by A. J. Cronin
‘What will – what will I sing?’ came the panting, tormented voice of his son.
‘Sing anything. Sing a hymn. Ay!’ he gloated over the idea, ‘that’s verra appropriate. Ye’ve juist missed murdering yer father – ye maun sing a hymn o’ praise and thanksgiving. Give us the Old Hundred, my big, braw man. Begin!’ he ordered.
‘All people that on earth do dwell,’ quavered Matt.
‘Louder! Quicker!’ shouted Brodie. ‘Give it pith! Put your heart into it. Pretend ye’re just out o’ the prayer meetin’.’ He marched the other off, supporting him, dragging him, bolstering him up when he staggered on the uneven street, beating time to the tune, and from time to time joining his voice in the refrain with a blasphemous satire.
Down the narrow Vennel they went, towards their home, the words ringing sonorously through the stillness of the imprisoned air. Fainter grew their steps and more faintly came the sound until, finally, the last fading whisper was lost in the peaceful darkness of the night.
Chapter Ten
Mrs Brodie lay on the thin, straw mattress of her narrow bed, encompassed by the darkness of her room and the silence of the house. Nessie and Grandma were sleeping, but since Agnes had left her, she had remained strainingly awake for the sounds of Matt’s return. Her mind, since the shock she had received earlier in the evening, was blank and dully incapable of thought, but, whilst she waited, she suffered physically. Her acute pain had returned to her! Restlessly she twisted from side to side, trying one position and then another in an effort to alleviate the boring volleys of pain which enfiladed the entire length of her body. Her feet were cold and her hot hands moved constantly on the fretted surface of the patchwork quilt that covered the bed. Automatically, in the darkness, her fingers moved over each pattern as though she unconsciously retraced the labour of her needle. Dimly, she longed for a hot bottle to draw the blood from her congested head into the icy numbness of her legs and feet, but she was too languid to stir and she feared, too, in a vague way, to move from the safe harbour of her room, dreading that some new misfortune might beset her, that she might perhaps encounter some fresh and terrifying experience on the stairs.
Slowly the seconds ticked into minutes, sluggishly the minutes dragged into hours and, through the peace of the night, she heard actually the faint distant note of the Town clock as it struck twelve whispering notes. In effect, another day had begun when she must soon face the melancholy round of the daylight hours and all that the new dawn would bring to her. But her introspection did not follow this course. As the significance of the hour broke upon her she murmured only: ‘He’s late! They’re both awfu’ late!’ With the characteristic pessimism of a defeated spirit, she now sounded the abyss of melancholy possibility to its deepest extent, and wondered, miserably, if Matt had encountered his father in the town. Intangible contingencies following upon the chance of this meeting made her tremble, even as she lay passive upon the bed.
At length, when her anxiety had reached an intolerable pitch, she heard steps outside in the road. Desperately she wished to rush to the window to try to penetrate the gloom outside, but she could not make the effort, and was compelled to lie still, waiting with anxious fears for the click of the front door latch. Soon, indeed, she heard this sound but with the opening of the door her perturbation increased, for, immediately, she distinguished the loud bawling of her husband, derisive, compelling, dominant, and in reply the cowed, submissive tones of her son. She heard the ponderous movement of a heavy body noisily ascending the stairs and the slurred footsteps of a lighter, less vital, and more exhausted frame following behind. On the landing outside her room her husband said, in a loud, hectoring voice:
‘Go to your kennel now, you dog! I’ll be ready for you again in the morning.’ There was no answer but the quick scuffle of feet and the loud bang of a door. Comparative quiet again descended upon the house, penetrated only by an occasional sound from Brodie’s bedroom, the creaking of a board, the scrape of a chair, the clatter of his boots as he discarded them upon the floor, the creak of the springs as he flung his huge bulk upon the bed. With this final sound, unbroken silence did, again, completely envelop the house.
The helplessness of her position seemed to intensify her perception and give her intuition an added force. She realised that the possibility she had dreaded had actually taken place and, in addition, that some crushing misadventure had befallen her son. She had at once sensed this latter fact from the shambling irregularity of his step and the hopeless impotence of his voice, but now her imagination ran riot, and she began to fill the torpid hush of the night with distressing sounds. She thought she heard someone weeping. Was it, she asked herself, a faint movement of air around the house or, in truth, the subdued sobbing of her son? If it were he, what rash act might not such misery induce? She pictured him, the errant but still beloved child, contemplating some desperate means of self-destruction. Immediately the sobbing turned to a soft sad music which swelled with the funereal insistence of a dirge. She tried, with all her power, to compose herself to sleep but could not. In the suspended state of her mind, swinging between reality and dreams, the lament broke over her like grey waves upon a forgotten shore, mingling with the lost, desolate cries of sea-birds. She saw, amidst pouring rain and the raw, wet clods of fresh-turned clay, a rough, plank bier upon which lay a yellow coffin, saw this lowered, and the heavy clotted lumps of earth begin to fall upon it. With a low cry she twisted upon her back. Her half-conscious visions suddenly became dissipated by a fierce onset of bodily suffering. The excruciating pang, that had stricken her occasionally before, now flung itself upon her with a fierce and prolonged activity. It was unbearable. Hitherto this particular spasm had been, though of deadly intensity, only of short duration, but now her agony was continual. It was, to her, worse by far than the pangs of childbirth, and it flashed upon her that she suffered so fearfully because she had betrayed her daughter and allowed her to be case headlong in her labour into the storm. She felt her enfeebled heart fibrillate with the stunning violence of the pain. ‘O God!’ she whispered, ‘take it from me. I canna thole it longer.’ Yet it did not leave her but increased in strength until it was impossible-for her to endure it; wildly, she struggled up, clutching her long nightgown about her. She swayed as she walked, but her anguish forced her on; she tottered in her bare feet into her son’s room, and almost fell across his bed.
‘Matt,’ she panted, ‘my pain is on me. It willna leave me – run – run for the doctor. Run quick, son!’
He had been hardly asleep and now he sat up, startled to be confronted by this new, terrifying apparition; she frightened him horribly, for he could discern only a long white shape that lay supinely across his bed.
‘What is it?’ he cried. ‘ What do you want with me?’ Then, as he perceived dimly that she was ill, he exclaimed: ‘What’s wrong with you, Mamma?’
She could hardly breathe. ‘I’m dyin’. For the Lord’s sake, Matt – a doctor! I canna live wi’ this pain. It’ll finish me if ye dinna hurry.’
He leapt out of bed, his head swimming with the residue of his own recent experience, and, as a passion of remorse gripped his already prostrate spirit, he became again a frightened, remorseful boy.
‘Is it my fault, Mamma?’ he whined; ‘is it because I took your money? I’ll not do it again. I’ll get the watch for you too. I’ll be a good boy!’
She scarcely heard him, was far beyond understanding his words.
‘Run quick!’ she moaned. ‘ I canna thole this longer.’
‘I’ll go! I’ll go!’ he ejaculated, in a passion of abasement. Frantically, he struggled into his trousers, flung on his jacket, and pulled on his shoes, then ran downstairs and out of the house. With long, lurching steps he raced down the middle of the road whilst the wind of his passage lifted the matted hair from off his bruised and swollen forehead. ‘ O God!’ he whispered as he ran, ‘am I going to kill my mother next? It’s all my fault. It’s me that’s to blame. I haven’t done rig
ht with her.’ In the dejection following his debauch he felt himself responsible, in every way, for his mother’s sudden illness and a gross, lachrymal contortion shook him as he shouted out to the Deity wild, incoherent promises of reformation and amendment if only Mamma might be spared to him. As he careered along, with head thrown back, bent elbows pressed against his sides, his shirt widely open over his panting chest, his loose garments fluttering about him, he ran like a criminal escaping from justice, with no apparent motive but that of flight. Though his broad purpose was to reach the town, he had at first, in the misery and conflict of his thoughts, no definite objective, but now, when his breath came in short, flagging puffs and a stitch penetrated his side, making him feel that he could run no further, he bethought himself more urgently of finding a doctor. In the distress of his exhausted condition he perceived that he could not continue the whole way to Knoxhill for Dr Lawrie – It was too far! Suddenly he remembered that Mamma, in one of her voluminous letters, had mentioned a Dr Renwick of Wellhall Road in a sense which he imagined to be favourable, With this in mind he swerved to the left at the railway bridge, and, after spurring on his jaded body to a further effort, he saw, to his relief, a red light outside one of the shadowy houses in the road.
Panting, he drew up at the door, searched in a flurry for the nightbell, found it, and tugged at the handle with all his pent-up fear. So violent had been his pull that, as he stood there, he heard a long-continued pealing inside the silent house; then, after a few moments, a window above him was thrown up and the head and shoulders of a man protruded.
‘What is it?’ called out an indecisive voice from overhead.
‘You’re wanted at once, doctor!’ cried Matthew, his anxious upturned face gleaming palely towards the other. ‘My mother’s ill. She’s been taken very bad.’
‘What’s the nature of her trouble?’ returned Renwick.
‘I couldn’t tell you, doctor,’ exclaimed Matthew brokenly. ‘I knew nothing about it till she just collapsed. Oh! But she’s in awful pain. Come quickly.’
‘Where is it, then?’ said Renwick, resignedly. He did not view the matter from the same unique and profoundly disturbing aspect as Matthew; it was, to him, merely a night call which might or might not be serious, the repetition of a frequent and vexatious experience – the loss of a good night’s rest.
‘Brodie’s the name, doctor. You surely know the house at the end of Darroch Road.’
‘Brodie!’ exclaimed the doctor, then, after a short pause, he said in an altered, interrogative tone: ‘Why do you come to me? Your mother is not a patient of mine.’
‘Oh! I don’t know anything about that,’ cried Matthew feverishly. ‘She must have a doctor. Ye must come – she’s suffering so much. I beg of ye to come. It’s a matter of life or death.’
It was a different Renwick from two years ago, one to whom success had given the power of differentiating, of refusing work he did not wish, but now he could not resist this appeal.
‘I’ll come, then,’ he said shortly. ‘Go on ahead of me. I’ll be after you in a few moments.’
Matthew sighed with relief, poured forth a babble of effusive gratitude towards the now closed window, then turning, hurriedly made his way home. Yet, when he arrived at the house, he was afraid to go in alone and stood shivering outside, in his insufficient garments, feeling that he must wait for the doctor’s support before he could enter. Although he buttoned his jacket to the neck and held it close about him, the chilly night air pierced him like a knife, yet the fear that he might make some terrible discovery, that he might perhaps find Mamma lying lifeless upon his bed, kept him standing indecisively at the gate, trembling with cold and fear. He had not long to wait, however, for soon the yellow blurs of two gig lamps came into sight round the bend of the road and approached towards him with a more diffuse brilliancy. Finally they drew into the side of the road and stopped with their full glare upon him and, from the darkness behind, Renwick’s voice came crisply:
‘Why haven’t you gone in? It’s folly to stand like that after running. You’ll catch your death of cold hanging about there with every pore of you open.’ He jumped out of his gig and, from the contrasting obscurity beyond, advanced towards the other in the circle of light. ‘Man alive!’ he said suddenly, ‘ what’s happened to your head? Have you had a blow?’
‘No!’ stammered Matthew awkwardly, ‘ I – I fell down.’
‘It’s an ugly bruise,’ returned Renwick slowly, looking at the other questioningly; yet he said no more but swung his bag forward in his hand and with it motioned the other towards the house.
They went in. Stillness and blackness immediately surrounded them.
‘Get a light, man, for heaven’s sake,’ said Renwick irritably. The longer he was with Matthew the more his quick judgment estimated and condemned the other’s weakness and indecision. ‘Couldn’t you have seen to all this before I arrived? You’ll need to pull yourself together if you want to help your mother.’
‘It’s all right,’ whispered Matthew, ‘I have a box in my pocket.’ With a shaking hand he struck a match and lit the small gas jet in the hall, and, in this dim, wavering gleam together they moved forward, following their own flickering shadows as they mounted the stairs. The door of Mrs Brodie’s room stood half open and, from within, came the sound of quick breathing, at which Matthew broke down and sobbed: ‘Thank God, she’s alive!’
By a miracle of heroic endeavour she had made her way back to her own room and now lay helpless, like a wounded animal that, by a last supreme effort, has reached its lair. The doctor took the matches from Matthew’s useless fingers and, having lit the gas in the bedroom, guided him quietly out of the room, then closing the door, he turned and seated himself beside the figure upon the bed. His dark, sombre eyes fixed themselves upon the outlines of her ravaged figure, and as he gently felt the quick, compressible pulse and noted the sunken hollows where emaciation had already touched her, his face shadowed slightly at the suspicion already forming in his mind. Then he laid his palm upon her body softly, with a sensitive touch which registered immediately the abnormal resistance of her rigid muscles, and simultaneously the concern of his face deepened. At this moment she opened her eyes and fastened them appealingly upon his, then whispered, slowly:
‘You’ve come!’ Her words and her regard recognised him as her deliverer. He altered his expression, adapting his features, the instant she looked at him, to an air of kind and reassuring confidence.
‘It hurts you here,’ he indicated gently, by a pressure of his hand, ‘This is the place.’
She nodded her head. It was wonderful to her that he should immediately divine the seat of her pain; it invested him with a miraculous and awe-inspiring power, his touch at once seemed healing and his gently moving hand became a talisman which would discover and infallibly reveal the morbid secret of her distress. Willingly she submitted her racked body to his examination, feeling that here was one in whom lay an almost divine power to make her well.
‘That’s better,’ he encouraged, as he felt her relax. ‘Can you let me go a little deeper – just once?’ he queried. Again she nodded her head and, following his whispered injunction, tried to breathe quietly, whilst his long, firm fingers sent shivers of pain pulsating through her. ‘That was splendid!’ He thanked her with a calm consideration. ‘You are very brave.’ Not by so much as the flicker of his eyelids could she have discerned that, deep in the tissues of her body, he had discovered nodules of a wide-rooted growth which he knew to have progressed far beyond the aid of any human skill. ‘How long have you had trouble?’ he asked casually. ‘Surely this is not the first attack you’ve had?’
With difficulty she spoke.
‘No! I’ve had it for a long time, off and on, doctor, but never for such a spell as this. The pain used to go a way at once, but this one is a long time in easin’. It’s better, mind you, but it hasna gone.’
‘You’ve had other symptoms – surely, Mrs Brodie,’ he exclaimed
, his speaking eye conveying a meaning beyond his simple words. ‘You must have known you were not right. Why did you not see about it sooner?’
‘I knew well enough,’ she answered, ‘but I seemed never to have the time to bother about myself.’ She made no mention of her husband’s intolerance as she added: ‘ I just let it gang on. I thought that in time it would go away.’
He shook his head slowly in a faint reproof, saying:
‘You’ve neglected yourself sadly, I’m afraid, Mrs Brodie. It may mean that you’ll be laid up in bed for a little. You must make up your mind for a rest – that’s what you’ve needed for a long time. Rest and no worry!’
‘What’s wrong with me, then,’ she whispered. ‘It’s – it’s nothing serious?’
He raised himself from the bed and surveyed her kindly.
‘What did I say about worrying,’ he replied. ‘I’m coming again to-morrow for a fuller examination, when you have no pain. Just now you are going to have a good sleep. I’ve something here to give you relief.’
‘Can you ease me?’ she murmured weakly. ‘ I couldna bear yon again.’
‘You’ll have no more of that,’ he comforted her. ‘I’ll see to it.’ She watched him silently as he picked up his bag, opened it and produced a small phial from which he measured some drops carefully into a glass; then, as he added some water and turned to her again, she placed her worn hand on his and said, movingly: ‘ You’re so kind to me. It’s no wonder your name’s on a’ bodies’ tongues. I canna but thank you for your goodness in coming to me to-night, and thank you I do with all my heart.’
‘You drink this, then,’ he murmured, gently pressing her dry, calloused fingers. ‘It’s the very thing for you.’
