by A. J. Cronin
“When can you pay it?”
“At once.” McKellar placed his knife and fork methodically together and pushed away his plate.
“More tea, Mr. McKellar.”
“Thank you no, I’ve done brawly.”
“A drop of spirits, then.” Papa, the prim abstainer, actually made the hospitable offering.
“Well, if you insist.”
When the full tumbler had been placed before McKellar, I slipped from my chair with the intention of escaping unobserved. But that steady and penetrating orb fell upon me like a searchlight.
“Where are you going?”
Papa came to my rescue. “He’s still a bit upset … Maybe you noticed at the funeral. That’s all right, we’ll excuse you, Robert.”
“Sit down, boy.” McKellar took a firm dram of spirits. “ It’s hardly respectful to the old man’s memory to slink out in the middle of the proceedings. If you have any regard for him at all—and you’re the only one that pretends to have—you might have the decency to bide till I have finished.”
I sank into my chair in confusion. McKellar had never used that tone to me before. It stung and humiliated me.
“Let’s get ahead with it then,” Adam said sharply.
“As you wish.” McKellar took some papers from his inside pocket. “Here is the policy, No. 57430, an endowment assurance in the name of Alexander Gow. And here is the will. I’ll read it through.”
“What for?” Adam was losing his temper at the lawyer’s pedantic slowness. “Why all this rigmarole? I was in your office when you drew it, I witnessed it, and I know it by heart.”
McKellar gave the impression of being taken aback. “ It’ll be more regular if I read it. It won’t take me a moment.”
“Of course.” Papa smoothed things over.
McKellar put on his glasses and in a slow broad voice read out the will. It was a short and simple document. Grandpa left everything to Mama, and, in the event of her decease, to her executor, Papa.
“Well.” Papa exhaled a satisfied breath. “That’s just as it should be. Now there’s nothing to detain us.”
“Wait!” McKellar almost shouted the word and at the same time thumped the table with his large fist. In the silence which succeeded he glanced round, crouching over the parchment, that slow grim smile, carefully hidden until now, contracting his bushy brows, tightening his firm mouth. He was like a man free at last to unleash and to enjoy some exquisite secret.
His eye found me again, dwelt upon me with open kindness, as he said: “There is a codicil to this will, a holograph codicil dated July 20th, 1910.”
An exclamation from Papa, which I scarcely heard. How clearly I remembered that day: that day of mortal sadness, when I lost the Marshall and Gavin was killed.
McKellar went on, letting every word sink in—yes, as though it afforded him excruciating pleasure to stab Papa with each individual word:
“On that day, the twentieth of July, Dandie Gow came into my office. I called him Dandie because, in spite of all his failings and misfortunes, I’m proud to say he was my friend. He asked me outright if he could divert the proceeds of his policy. We had a long talk, he and I, that afternoon. As a result, every penny of the money, I say every penny, and my God, I mean every penny, is left to the boy here, Robert Shannon, under my trusteeship, to enable him to take his medical degrees at Winton College.”
Deathly silence. I had turned white; my throat, my heart constricted; I could not believe it, I was too used to misfortune, too beaten-down—it was just another device of the blind sky to pretend to raise me up so that I could be dashed down again, more cruelly.
“You are trying to impose on me,” Papa whimpered. “ He couldn’t do such a thing. He had no right.”
The grim smile deepened. “Every right, under this policy, which could not be mortgaged or compounded during his lifetime, but was his to devise and bequeath, voluntarily.”
Papa threw a piteous glance at Adam. “Is that so?”
“It’s the only way Mama would have it.” Adam glared at McKellar. “He was out of his mind.”
“Not when he drew the codicil two years ago. He was as sane as you are.”
“I’ll contest the will,” Papa said in a high strange voice. “ I’ll take it to law.”
“Do so.” McKellar ceased to smile. He glanced from Adam to Papa in a very threatening manner. “ Yes, do so. And I promise you I’ll fight you of my own accord, fight you if need be to the County Court, and the High Court. Fight you to the floor of the Parliament itself. It would be a bad business for you, Leckie. There would be no Waterworks for you then, my man.” He paused, relishing to the full this little bit of melodrama which, after years of staid practice, had come his way. “Your wife didn’t wish to take out this policy, though she paid most of the premiums herself. As for the old man—he had no chance to get a farthing from it. But he wanted it to serve a good and useful purpose. It will serve that purpose, or my name is not Duncan McKellar.”
Oh, God, was it really true then … this wonderful gift from Grandpa, who had never breathed a word of it to me? I kept my eyes lowered, scarcely breathing, the muscles of my face twitching beneath their fixed rigidity. Suddenly I heard Kate’s voice, felt her arm go round my shoulders.
“I don’t know what the others think … in my opinion it’s the best use that could be made of this money … yes, the very best use.”
“Hear! Hear!” Jamie added in a loud whisper.
Blessed Kate of the bad tempers and the bumps on her forehead, and Jamie, who makes money seem clean and decent … I humbly trust their little boy will have less difficulty in growing up than did I. McKellar, folding up the papers, addressed me as he stood up.
“Ten o’clock to-morrow at my office. But meantime you can walk down the road with me. A breath of air will do you no harm.”
I left the room with him blindly. There comes a point when nature, strung to the breaking-point, can endure no more.
Chapter Eleven
Late that evening there returns from Lawyer McKellar’s house an excited small-town mammal of the genus Homo sapiens, in brief, that woeful yet warm-blooded vertebrate, Robert Shannon. Although this peculiar biped is actually eighteen and has not so long ago felt upon his stooping shoulders the awful burden of the years, of an almost unrequited love and of countless other miseries as well, he is still unhardened and immature. Now, while conscious of the calm still beauty of the night, a vast pellucid night singing with stars, beneath which his heart also is singing, he gazes straight ahead, flushed, and intent.
The future is wide and open to him. The dry Scots lawyer, who has talked with him so long, will act as his trustee and counsellor, as his friend. He will never go back to the Works. At the beginning of the new session, next month, he will go to the University, living in the students’ hostel there, entering with joy upon his medical studies. Biology … practical zoology … these magic names have brought that high colour to his cheeks. Already he sniffs the intoxicating odours of formalin and Canada balsam, views that long line of Zeiss microscopes, each with its wonderful oil-immersion lenses, and one of which will be his—in spite of poor Mr. Smith, whom he will be pleased to see again. To think of it! Why, they will probably let him dissect the dogfish, mustelus canis, if he is lucky, in his first term!
There is enough money to see him through: the few loose ends left by Grandpa can be cleared up by McKellar for less than twenty pounds. If unpleasant things are said to him when he goes home—and his expression hardens here—he has been told to take no notice. He will soon leave Lomond View for good.
Ah, yes, the future is open and shining. Reid and Alison may be going, but he is going also.… He will show them that he is not fated to be a failure. His feelings towards Alison have subtly changed, his passion is more sternly contained. Perhaps there is no place for women in the life of a great zoologist? Or perhaps one day in Vienna, when a famous prima donna is singing the title role in Carmen, a grave distinguished d
octor with a decoration in his buttonhole and a small trim beard will come quietly into the stage box.…
No, no, these fancies belong to the phase of adolescence which the boy has put behind him. Ahead there is work to be done … serious, oh, glorious laboratory work.
But wait … one last moment, one final inconsistency before we let him go. As he passes along Chapel Street there rises before him on his right the dark despised structure of the Holy Angels Church. He needs nothing, this bright spirit, from that place, which no longer deludes him. Bravely, he has resisted all the wiles of Canon Roche to bring him back to it. Sadness has not brought him to his knees.… Oh, he’s past being hoodwinked; practically, in fact, on the verge of being a freethinker.
And yet at this moment he is caught unawares, seized and strangled, by an overmastering force. Remember—he has read everything, from the Origin of Species to Renan’s Life of Jesus, he has smiled at the fable of Adam’s rib, and agreed with the witty French Cardinal, whose name he has forgotten, that Christianity rests upon a charming myth. Yet this is something which surges up, which is in his blood, his bones, his very marrow, something he will never be rid of, which will haunt him till the instant of his death.
We are faced with an anticlimax of the first magnitude. But we have sworn, beyond everything, to be truthful. How many times in the future this Robert Shannon will shuttle between apathy and ardour, rise and be smitten down again, we are not at liberty to predict—or how often he will make, and break, his peace with the Being towards whom all human impulses ascend. The fact remains that now, uncontrollably, he feels the need of communicating the exaltation of his spirit, in the listening stillness. He feels suddenly that his prayer of gratitude will not fall into the void. And with a shamefaced air, he darts into the dark church.
The least we can say is that he is not absent long. Perhaps he has only stayed to light a penny candle, or murmur some incoherent words before the sombre altar. Yet perhaps it is more than that. When he emerges, dazzled a little by the lucid stars and the Northern Lights now searching the polar sky, he sets off more briskly, his footsteps ringing clear in the empty street.
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1960 by Gollancz
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © A. J. Cronin, 1960
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