by A. J. Cronin
For one who had hitherto been struggling in a middle-class surgery for driblets of five shillings and even half a crown, this turn of events was a godsend, a lifesaver – in brief, immensely profitable. My treatment would never have been deemed worth while had I not charged for it an appropriately exorbitant fee. Where pence had previously been my recompense, guineas now poured in – a golden stream.
Why should I be hypocritical and pretend that this financial victory was not gratifying to me? It brought many pleasant things in its train. Presently our obligation to Dr Tanner was fully discharged, the house repainted and properly furnished. There was a neat maid to open the door, and a nice nurse to take the children out for afternoons in the park. I had at last been persuaded to patronize Manuel’s tailors, had been put up for a good club, escaped occasionally for an afternoon’s golf, and I made my visits in a new Austin coupe.
Often I would pause, and, in a kind of daze, wonder at the circumstances which had brought us all this … and, we hoped, though dubiously, heaven too. A little old woman had, by mistake, swallowed a lethal dose of belladonna liniment, and I, called in by chance, had been fortunate enough to save her. The rest had followed, like ripples spreading outward, farther and farther, when a stone is dropped into the still waters of a pool. Ah, yes, I was riding upon the crest of these wavelets. Had I not reason to be pleased with myself?
Nevertheless at the back of my mind I was conscious now and then of a vague dissatisfaction as the character of my practice changed. More and more I was preoccupied by my ‘high-class’ patients, less and less by the ordinary working people who came to the side door. While I enjoyed the sweets of prosperity and revelled in the sense of fulfilled ambition – nothing is more thrilling to the Scot than the knowledge that he is ‘getting on’ – I could not but contrast the work I was now doing with the work I had once done.
The climax came one afternoon when I stepped out of my consulting-room for a cup of tea, very well pleased with myself, having just conducted to the door a new patient – an erect, military-looking man with a coppery complexion and a moustache.
‘Do you know who that was?’ I inquired smugly of my wife.
She shook her head.
‘Sir — —, C.B., I.C.S.’ I mentioned a name prominently before the public of that day. ‘I’m getting the men now as well as the women. He was recommended to me by his wife.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Not much,’ I chuckled. ‘Touch of liver. Anglo-Indian, you know. He’s going to have a course of injections at five guineas a time. Think of it. When we started here I had to sweat like the devil for a miserable two and six. And now, five guineas for three minutes’ work.’
She did not answer, but, in silence, poured me another cup of tea. Something in her reserve nettled me.
‘Well, what about it? Don’t you think I deserve some credit?’ I smoothed the lapels of my well-cut Seville Row suit. ‘After all, I’ve come a long way from the days when I tramped up the miners’ rows in dirty oilskins and hobnail pit boots.
She looked me straight between the eyes.
‘I think I liked you better in those hobnail boots. You thought more of your cases and less of your guineas when you wore them.’
I reddened to the roots of my hair. I wanted to blast her out of the drawing-room – ‘Damn and hell, there’s no satisfying you!’ – but I surprised myself by keeping silent. Then after a long pause, I mumbled:
‘Perhaps you’re right … Mustn’t ever forget those days … They were well worth while.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘It’s the Mother Superior to see you, sir.’
Katie, our dark-eyed Irish maid from Ross are, made this announcement to me in a voice hushed with awe. In Westbound Grove, quite near, set back from the street, there stood a quiet grey building, the convent of the Bon Secours nuns. Occasionally one heard from it the soft chime of the Angelus bell. Otherwise it was quite unobtrusive, and one rarely saw signs of life within.
But ‘on the district’, that network of poor slum streets and alleys surrounding Portobello Road and Notting Hill Gate, it was a different story. The order of the Bon Secours was not enclosed. On the contrary, its members, as their name implied, had pledged themselves before God to succour the needy, the destitute, and those unfortunates outcast from society through their own misdeeds or the wrongdoing of others. Many times I had come across these good sisters, always two of them together, walking swiftly, with lowered gaze, on some errand of mercy, through mean and darkened streets which were scarcely safe by day and downright dangerous by night. These devious passages which opened off the Portobello Road – itself a narrow channel choked by stalls and hucksters’ barrows, lit in the evening by naphtha flares, crowded with the riffraff of the city, all pushing, jostling, and shouting – were well known to the police as the resort of pickpockets, thieves, mobsters, and worse. Many of the houses were dens of iniquity, and evil things were done there. I always dreaded a call to this locality, and on several occasions, before I was recognized as a doctor, I had missed disaster by a hair’s-breadth. But the good sisters seemed to go there without hesitation and apparently with-out fear.
In my waiting-room I found the Reverend Mother standing by the window, a tall, slender, distinguished figure, supremely graceful in her dark sweeping habit and spotless white coif, and, despite the coarse serge of her robe, of an elegance which at once informed me that she was French. She turned as I entered, revealing a pale, delicately modelled face, the nose long and straight, a noble brow, pressed by its circlet of linen, luminous eyes in which, however, there burned a fire of energy and purpose.
‘I am Mother Cécile, Doctor. I have meant so often to call upon you, for I have seen you occasionally in church … Such an excellent example to everyone.’
At this tribute to my piety, wholly unwarranted, betraying such ignorance of my true character, I had the grace to be confused.
‘And since you are the only Catholic doctor in the neighbourhood,’ she went on, ‘I have come to ask a favor of you. Up until now we have been attended by Dr Collins of Eldon Road. But he is getting old now, and it is a long way for him to come, a great hardship, I wondered, therefore, if we might regard you as the doctor to our convent.’
‘Why … yes …’ I stammered, uncertainly.
‘I warn you, it is often hard, unpleasant work … As you know, we go out to cases on the district. Then we are very poor. We could not afford to pay you a large fee.’
‘Oh, I should want no pay at all,’ I exclaimed with great nobility.
Quietly, she inclined her head, rather disappointing me by failing to acknowledge ray magnanimity with effusive thanks. Instead, she said simply:
‘You will be doing it for God, Doctor. And perhaps, if it is convenient, you could come with me this afternoon to Noting Hill Row, There is a girl there, Lily Harris, who needs our help.’
Cornered, realizing that I must put off the golf game I had arranged, I answered with mixed feelings:
‘Yes… of course.’
At three o’clock, then, I went with Mother Cécile to Noting Hill Row, and there, in a single tenement room, we found Lily Harris. She was not more than twenty, pretty, with brown hair and hazel eyes, dressed in a tight black skirt and cheap fancy blouse. Her face was pale, disfigured by a faint rash, her lips drawn tight together, her expression holding something sullen and suppressed. She looked at me in a hard way when I told her to open her bodice so that I might examine her. Some minutes later on the stair landing, confronting the Reverend Mother, annoyed at being dragged into this situation and, above all, at missing my golf, I spoke with brutal frankness.
‘You told me it might be unpleasant, and it is. She has syphilis. And she’s pregnant.’
Mother Cécile did not flinch. She answered quietly:
‘I thought as much.’
And she told me that Lily, once decently employed in a florist’s shop, had fallen in love with one of the district’s w
orst characters, a man named Sevens, pickpocket and race-track tout, who had twice been in prison for robbery with assault. For some months she had lived with him; then he had tired of her, put her on the streets. Yet still he exercised over her that power which belongs to men of his type, and, though beaten, degraded, and abused, she continued to bring him her earnings as a common prostitute.
Back in the room I told Lily, abruptly – for admissions of this disease were always difficult to arrange – that she must be removed at once to hospital. But if my manner lacked sympathy, Mother Cécile, by her sweetness and gentleness, made ample atonement. As I watched her console the unhappy girl and, while holding her close, tenderly wipe away her tears, I thought of those aristocratic women who, in die Middle Ages, tended and kissed with holy humility die running sores of lepers.
That same evening, I succeeded in getting a bed for lily in the Euston Lock Hospital and, glad to be relieved of this responsibility, imagining, quite mistakenly, that I should never see her again, I promptly forgot about her. Yet I could hot so easily escape from the gentle yet insistent exactions of Mother Cécile. If by chance my good wife had begged of Heaven that I might lose something of my sin of worldliness, here, surely, in this spare, elderly, austere French gentlewoman was the answer to her prayer.
Having lured me to the fold, Mother Cécile called upon me for her poor and her nuns quite mercilessly, and quite without remuneration, ‘all in the service of the good God’, as I somewhat sourly reminded her. Yet the more I knew her the more I grew to love her. She was a cultured woman and possessed both dignity and beauty. There was high breeding in the fine bones of her face and in her wide gentian-blue eyes. Her constitution was not robust, but she never complained, and though pale with fatigue, impelled by a kind of inward fire, she forced herself on.
As our friendship deepened she gave me, occasionally, a cup of tea in the convent parlour – a frigid little room, with bare boards waxed till they shone, where she conducted the business of the order. And there, one day, my gaze lit upon a small framed photograph which stood upon her desk.
‘What a beautiful scene!’ I could not help exclaiming.
‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ Her eyes followed mine to the picture of a great château, white and castellated against a forest of giant beeches with a sweep of terraces and formal gardens running down towards die lakes. ‘It is the Château d’ Anjou.’
‘I’ve heard that name before. It’s historic, surely. Do you know it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered mildly, and at once changed the subject, but not before I had realized that the Château d’Anjou had been her home
One morning, some two months later, I received from the Lock Hospital the official notice of Lily Harris’s discharge. As I had expected, and fortunately, her baby had been stillborn. But Lily herself had now a clean bill of health – she was completely cured.
I put the paper in my pocketbook and, at the end of that week, when I went to the convent parlour for my usual cup of tea, I handed it to Reverend Mother.
‘There!’ I exclaimed. ‘ Now say “ thank you” to your servant of God.’
To my surprise, she did not answer. Then she smiled sadly, a smile which held all the pathos of experience, all the pitiful, compassionate knowledge of human weakness.
‘Doctor … when Lily left the hospital … the first thing she did was to return to Sivens … and now … she’s back again on the streets.’
‘Oh, no … no!’
‘It’s a common experience for us.’ She bent her head. ‘ Souls are not won so easily …’
‘She can’t possibly love that scoundrel.’
‘No … I would say rather that she hates him. He gave her a dreadful beating when she came back … At the same time there’s a horrible fascination … a kind of dominance …’
‘What shall you do?’
‘We must go on trying … hoping … and praying.’
Towards the end of the following month, at my evening surgery, when most of the patients had gone, I saw, seated, a stiff and upright figure in a bedraggled little hat and buttoned-up raincoat. It was Lily Harris. She came in and in silence removed her blouse, revealing a large burn, of the second degree, reaching partly down her back, roughly dressed with oil and a torn square of cotton.
‘When was this done? Last night by the look of it.’ Observing her wince, I made an impatient sound with my tongue. ‘You should have come sooner.’
‘How could I?’
I glanced at her intently, beginning to dress the raw and blistered skin.
‘How did you do this?’
‘Spilled a kettle of boiling water on myself.’
‘Nonsense. You don’t carry the kettle on your back.’
She made no answer, but shut her lips tighter, keeping her wounded gaze upon the floor. I knew then how it had happened.
‘Why don’t you leave him, Lily?’
She shook her head numbly and there was fear now in her eyes.
‘It’s no use. He’d get after me somehow.’ She added, ‘He was waiting for me when I came out of the hospital.’
For the first time I felt truly sorry for her. Frequently, in plays and novels, I had seen, romanticised, the woman of the streets. It was, in fact, a feature of this era, if not to glamorise the courtesan, at least to portray her as an interesting and exciting type. But Lily … I looked at her with a heavy heart.
‘Come again and have that wound dressed,’ I said. ‘And let me know … at any time … if I can help you.’
She did not come again. But ten days later, about five o’clock in the morning, while it was still dark, a small boy came running to my house.
‘Lily Harris wants you.’ And as soon as he had given the message, he bolted.
In twenty minutes I had reached Notting Hill Row. I entered the house. And there I drew up, chilled by what I saw. Crouched in a corner of the hall, with a face like chalk, was Lily. Spread-eagled on the bare floor, at the foot of the rickety stairs, with a dried trickle of blood at his nostrils, was a man. One glance at the burly, sprawling figure, the mottled face, the slack lips fallen-awry, was enough – he was dead.
I knelt by the body, sickened by the stale smell of liquor from the gaping mouth, and ran my hand over the scalp. It was unbroken, but behind, in the region of the occiput, I could just make out the thin serrated edge which grated on pressure. Fatal fracture of the skull.
Rising, I walked over to Lily.
‘What happened, Lily?’
She did not seem to hear me. Like a beaten animal, she crouched there, her upper lip twitching, her arms huddled about her bosom.
I put my arm across her shoulder, repeated the question.
She looked up at last, dully. After a long pause she said:
‘I tried to leave … He was blind drunk … made a rush at me … and fell downstairs.’
Only a few words – but enough to convince me that she spoke the truth. In her present state of shock it would be impossible for her to lie.
Silence.
I thought quickly. Although she was innocent, in view of her record, things might go hard with Lily, if she were involved in this affair. I turned to her abruptly and spoke in measured tones, so that every word might sink into that shocked and shrinking mind.
‘Go to Mother Cécile at the convent. Go there at once. And say nothing … absolutely nothing. That’s all you’ve got to do.’
When she had gone I went to the nearest telephone booth and called up my point-duty friend, Sergeant Blair of the Campden Hill police. When he arrived I was kneeling by the body, my hand upon the dead man’s heart.
‘You’re too late, Sergeant,’ I said regretfully. ‘I thought you might have given me a hand – but he’s gone.’
‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’ asked Blair.
‘Brain haemorrhage!’ I announced decisively. ‘He came home in liquor, had a seizure, and fell bang on the back of his head. That’s how I found him – poor fellow.’
‘Poo
r fellow!’ Blair echoed sardonically. ‘Don’t you know who this is? Chuck Sivens … one of the worst lags in the city. I’m not sorry to see the end of him. Well, it was a sudden call, and him in drink. But I always said he would come to a bad end.’
I stood up.
‘I’m quite satisfied. But we’d better have a post-mortem, just to be sure.’
The same afternoon, in the public mortuary, I performed the autopsy which bore out my conclusions exactly. There was not a mark of violence upon the body.
That evening, in the surgery, I made out the death certificate, blotted the slip, handed it over to Blair.
‘Have a drink, Sergeant, before you go.’
‘I don’t mind if I do, Doctor.’
We had a glass of Scotch together. The big sergeant drank his neat, wiped his moustache with the back of his hand, and put on his helmet.
‘Good night, Doctor. All the best.’
In the summer of that year Lily Harris left for Canada, with a number of other young women, bound for domestic service in the Dominion. Mindful of Mother Cécile’s words, I had no great hopes of her. But again I was wrong. Some eighteen months later I received from her a brightly coloured picture postcard of Niagara Falls. She had married a young farmer and was settled, happily, in the wheatlands of Saskatchewan.
When I showed the card to Reverend Mother she gazed at me gravely.
‘You see, Doctor dear, you really have been the servant of the good God.’