Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“Take this, Arthur. It’ll help you to sleep.”

Laura had returned. How good she was to him. Resting on his elbow he drank the bowl of hot soup she had brought him. She sat beside him on the edge of the bed, filling the silent room with her real presence. Her hands, holding the tray for him, were white and soft. He had never thought much about Laura before, never cared much for her; but now her kindness overwhelmed him. Out of sheer gratitude he cried: “Why do you bother about me, Laura?”

“I shouldn’t worry, Arthur, if I were you,” she said: “everything’ll come all right.”

She took the empty bowl and placed it upon the tray. She made to get up.

But he reached out and stayed her, like a child fearful of being left alone.

“Don’t leave me, Laura.”

“Very well.”

She sat down again, placed the tray on the bedside table. She began gently to stroke his forehead.

He sobbed, then started to cry brokenly. In complete abandonment he lay against her, his face pressed against her, against her soft body. The comfort of his face against her softness was unbelievable, an ease flowed like warm milk through his being.

“Laura,” he whispered, “Laura.”

A fire of indulgence blazed in her suddenly. His attitude, his need of comfort, the pressure of his head against the lower part of her body raised a wild tension in her. Staring rigidly across the room she saw her own face in the mirror. A quick revulsion took her. Not that, she thought fiercely, no, not that gift. She gazed down at Arthur again. Worn out, his sobs had stopped, he was already on the edge of sleep. His lips were open, his expression undefended, helpless, exposed. She saw the wounds plainly. There was something infinitely sad and wistful in the flaccid closure of his eyelids, the narrow foreshortening of his chin.

Outside, the thrushes ceased to sing and the dark beginnings of the night crept into the room. She still sat there, though he was asleep, supporting his head. The expression on her face was pathetic and beautiful.

For a fortnight Arthur lay ill at Todd’s, unable to get up. The doctor whom Laura brought had an alarming suspicion of aplastic anæmia. He was Dr. Dobbie from 1 College Row, an intimate of the Todd family, who knew Arthur’s history, and he behaved with kindness and discretion. He made several blood counts and treated Arthur with intra-muscular injections of manganese. But it was Laura rather than Dr. Dobbie who got Arthur well. There was some rare quality, a passionate selflessness, in the attention she gave him. She had closed the house at Hilltop and all her time she spent looking after Arthur, preparing his food, reading to him, or merely sitting in silent companionship by his bed. Strange behaviour for a woman naturally so indifferent, so apparently self-absorbed. It was perhaps an atonement, a clutching at this chance straw of expiation in the throbbing desire to prove that there was something of good in her. Because of this every step made by Arthur towards recovery, every single word of gratitude he spoke, made her happy. In tending his wounds she healed her own.

Her father did not interfere. It was not Todd’s nature to interfere. Besides, he was sorry for Arthur who had, so disastrously, swum against the stream. Twice a day he came into the room and stood awkwardly making conversation, pausing, clearing his throat, and, in an attempt at ease, balancing himself beside the bed first on one leg then on the other, like an elderly, rather dilapidated robin. The obviousness with which he sheered away from topics of danger: the Neptune, the war, Hetty, from anything which might be painful to Arthur, was touching and comic. And he always concluded, edging towards the door:

“There’s no hurry, my boy. Stop here as long as it suits you.”

Gradually Arthur improved, he left his room, then began to take short walks with Laura. They avoided the crowded places and went usually across the Town Moor, that high sweep of open park from which on a clear day the Otterburne Hills were visible. Though he was not yet aware of how much he owed to Laura, occasionally he would turn to her spontaneously.

“You’re decent to me, Laura.”

“It’s nothing,” she would invariably reply.

It was a fresh bright morning and they had seated themselves for a few minutes on a bench upon the highest part of the Moor.

“I don’t know what I’d have done without you,” he sighed; “slipped right under, I suppose. I mean morally, of course. You don’t know the temptation, Laura, just to let everything go.”

She did not reply.

“But somehow it feels as if you’d put me together again, made me something like a man. Now I feel I can face things. It isn’t fair though. I’ve had all the benefit. You get nothing.”

“You’d wonder,” she answered in a strange voice.

While the wind blew cleanly about him he studied her pale, chastely cut profile, the passive immobility of her figure.

“Do you know what you remind me of, Laura?” he said suddenly. “In a book at home, one of Raphael’s Madonnas.”

She coloured painfully, violently, her face suddenly distorted.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said harshly and, rising, she walked rapidly away. He stared after her, completely taken aback, then he got up and followed her.

As his strength came back he was able to think of his father, of Sleescale, and of his return. He must return, his manhood demanded it. Although procrastination and timidity were in his blood he had a serious intensity which gave him strength. Besides, prison had hardened him, increased that sense of injury and injustice which now activated his life.

One evening, towards the end of the third week, they were playing bezique together, as they often did after supper. He picked up his cards and, without warning, declared:

“I must get back to Sleescale soon, Laura.”

Nothing more was said. Now that he had announced his intention, he was tempted to delay the actual date of his departure. But on the morning of May 16th when he came down to breakfast, after Todd had left for the office, a paragraph in the Courier caught his eye. He stood by the table with the paper in his hand, his attitude arrested and motionless. The paragraph was quite small, six bare lines, lost in a mass of shrieking war news. But Arthur seemed to find it important. He sat down with his eyes still fixed upon these six bare lines.

“Is anything the matter?” Laura asked, watching his face.

There was a silence; then Arthur said:

“They’ve driven the new roadway into the Paradise. They went through to the dead-end three days ago. They’ve found the ten men and the inquest is to-morrow.”

The whole force of the disaster rushed over him again like a wave which has momentarily receded only to return with greater strength. His mind contracted under the impact. He said slowly, his eyes on the paper:

“They’ve even brought some of the relatives from France… for formal identification. I must go back, too. I’ll go today… this morning.”

Laura did not answer. She handed him his coffee. He drank it mechanically, confronted once again by the situation which had altered, and ruined, his life. The thing from which there was no escape. Now he must go back, must, must go back.

When he had finished breakfast he looked across at Laura. She interpreted that glance, the fixed idea which compelled him, and she nodded imperceptibly. He rose from the table, went into the hall and put on his hat and coat. He had nothing to pack. Laura accompanied him to the door.

“Promise me, Arthur,” she said in her unemotional voice, “you won’t do anything stupid.”

He shook his head. A silence. Then, impulsively, he took both her hands.