Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“They are keen people these,” Mr. Bannerman answered. “Very keen people indeed. This offer is their final offer.”

“It’s sheer robbery,” Arthur groaned.

“Who are they?” Hilda asked.

Mr. Bannerman fitted back his monocle delicately:

“They are Mawson & Gowlan,” he said. “Yes! Mr. Joseph Gowlan is the negotiating party.”

There was a silence. Arthur lifted his head slowly and looked across at Hilda. His voice was savagely ironic.

“You know the fellow, don’t you?” he said. “These new offices in Grainger Street. All black and marble. The site alone cost them forty thousand. He’s the Joe Gowlan who worked as a hand-putter in the Neptune.”

“He does not work there now,” Mr. Bannerman said precisely. Inspecting the heading of the notepaper before him he declared: “Messrs. Mawson & Gowlan have now the controlling interest in Northern Steel Industries Ltd., in United Brassfounders Ltd., in the Tyneside Commercial Corporation, in Corporation and Northern Securities Ltd., and in the Rusford Aeroplane Co.”

There was another silence. Adam Todd seemed very unhappy and he chewed a clove as if the flavour of the clove was not good.

“Is there no other way?” he said, shifting restlessly on his seat. “I know the stuff that’s in the Neptune. Wonderful stuff. It’s always been Barras’s Neptune. Isn’t there any other way?”

“Have you any suggestion?” Mr. Bannerman inquired politely. “If so be kind enough to let us have it.”

“Why don’t you go to this Gowlan,” said Todd suddenly, turning to Arthur, “and try to get in with him?… Bargain with him. Tell him you don’t want to sell for cash. You want to amalgamate with him. You want a seat on the board, shares, just to be in with him, Arthur. If only you get in with Gowlan you’d be absolutely made!”

Arthur reddened slowly. “That’s a grand idea, Todd. But unfortunately it’s no use. You see, I’ve tried it.” He faced them all and with a sudden outburst of bitter cynicism he cried: “I went up to Gowlan two days ago, up to his damned new offices. God! You ought to see them — solid bronze doors, Carrara marble, teak and tapestry elevator. I tried to sell myself to him. You know what he is. He began by swindling Millington out of the foundry. He swindled his shareholders in the boom. He’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. Everything he’s got has come crookedly — from sweating his workmen, corruption on contracts, that big munitions ramp. But I swallowed all that, tried to sell my soul.” Trembling, he paused. “It would have made you laugh. He played with me like a cat with a mouse. He began by telling me how honoured he was but that our ideas seemed to be slightly different. He went on about the new aeroplane works at Rusford where he’s turning out military aeroplanes by the hundred and selling them to every country in Europe. He enlarged on the prospects of the Rusford ’plane because it has what he called greater killing power than any other line. He took me on bit by bit, putting out a hint here and a promise there, until I’d sworn away everything I’d ever believed in. And when he’d got me stripped naked he laughed at me and offered me a job as underviewer at the Neptune.”

Yet another silence, a long silence. Dan Teasdale moved restively, and for the first time spoke.

“It’s a damned shame.” His ruddy face was alive with indignation. “Why don’t you chuck the whole thing up, Arthur, and come down with us? We don’t make money. But we don’t want it. And we’re perfectly happy without it. There’s better things — that’s what Grace has taught me. Health, and working in the fresh air, and seeing your children grow up strong. You come down, Arthur, and start fresh with us.”

“I should look well,” Arthur said in an agony of dejection, “among the chickens.”

Bannerman made another gesture of impatience. “Might I ask what your instructions are, then?”

“Haven’t I told you to sell?” The words came with a terrible disillusionment, and Arthur rose abruptly as though to terminate the whole affair. “Sell the Law too. Gowlan wants that as well. Let him take the whole damn lot. He can have me as underviewer too, for all I care.”

Outside the door, sprawling on his knees, Richard Barras gaped and stared. Richard’s face was very red now, and terribly confused. He did not fully gauge what was happening within. But he grasped with his poor muddled brain that there was trouble at the Neptune which he alone could readjust. Moreover, they had all forgotten about him and his power to achieve the impossible. It was splendid. He sat back on his haunches on the tiled floor of the hall. They were not talking any more inside now and he was a little tired from sprawling and he wanted greater comfort to enable him to think.

Suddenly, as he squatted there, the door of the dining-room opened and they all came out. The unexpectedness of it slumped Richard over upon his back. His dressing-gown flew up exposing his lean shanks, his underwear, his very person. The whole pitiful travesty of the man was there, shrunken yet distorted, cunning yet inane. But Richard did not mind. He sat there, as he was, on the cold tiles of the vestibule, and he looked very sly and he laughed. He sniggered.

Every face expressed concern and Hilda ran forward crying:

“My poor father!”

Teasdale and Hilda helped him to his feet and assisted him upstairs to his room. Bannerman, one eyebrow lifted, shrugged his shoulders and took a formal good-bye of Arthur.

Arthur remained standing in the hall, his eyes fixed on the yellowish eyes of Adam Todd who, all those years before, had implored him not to swim against the stream. He said suddenly:

“Let’s go into Tynecastle, Todd. I think I want to get drunk.”

For the next few days Richard lay very low. After the incident entered in his writing-book as Discovery at Observation No . 2, Hilda had spoken gravely upon the advisability of keeping him in bed. He was so feeble now and so uncertain upon his legs that Hilda insisted, before she left for London, he must at least remain in his bedroom. That alarmed Richard for Richard was aware that he could not conduct operations from his bedroom. So he feigned most exemplary behaviour, was good and docile and did whatever Aunt Carrie told him.

All his thoughts were now concentrated upon his great new idea for regenerating his Neptune pit. The whole of that Friday forenoon he was so excited by his idea he could not contain himself. As he sat in his room a hammer kept beating in his head, and his scalp was tight like the skin of a drum. Once he almost thought the electricity had got him but he lay back and closed his eyes until at last they turned it off.

When he came round he found Arthur in the room standing before him.

“Are you all right, father?” Arthur asked and he looked at his father with sadness filmed over the fixity of his face. Arthur could not behold this poor shrunken silly old man, nor feel that sly and bloodshot eye wavering across his, without sadness. He said:

“I thought I’d come up and have a word with you, father. Can you understand what I say?”

Could he understand! — the insolence sent the blood bursting again through Richard’s head. He drew within himself at once.

“Not now.”

“I’d like to straighten things out for you, father,” Arthur said. “It might make it easier for you. You’re restless and so excited. You do not realise that you’re not well.”

“I am well,” Richard said angrily. “I was never better in my life.”

“It struck me, father,” Arthur went on, wishing to break as gently as he could the impending disruption, “that it mightn’t be a bad thing if we gave up the Law and took a smaller place. You see—”