by A. J. Cronin
But she shook her head.
‘Not now, thanks.’ Her lips made a little smile. ‘I’ve got a smoker’s cough.’
Another rather awkward pause. It was not turning out to be so funny as they expected. But Doggy rallied.
‘Well, Miss le Brun, perhaps we’d better say au revoir. We’ll expect you tomorrow night. And again congratulations on your marvellous performance.
She smiled again quietly as they went out.
On the following morning, across the breakfast table, Cameron tossed a note that had just come in, to Finlay. ‘Ay!’ he announced dryly. ‘You’d better take this call, seeing you’re so interested in the theatre.’
It was a note asking the doctor to call on Letty le Brun at her lodgings.
So it came about that Finlay went in the forenoon to No. 7 Church Street. He went early, impelled by a strange curiosity and a strange shame.
Something of this emotion must have shown in his face as he entered the room, for Letty smiled at him – almost reassuringly.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said with less than her usual impassiveness. ‘I wanted you to come. I found out about you when you’d gone. You were the only one who wasn’t trying to make game of me.’
She was in bed, surrounded by a few things obviously her own – a photograph in an embossed silver frame, a crystal bottle of Florida water, a little travelling French clock that was now sadly battered but had once been good.
There was, indeed, a queer fastidiousness about the common room which she alone could have imparted to it. Finlay felt this deeply, and in his voice was a singular constraint as he asked her what he could do for her.
She motioned him to sit down, and for a moment lay back upon the pillow before she answered:
‘I want you to tell me how long I’ve got to live.’
His face was a study. It might even have amused her. For she smiled faintly before going on.
‘I’ve got consumption – sorry, I suppose you’d prefer me to say tuberculosis. I’d like you to listen to my lungs and tell me just how long I’ve got to put up with it.’
He could have cursed himself for his stupidity. He had been blind not to see it. Everything was there – the hectic flush, emaciation, the quickened breathing – everything.
Now there was no mystery in that strange pathetic lassitude of her performance on the night before. He rose hurriedly, and without a word took his stethoscope. He spent a long time examining her chest, though there was little need for lengthy auscultation, the lesions were so gross.
Her right lung was completely gone, the left riddled by active foci of the disease. When he had done he was silent.
‘Go on,’ she encouraged him. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell me.’
At last, with great confusion, he said:
‘You’ve got perhaps six months.’
‘You’re being kind,’ she said studying his face. ‘You really mean six weeks.’
He did not answer. A great wave of pity swept over him. He gazed at her, trying to reconstruct that haggard face. She was not really old; illness, not years, had aged her. Her eyes were really extremely beautiful; she must once have been a lovely woman – manifestly a woman of taste. And now, mincing grotesquely in the tenth-rate pantomime, the butt of every provincial boor!
Despite himself, his thoughts came clumsily into words.
‘You’ll not bother about that supper tonight. Clearly you’re not fit to go.’
‘Oh, but I’m going! It’s a long time since I’ve had a supper invitation. It’s likely to be longer before I have another.’
‘But don’t you see—’ he broke in.
‘I see,’ she answered. ‘But if they like, let them have their little joke. That’s what life is – just a little joke.’
She lay staring away through the window.
Then, as if recollecting herself, she took her purse from under the pillow and asked to know his fee.
Finlay coloured violently; her circumstances were so obvious. But there was tact in him, for all his rawness. He had the breeding to name the fee – it was not large – and he took it from her silently.
As he went out, she said: ‘I shall see you tonight, I hope.’
All that day he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
He found himself longing for the evening to come. He wanted to see her again, to help her if he could, to solve the baffling enigma she presented. Yet, in a sense, he dreaded the evening too. He feared to see her hurt by Doggy’s insufferable ridicule.
Eleven o’clock came at last, the hour fixed for the supper party. The place was a little restaurant which had recently been opened in Church Street by a man named William Scott, a decent enough spot, frequented chiefly by commercial travellers, and known to Levenford inhabitants – perhaps because of a certain refinement in napery and glass – as the Swank.
Of course, the Swank was closed long before eleven, but Doggy, who knew everybody and everything, had induced Scott to set out a real good supper before a blazing fire in the smaller room.
It was, in fact, a very pleasant room with a good carpet and a piano – that was wheeled to a larger hall for dances – standing in the corner by the red plush curtains.
Finlay was early, but it wasn’t very long before the others arrived, Doggy bursting in first with an air of great consequence, as if to announce that he escorted Royalty.
‘Dandini,’ he cried with a flourish. ‘Here comes Dandini!’
Jackson and young Weir had evidently been primed to take their cue from Doggy, for with exaggerated deference they made way for Letty as she came up to the fire.
She was dressed very plainly in a dark blue dress, and, perhaps because she had rested all the afternoon, she looked better, certainly less haggard about the face.
They sat in to supper straight away; some excellent tomato soup, followed by a cold chicken and a fine jellied tongue.
Then Doggy, with a knowing air, popped the cork from a bottle of champagne and creamed Letty’s glass magnificently.
‘You drink champagne, of course?’ he queried, with a wink at Weir.
She must have seen the wink but she ignored it. She replied simply:
‘I used to like Veuve Cliquot. But I haven’t tasted it for a very long time.’
‘Come, come, Miss le Brun,’ remarked Doggy. ‘You can’t mean that. You pantomime stars do yourselves pretty well, I imagine.’
With complete equanimity, she answered:
‘No! We have perfectly atrocious food on tour. I haven’t had a decent meal for weeks. That’s why it’s such a treat for me to have this.’ She drank a little champagne.
‘It’s very good.’
‘Aha, Miss le Brun,’ mocked Doggy. ‘It’s well seen you’re a connoisseur. You’ve been to many a supper party in your day. Come on, now! Tell us about all these midnight suppers you’ve been treated to.’
She looked dreamily into the fire, stretched out her hand as though to capture something of its warmth.
‘Yes, I’ve been taken out to supper. To Romano’s many times, and Gatti’s, too, and the Café Royal.’
Doggy grinned. It was getting good at last; she was rising to the bait. In a minute he’d have her making speeches on the table.
With a leer he filled up her glass.
‘That was when you performed in London?’
‘Yes – in London.’
‘Naturally you’ve played in – well – bigger pantomimes than this, Miss le Brun. An artiste of your genius—’
Finlay gritted his teeth at Doggy’s rudeness, but before he could interfere she shook her head.
‘No! This is my first attempt at pantomime,’ – she shot a glance at Finlay – ‘and my last.’
‘Grand opera was perhaps your speciality?’ suggested Doggy insiduously.
This time she nodded her head quietly.
‘Yes. Grand opera.’
It was too much, oh, too much. Grand opera! They collapsed. Young Weir let out a guffaw, e
ven the stolid Jackson sniggered. But Doggy choked back his laughter, for fear it should spoil the fun.
‘Excuse them, Miss le Brun; a little champagne has gone the wrong way, I imagine. You were talking about opera, Miss le Brun – grand opera, Miss le Brun.’
She looked at him with those sad and tranquil eyes.
‘You ought to stop calling me that silly name. It’s only part of the pantomime. My real name is Grey – Letty Grey – a common name in Australia, where I come from, but it’s the name I sang under.’
A curious little silence followed.
Then Jackson, who prided himself on his press memory, and carried the histories of celebrities in his head, let out a long, derisive whistle.
‘Letty Grey! You’re not trying to make out that you’re the Letty Grey!’
‘Don’t believe me if you don’t wish to.’
‘But Letty Grey was famous. She came over from Australia to sing at Covent Garden. She sang “Isolde”, “Aïda”, “La Bohème”. She had a triumph in “Madame Butterfly”. Ten years ago Letty Grey was the toast of London.’
‘And now she’s here.’
Jackson stared at her incredulously.
‘I don’t believe you,’ he declared bluntly. ‘Letty Grey could sing. But you cannot sing for toffee.’
She emptied her glass. The champagne whizzing through her head had set an unaccustomed sparkle in her eyes, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.
‘You’ve never heard me sing,’ and there was a strange scorn in her tone. ‘I haven’t sung for years.’
She looked again at Finlay.
‘He could tell you why. But I’ve a mind to sing now. Yes, I believe I will sing now. I’ll sing to the gentlemen to pay for my supper.’
Now she was like a queen talking to a group of country bumpkins.
Doggy and Weir watched her with their mouths agape as she rose and walked over to the piano.
She opened the piano and let her fingers fall upon the keys. She paused – a long, dramatic pause. Then, throwing back her head, she filled her chest deeply and began to sing. She sang in German – one of Schubert’s lieder. Her voice, uncertain for a moment, like an instrument long unused, swelled up in the little room with a purity that was divine.
Up, up, up went the voice, lifting them with it, thrilling the very air with its celestial harmony.
There fell a deathly silence when the song concluded.
Jackson stared like a man who has seen a ghost, and in young Weir’s eyes was something cowed and bitterly ashamed. But she had forgotten them. Breathing quickly, bent a little forward, she sat at the piano with that dreamy distant look upon her face.
Then, as for herself alone, she sang again – the Love Song from ‘Isolde’.
When she had finished, they still sat petrified. But at last Doggy stirred.
‘My God!’ he whispered humbly. ‘That was marvellous.’
She turned to them, and with that half-smile upon her lips, said:
‘Let me sing “Allan Water”.’
Finlay, watching her face, the panting of her breath, jumped up from the table.
‘No, no!’ he cried. ‘For God’s sake, don’t – don’t sing any more.’
But she had begun. The moving words of the old Scots song flowed out with a pathos unbelievable:
‘On the banks of Allan water,
When the sweet spring time had fled.’
There were tears in Finlay’s eyes; Doggy bowed his head upon his hands. But as they listened, spellbound, her voice, rising at the second verse to one last supreme note, broke suddenly and failed.
She swayed upon the seat; a tiny foam of scarlet came upon her lips. She looked at them rather stupidly; then, helplessly, she toppled sideways.
Finlay caught her before she fell. As the others rose clattering from the table, Jackson gasped:
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Haemorrhage,’ snapped Finlay. ‘Bring some cold water, quick!’
He carried her to the sofa in the far corner of the room.
Doggy stood blubbering: ‘It’s all my fault! It’s all my fault! Oh, God! What can I do for her?’
‘Get a cab, you fool,’ said Finlay. ‘We must get her to the hospital.’
When they got her to the Cottage Hospital, she had recovered consciousness. Indeed, she rallied a little for the next few days, then slowly she began to sink. She lived altogether for three weeks more.
She was completely tranquil. She had no pain; she had everything she desired. Doggy saw to that. He paid for everything. He took her flowers every day – great masses of flowers which brought to her sunken features that faint, elusive smile.
He was with her when she died, and when he left the hospital that cold January afternoon, there was written on his face a strange new firmness.
Letty Grey lies buried in Levenford Cemetery.
Every week Doggy walks up there with his big stick and his pipe. He has lost his gush, his empty laugh, and something of his taste for brandy-splashes. But there is something more about him of the man.
The Sisters Scobie
That sharp September morning, while Finlay stood warming his boots at the fire before stepping into them, Janet entered the room with a slip of paper in her hand.
‘There’s a call,’ she remarked, ‘for Anabel Scobie.’ And she held out the paper with a singular expression on her face.
He took the paper, a curious, narrow strip which somehow impressed him as having been cut carefully to pattern, and let his eye fall upon the angular, old-fashioned script—
Miss Beth Scobie requests the doctor kindly to call upon her sister Anabel, who is unwell.
‘All right, Janet,’ he nodded. ‘I’ll make a note of it.’
She stood for a moment, watching him make the entry in his book, burning, simply, to tell him something of the Scobies. The conflict between her imposed dignity and a frightful inclination to gossip made the corners of her down-drawn lips twitch – like a cat within sight of forbidden cream. Glancing up suddenly, he caught that thirsting look fixed on him. He laughed outright.
‘Don’t worry, Janet,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ve heard about the Scobies.’
She bridled.
‘It’s just as well. For not one thing would ye have heard about them from me.’
With her head in the air she turned on her heel, and in high indignation swept from the room.
The fact is that most folks in Levenford knew about the Scobies. They were sisters. Two maiden ladies, well past fifty, who occupied the little grey stone house at the end of Levenford Crescent.
It was an old-fashioned house situated beyond the Green, right on the edge of the Estuary, a wind-blown little house, with a wonderful view of ships and open water and a taste of salt, so to speak, washed into its very mortar.
It looked the house of a seafaring man, and so, indeed, it was.
Captain Scobie had built the house when – a widower with two grown daughters – he retired at long last from fighting the Atlantic gales. And he had built it snug and proper within sight and sound and smell of the sea he loved so well.
He was a short, trim, genial man, Abernethy Scobie, who had served his time in sail, stood his watch on the old paddle-pushers that made their clanking passage to Calcutta in the eighties, and come finally to command the Magnetic, the finest twin screw ship that ever left the Latta Yards for the southern trans-Atlantic route. That, in a sense, is ancient history, for Captain Scobie was dead these eighteen years past. But his daughters, Beth and Anabel, still lived on in the solid, spray-stung house which their father had built upon the Estuary shore.
Beth was the elder, a small, dark, dried-up woman with black, forbidding eyebrows and hair drawn tight as wire.
Anabel was two years younger, very like her sister, except that she was taller and more angular. She, had, however, a shade of colour in her cheeks, and sometimes, alas, when the wind blew sharp, in her nose as well.
They dressed alike – two regula
r old maids – the same style in shoes, gloves, hats, stockings of the same ply wool, and gowns always of black, with a thin white edging at the neck and cuff.
And they had the same expression – that bleak and vaguely hostile look which seems somehow to become ingrained in the faces of elderly spinsters compelled by usage to live too much together. For they were always together.
In fifteen years they had not once been apart. But for fifteen years they had not spoken a single word to one another.
This stupendous fact seemed incredible. But it was true. And like most incredibly stupendous facts it had arisen in the simplest, the silliest manner possible. It had arisen over Rufus.
Rufus was a cat, a large ginger cat belonging equally to the sisters, and equally esteemed by them. Every evening they took in turn the duty of calling Rufus from the back garden, where, like a sensible cat, he habitually promenaded before stretching himself luxuriously upon the kitchen hearth to sleep.
‘Rufus! Rufus! Here, here!’ Anabel would call one night. And on the next Beth, not to be thought copying her sister, would exclaim—
‘Pussy, pussy! Here, Rufie, here!’
It went like clockwork until that fatal night of fifteen years ago. Then Beth, glancing up from her knitting, or it might have been her crochet, towards the clock inquired—
‘Why haven’t you called Rufus, Anabel?’
To which Anabel replied, without rancour—
‘Because it isn’t my turn. I called him last night.’
‘But no!’ Beth countered. ‘I called him last night.’
‘You did not, Beth Scobie.’
‘I did!’
‘You did not!’
‘Allow me, but I did! I remember because he would keep hiding in the currant bushes.’
‘That was the night before! I remember fine you telling me when you came in. It wasn’t last night.’
‘I beg your pardon, but it was last night.’
Then they both lost their tempers and went at it hammer and tongs. Finally Beth determinedly demanded:
‘For the last time, Anabel, I ask you. Will you go and call the cat?’