by A. J. Cronin
‘No. Don’t come.’
She stood before him with face uplifted, her arms listless by her side, her whole body wilted, impotent. Then suddenly she reached forward and kissed him. The coldness of his cheek against her burning lips was agony. She sobbed anew.
Still sobbing, she turned and stumbled from the room. She had the agonising conviction that she would never see him again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
At least there was Robert! How she thanked God for that thought as she stumbled up the hill, beating her way against wind and rain to the Rodgerses’ plantation.
Now it blew a hurricane; the rain lashed down in sheets, and where the stream had barely trickled a yellow torrent came tearing down. The night’s wild desolation was re-echoed in the desolation of her heart. But through it all shone that one precious thought: her brother! Robert, dear Robbie! He would comfort her. Oh, sure he would – and he would understand.
With her hair straggling about her face, her jacket unfastened, her cheap suit-case in her hand, she had a plain and unheroic look. Detached from her surroundings, set back upon the Okeville side-walk, she might have been some tired little school-ma’am starting peacefully upon her vacation. But no peace was in her. And the holiday – how strange that holiday was to be for Susan!
She came out of the wood of cedars, drew near to Rodgers’s house. Pushing open the gate, she went up the drive. A light burned in a single window upon the ground floor. She mounted the porch, let herself in, laid down her case in the hall. Then she entered the living-room.
In that pallid room, sparsely furnished in yellow oak, that bore somehow a scriptural austerity, and floored with ghastly shining linoleum, Rodgers was seated at the table. By the light of a green-shaded lamp he was reading a small New Testament.
And he was alone.
He looked up, surveyed her from head to toe with a barren stare, then, tightening his bleak mouth, prepared himself for speech.
‘You’ve come back,’ he said; and the coldness of his voice was more than ice.
She felt weak, frightened; she could not cope with his hostility.
‘I want Robert,’ she said hurriedly. ‘ I want my brother.’
Rodgers took off his steel spectacles, restored them to their case with the bleak deliberation of a judge. Then he stared at her again.
‘Your brother,’ he threw out; and his tight lips parted in a sterile laugh. ‘You want your brother. Doggone it if that ain’t great! Yes, ma’am, I’d call that just great.’
His manner was frightening her more than ever. She hadn’t any strength left to stand his bullying. No, no – really she hadn’t.
‘Don’t go on like that,’ she cried. ‘Is he upstairs? Is he out? Tell me quick. I’ve got to know.’
‘So you gotta know,’ he sneered, with a devilish urbanity. ‘You really gotta know. Well, well, that’s swell! The lady sister of the missioner has sure fire gotta know. It’s hard to beat.’
All at once his manner changed, his voice trumpeted with bitterness. ‘If you want to know,’ he yelled out, ‘then I’ll tell you. He’s gone! Yes, gone – the rat that he is. He’s never come back since the day you were here. He skipped out on me to Santa Cruz. That’s where he went, and that’s where he stopped. He’s stopped there, I tell you, stewed up for days in that sink of iniquity.’
She paled; she hardly understood.
‘Santa Cruz?’ she gasped. ‘What is he – what is he doing there?’
Again he flayed her with that savage sneering laugh:
‘So you gotta know that as well. I guess there’s no end to your demands. But you deserve consideration. Sure, you do, a mighty lot. Comin’ all this long way, you and your brother, to bring salvation to this sinful place. Yes, ma’am, a swell example to the natives and your fellow-countrymen – you come bringin’ God’s word. God’s own good word.’ And he stroked the book before him with a tense yet fondling touch.
She was absolutely terrified, confronted in this lonely house by his maniac behaviour, encompassed by the screaming wind, the rain, the muttered thunder, and the dreadful mystery of Robert’s absence.
She opened her lips to speak, when suddenly he shouted:
‘Don’t speak. Don’t ask no more. I’ll tell ye where he’s gone. He’s gone to hell, that’s where he’s gone. I figured he was rotten from the start. And now, by the Lord God of Hosts, I know it. He’s in Santa Cruz, sunk in debauchery in the bawdy house of that woman Hemmingway. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I went, I tell you, to find out for myself. And he’s there, rotten with carnal lusts – lyin’ on the foul bosom of a harlot.’
Under those last words, which hurtled like stones upon her, Susan recoiled. But she gathered herself, rose in defence to instinctive denial. She gasped out:
‘I don’t believe it.’
He rose up and advanced slowly, towering his bony frame above her. His eyes were sombre, menacing.
‘You would give me the lie,’ he rasped, ‘in my own house. Me, Aaron Rodgers, servant of my Maker.’ And he raised up his fists as though to invoke upon her the vengeance of the Most High.
She did not move. A fear, more terrible than any he could inspire, rushed over her: the fear that he was right. It gripped her by the throat and stifled her rising cry. In one blinding flash came the thought of Robert caught by something evil and obscene. She shivered.
‘Yes, I reckon you ought to hang your head,’ he cried, still in that voice of fanatic anger. ‘To have named me for a liar. I reckon you ought to kneel and beg forgiveness of God and me.’
She did not hear him; passionately she was thinking: Robbie, he needs me, my own dear Robbie. A gust of courage stiffened her tired body. She raised her head; still facing him, she retreated to the door.
‘I’m asking no forgiveness,’ she cried abruptly. ‘ I’m going to find out – to find out for myself. I’m going to Santa Cruz – to my brother – right now.’
Turning, she wrenched open the door, ran into the hall. From a peg she tore down her light coat and began to struggle into it.
He followed her with a heavy step; stood watching her in a silence almost sinister. But, as he stared, the grimness slowly left his face. Suddenly he said, in a voice from which the exultation had departed:
‘There’s a tornado blowin’. You’ve figgered that out, I reckon.’
All unheeding, she unhooked a lantern from the wall, and with trembling fingers set herself to light it. The first match spluttered and went out.
‘It’s none too good a road at any time,’ he went on in the same manner. ‘And it’s a darn sight worser on a night like this. I reckon you don’t want to get bogged in the woods or struck by lightnin’. I reckon you want to think twice before leaving my house.’
The lantern was now alight. She snapped it shut, gripped the handle tightly, and made for the door.
He took a quick step forward.
‘Say, don’t be runnin’ out that way. Don’t you hear me? It’s plumb crazy in such a storm. I ain’t got no wrong against you when all’s said and done. Stop here till mornin’.’
With her hand upon the outer door, she swung round. Her face was pale, but her eyes were set with a feverish determination.
‘I’m not stopping,’ she cried. ‘I’m going. I’m going now. And I’m not coming back.’
With a sudden jerk she flung the door open; before he could speak, she crossed the porch and ran down the drive. As she vanished into the roaring darkness, she heard his voice hailing her, once, twice. But she gave no heed. With body bent against the hot blast of the wind, she went on, half running, half walking, until she gained the plantation path. Here the lantern’s light was merciful: without it she must surely have been lost. Beyond the arc of the swinging beam the blackness rose like a wall. The track, too, was almost washed away by the rush of surface water. It was everywhere, the water; trickling, dripping, soaking, deluging the arid earth. On she went. Her feet churned the rich mud, splashing it upon her dress. The warm, stinging rain plastered h
er hair upon her brow. She did not care. She floundered on, crossing the bridge above the swollen stream, and gained at last the main highway.
She sighed deeply with relief and made off rapidly down the broad, deserted road. It was the carretera which Harvey had taken on the evening of his coming to Los Cisnes – the same road – but now how different! No placid sunset air now wrapped the listless groves. Instead, the hurricane went whining through the trees, rending the dwarfed stalks, savaging the fleshy leaves – tearing, destroying, whining, whining. Yet it was not so much the wind that hindered Susan as the rain. She had never felt such rain. It teemed upon her in warm, brackish sheets. Her clothing clung to her as to a drowned woman. Little swirls of water formed at her feet. Out of the sodden sky there flared from time to time not lightning as she had known it, but a diffused and spreading glare which rushed across the canopy of night like wildfire.
She went on, sustained by the fierce burning of her will, through the hamlet of La Cuesta, past the brimming reservoirs, under the shoulder of the high basaltic cliffs. But for all her resolution her steps were flagging. Though the gale was following and the way down-hill, her tiredness increased beyond endurance. Her joints relaxed; her body sagged; she was ready to sink with weariness.
And then, to show that God had not forgotten her – oh, sure, she knew that was the way of it! – a wagon came clattering down the hill beside her. She heard the clop-clop of hoofs and, turning with sudden hope, she waved her lantern in high distracted sweeps. With a squelch the team of mules drew up, the boyero peered at her out of the sack which swathed his head and body.
She made a queer figure standing in the deluge, shouting against the wind, her pale face straining upwards in the effort to make herself understood.
‘Give me a lift.’
‘Pero yo no entiendo.’
‘You must give me a lift – oh, for God’s sake take me to the town.’
But, whatever his thoughts, her need clearly was urgent. And the night was terrible. He made a gesture of invitation with his whip. In a moment her foot was on the wheel hub. She was beside him and they were off, rocking and bumping down the slanting darkness.
The boyero was from the market at Santa Cruz and he had been caught by the storm beyond Laguna. Now, rather than rest benighted in the hills, he was pushing at dangerous speed towards the town. He did not speak, but from time to time he threw a stealthy side-glance at her profile. Nor did she speak. She sat rigidly upon the narrow perch, chafed by fierce impatience. The breakneck haste was not enough for her. The journey seemed interminable.
But at last they swayed sharply round a narrow bend, and the rain-blurred lights of Santa Cruz loomed mistily beneath. The streets were empty, the Plaza utterly deserted, as they clattered towards the market. Yet through the dead emptiness of streets and square there came a roaring sound: not the rain; not the wind; she could not think it swelled so deafeningly in her ears. And then she knew it for the roaring of a river. It was the Barranca Almeida – engorged beyond its banks, tearing through the town towards the sea.
The wagon drew up at a stable in a side-street behind the market. She jumped stiffly from her seat, fumbled in her dress, and gave the boyero a piece of money. Then she looked around her. She had her bearings; she knew what she was about. In five minutes she was in the Calle de la Tuna, outside the doorway bearing the number that she sought. The door had no fanlight, but there was a Moorish grille whose interstices disclosed the presence of light within. She had no hesitation. At once she tried the handle. It yielded. She drew a long breath and ran into the hall. It was a long hall, tiled in mosaic pattern, edged by a tarnished dado and a row of tattered palms. All along one wall hung little pictures of sailing-ships worked in coloured wools. On the left was a curtained archway through which came light, the sound of voices, and of laughter. The light, reaching into the dimness of the corridor, was hazed by swirling clouds of cigarette smoke. There came, too, as she listened, the thoughtless tinkling of a mandolin.
Susan stood quite still. Nothing particular to cause alarm was in the place. But for all that her whole being rang with a sense of apprehension and disaster. She clenched her hands tightly, went forward down the passage. But as she advanced a woman came out of the alcove.
It was Mother Hemmingway.
A vivid colour rushed into Susan’s rain-blanched cheeks and then rushed out again. She hardened herself to face the rancour that must come.
But the other stood silent. She seemed, incredibly, at a loss for words. At length she came up to Susan and stared her up and down. Into her ugly features flowed a curious perplexity. Then she exclaimed:
‘Wot you doin’ down ’ere on a night like this? Swipe me if I didn’t think it was your ghost at first. You’re wet – absolutely drenched. Blimey! you ’ aven’t even fetched a numbrella. Don’t you know the weather ain’t fit for an ’erring to be bout in?’ It was strange, but in her voice there rang a note of odd commiseration.
Susan’s state was pitiable. She was soaked to the bone, her hair smeared dankly about her face, her shoes squelching, her sodden clothing oozing water to the floor. But she seemed unconscious of her own condition. She cried out:
‘My brother – is he here?’
Mother Hemmingway ignored the question. A gust of energy seemed all at once to strike her. Taking the other by the arm, she declared vigorously:
‘I never ’ eard of such a perishin’ adventchure – muckin’ through ryne like this. Did you think it was an April shower or wot? You’ll get your death of cowld. Pneumonia and Gawd knows what. W’y, criminey, I won’t stand and see you froze. ‘Ere! Come into this little plyce and get your duds dried.’ And, before Susan could resist, she pulled her into a small sitting-room which gave off the other side of the corridor. There she thrust her into a chair and, talking with the utmost volubility, began to rummage in a chest of drawers which stood beside the shuttered window.
‘You shall ’ ave a couple of towels,’ she ran on, ‘ if you’ll excuse me ’alf a jiff, I ’ave them ’ere under my ’and. W’ere did I put them? In this drawer they was. Never can get your fist on a thing when you wants it. I’ll ’ave them in a tick. Ought to ’ave a mustard bath, you did. Stryte. But I’ll get ’old of the towels first. Then you’ll tyke your shimmy off and I’ll give you such a rub you’ll rise all of a glow. Blimey, I cawn’t get it out my ’ead. You walkin’ in ’ere like you’d swam the bleedin’ ’arbour.’
But Susan’s mood was not to be propitiated. Tensely she waited. The moment the other turned from the chest she bent over and looked her in the face.
‘Where is my brother?’ Her tone was low, but it held a thrilling urgency.
Mother Hemmingway made a great ado with her towels: unfolding and flapping them in immense solicitude.
‘Brother!’ she exclaimed, as if it were the last thought in her mind. ‘You’re meanin’ little Robert, ain’t you? Blimey, ’ ow should I know where he is? I ain’t’is keeper, ducky. Puñeta, no. And you’re the main consideration at the momenta. Wyte till you’ve ’ad a dry-up and a noggin. Then you can talk about ’ im to your little ’eart’s content.’
Susan did not move.
‘I can’t wait. I’ve got to know. Is he here?’
The other paused. Behind her beady eyes, which beamed inevitably a sparkling malice on the universe there lay for once a singular embarrassment. Suddenly she shrugged her shoulders, offered on impulse a generous lie.
‘No,’ she answered, ‘’ e aint ’ere. ‘Ow should ’e be ’ ere? I swear ’e ain’t ’ ere as Gawd’s my Myker.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Susan quickly. Her teeth were chattering now, her lips blue with cold and fear. She reached across the table towards the other. ‘Tell me –’ Her voice broke. ‘Oh, honest – you’ve got to tell me if he’s in this house.’
‘No,’ shouted Hemmingway, with a violent out-thrusting of her bosom. ‘’E ain’t in this ’ouse. Would you myke me hout a liar to my fyce? I tell you ’e simp
ly ain’t ’ere. I swear it on my sacred oath. And that’s the end of it.’
Then the door opened and Robert entered the room.
There was a dead silence, broken only by the drumming rain and the rushing of the river. He came in dizzily, like a man who had swung between unknown extremes of exultation and despair; and from his present look, drooping and half fuddled, it was clear he had now touched the pit of his experience. He lurched in aimlessly. He’d been goin’ to show somebody, hadn’t he? Show somebody somethin’! Well! -
And then he raised his head. He saw Susan. For five seconds he stood transfixed, then a cry that was like a sheep’s bleat broke from his lips. He did not speak, but his face spoke more than words, suffused by a ludicrous dismay that shocked the eye. They gazed at each other in silence; at last he looked away – shrinking yet sulky.
She gave a long, long sigh.
‘Robert,’ she whispered. But the shock of seeing him had frozen her trembling body. She could say no more. He flung himself into a chair.
‘What d’you want?’ he muttered thickly, resentfully. ‘What d’you want coming down here? What you doing here?’
She gave a little choked cry.
‘Oh, Robbie, I came to find you – honest I did – to take you away.’
He stared straight at the opposite wall. He had still the dregs of liquor in him.
‘Huh! You did – did you? To take me away? And where you think you’re goin’ to take me?’
At his tone a scream rose almost to her lips.
‘Anywhere,’ she gasped, ‘out of here. Oh, anywhere so long as we’re together, Robbie.’
Mother Hemmingway, listening with ill-concealed impatience, felt irritation supplant her ineffectual benevolence.
‘That’s right,’ she cried shrilly to Susan. ‘You tyke ’im away. Tyke ’im out of my ’ouse, for as Gawd’s my judge I’m sick of the very sight of ’im. Full of ’ anky-panky the one minute and hangles’ ’ymn-tunes the next. Laughin’ ’is silly ’ead off like ’e was a cuckoo and the next thing – pull the blinds down, Willie’s dead! ‘Streuth! I’m used to men, I am, and not to ’arf-baked ’ armonium-pl’yers. I only let ’im stay to try to put some guts in ’im, but ’elp me, jimminy, you can’t do that to a crawler. Tyke ’im away, I say, and good luck to you.’
