The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  He had his pride, of course, the natural pride of a liberal, enlightened man. He knew himself as a man of position and substance; he was a mine owner, the owner of the Neptune, whose family had worked the Neptune pits for just one hundred years. He took a real satisfaction in the family succession, beginning with Peter Barras who in 1805 had originally sunk No. 1 shaft into the Snook, known now as the Old Neptune, leaving a tidy little pit to his son William who in his turn had sunk shafts Nos. 2 and 3. As for Peter William, Richard’s own father, he had bored No. 4, a shrewd and well-judged stroke from which Richard was now benefiting hugely. The foundation of the family name and fortune by these shrewd, hard-headed men gratified Richard deeply. He prided himself on inheriting, on developing the qualities of his forebears, on his own shrewdness and hard-headedness, his ability to drive a hard bargain.

  Socially, he was not openly aspiring. When, in conversation, the name of some county notable cropped up Barras had a way of calmly interjecting: “And what’s he worth?” inferring with a mild amusement that his neighbour’s financial position was contemptible. Thus while he enjoyed the deference of his banker and his lawyer he was not a snob—he despised the pettiness of the word. Though Harriet Wandless was of a county family he had not married Harriet for the distinction of her pedigree. He had married Harriet to make Harriet his wife.

  The suggestion of a passion arises here. Yet Barras was a man of no apparent passions. The strength of his personality was terrific; but it was a static, a glacial strength. He had no violence, no towering passions, no gusts of fiery emotion. What was alien to him he rejected; what was not alien he possessed. The evidence of Harriet, taken in camera, is, positively, the clue. But Harriet, on the mornings which succeeded these regular nocturnal idylls, merely ate a large breakfast soulfully—with the placid satisfaction of a cow that had been successfully milked. Such visible biological evidence as Harriet’s modesty afforded was both positive and negative. But the examination of Harriet’s stomach contents would undoubtedly have revealed cud.

  Richard himself gave a few clues. He was a secret man. This secrecy was definitely a quality. Not the ordinary banal secrecy of concealment, but a subtler secrecy, a secrecy which sternly resented prying and froze all familiarity with a look. He seemed icily to say, I am myself and will be myself but that is no concern of any one but myself. And to continue, I dominate myself but I will be dominated by no one but myself. The static glacier again.

  It must not be assumed, however, that Richard’s qualities were cast entirely in this out-size arctic mould. Barras had some very individual characteristics. His love of organ music, of Handel, of the Messiah in particular. His devotion to art, to sound established art as manifested in the expensive pictures upon his walls. His loyalty to the domestic unities. His inveterate neatness and precision. And finally his acquisitiveness.

  Here, at last, lies the hidden intention of Richard’s soul, the very core of the man himself. He loved his possessions passionately, his pit, his house, his pictures, his property, everything that was his This accounted for his abomination of waste, of which the pale reflection was Aunt Carrie’s acquired inability “to throw anything out.” Aunt Carrie often protested this openly and Barras was always pleased. Barras himself never threw anything out. Papers, documents, receipts, records of transactions, everything—all neatly docketed and locked away in Barras’s desk. It was almost a religion, this docketing and locking away. It had a spiritual quality. It was most exemplary. It rang in harmony with his love of Handel. It had, like Handel, impressive breadth and depth and a kind of impenetrable religiosity, but it had its basis in simple avarice. For, beyond everything, the secret and consuming passion of Barras’s soul was his love of money. Though he masked it cleverly, deceiving even himself, he adored money. He hugged it to him and nourished it, the glowing scene of his wealth, his own substance.

  Meanwhile Hilda had finished with Handel. At least she had finished with Water Music. And in the normal way she would have restored her music to the long piano stool and gone straight upstairs. But to-night Hilda seemed determined to propitiate. Staring straight at the keyboard she said:

  “Would you like Largo, father?”

  It was his favourite piece, the piece which impressed him beyond all others, the piece which made Hilda wish to scream.

  She played it slowly and with sonorous rhythm.

  There was a silence. Without removing his hand from his forehead he said:

  “Thank you, Hilda.”

  She got off the stool, stood on the other side of the table. Though her face wore the familiar forbidding look, she was trembling inside. She said:

  “Father!”

  “Well, Hilda!” His voice appeared reasonable.

  She took a long breath. For weeks she had been nerving herself to take that breath. She said:

  “I’m nearly twenty, now, father. It’s nearly three years since I came home from school. All that time I’ve been at home doing nothing. I’m tired of doing nothing. I want to do something for a change. I want you to let me go away and do something.”

  He uncovered his eyes and measured her curiously. He repeated:

  “Do something?”

  “Yes, do something,” she said violently. “Let me train for something. Get some position.”

  “Some position?” The same remote tone of wonder. “What position?”

  “Any position. To be your secretary. To be a nurse. Or let me go in for medicine. I’d like that best of all.”

  He studied her again, still pleasantly ironic.

  “And what,” he said, “is to happen when you marry?”

  “I’ll never get married,” she burst out. “I’d hate to get married. I’m far too ugly ever to get married.”

  Coldness crept into his face but his tone did not change. He said:

  “You have been reading the papers, Hilda.”

  His penetration brought the blood to her sallow face. It was true. She had read the morning paper. The day before there had been a raid by suffragists on Downing Street, during a Cabinet meeting, and violent scenes when some women attempted to rush the House of Commons. It had brought Hilda’s brooding to a head.

  “An attempt was made to rush,” he quoted musingly, “to rush… the House of Commons.” He made it sound the last insanity.

  She bit her lip fiercely. She said:

  “Father, let me go away and study medicine. I want to be a doctor.”

  He said:

  “No, Hilda.”

  “Let me go, father,” she said.

  He said:

  “No, Hilda.”

  “Let me.” An almost frantic intercession in her voice.

  He said nothing.

  A silence fell. Her face had gone chalky white now. He contemplated the ceiling with an air of absent interest. For about a minute they remained like this, then, quite undramatically, she turned and went out of the room.

  He did not seem to notice that Hilda had gone. Hilda had broken an inviolable convention. He sealed his mind against Hilda.

  He sat for about half an hour, then he rose and carefully turned out the gas and went up to his study. He always went to his study after Hilda had played to him on Saturday nights. The study was a spacious and comfortable room, thickly carpeted, with a massive desk, dark red curtains screening the windows, and several photographs of the Colliery hung upon the walls. Barras sat down at his desk, pulled out his ring of keys, selected one with meticulous care and unlocked the top middle drawer. From the top middle drawer he took out three ordinary red-backed account books and with a familiar touch began to examine them. The first was a list of his investments, written carefully in his own neat handwriting. He considered it detachedly, a pleased yet non-committal smile touching his lips. He lifted a pen, without dipping it in the ink and ran the point delicately down the row of figures. Suddenly he paused, reflected seriously, deciding to sell that block of 1st Preference United Collieries. They had touched their peak recently; his confiden
tial information regarding their current profits was of an adverse nature; yes, he would sell. He smiled again faintly, recognising his own shrewd instinct, his money sense. He never made a mistake, and why need he? Every security in this little book was virtually gilt-edged, guaranteed, impregnable. Again he made a rapid calculation. The total pleased him.

  Then he turned to the second book. This second book gave the list of his house property in Sleescale and the district. Most of the Terraces belonged to Barras—it was a sore point with him that Ramage, the butcher, had half of Balaclava Row—and in Tynecastle he had several sound blocks of “weeklies.” These tenements, which lay down by the river, and yielded their rents to a weekly collector, were immensely profitable. Richard never regretted these tenements, his own idea, though Bannerman, his lawyer, handled the actual business with a quiet discretion. He made a note to speak to Bannerman on a point of costs.

  And finally, with a sense of relaxation, a fondling touch, he drew the third book towards him. There was the list of his pictures with the prices he had paid for each. He considered it tolerantly. It amused him to consider that he had spent twenty thousand pounds, a fortune, virtually, on pictures. Well, it was a sound investment too—they were on his walls, appreciating in value, growing rare and old like the Titians and Rembrandts… but he would buy no more. No, he had paid his homage to art. It was enough.

  He looked at his watch. His lips made a little clicking sound that it should be so late. Carefully, he put his books away, relocked the top middle drawer and went up to his bedroom.

  He took out his watch again and wound up his watch. He took a drink of water from the carafe beside his bed. Then he began to undress. The quiet movements of his powerful figure had a set inevitability. The movements were regular and systematic. The movements admitted no other movements. Each movement had a deliberate self-interest. The white strong hands spoke a dumb alphabet of their own. This way… like this… the best way to do it is this way… the best way for me… there may be other ways… but this way is the best way for me… for me. In the half light of the bedroom the symbolism of the hands was strangely menacing.

  At last Barras was ready. He circled on his dark purple dressing-gown. He stood for a moment smoothing his jaw with his fingers. Then he went steadily along the corridor.

  Hilda, sitting in the darkness of her own room, heard the heavy tread of her father as he entered her mother’s room next door. Her body contracted, she held herself quite rigid. Her face wore a tormented look. Desperately she tried to shut her ears but she could not shut her ears. She could never shut her ears. The tread advanced. Subdued voices. A heavy deliberate creak. Hilda’s whole body shuddered. In an agony of loathing she waited. The sounds began.

  THIRTEEN

  Joe lounged in the living-room at Scottswood Road paying not the slightest heed to Alf Sunley who sat by the table reading aloud the selections of Captain Sanglar for Gosforth Park Races. This afternoon Joe and Alf were going to the races, though Joe, from the sullen expression in his face and his contemptuous indifference to the Captain’s information, did not appear to exult unduly at the prospect. Replete with dinner, he lay back in his chair with his feet on the window-sill, indulging himself in surly meditation.

  “Taking form for courses I confidently nap Lord Kell’s Nesfield for the Eldon Plate, making that well-tried filly my three-star selection for the day…”

  As Alf’s voice droned on Joe’s eyes roved glumly round the room. God, what a sickening place! What a hole! And to think, to think actually that he had put up with it for over three years! Nearly four, in fact! Was he going to stick it much longer? He couldn’t believe it, the way time had slipped in, and left him still here, like a stranded whale. Where, curse it, was his ambition? Was he going to waste himself here all his life?

  Soberly reviewed, the position impressed him as being not altogether lively. At Millington’s in these four years he had got on well enough. Yes, well enough… but well enough was not good enough, not nearly good enough for Joe Gowlan. He was puddling now, earning his regular three pounds a week; and that, at twenty-two, was something. He was popular—a faint complacent gleam broke through his present gloom—wonderfully popular. He was one of the lads! Mr. Millington appeared to take an interest in him, too, always stopped and spoke as he came through the works, but nothing definite ever seemed to come of it. Nothing, dammit, thought Joe, glooming.

  What had he done for himself? He had three suits instead of one, three pairs of brown boots and a lot of fancy ties; he had a few quid in his pocket; he had improved his physique, even boxed at St. James’s Hall; he knew his way around the town; he knew some tricks. But what else? Nothing, dammit, nothing, thought Joe, again, glooming worse. He was still a workman living in lodgings, with no money to brag about, and he was still… still mixed up with Jenny.

  Joe moved restlessly. Jenny represented the peak, the crisis, the goading thorn of his present discontent. Jenny was in love with him, clinging to him, mucking him up. Could anything be bloodier? At first, naturally, his vanity had been tickled, it had been a bit of all right having Jenny running after him, hanging on his elbow as, with his chest well out, and his derby well back, he brown-booted jauntily down the street.

  But now he wasn’t so jaunty, by a half of a long chop. He was fed up with Jenny. Well, no, perhaps he wouldn’t put it so strong as that—she was still soft, still desirable in his arms, and their love-making, the fierce consummation of his desire, snatched secretly here in this room, in his own room, outside after dark, in doorways, round by the back of Elswick stables, in all sorts of queer and unexpected places, that, he had to admit, was still sweet. But it was… oh, it was too easy now. There was no difficulty, no resistance in Jenny; there was even a faint eagerness about her sometimes, and sometimes a sense of neglect when he left her alone too long. Oh, hell! He might just as well have been married to Jenny.

  And he didn’t want to be married to Jenny, nor to any other Jenny. Not to be tied up for life, not him. He was too wise a bird for that sort of snare. He wanted to get on, make his way, pile up some money. He wanted to scrape some of the gilt, the real gilt off the gingerbread.

  He frowned. She was too much in his life, changing it too much, she really was upsetting him. This very afternoon, for instance, hearing that he was going to Gosforth with her father and leaving her at home she had dissolved in sudden scalding tears, had been pacified only at the cost of promising to take her with them. She was upstairs, dressing, now.

  Oh, blast! Joe took a sudden fierce kick at the stool in front of him, making Alf stop reading and look up in mild surprise.

  “You’re not lissenin’, Joe,” Alf remonstrated. “What’s the good of me wastin’ my breath if you don’t lissen.”

  Joe answered disagreeably:

  “That fellow don’t know nowt. He gets his tips straight from the horses’ mouths. An’ the horses is all liars. I’m goin’ to get my information from Dick Jobey on the course. He’s a pal o’ mine and a man as knows what he’s talkin’ about.”

  Alf gave a short expressive laugh.

  “What’s like the matter with you, Joe? I’d stopped readin’ about the horses ten minutes ago. I was readin’ about the new aeroplane this fella Bleeryoh has got, you know, him that flew the Channel last year.”

  Joe grunted:

  “Aw’ll have a fleet o’ bloody aeroplanes myself one o’ these days. You watch.”

  Alf squinted over the edge of the paper.

  “I’ll watch,” he agreed with enormous sarcasm.

  The door opened and Jenny came in. Joe looked up grumpily:

  “You’re ready at last.”

  “I’m ready,” she admitted brightly; all traces of her recent weeping had vanished and, as was often the case after a bout of tearful petulance, she was brisk, blithe as a lark. “Like my new hat?” she asked, tilting her head for him archly. “Pretty nice, mister?”

  Through all his moodiness he had to grant that she did look nice. The
new hat, which she wore so dashingly, set off her pale prettiness. Her figure was extraordinarily attractive, she had the most beautifully modelled legs and hips. Physically the loss of her virginity had improved her. She was riper, more assured, less anæmic; she had more go in her; she was near her point of perfection.

  “Come on, then,” she laughed. “Come on you too, dad. Don’t keep me waiting or we’ll be late.”

  “Keep you waiting!” Joe expostulated.

  And Alf, nodding his head commiseratingly, sighed.

  “Women!”

  The three set out for Gosforth Park by tram, Jenny sitting between the two men, very straight and happy, while the tram bumped and bounded along North Road.

  “I want to make some money,” she remarked confidentially to Joe, patting her handbag.

  “You’re not the only one,” Joe answered rudely.

  They went into the two-shilling ring which was pleasantly full, just enough people to interest Jenny, not enough to crowd her. She was delighted; the white railings against the bright green of the course, the colours of the jockeys, the sleek lovely horses, the shouts of the bookies under their big blue and gold umbrellas, the movement, animation and excitement of the ring, the fashionable dresses, the celebrities seen not too distantly in the paddock.

  “Look, Joe, look,” she cried, clutching his arm. “There’s Lord Kell! Isn’t he a gentleman!”

  Lord Kell, doyen of British sport, millionaire landowner of the North, florid, sidewhiskered and genial, stood chatting to a little scrap of a man, Lew Lester, his jockey.

  Joe grunted enviously:

  “If he thinks Nesfield’s goin’ to win he’s up a gum tree.” Then he barged off to find Dick Jobey.

  He had a lot of trouble in finding Dick, for Dick was in the ten-shilling enclosure; but by getting hold of the ticktacker, Joe managed to summon Dick to the railings.