by A. J. Cronin
Yet, from time to time, as with a fresh pang, her body seemed to shrink a little, her eye, still bright, became haunted, and her face took on a strange look of listening.
It was after tea that the doorbell rang – a sudden peal, vibrating upon her tautly drawn nerves. Startled unreasonably, she went to the door. But it was only Miss Hocking, standing incredibly, with a mould of jelly neatly wrapped within her large gloved hands.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Hocking, rather foolishly. ‘I know you are upset, but I thought you might care to have this. You looked so ill. It would do you good.’
There was a moment’s silence, during which Lucy looked doubtfully at Miss Hocking’s smooth, too-reasonable face: her giving was like a child offering a toy; an action light and unconsidered, empty of anything but a sort of laughing simplicity.
‘It was kind of you,’ she said, as reluctantly she took the mould.
‘I’ve enjoyed making it,’ answered Miss Hocking apologetically. ‘It’s the mixing – and the colour!’ Her smile faded – when she was not smiling her face was quite expressionless – then she added: ‘You must come up and see me often now.’
No depth of motive lay beneath her tone, merely a benevolent friendliness.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been sad today,’ said the other again, dreamily; ‘something of your sadness has come up to me – like a dark flower!’
Lucy made no reply, but drew back slightly from the doorstep.
‘I mustn’t keep you,’ exclaimed the other quickly. ‘But anything I can do I will do. Yes, I will, for I understand.’ And she turned with a slow sweep of her skirts, and went slowly away.
Lucy closed the door. She was used now to these capricious manifestations of Miss Hocking’s favour, but tonight her mood was filled solely by the urgency of tenderness and grief. The approach of night chilled her, gave her again that frozen sensation of her sorrow.
She entered the parlour and sat down beside Peter, who was on his elbows on the floor, playing a game of soldiers upon the carpet, watching the smiles strain through his intent and serious face.
After they had played together they went early to bed, lying together in the small bed in the spare room, where they talked in low voices, saying to each other those things which could be said only in the darkness. They had suddenly an intimacy, a warmth, a comradeship; his breath was upon her cheek; under the flashing promises he made – of the furs and motor-cars which he would buy her, of the greatness he would achieve for her sake – the future opened before them both.
At last his voice grew jerky, then drowsily his breathing deepened. She raised herself up, and, quietly bending over him, watched in the dim light his sleeping face. As she gazed, she heard the vague sound of music coming from without, afar, swelling into a slow strain of sadness, falling thinly into the silence of the night. She lay down, swallowed with difficulty, curved her body against her son, then she closed her eyes, and, worn by the long passage of broken nights, her breathing eased into sleep.
Chapter Three
Next morning she took a firm grip upon herself and set her face doggedly towards the future. Despite her assumption of confidence before Joe and Edward, the fact was that she had with difficulty persuaded Lennox to allow her to continue her husband’s work.
‘I could only give you a trial,’ he had said, dissuasively. ‘If you didn’t do, then we couldn’t keep you.’
He had hesitated, uncertain, swayed a little by his regard, yet half persuading himself that the move might be a shrewd one. Although he had entertained for Moore a certain regard, although he liked Lucy, sympathy and affection did not lie entirely at the back of his acquiescence. He saw that she was young, presentable; likely, moreover, to receive a sympathetic reception from his customers because of her recent sensational bereavement; he committed himself to nothing; her remuneration would be adjudged chiefly upon a commission basis; and the work itself was simple, of a nature involving merely a knowledge of prices and quality which she could easily acquire. Yes, he was careful – very careful: he explained that such a departure would be a novelty totally lacking in precedent, a novelty which could hardly be successful, but he inferred at least that she should have her opportunity.
‘It’s a risk I’m taking, mind ye; it’s a risk,’ he had declared in conclusion. ‘Me that’s as long in the head as the Tron steeple. But I’ll give you the chance.’
She saw clearly, therefore, that she must fight for success, that to ensure this success she must first make provision for Peter.
How she would part with him she did not know – but it was apparently inevitable. At her work she would be away all day; often, on her wider visitations, until late at night; already she had decided on the grounds of economy that she must part with Netta, and in consequence there would be no one to look after him or to prepare his meals. Besides, never could she be happy to be away from home, constantly in fear that some unforeseen mishap might befall the boy. Again, his present school was inferior, and attended chiefly by a poorer class of children; she had for him a great ambition; he was now virtually nine years of age; finally, there was Joe’s generous, even handsome offer to send him to an admittedly excellent boarding-school. It was unthinkable that she could place her own feelings in the way of the boy’s best interests and refuse this excellent opportunity. Yes, she faced the melancholy, indisputable fact: she must part for the time being with Peter. It was a sacrifice, a great sacrifice, yet she must make it.
Lest her resolution should falter, she sat down quickly and wrote to the Brother Superior at Laughtown.
And quickly, too, in return came a courteous personal letter from that Superior thanking her profusely for her enquiry, pointing out that the new term began in ten days’ time, indicating the extremely reasonable range of fees, and enclosing a green and gold illustrated prospectus which explained in eloquent terms the manifold attractions of the school. Earnestly she read through this neat little book, beginning: ‘Designed to afford an eminently sound and practical education for the sons of Catholic gentlemen, the college is delightfully situated within the salubrious country town of Laughtown, so justly dubbed by the poet Brown “ The Pearl of the Eastern Lowlands”. Soundly built, standing in its own tasteful grounds, and so agreeably fanned by the balmy yet bracing breezes of the eastern seaboard, it commands –’ and ending: ‘The food in particular is wholesome, nourishing, and plentiful. Delicate and backward boys are especially cared for. No extras. The Brothers mingle with the boys and engage freely in their sports and recreations. Fees in all cases and without exception are payable in advance.’
It was an elegant and moderate essay. She was impressed – indubitably impressed. She sighed and turned again to the photographs; the School Band; the School Orchestra (almost the same photograph); the School Choir; the School Dramatic Society – in the costume of that classic piece Nero! or the Christian Slave; the groups of the various forms – every boy in the college had his face in the book, and Lucy looked at them all.
She read glowing extracts reprinted from the Laughtown Courier: ‘A distinguished gathering … the Lord Bishop of Nofar presiding … amongst the laity were …’ She read the long lists of prizes which could be won. Then she laid the book upon her knee and gazed across at Peter.
Strangely, he was fired by a desire to leave her. Inconceivable it was, but indisputable. This timid, sensitive, childish boy, who had wept in her arms less than a week ago, now desired urgently to forsake these arms. He had read the usual fictitious literature of school life; he had read, too, this prospectus; and now he saw himself leading the orchestra, beating the big drum in the band, holding a vast audience rapt by his impersonation of the Christian slave; he craved nothing more of life at this moment than to see his photograph staring proudly from that green and yellow book. Even through her relief, the fact that he made no demur saddened her. Irrationally, she wanted him to consent, yet she wished him to protest lovingly: ‘ I don’t want to go. I couldn’t leave yo
u.’ But he made neither of these protestations. Instead, he leapt visibly at the idea.
The buying of this outfit – according to the prescribed list – was for him an expedition as joyous as it was tragic for Lucy.
They went, naturally, to Gow’s. Mr Gow himself – dreadfully overcome to hear of Frank’s death – was kind, almost paternal, and generous to the tune of three shillings discount. Yes, it was a sad business for Lucy, this setting out of her son upon the business of life. But Peter was ravished by his new and manly garments.
He came home elated, tried on his new pyjamas, and at the same time his bowler hat, which had been chosen, on Mr Gow’s advice, on the large size, to allow for the natural growth of the head, and which reposed backwards on his ears with a faintly Semitic archness. He postured before the mirror with supreme gratification, and demanded with an unblushing vanity that Miss Hocking be brought along to view him. She did come, and delightedly viewed the outfit, praising particularly the colour of his new braces, which superseded his old and worthless ones. She passed no comment upon the school; her father, to whom she remotely alluded, had been educated, it appeared at an exclusive English Public School; she herself had been to Leipzig; but she did like those braces, and she laughed unrestrainedly as he jumped about in his pyjamas, exposing his small person shamelessly at every excited leap. Every leap sent Pinkie into a fresh peal. That strange interest flashed happily in her blue excited eye. But Lucy’s answering smile was wan.
That the term should begin so soon – it was an unexpected pang, and it seemed to her that the days rushed past. They swept along, indeed, in a stream so swift that the last inevitable day had reached her before she realised it. Yet it was here.
They set off for the station in a cab; the new shiny black trunk, with his initials inscribed upon it in white paint – ineffable refinement of modern civilisation – lay tenderly bestowed above them; Miss Hocking, who had come down to see him off, ordered the cab-man about to distraction, and waved them good-bye with a pink sash from the doorway. To Lucy the occasion was one not only of sorrow but of solemnity; and the high solemnity of the occasion warred with and almost overcame her sadness. To her this setting out was momentous. She saw in it the first step into life of this young and captivating creature that was hers, the opening out of a highway which he should walk with an illustrious tread. In the train she was silent, now gazing out at the moving landscape, now suddenly returning her look to the excited figure of her son.
Her determination firmed within her. She had pride and she had an immense love, both moving her to a resolution. It was like an aspiration: a swift pang of yearning tempered by her own courage.
The past was the past: she must not, she could not, brood upon it – therein lay only wretchedness and defeat. She determined that she would succeed; as for Peter, his success would be hers; together they would achieve it, and she would see that it was incomparable.
The journey was long, and involved a change with a considerable wait, but they reached Laughtown in the early afternoon. As the train drew in, she carefully wiped the smuts from Peter’s cheek with her moistened handkerchief, and they got out upon the bustling windswept platform. She had expected that someone might meet the train, but in the press of people – it was market day, and the station was full of farmers and their stock – she could discern no face which looked expectantly towards her and the boy, standing in his stiff new hat so obviously beside the shiny trunk.
The porter whom she approached betrayed only an unsympathetic knowledge of the school and its whereabouts: she was jostled by some passing yokels; the cows mooed and lifted their tails incontinently; the sheep bleated mournfully; and the pigs mingled their grunts discordantly from the adjoining pens. She became aware that this arrival at ‘The Pearl of the Eastern Lowlands’ was hardly the picture that her fancy had drawn, and as she stood holding Peter’s hand her brows drew together with a slow perplexity. In the end, however, they found a cab and drove with a continuous chatter of iron-girt wheels over the roundly cobbled streets. Clop-clop, went the sluggish hoofs of the jogging nag and somehow the town seemed sluggish, too. It had a blousy and bucolic air: shops full of the instruments of agriculture, barrels of potatoes stacked upon the pavements, in the market-place a crowd of rustics who merely stood in apathy or moved their heavy boots towards the nearest tavern: yes, a disappointing town, threaded but unredeemed by a greyish river which wandered aimlessly beneath some low-arched bridges.
At last, with a jerk, they drew up at the school, and here at least there was no disappointment for Lucy. The college buildings of white sandstone had a neat and compact air. The laurel-edged drive was precise and scrupulously raked. The whole establishment exhibited a genuine solidity, which reassured at once her anxious mind.
At her ring a manservant in a green baize apron opened the door, and at the sight of them an agreeable smile parted his dark, shaven face.
‘Will you please to step this way, ma’am?’ said he, and showed them along a polished corridor to a small hushed chamber. Lucy and her son sat down formally on the edges of two straight-backed chairs, gazed at each other as from a distance, forbidden almost, by the strangeness of their situation, to speak, then looked round the room. An aspidistra in a china pot stood in the centre of a brown drugget tablecloth; a marble temple of a clock upon the mantelpiece loudly marked the seconds; and rows of darkly bound books against the wall conveyed a serious sense of erudition.
In a few moments an old man came slowly into the room.
‘I’m Brother William, he said, advancing a tremulous hand, explaining further with a naïve satisfaction: ‘Superior of the College.’
He wore a small black skull-cap, a habit shiny from use and pollened upon the chest with snuff; askew, a short black shoulder-cape drooped from him. He was bowed, shuffled somewhat as he walked, and his redly veined, clean-shaven face was pendulous with age: his brows hung down, his neck fell into folds, even his cheeks sagged in limp dewlaps over his chin like those of an aged bulldog.
But, for all this patent evidence of senility, he looked a wise and kind old man, now turned a little simple in his sagacity, perhaps, yet with a mild astuteness, the more subtle because it sat on him so openly.
‘Yes, I’m Brother William,’ he repeated, as he sat down, with a faint nodding smile; and when Lucy saw that smile she forgot Brother William’s age and knew only that she liked him.
‘You’d like to take a little walk and see some of the other boys?’ he said to Peter, after they had spoken for a moment. He struck a small bell upon the table, and almost at once a young Brother entered: dark, he was, alert and trim about his person.
‘Brother Aloysius,’ continued the Superior, ‘take this young man and show him round. Don’t be afraid,’ he went on, looking at Peter; ‘your mother’s not going yet.’
But Peter was not afraid; his excitement still swept him buoyantly along. He went out of the room almost at a trot, clasping the hand of Brother Aloysius.
‘A fine boy,’ remarked the Superior, with just the right amount of weighty deliberation, as he turned slowly to Lucy; ‘an exceedingly sensitive boy.’
He said this to every maternal parent. To the fathers he used the words: ‘Manly little fellow.’ Oh, he was a very nice old man. And so, too, thought Lucy, as, knowing nothing of ten thousand similar interviews which stood in heaven to Brother William’s credit, she accepted the implied compliment, and faintly blushed in gratification.
‘A little cake and wine after your journey, I think? Yes, I think so!’ murmured the other, and, making a ruminating movement with his jaws, he went to the sideboard, where a decanter of sherry stood beside a cut seedcake. In a moment he returned, offering Lucy a glass of wine and a portion of the cake. Then he sat down opposite her, without himself partaking of the refreshment, and went on mildly: ‘He’ll be very happy with us once he gets used to us.’
Lucy nodded her head, and, lifting her black veil, removed one neat kid glove and made a pretence o
f nibbling the cake upon her plate. The imminence of the parting with her son had gripped her. Speech became increasingly difficult.
‘He’s very young, you know,’ she declared dryly through the cake, ‘ and I’m anxious about his health.’
‘We’ve many here younger than he,’ he reassured her reflectively. ‘Yes, and from a long way; but they come to us. I mother them. Myself!’
There was a short pause; then Lucy said, with diffidence, hesitating over the words:
‘I hope you’ll take care of him. I’ve only got him, you know.’
He came a little nearer, patted her arm protectively, and murmured an affirmative. Then he looked at her black dress, said in a tone persuasive of her confidence:
‘You’ve had a sad bereavement recently, I understand?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted.
‘And it has upset you,’ he suggested gently. ‘ I see that.’
A quick warm tear rushed to her eye as she again nodded her head.
‘Poor thing, poor thing,’ he murmured soothingly.
It gave him a strange benignant pleasure, fleeting and atrophic, to see this warm, vivid young creature grievous and opening to his sympathy. He liked this gentle, sensuous stimulation – a rare delight; often in default he would draw the younger boys to confide in him tearfully in this fashion.
‘Was it a long illness?’ he murmured.
But a warm drop fell from Lucy’s lashes, and splashed into the wineglass. The still, strange room, the cloistered quiet, the sun striking a mote-filled beam upon the old books, this aged Brother offering his benignant sympathy, and, above everything, the separation from her son – all these moved her suddenly. Inward it was, except for that single tear, but to her it seemed a shameful grief.
