Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“Not now,” Richard interrupted. “To-morrow, perhaps. I won’t listen. Some other time. I simply won’t listen. Not now.” He lay back again in his chair with closed eyes and would not listen to Arthur until Arthur at last gave up and went out of the room. It was not his intention to talk to Arthur yet. No, indeed! He would dictate his terms to Arthur later, when the regeneration of the Neptune was complete. Here he opened his eyes with a start, his remote yet feverish stare transfixing the blank ceiling vacantly. What was it? Ah, he remembered. The vacancy left his face, the dull eye watered and gleamed; why had he not thought of it before, why not, why? The pit, of course, his Neptune pit! It was superb, his terrible yet brilliant idea. He must defy them all by going to the Neptune in person.

Tremulous with agitation and excitement, he rose and went downstairs. So far so good. There was no one about; everyone was occupied and worried and distressed. He slunk into the hall, where, hurriedly, he took his hard hat and pressed it upon his head. His hair had not been cut for some time and it stuck out behind his hard hat in a tangled fringe. But Richard did not mind. With great secrecy he let himself out by the front door and stood balancing upon the steps. The drive lay before him with the gate open and unguarded beyond. It was all forbidden ground, dangerous ground, far away from the lawn and the laburnum tree. Both Hilda and Dr. Lewis had made it seriously forbidden and dangerous. The whole thing was a terrible undertaking. But Richard did not mind that either. He compassed the steps and the drive in one stuttering rush and was out, at last, and free. He staggered, it is true, and almost fell; but what did that matter, his staggering, when he was so soon to be rid of it, staggering, hammering, electricity, the whole horrible conspiracy against him?

He walked up the drive towards the top of Sluice Dene. He was much too clever to take the ordinary road to the Neptune, for that road would certainly be watched and he would be intercepted. No, no! he knew better than that. He took the long way round, the way which went behind the woods of Sluice Dene and across the fields and the Snook and into the Neptune from the back. He exulted in the brilliance of his counterstroke. Wonderful, wonderful!

But it had been raining heavily and the road he took was muddy and bad. The heavy rain had left big puddles in the ruts and Richard could not lift his feet. Soon he was splashed with water and mud. He floundered along through the water and the mud with his little starts and staggers until he reached the stile at the top of Sluice Dene.

At the stile he drew up. The stile presented an unconsidered difficulty. Richard saw that he would have to climb the stile. But Richard could not raise his foot more than six inches at the utmost and the height of the step upon the stile was at least eighteen. Richard could not climb the stile and tears came trembling into his old dazed eyes.

Tears and fury; oh, a terrible fury. He was not defeated, he was not. The stile was merely part of the conspiracy; he must defeat it too, the stile, the conspiring stile. Trembling with rage Richard raised his arms and fell upon the stile. His belly hit the top bar of the stile, for a second he was balanced, as though swimming, upon the top bar of the stile, then he toppled and was over. Wonderful, wonderful, he was over! He fell heavily on his face and head into a puddle of slush and he lay panting and stunned and slobbering while the hammer and electricity worked at him through the slush and the mud.

He lay quite a long time there, for the big hammer seemed to have burst something inside his head, and the mud was cool against the outside of the burst place in his head. But he got up at last, oh yes, he got up, elbow, knees and a dreadful clamber to his feet. The earth swayed slightly and he had lost his hat and his face and clothes and hands were terribly daubed with mud. But never mind, never mind all that. He was up again and walking. He was walking to the Neptune.

Walking was not so easy now. The hammer had hit so hard, his right leg was dull and dead, he had to drag it along with him, like a sort of supercargo. That was peculiar, for usually both hammer and electricity worked upon his left leg, but now they had got his right leg and his right arm too. His whole right side was paralysed.

On he went, behind the wood and along the path towards the Snook, staggering and dragging the leg, bareheaded and bedaubed with mud, his red-injected eye fixed feverishly upon the headstock of the Neptune which showed above the last row of houses that bordered the Snook. Although he wished to go quickly he went very slowly; he was all bound and clogged; he knew that he was going slowly and this infuriated him. He tried to make himself go quicker and could not; he had the idea that something was happening at the Neptune, a conspiracy or a catastrophe, and that he would not get there in time. This drove him frantic.

Then the rain came on, a heavy lashing shower. The rain streamed upon him and upon his old bare head. The rain flattened the long grey hair upon his old bare head, washed the mud into his eyes, battered and soaked and blinded him.

He stopped, all the fury washed out of him, and he stood quite still under the hissing rain. He was frightened. And suddenly he began to cry. His tears mingled with the rain and wetted him the more. He moved blindly forward. He wanted shelter.

At the end of the row of houses which bordered the Snook stood a small public-house, known as The Hewer’s Rest, a poor and wretched place which was kept by a widow named Susan Mitchell. Nobody went there except the poorest workers from around the Snook. But Richard went there, into the public-house known as The Hewer’s Rest.

He came in as though blown by a gust of wind and rain and he stood on the stone floor, dripping wet and swaying upon his feet like an old drunk tramp. Only two men were in the bar, two labouring men in moleskins, who were playing dominoes, their empty beer mugs beside them on the one trestle table. They stared at Richard and they laughed. They did not know Richard. They thought Richard was an old tramp who had certainly had his gill. One winked at the other and spoke to Richard.

“How, hinny?” he said. “Ye’ve been to a weddin’ I see.”

Richard looked at him and something in Richard’s look, as Richard swayed there, made both of the men laugh. They shook with laughter. Then the second man said:

“Niver mind, man. We’ve all been glee-eyed in our time.”

And he took Richard by the shoulders and steered him to the wooden settle at the window. Richard fell into the settle. He did not know where he was and he did not know who were these two men who both stared at him. He fumbled in his pocket with his numb hand for his handkerchief and as he pulled it out a coin came with it and rolled on the stone floor. It was a half-crown.

The second man picked up the coin and spat on it and grinned.

“Eh, mon,” he said. “You’re a champion, right enough. Is it a half-gill, hinny, a half-gill the piece?”

Richard did not understand, so the second man rapped on the counter hard:

“Three half-gills,” he called out.

A woman came out of the back, a thin dark woman with a pale face. She filled three measures of whisky but as she filled the third she looked doubtfully at Richard.

“He’d do better without it,” she said.

The first man said:

“A drop more’ll do him no harm.”

The second man came over to Richard.

“Here, hinny,” he said. “Drink this.”

Richard took the glass the man gave him and drank what was in the glass. It was whisky and the whisky took his breath and warmed him inside and started the hammer beating inside his head. The whisky made him remember the Neptune too. He thought it had stopped raining. The men were staring at him, too, until at last he became frightened of the men. He remembered himself as Richard Barras, owner of the Neptune, a man of dignity and substance. He wanted to be out, away from here and at the Neptune. He rose with an effort from the settle and staggered at the door. The laughter of the men followed him.