by A. J. Cronin
‘Well, what do you suggest? There’s the entertainers – they’re awful good.’
They went to the entertainers. He took the best front seats, and bought her a box of chocolates. By the time they came out a soft darkness had come down upon the bay. The end of his cigar glowed brightly, and on the way home, in that absentminded fashion, he slipped his arm round her waist.
‘You’re a nice chap, Walter,’ she whispered.
The next few days were fine and sunny. The time passed quickly, while Walter and Nancy enjoyed each other’s company. They walked together, took drives together, and a cruise round the Kyles. They even danced together, for, on the eve of her return to Glasgow, as they passed beside the Cowal Hall they saw a placard displayed—
GALA ASSEMBLY TONIGHT. ALL WELCOME
GLOVES OPTIONAL: SLIPPERS ESSENTIAL
Nancy sighed wistfully, hanging on his arm, and asked—
‘Do you dance, Walter?’
‘I think I might dance,’ he said with the odd, noncommittal caution with which Nancy was now familier.
He had changed visibly; his shoulders were more erect; he was slightly sunburned; his eye, though still, alas, extremely distant, was bright and daring.
She was to leave by the five o’clock boat, and that afternoon they took a final walk up past the golf course beyond the Skeoch Wood.
Nancy was very silent. Presently she complained that she was tired, and they sat down. They were enclosed by a sea of young bracken, above which the tree trunks and feathery bushes framed a strip of blue sky.
Far away they heard the throb of a streamer going down the Kyles, and then a deep stillness fell.
‘You won’t forget me, will you, Walter?’ Nancy whispered, afraid to break this quietness.
‘I don’t know,’ he said queerly. ‘I’m not very good at remembering.’
At that she gave a little sigh and her arms went round him. Absentmindedly his went round her.
Then it was time to return for Nancy’s boat. She took Walter’s arm, and in silence walked very close to him.
They had reached the promenade leading to the pier, when suddenly a large and portly figure blocked the way.
‘Hello, hello!’ he exclaimed in a tone of wonder. ‘It’s you, Robertson! Well, I’ll be damned!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Walter in a stiff voice, ‘You’re making a mistake.’
‘What!’ gasped the other. ‘Don’t you know me – Bailie Nichol, of Levenford? Damn it all, Robertson—’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Walter again. ‘My name’s Scott. Kindly let me pass.’
‘But hang it all,’ protested Nichol. ‘Hang it all, Robertson, the whole town has been ringing with you. They’ve turned the place upside down looking for you. Every paper—’
‘This young lady has to catch her boat,’ remarked Walter, and, pushing past the dumbfounded Nichol, he drew Nancy to the pier and towards the boat.
‘What was it, Walter?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘How should I know?’ he answered. ‘I never saw him in my life before.’
The bell on the boat clanged. She gave him a big, hurried hug.
‘You’ve got my address,’ she said. ‘You won’t forget me, dear? Please?’
When he returned to Cowal Cliff he had an idea that the manageress looked at him with a strange intentness, but he took no notice.
After tea he went out for a solitary walk along the promenade, and the stars came out and looked at his small figure strolling along with an air of vague triumph. It was impossible to tell what his thoughts might be, but that night he slept dreamlessly.
Next morning he lay late. It was about ten o’clock before he came down briskly, and found the manageress waiting for him in the hall.
‘Somebody wants to see you,’ she declared with an air of purpose and took him aside into a little room.
There he stared blankly at Bailie Nichol, accompanied by two women. One of the women was tall, large of bosom and hip, and flat of face. There were tears in her eyes, and her hands trembled. Beside her stood obviously her daughter.
‘Now, Robertson,’ said Nichol carefully, ‘here we are. You’re glad to see us, aren’t you, old fellow?’
‘What d’ye mean?’ said Walter coldly. ‘You are a damned nuisance, sir. And what are these women doing here?’
At this a groan broke from the elder female. She pushed forward and flung her arms round Walter’s neck.
‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ she moaned. ‘Don’t you remember me, dear? Don’t you know me?’
Stonily, Walter withdrew from her embrace.
‘Leave me be, woman. I can’t understand such shameless behaviour.’
With a gesture of his arm, Nichol restrained the elder woman.
‘Leave him in the meantime,’ he whispered aside. ‘We’ll get him home. His memory’s gone.’
The object of their sympathy and solicitude, Walter, was escorted with great care on the short journey to Levenford.
He preserved a cold and disgusted dignity when first one woman and then the other sobbed over him. But he made no demur about accompanying them, trotting with docility from boat to train and from train to cab.
‘He’s like a man bewitched,’ sobbed the middle-aged woman, ‘My poor Robert.’
When they reached the house at Barloan Toll, a young man was awaiting them.
‘Oh, Dr Finlay, Dr Finlay!’ wailed the woman, ‘Look at him; it’s just as you said. Oh, what’ll I do? What’ll I do?’
Finlay was very upset as he saw again the face of ‘wee Robison’ with its new, remote expression. He went up to him with quick kindness.
‘Come away, man,’ he said. ‘Just sit down quietly, and we’ll have a little talk. Don’t you know me? You’ve had a breakdown man, and you just want to go very quietly.’
Walter seemed unmoved by this solicitude. He looked round in cold disapproval.
‘What are those two women doing there?’ he asked. ‘Tell them to go away.’
Finlay signed to Mrs Robertson and Margaret to leave the room, and they went reluctantly, their sobs echoing down the passage.
Finlay and Robertson sat for some time in silence. It seemed to Finlay that Robertson’s expression was changing. Just being in his own house, although he did not recognise it, was smoothing out that expression of tense remoteness. At last Finlay began to speak carefully.
‘Now, listen,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to understand, my friend, that you have lost your memory. It’s not serious, but you have completely lost your memory. You will have to wait until it comes back.’
The patient’s face at last showed a look of frank interest.
‘Is that a fact?’ he said. ‘And how long does it take?’
‘Well,’ said Finlay, trying to be reassuring, ‘sometimes it comes back quite suddenly, the trouble passes over—’
A slow grin broke over wee Robison’s face.
‘Well, it’s over now!’ he said. ‘So fetch them in!’ He fingered an address slip in his waistcoat pocket, and his grin broadened. He dug Finlay slyly in the ribs.
‘But, by God, man, it was grand while it lasted!’
The Man Who Came Back
One evening in early June as Finlay sat in his surgery there entered a man whom he had never seen before in Levenford. The stranger was perhaps between thirty-five and forty years old, but it was uncertain, for his features, lean, haggard, and jaundiced by tropic suns, wore that look of cheap experience which puts the stamp of age upon the face of youth.
The manner of this young-old man was easy, flashy, almost arrogant. He was dressed in a light suit of ultra sporting cut, carried worn-out yellow gloves and a chipped malacca cane, while his hat, which he had not troubled to remove, lay on the back of his head as if to mask the stains upon its threadbare nap by this extremely rakish tilt.
‘Evening, doctor sahib,’ remarked the unusual visitor with complete assurance; and without invitation flung himself into the chair beside Fin
lay’s desk. ‘Dropped in on you to get acquainted. I’m Hay, Bob Hay, Esq., of the North East India Company. Just back from Bombay to look the old town up again.’
Finlay stared at the queer individual in surprise. No one like this had ever been in his surgery before. Recovering himself he made to put a question, but before he could speak the ubiquitous Hay, tapping his pointed shoe – rather cracked about the uppers, but finely shined for all that – with his malacca cane, resumed his cocksure style.
‘Pretty damn funny the old town looks after fifteen years. I can tell you, when a man’s been out East and seen the world, he’s fit to laugh his sides out at a chota spot like this. Ha! Ha! call it the Royal and Ancient burgh. It’s ancient all right. No life, doc, no bright lights, nothing! Damn my liver! I don’t know how I’ll stand it now I’ve come home.’
And with an easy, man of the world laugh, he pulled a cheroot from his waistcoat pocket, and stuck it nonchalently in his mouth.
With level eyes and a growing repugnance, Finlay studied the flashy Hay – Bob Hay, Esquire, as he styled himself – this son of Levenford, returned to his native town after many years abroad. At length he inquired brusquely—
‘Seeing that you find it so unsatisfactory, may I ask why you came back?’
Bob Hay laughed, and airily waved his cheroot, which he had ignited by the simple process of borrowing a match from Finlay’s desk and sparking it expertly upon his shoe.
‘Reasons of health, doctor sahib! Climate plays the devil with a man’s liver and lights out East. And the life y’know. Dinners, dances, regimental balls. God, doc, when a man’s run after socially – oh, you understand how it is, old man! Had to give it up for a bit and come back. Couple of my pals in Bombay, big specialists out there, good fellows both, advised me to have a little rest and take a trip home.’
A pause while Finlay grappled with this specious information.
‘You’re returning to India, then?’ he queried after a moment.
‘Maybe, maybe,’ evaded Hay. ‘We’ll see how we get on in the old home town. Might settle down altogether here. Buy a little estate up the country. Y’never know. Ha! ha! Company have been handsome, hang it all – confounded handsome! Settled a whacking pension on Bobbie Hay!’
‘They’ve pensioned you?’ echoed Finlay sharply.
For all his airy pretence, if Hay had been pensioned by his company, it was plain he would never go back to India. But why? Finlay stared with a new intentness at the other, whose pinchbeck outer husk revealed, on closer examination, the manifest seediness beneath. And, scrutinising even closer, Finlay became aware of a sickly pallor that underlay the sunburn complexion before him, of a shortened breathing, a quick and restless tremour of thin, yellow-nicotined fingers.
Decisively he pulled a sheet of paper towards him and picked up his pen.
‘We seem to be wasting a fair amount of time,’ he declared. ‘Do you wish to consult me? Or what exactly can I do for you?’
‘Oh, nothing much, doctor sahib, nothing much,’ protested Hay with a gracious, deprecating gesture. ‘I don’t want to consult you. And don’t bother about particulars or medicine. I’ve a prescription from my Bombay pals I take when I remember. As a matter of fact, I’ve only looked in because the company asked me to see my doctor sahib at home. I shall have to send them a medical chit from you every month.’ He paused elegantly. ‘Because of my pension, don’t you see?’
‘No,’ returned Finlay, very precisely. ‘I don’t quite see. I cannot undertake to give you a certificate unless I know what’s the matter with you. I’m sorry, Hay, but if you want a certificate out of me you’ll have to let me examine you.’
There was a distinct and curious pause; then out came Hay’s ready laugh.
‘Right you are, then, old sport. I don’t mind in the slightest. Not one chota peg. Ha! Ha! You go ahead. Put the old damn measuring tape across me. Bob Hay can say ninety-nine with the best of ’em.’
With the same conscious indifference Hay rose and slipped off his coat and vest, revealing the shabbiest of underclothing. Stripped, standing in his trousers and stocking soles, he showed a pitiable physique; his arms were skin and bone, his ribs standing out like spars, while in the centre of his narrow chest around his breast-bone there moved a curious pulsation.
Hay’s whole bodily appearance indicated a wasted, ill-spent life. But Finlay was less concerned with the man’s physique. His eyes remained riveted upon that pulsing movement in Hay’s breast. It was laboured, that pulsing, and ominous – horribly ominous.
Finlay made his examination slowly and without asking a single question, using his stethoscope carefully, deliberately. Then, in a manner patently altered, he sat down at his desk again and remarked—
‘You can dress up now; that’s all for the moment. I’ll give you a certificate.’
‘Right you are, doctor sahib!’ cheerfully exclaimed Hay. ‘Knew there wouldn’t be the slightest difficulty. Old warhorse is fit as a fiddle. Only a bit of nonsense on the part of these doctor wallahs in Bombay. Good friends of mine, mind you, but nervous, too damn nervous for words. I’ll be all right once I dig up a little sport and gaiety in this one-anna town.’
Finlay did not answer immediately; he continued slowly writing out the certificate. But when Hay was dressed he looked up, and, in an unemotional, professional voice which masked the distaste he felt, he declared—
‘Sport and gaiety are not for you, Hay. You’re a sick man. You must have complete rest and freedom from all excitement.’
‘Ah, a lot of tommy rot, doc,’ laughed Hay. ‘I’m right as rain.’
‘You’re not right,’ Finlay repeated with emphasis. ‘You surely appreciate why you’ve been sent back here.’ A pause. ‘Don’t you realise that you’re suffering from advanced aneurism of the acta?’
As the fatal name of that awful complaint echoed in the surgery, once again that curious silence fell. Then Hay smiled, though this time perhaps the smile on the pinched and sallow features turned somewhat ragged, merging insensibly into a grimace that almost was a sneer.
He stared at Finlay bitterly, defiantly, revealingly. But only for an instant. The ready laugh rang out again immediately, the easy, careless, blustering laugh.
‘That’s a good one, doctor sahib. But you can’t scare me with those fancy tales. Ha! Ha! The lad’s hard as nails and tough as leather, doc. The old pump’s out of gear a bit, that’s all. Nothing serious. You can’t kill Bob Hay, doctor, no, by God, sir not for a hundred years.’
And picking up the certificate he folded it, tucked it deliberately in his waistcoat pocket, cocked his hat, pulled on the shoddy gloves, nodded to Finlay confidently, and swinging his malacca cane, strolled easily out of the surgery.
Finlay sat motionless at his desk frowning, surprised in a way by the odious effrontery of this strange patient, yet strangely arrested by Hay’s indifference to the dreadful malady which possessed him.
Could Hay really understand the full significance of the terrible disease – aneurism – that swelling of the great artery leading from the heart, which was liable at any second to rupture and cause instantaneous death?
Was he ignorant of the fact that his life hung by a thread? That, at the outside, a few short months must see him cold in his grave? Finlay sighed, and, despite himself, a great curiosity possessed him as to who Hay was, and what his history might be.
Indeed, when the surgery was over and he came into the dining-room to eat his supper, he was moved to make a discreet inquiry.
Cameron was out upon a case, but Janet, never-failing source of information on matters relating to Levenford and its people, readily afforded him the information which he sought.
‘Ay, indeed,’ she responded, shaking her head, and drawing her lips together tightly – sure sign of condemnation and regret! ‘Weel do I ken Bob Hay – and all about him. A sore heartbreak he’s been to his folks, and a sorer heartbreak still to Chrissie Temple.’ Janet paused, shook her head again, then severely
continued—
‘A fine young fella he was at a’e time, mind ye. He come o’ decent stock, ay, his folks was highly respeckit in Levenford; they lived up Knoxhill way, an’ had a braw big house. An’ Bob was the only son. He went to the Academy like maist o’ the other Knoxhill laddies, and then went into the yard to serve his time for the drawin’-office.
‘Weel, he showed considerable promise in his wark, was likit by a’ folks in the office, and took a pleasant part in the sociability o’ the town. And to crown a’, at the age of twenty-three he twined up wi’ Chrissie Temple, and took to courtin’ her serious and proper. Maybe ye’ll ken Chrissie Temple, doctor?’
Finlay nodded in the affirmative, and reinforced by his interest Janet pithily went on—
‘Ay, and a fine, sweet woman she is. Though, mind ye, in thae days she was bonnier by far. As ye maybe ken, she was the daughter of Temple, the writer in the town, oh, a sparky darke’ed lass, fu’ o’ innocence and speerits, an’ fair desperate ta’en on with Bob. The two walked out for over a year. They were plighted, ye ken, and their devotion to each other was kenned and much thought o’ throughout the hale toun.
‘Weel, in the spring o’ the next year it so fell out that Bob got the offer o’ a post wi’ one o’ the big Indian companies out in Bombay. It’s a chance that often happens in this toun, doctor, as maybe ye ken, what wi’ the connections o’ the yard and that like. Onyway, the post was offered to Bob.
‘Oh, ’twas a grand opportunity, which baith Chrissie and Bob agreed he couldna afford to neglect, a chance for advancement which would bring him, at the end of five years, back to Levenford and the yard, in a braw superior possetion.
‘So, after much haverin’ and heart-burning, for ye maun understand that the Indian climate prevented Chrissie from going, and Bob was loth to gang by his lone and leave his Chrissie, ’twas a’ agreed that he should go and serve his time in India. Chrissie would bide patiently until he came back, when they would be married at once, and settle down to a happy life in Levenford.
‘So Bob took his leave ’midst tears and a’ that show o’ fondness, swearin’ he would be true to Chrissie, as weel he might, and for some months a’ went richt and proper.