Adventures in Two Worlds

by A. J. Cronin

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  Contents

  A. J. Cronin

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Part Four

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  A. J. Cronin

  Adventures in Two Worlds

  Born in Cardross, Scotland, A. J. Cronin studied at the University of Glasgow. In 1916 he served as a surgeon sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteers Reserve, and at the war’s end he completed his medical studies and practiced in South Wales. He was later appointed to the Ministry of Mines, studying the medical problems of the mining industry. He moved to London and built up a successful practice in the West End. In 1931 he published his first book, Hatter’s Castle, which was compared with the work of Dickens, Hardy and Balzac, winning him critical acclaim. Other books by A. J. Cronin include: The Stars Look Down, The Citadel, Three Loves, The Green Years, Beyond This Place, and The Keys of the Kingdom.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  When I awakened, that April morning, in my attic bedroom, my head still cloudy from late hours of study, I felt constrained, reluctantly, to review my financial position. Thanks to the gratuity which I had received on my demobilisation from the Navy three months before, the fees for my medical classes were paid up until the end of the year. The gold watch and chain I had inherited from my father, once again judiciously pawned, had provided me with the requisite instruments and second-hand textbooks. I had even managed to discharge in advance my annual dues to the Students’ Union. In an academic sense I was strictly solvent.

  But alas, the other side of the ledger was less satisfactory. In my anxiety to ensure that nothing should interrupt this resumption of my studies, I had given slight heed to the minor consideration of keeping body and soul together. For the past month I had been subsisting on an occasional tea-room snack, supplemented by bizarre bargains from the local market brought into my lodging of an evening in a paper bag. I was, moreover, two weeks behind with my room rent, while my total assets – I counted the few coins again – were precisely three shillings and fivepence. Viewed from the rosiest aspect, it seemed scarcely an adequate sum on which to feed and clothe myself for the next eight months. Something must be done … and quickly.

  Suddenly I burst out laughing, wildly, hilariously, rolling about on the lumpy flock mattress like a colt in a meadow. What did it matter? I was young, healthy, filled with that irrepressible spirit only to be found in a ruddy, towheaded Scot whose veins were infused with a dash of Irish red blood corpuscles. I would work, work, work. I would live on air, sleep in the park, sing in the streets, do anything and everything, to enable me to take my doctor’s degree. I would win through at all costs. Was I not free again, and alive, miraculously, after these weary and dangerous years when, in the destroyer Melampus, we had patrolled the leaden, perpetually agitated waters of the North Sea, darting across, a solitary decoy, to Terschelling, Zeebrugge, and Jutland, through uncharted mine fields and submarine-infested shallows, half frozen by icy spray, sleeping in sea boots and a life-saving jacket, riven by seasickness and the firm belief that any moment we might find ourselves blown to smithereens? Yes, the war, thank God, was over – there would never be another! And spring was here, glorious spring, touching even this smoky old city of Glasgow with its tender tints and sudden shafts of radiance. And – this above all – was I not immeasurably, hopelessly, and utterly unsuitably in love? She was a slender, brown-eyed young woman of eighteen, with soft russet hair and sun-warmed complexion, of a sweetness and innocence that melted the heart, also studying medicine at the University of Glasgow, and bent upon becoming a doctor attached to one of the Uganda foreign missions. Upon a foggy February day, some weeks before, in the pathology department I had come upon her, dissecting an endocarditic heart with grave application. On looking up from her work she noticed me, and at the blinding moment the seeds of an unreasoning affection were sown. My first remark was breath-taking in its fatuity. I said, ‘Isn’t it foggy today?’ But I learned that her name was Mary.

  We began to go out together. This dreary city which we inhabited had two redeeming features – the excellence of its tearooms, where for a modest twopence one could sit long over a refreshing cup, and the superb beauty of its surrounding countryside. Already we had expended more twopences than I could afford – an excuse to be together and to talk. Then on Saturdays we escaped to the nearby woods and hills, travelling through the suburbs by tramcar, then walking many miles across the moors, wind-burned and carefree.

  In our serious moments we realised how impossible was our relationship. Not only were we temperamentally opposed, for every practical purpose we were the last two people in the world to consider, even remotely, the business of matrimony. She was quiet, modest, and reserved, brought up in a strict Nonconformist circle and still, presumably, treasuring ardent hopes of converting the natives of the Congo. I was both happy-go-lucky and fiercely ambitious, while the religion into which I had been born, though it exercised me little, was not likely to commend me to Mary’s family.

  Our various friends had been kind enough to point out our mutual unsuitability, and from time to time we had met in agonised confabulation, whereat, over more tea and buns, we palely pledged ourselves to common sense, then parted, heroically, for ever. But no sooner had we done so than, next morning, we came together by a force stronger than Newton’s law of gravity and called Heaven to witness that we would never give each other up.

  I jumped up, threw open the window, and began those back-breaking exercises with which I tortured my lanky body in a vain effort to become a second Sandow. Then, in the rickety bathroom, two flights down, I set my teeth and plunged into an icy tub. I dressed quickly, regretting the necessity which made me wear my old naval uniform. Not from choice was I attending classes like a juvenile admiral of the fleet – on my return from service I had found the moths in possession of my sole civilian suit. Still, why n
ot carry through with it in style? I set my peaked cap at an angle, picked up my textbooks, and ran downstairs.

  Unluckily, my landlady lay in wait for me, guarding the front door with broom and bucket, a little cadaverous woman with adenoids and broken whalebone stays, whose execrable performances upon the parlour harmonium every Sunday afternoon were torture to the dogs of the neighbourhood.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Grant.’

  She did not respond to my greeting, but continued to regard me with her lacklustre yet accusing eye.

  ‘Did you cook a herring in your room last night?’

  ‘Well … as a matter of …’

  ‘The smell went all through the house. My Indian gentleman was fair upset. Forby, you were wasting my gas.’

  ‘I didn’t use much gas, Mrs Grant. In fact’ – I forced a jovial laugh – ‘I ate the thing half raw.’

  She was not amused, but shook her head in melancholy disapproval.

  ‘I’ve nothing against you, lad, you back from the war and all. But you’re away behind with your rent. If you cannot pay … you’ll have to go.’

  Silence. I clenched my fist and banged it down hard on the well-worn covers of Osler’s Practice of Medicine.

  ‘Mrs Grant,’ I assured her, ‘I swear by Hippocrates, I’ll pay you. Something is going to turn up for me. And soon!’

  Outside, the breeze was soft and fresh. As I strode through Kelvingrove gardens a mavis was singing in the flowering red-currant bushes, and crocuses dappled the new grass surrounding the art gallery, where hung my favourite portrait, Rembrandt’s ‘ Man in Armour’, before which, lost in admiration, I had often sighed, ‘Ah, to possess a painting such as that, one day!’ Upon the hill beyond, the low outline of the University lay clear against the morning sky, chill despite the warmth of the day, and with a massive, brooding air, as though burdened by the weight of its five hundred years. How many Scottish country boys, poor yet ardent, had come to these grey cloisters, bringing with them, in the early days, from the farm, a sack of meal to make the porridge that would sustain them through months of study – in commemoration of which there was instituted a special students’ holiday, Meal Monday’. How many of these ambitions lads, or perhaps how few, had won through in the end, and how many, ah, how many more, despite their desperate striving, had been coldly rejected, returned to their native villages, spent and defeated, stigmatised as failures!

  The thought galvanised me: I could not, must not fail; at all costs I must succeed. That, indeed, was my dominant passion, the leitmotif of my life, the very reason of my being, implanted in my breast by those ten years of unbelievable hardship which had followed upon the death of my father – an event which had transformed my easy, affluent, and pampered existence to a struggle for bare survival. Nothing can exceed the longing of a poor youth, beaten down by circumstances, to rise above misfortune and justify himself, not only in his own eyes but in the eyes of others. Upon the heart of such a one is blazoned the motto ‘ Conquer or die’. With every pulse-beat I seemed to hear, throbbing in my ears, the words ‘get on, get on … to riches, high position, fame.’

  On the south side of the University, upon a slightly lower level, stood the Western Infirmary, and as the town clock struck nine I passed through the students’ entrance. This morning, in the main surgical clinic, the excision of a cerebral tumour was to be performed – a special treat which I had no wish to miss – but beyond that, my hopes were centred upon a plan which I meant to put into execution as soon as the operation was over.

  Despite my apparent bravado, I was only too well aware that the opportunities for a student to support himself at this small northern university were practically non-existent. Indeed, the only chance lay in securing an appointment as ‘dresser’ or ‘houseman’ to one of the Infirmary surgeons, a position which, though unpaid, entitled the fortunate incumbent to free board and lodging at the hospital. Now, I had been privately advised that the dresser to my surgery professor, Sir William MacEwen, was presently to be promoted to the position of registrar. I felt that I stood well with MacEwen; before going into the Navy I had received evidence of his consideration, and in each of the three monthly examinations conducted since my return, I had gained the first place. In brief, I had decided to ask him for the position.

  Already, in the operating theatre, most of the class were assembled, filling the circular tiers of benches that rose to the white-glassed roof, but my friend Chisholm had reserved a seat for me in the front row. As I squeezed in beside him a low, expectant buzz filled the air, intensified as the patient, a middle-aged woman, already under the anaesthetic, was wheeled in.

  I was no stranger to suffering, yet as I saw her lying inert upon her face, breathing hoarsely, her head, completely shaven and swabbed with iodine, resembling a huge billiard ball, there was in her appearance something inhuman and grotesque which moved me strangely, and with a dramatic instinct altogether out of place in one dedicated to science, I began to reconstruct her history.

  At the outset, as she went about her household tasks – getting the children off to school, preparing her husband’s midday dinner – she had heard a faint ringing in her ears, like a peal of distant bells or wind whistling in the chimney, a sensation so odd it actually made her smile. As the noises recurred at intervals during the next few weeks, she dropped a little warm oil in her ears. There was not much improvement. And then her eyes began to trouble her, the newsprint of the daily paper seemed blurred and indistinct. Ah, that was it, of course! Why hadn’t she realised that her glasses needed changing? She went to the optician straight away.

  But no, the stronger spectacles did not help her, and now, indeed, she felt singularly out of sorts. Her head ached, her appetite was gone, and at times the roaring in her ears assumed the intensity of a train thundering through a railway tunnel. What on earth was the matter with her? Worried and alarmed, she paid a visit to her family physician.

  The doctor listened sympathetically to her story, put the stethoscope to her chest, and nodded wisely. She was a trifle run-down, he told her, too bound up in her children, too unsparing of herself. She must take things easier, eat more green vegetables, spend an occasional week-end at the seaside. He gave her a tonic which would put her right in no time. He also syringed her ears.

  Reassured, clutching hopefully this marvellous medicine, she returned home. Next morning, when she rose, she felt giddy, reeled, lost her balance, and fell sideways to the floor. Thereafter, inexorably yet quite unrecognised, the frightful malady progressed. Accompanied by her husband, she visited a new doctor and then another, receiving always a different diagnosis which blamed in turn the liver, the nerves, the stomach, and always a fresh treatment that failed miserably to alleviate her sufferings.

  At last, in despair, she had recourse to the Infirmary, and here came under the care of one who was neither an ignoramus nor a charlatan. She was examined thoroughly, scientifically – all manner of tests were carried out. Then the fatal words were uttered: ‘A tumour of the brain … The only hope, and that a faint one, immediate operation.’ With what anguish, what nightmare terror had she contemplated this prospect? And then finally, this very morning, she had surrendered herself to the unknown, to that void wherein sharp steel would bite into her head, break apart the skull and pierce to the very seat of life …

  Suddenly, a silence in the theatre recalled me – the professor had entered, unheralded and unaccompanied, but with a calm dignity, a look of interior purpose which made him at once the central figure in the drama about to be enacted before us. At this time Sir William MacEwen was past seventy, yet his tall spare figure, erect as a lance, his regular, clean-cut features and hand-some profile, his tanned skin taut over high cheekbones, even the sweep of silvery hair that framed his striking head, conveyed a sense of youthful indomitable vigour. Simply to look at MacEwen was to recognise instantly a great man whose powers, remained undiminished. Indeed, for more than three decades, he had been acclaimed as the finest brain surgeon in
Europe. We students – a thoroughly hardened and disrespectful lot – loved and revered him among ourselves as ‘Billee’, repeated with affection the legends that had grown around his name.

  He was already gowned for the operation, and after quietly studying a few X-ray photographs, he turned towards the class. His voice was soft yet incisive, his manner courteous, a model of politeness.

  ‘Gentlemen, we have today an interesting case which we believe’ – in addressing us he always used the royal plural – ‘which we believe exhibits unmistakably the symptoms of intracranial glioma.’

  He paused, and his eye, roving the benches, came to rest – no doubt because I sat at the end of the front row – upon me.

  ‘What are these symptoms?’

  ‘Intense headache, vomiting without apparent cause, unrelated to the taking of food, and extreme vertigo.’

  ‘Continue.’

  ‘There is usually marked optic neuritis with choked disk. The relative degree of neuritis is a reliable guide to the side on which the tumour is situated.’

  ‘And if this tumour were situated in the cerebellum?’

  ‘The speech would be slow and jerky, the head retracted. The patient would tend to fall towards the side opposite the tumour. Unilateral paralysis would occur.’

  ‘The prognosis?’

  ‘The outlook is grave. Tumours of the base of the brain, though usually circumscribed, are difficult to reach. Death may occur from sudden haemorrhage, asphyxia, or pressure on the vital centres.’

  ‘Admirable. I congratulate you.’

  With an effort, I maintained my air of studious detachment. Above all, at this moment, I had wished to impress Billee with my earnestness and efficiency. I felt that in offering me this opportunity Fortune could not have been kinder to me.

  Now the patient’s stertorous breathing had lapsed to a low sibilation, the theatre sister had clipped the last sterile cloth around her neck, and, with a glance at his anaesthetist, MacEwen approached the operating table.