha! That’s a good one, doc! Why in the name of Allah should I?’
‘For your own sake, Hay.’
Again a pause, while Hay, with unwavering defiance, met Finlay’s entreating gaze. It all seemed hopeless to Finlay, and, giving it up as a bad job, he was about to turn to open his bag and take out his stethoscope, when suddenly a strange and staggering phenomenon arrested him, held him as in a vice.
Through the shallow, callous expression on Hay’s face there suddenly broke an unbelievable agitation; his cheek began to twitch, and, miracle of miracles, a tear fell from his eye and rolled slowly down his cheek.
Desperately he tried to hold his pose of indifference, but it was no use. The mask was off once and for all. He gave way completely, and turning to the wall, he sobbed as if his heart would break.
Unwilling pity welled up within Finlay.
‘Don’t take on, man,’ he muttered, ‘Pull yourself together.’
‘Pull myself together!’ sobbed Hay hysterically. ‘That’s good, that is! What do you think I’ve been doing ever since I came home but pull myself together? Do you think it’s been nice for me, coming back like a beaten dog to die in the gutter?
‘Haven’t I tried to put a face on things and keep my end up? Oh, God in heaven, haven’t I tried? You think I’ve been drinking? Do you know I haven’t touched a drop since I came back? I don’t care if you don’t believe me. It’s true. Do you know what my allowance is? Three pounds a month. A fine time a man can have on that! Oh, a hell of a fine time! Especially a man like me, whose heart’s liable to burst at any minute.’
And, convulsed by an agony of pain and grief, Hay writhed upon the bed.
There was a long silence; then instinctively Finlay placed his hand on Hay’s shoulders. He had a terrible feeling that he had misjudged this man, that what he had mistaken for cheap affrontery was merely the mask of courage.
‘Cheer up!’ he whispered. ‘We’ll do something about it.’
‘No, it’s no use. They won’t own me here,’ Hay retorted in a voice of anguish. ‘Nobody speaks to me. I’m like a leper. Maybe I am a leper. They only wa
nt to spit at me, throw mud at me. Oh, don’t think I’m complaining. I deserve it. I’ve earned it. They’re entitled to snarl and snap at me. The sooner I’m dead the better.’
As Hay spoke a curious expression appeared on Finlay’s face – that look which usually betokened the taking of an important decision. He said no more; he did not even attempt to console Hay further; but, rising from the bed with a strange purpose in his eyes, he walked out of the room.
About an hour later, when Hay had sobbed his grief out, and lay staring at the ceiling in the blankness of his desolation the door opened softly, and someone came into the room. Apathetically, he did not at first turn his head, but at last he did so. Then a cry came from his lips.
‘You!’ he whispered as if in awe. ‘You – Chrissie!’
Slowly she came forward – Chrissie Temple, quiet and unassuming, her dark hair braided from her smooth forehead above her kind and gentle eyes.
She sat down beside the bed and took his hand.
‘Why not?’ she said.
He could not speak; fresh sobs rising in his throat seemed to strangle him. At last he groaned—
‘Go away and let me be. Haven’t I harmed you enough? Go away and leave me be.’
‘But I don’t want to go, Bob,’ she whispered. ‘If ye’ll let me, I’d rather stay. It’s now that you need me.’
She smiled at him unflinchingly, and there was that in her smile which silenced him. He bowed his head against her breast, his pain forgotten in the knowledge of her love, of her forgiveness.
Later he tried to tell her, to explain haltingly his faithlessness – of how he had been swept off his feet by wild companions, led into wretchedness and debt, sent finally to a fever-ridden, up-country station, where he had surrendered to oblivion and fate.
She listened, compassionate and understanding, fondling his head, smoothing his ruffled hair.
The twilight found them thus, and drew a veil upon their reconciliation beyond which it was sacrilege to penetrate.
A week later Levenford was stirred by the news that Bob Hay and Chrissie Temple had got married.
The ceremony took place privately, and Finlay was there to witness it. Afterwards Bob was driven home to Chrissie’s house, which stood right on the top of the Lea Brae, with a small garden from which there was a lovely view of the Firth of Clyde.
Healed in mind and spirit, if not in body, Bob knew the comfort and attention of a good woman.
Much of his time he spent in bed, but when winter passed and spring came again, Chrissie would take him into the garden, where, reclining in a long chair, he would rest his hands fondly in his wife’s as she sat beside him, and his eyes on the view, watching the ships sail out to the great beyond.
A strange honeymoon, but a happy one! Finlay was a frequent visitor at the house, yet it was Chrissie’s love and overflowing goodness rather than his skill which prolonged Bob’s life.
He lived all through that lovely summer in great happiness and peace, his pretence and cheap flashiness gone, and in its place real strength and patience, with which he met all his pain and suffering.
When the first colours of autumn were creeping over the landscape, and the first leaves fluttering gently down from the trees, Bob Hay passed peacefully away, sailing away, like the ships, into the great beyond.
And Chrissie was there beside him when he died.
She still keeps much to herself, and still takes her solitary walks, but on the occasions when Finlay meets her and stops to have a word, it seems to him that, instead of sadness, happiness is written upon her face.
Miracle By Lestrange
The coming to Levenford of Lestrange, charlatan and quack healer, worked a strange miracle. But the miracle arose in a queer and devious way; took place in a woman’s heart; and was far from the result Lestrange had intended.
Jessie Grant was a widow who kept the small tobacconist’s shop at the corner of Wallace Street and Scroggie’s Loan. She wasn’t a tall body – rather to the contrary, in fact. Her hair was dark and clenched back tightly from her brow, and she dressed always plain as plain in a black serge gown. But she had a look on her pale, narrow face that struck and daunted you – a kind of tight-lipped, bitter look it was, and it burned out of her dark-browed eyes like fire.
Stubborn and hard was Jessie, known throughout Levenford as a dour and difficult woman who neither asked nor yielded favours.
The shop wasn’t much – a dim, old-fashioned place, like an old apothecary’s shop, with its counter and small brass scales, its rows of yellow canisters, and a stiff, weather-blistered door that went ‘ping’ when you opened it.
Ben from the shop was the kitchen of Jessie’s house, with its big dresser, a wag-at-the-wa’ clock, two texts, a table scrubbed to a driven whiteness, some straight chairs, and a long, low horsehair sofa – that made up the tale of the furnishings. And out of the room rose a flight of narrow steps to the two bedrooms above.
Jessie’s husband, who in his life had been a graceless, idle ne’er-do-well, was dead and buried these twelve years. She had been left with one bairn, a boy called Duncan.
Soured and disillusioned, her subsequent struggle to secure a livelihood for herself and her son had been severe, and, although successful, had served further to embitter her.
As they say in Levenford, ‘the wind aye blows ill wi’ Jessie Grant’.
Strict wasn’t the name for the way she brought up Duncan. Never a glint of human affection kindled her blank eye. To those that dared tax her on the matter she had the answer pat, and would throw Ecclesiastes xii., 8, right into their teeth.
Duncan, at this time, was turned fourteen years old, a thin and lanky lad who had fast outgrown his strength, a silent boy, very diffident and sensitive in his manner, but with the friendliest smile in the world.
At school, he had been a regular prize-winner, and had begged to be allowed to continue his studies and go in for teaching. But Jessie, implacable as ever, had said ‘No’, and so Duncan had left school a few months before to start work in the shipyard as a rivet-boy.
Folks murmured at such treatment of the boy, at such lack of motherly affection, but Jessie minded nothing. Bitter and harsh she was with Duncan in everything.
Naturally, such a woman had little to do with doctors – her Spartan principles and steadfast belief in castor oil and fresh air precluded that.
And so Finlay never met in with Jessie until one day in the spring he received a most surprising and wholly unexpected summons to her shop. It was not Jessie, of course, but Duncan – for once castor oil had not answered. And Finlay had not been ten minutes in the boy’s dark little room before he saw the trouble to be really serious.
Duncan’s right ankle showed a full swelling, a sinister swelling very white and boggy, yet without signs of inflammation. It looked bad: and it was bad.
Following a thorough investigation, Finlay had no doubt whatever in his mind; the condition was one of tuberculosis of the ankle bone.
Back in the kitchen, Finlay told Jessie, and he did not mince words, for already her critical attitude towards him and the coldness in her manner towards the boy had roused him to quick resentment.
‘It means six months in a leg iron,’ he concluded abruptly. ‘And complete rest from his work.’
For a moment Jessie did not answer – she seemed taken aback by the seriousness of the complaint – then she exclaimed—
‘A leg iron!’
Finlay looked her up and down.
‘That’s right,’ he said bluntly. ‘And some care and attention from you.’
Again Jessie was silent, but she glowered at Finlay from under her dark brows as though she could have killed him. From that moment she was his mortal enemy.
It showed itself in many ways during the weeks which followed. Whenever Finlay called to see the boy she was at his elbow, dour and critical, even contemptuous. She watched the fitting of the iron leg brace with a sour, forbidding frown.
She muttered openl
y at the instructions given her, and grumbled bitterly at the tedious progress of the case. Finlay was doing the boy no good at all; the whole thing was a pack of nonsense.
On more than one occasion hot words passed between them, and soon Finlay began to loathe Jessie every particle as much as Jessie hated him.
He began to study the relationship of mother and son, feeling Jessie’s harshness to Duncan as wholly unnatural.
Here was a clever, sensitive, delicate boy, whose heart was bound up in books, forced to make his way through the rough hazards of the shipyard for which he was so clearly unfitted, when he might easily have made a career for himself in the scholastic profession, as he longed to do. But Jessie’s thrawn will prevented it.
Every word she spoke was curt and brooking; never a single term of endearment passed her lips.
As time went on Finlay found the situation almost intolerable.
And then, with a flourish of trumpets and much bill-sticking on country gate-posts, Lestrange came to Levenford.
Now Lestrange, or, as he proudly styled himself, Dr Lestrange, was a mixture of the showman and the quack, hailing from America, who had toured the breadth and the length of the world, and now found himself at last in Levenford.
Armed with an impressive electrical equipment, he posed as a great healer, a man of miracles, who helped humanity, cured those hopeless cases where the methods of ordinary physicians had failed.
It was his custom, outside the hall where his performances took place, to display a breathtaking collection of splints, crutches, and steel leg irons, which, he claimed, had been cast away rejoicingly after their owners had been restored to health.
Humbug it was. But such a display did indeed appear outside the Burgh Hall on the occasion of the visit of Lestrange to Levenford, accompanied by photographs and testimonials galore.
Finlay himself observed the galaxy, which occasioned him no more than a mild, contemptuous amusement. He gave it no more than a passing thought.
But the fates decreed that Finlay would think and think about Lestrange.