Adventures of a Black Bag

by A. J. Cronin

  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.

  8. 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 horse chair 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 openly 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 breath-taking co
llection 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.

  Late that afternoon as he walked down Church Street towards his surgery he was waylaid by Jessie Grant. She had plainly enough been awaiting him, for there was a fiery gleam of determination in her eye. Straight outright she declared –

  “Ye don’t need to come any more to my Duncan. I’ve finished with you and your do-nothing treatment. I’m taking him to Dr. Lestrange tonight.”

  Caught completely unawares, Finlay could only stare at her, but at last he exclaimed – “ You wouldn’t be so foolish!”

  “Foolish, indeed!” she bit out. “I’m sick of all your hummin’ and hawin’ and orderin’ about, wi’ not a thing to show for it.”

  “But I explained it would be a long job,” protested Finlay. “Duncan’ll be well in another couple of months. For heaven’s sake be patient!”

  “Ye’ve kept on biddin’ me be patient long enough,” she cried fiercely.

  “But this Lestrange isn’t a doctor at all,” protested Finlay indignantly.

  “So you say!” flashed Jessie with a short, hard laugh. “ But the folk say different I’m taking Duncan to him as sure as my name is Jessie Grant.”

  And before he could say another word she darted a glance of final malevolence at him, and walked off down the street.

  For a moment Finlay thought of hurrying after her, but he realised quickly the uselessness of further protest. With a shake of his head he resumed his way.

  He knew Lestrange to be an impostor who could not possibly cure Duncan, and as such he left it, reflecting that nothing could result from the man’s intervention but disillusionment and humiliation for Jessie Grant.

  But here Finlay slightly miscalculated the methods and personality of the bold Lestrange. The so-called doctor had traded so long in human credulity he had become a past master in the art of roguery and deception. In his appearance, too, he was magnificently fitted for the part, tall and upright, with a patriarchal mane of hair, and a flashing eye which magnetised the beholder.

  Matching his own arresting figure was his chief assistant, a beautiful young woman by the name of Marietta, silent, dark, and liquid-eyed, whom he claimed to be the daughter of an Indian chief. Small wonder, indeed, that the unwary were beguiled by such high-sounding effrontery.

  That night, before a packed audience in the Burgh Hall, surrounded by Leyden jars, electric apparatus, and a weird instrument known as the Cage of Regeneration, Lestrange and Marietta worked their way steadily through their performance towards the climax of the evening, which was, of course, the demonstration of miraculous healing.

  Then, with a spectacular flourish, Lestrange called for the halt and the lame to be brought to him.

  The first case of all was that of Duncan Grant. Thrust relentlessly into the limelight of the stage by his mother, the little chap stood pale and trembling, while every eye in the crowded hall was turned upon him.

  Lestrange advanced dramatically and laid a protective arm on Duncan’s shoulders.

  With assumed benevolence, he placed the boy upon an elaborate couch, and, in full view of the audience, made what was apparently the most profound examination.

  Although his mask-like features revealed nothing as his hands slipped over Duncan’s leg, Lestrange was inwardly delighted.

  Although entirely without professional skill, long experience had acquainted him with those cases most adapted to his own ends. Duncan’s was exactly such a case, for the leg, under Finlay’s patient and persevering treatment, had responded finely. The swelling had subsided and the bone had healed; the ankle, in fact, was almost well.

  Straightening himself theatrically from the couch, Lestrange raised his hand as though to compel the attention of a multitude.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in his sharp-pitched nasal voice, “ I will now proceed to demonstrate my powers!”

  Continuing, hypnotising the audience with high-sounding jargon, he condemned the old-fashioned bungling which had crippled the lad with a loathesome iron, then, in ranting terms he declared that he proposed to cure him.

  Beckoning Marietta, who came forward with a winsome tenderness never seen on the face of any trained nurse, he raised Duncan from the couch, and, assisted by his beautiful partner, led the boy to the Cage of Regeneration.

  Donning a long white garment, and drawing on rubber gloves, Lestrange took Duncan with him inside the cage. In a deathly silence various impressive rods and wires were adjusted; then in a stillness which was almost painful, the man’s rasping command rang out.

  Marietta threw over a lever, and the current passed in a quick crackle. Blue sparks ringed the cage with a screen of flame. Then the lever went back, the flame died, and the stillness was intense.

  Spellbound, the audience watched Lestrange stoop to remove Duncan’s leg-iron and cast it out of the cage across the stage with a gesture of triumphant insolence.

  Then, as Duncan came shakily out of the cage, walked a little, and, at the man’s hissed command, finally ran across the stage, a great sigh rose in the hall and swelled into a crescendo of sound.

  Cheer after cheer rang out from the wildly-excited crowd as Duncan came down the steps and rejoined his mother, while Lestrange, with one hand outstretched and the other placed on his heart, bowed to the acknowledgement of his mastery.

  It was a great moment – oh! a thrilling moment – for all within that tense excited hall.

  On the very next morning, when Lestrange and his associates, a tidy sum of takings to the good, had placed thirty miles between themselves and Levenford, Jessie Grant burst into Finlay’s surgery with the light of baleful triumph in her eye.

  So vindictive was she and so triumphant that the words broke from her lips with the rush of a burn in spate –

  “You wanted me not to take the laddie to Dr. Lestrange! You wanted to keep him crippled for life, nae doot! Well, in case you haven’t heard, I’d have ye know I did take him. And he’s cured – cured, do ye hear me? He started back in the yard this morning; he’s fit to do it in spite of all your bungling. That’s what a real doctor has done for him, and not a fushionless, know-nothing like yourself.”

  Finlay stared at the enraged Jessie, unmoved by her vituperation, but strangely perturbed at the unexpected turn of events.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” he said slowly. “This man’s a rank impostor.”

  “He made the laddie walk without irons,” she cried shrilly. “That’s a heap sight more nor you could do!”

  “But don’t you see,” answered Finlay quickly, holding his temper in rein, “Duncan could have walked in any case. The trouble is that by putting away the irons too soon the good of all these weeks of treatment is undone.”

  “Nonsense!” she shouted. “A pack of lying nonsense! I know ye. Ye’re only trying to save your face.”

  Finlay’s expression became a trifle strained.

  “Mrs. Grant,” he declared with firm gravity, “say what you like about me. I’m not thinking about myself; I’m thinking about Duncan. I beg of you to let him wear the iron for another two months. Just let me go on that little bit longer then …”

  “No, no,” she interrupted in a passion of violence. “I’m done and finished with ye. The boy’s cured in spite of ye. So don’t ever dare to darken my door again.”

  And with a laugh of triumph and contempt, she turned and banged out of the surgery.

  Too late Finlay’s anger flared. He was furious.

  With a hot flush of indignation he c
ursed himself for having borne with Jessie for so long. She was beyond words. And he swore there and then to let her go her own intolerable way. He had warned her sufficiently; now she could run towards disaster and take the consequences.

  But, as the days passed and turned into weeks, Finlay’s resentment passed also, and instead he began to feel a deep concern for Duncan. It was his own strong professional sense allied to a profound instinct of humanity.

  And then, one Saturday in June, almost a month later, as he walked along Church Street, past the Public Library, he came across Duncan, and all his suppressed feeling rose with sudden intensity.

  The boy, emerging from the library, where he had been spending his few free hours amongst his beloved books, was limping abominably, hardly daring to place any weight on his right leg.

  A pained frown formed on Finlay’s brow. He remained in the middle of the pavement directly in Duncan’s path, and despite the frown his voice was kind.

  “How are you, Duncan, lad?” he asked quietly.

  Startled, Duncan raised his eyes from the ground, where they had been fixed, and at the sight of the doctor his pale cheeks flooded with colour.

  “I’m not so bad, thank you, doctor.” He paused awkwardly. “At least…”

  “At least what?”

  “Well, I get about,” muttered Duncan miserably. “ I go to work. But, oh, I don’t know …”

  Finlay did know, however. As he watched Duncan go hirpling down the road he went home and raged to Cameron.

  “It’s iniquitous,” he threw out in conclusion, pacing furiously up and down the room. “ We’ve got to stop her. We can’t stand by and let her do this thing. The situation is impossible.”

  “Yes, it’s impossible,” Cameron agreed slowly. “Impossible for us to interfere.”

  “But we must!” Finlay cried violently.

  “We can’t!” Cameron answered with a shake of his head. “You know we can’t. She’s his mother. We can’t enforce our treatment. I know that she’s hard and bitter on him – that she doesn’t care a hang for his welfare besides her own black pride. But makes no difference. You cannot get between mother and son.”