Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Stanley, Miss Todd, Jenny and Joe took supper together. Jenny was in heaven. She smiled, showed her pretty teeth, cast her dark lashes down entrancingly; she ate jelly with her fork; left a little of everything upon her plate. She was a little shaken when Laura Todd, lifting an orange, bit into the skin off-handedly with her white teeth. She was even more shaken when Laura nonchalantly borrowed Stanley’s handkerchief. But it was rapture, rapture, all of it, every moment. And to crown all, when it was over, and the Social breaking up, Joe, in atonement for that earlier sin of omission, magnificently commandeered a cab.

The last compliments were exchanged; good-byes called, much waving of hands. In a flutter of petticoats and excitement Jenny stepped into the greenish mildewed vehicle which smelt of mice, funerals, weddings and damp livery stables. The little woolly balls of her fascinator dangled deliriously. She sank back in the cushions.

“Oh, Joe,” she gushed. “It’s been perfectly lovely. I didn’t know you knew Mr. Millington so well. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d no idea. He’s very nice. She is too, of course. Not good-looking, mind you, a bit of a one to go, I should say. Real style, though. That dress she had on cost pounds and pounds let me tell you, the last word, and I should know. Did you notice when she bit that orange, though? and the hanky?… I could have dropped. My! I wouldn’t have done a thing like that. Not at all ladylike. Do you hear me, Joe, listen!”

He assured her tenderly that he heard. Alone with her in the dark cab, the longing he had for her rose suddenly to fever heat. His whole body flamed, swelled with that longing. All the evening he had held her in his arms, felt her thinly covered body against his. For months she had staved him off. Now he had her, here, alone. Burning, he shifted his position, carefully edged nearer to her, as she lay back in the corner of the cab, and slipped his arm round her waist. She was still talking nineteen to the dozen, excited, lifted out of herself, gay.

“Some day I’ll have a dress like hers, Miss Todd’s I mean. Satin it was and real lace edging. She knows what’s what I’ll be bound. She’s got the look of a real fast one, too, you can always tell.”

Gently, very gently he drew her close to him, murmured, making his voice caressing:

“I’m not wanting to talk about her, Jenny. I didn’t notice her at all. It’s you I noticed. I’m noticin’ you now!”

She giggled, well pleased.

“You’re far, far better lookin’ than her. And your dress looked a heap prettier an’ all.”

“Two and four the material cost, Joe… I got the pattern out of Weldon’s.”

“By gum, you’re a wonder, Jenny…” He continued skilfully to flatter her. And the more he flattered, the more he fondled her. He could feel she was excited, strung up, letting him do little things he had never been allowed to do before. Elation swelled in him. Thirsting for her, he moved ever so cautiously.

Suddenly she called out sharply:

“Don’t, Joe! Don’t! You got to behave.”

“Ah, what’s your worry, my dear,” he soothed her.

“No, Joe, no! It’s wrong. It isn’t right.”

“It isn’t wrong, Jenny,” he whispered piously. “Don’t we love each other?”

Tactically it was perfect. Whatever his status in the billiards handicap, Joe certainly was no novice in the seducer’s gentle art. Flustered, feeling him close to her:

“But, no, Joe… well, not here , Joe.”

“Ah, Jenny…”

She struggled.

“Look, Joe, we’re nearly there. See, Plummer Street. We’re nearly home. Let me go, Joe. Let me go.”

Sullenly he lifted his hot face from her neck, saw that she was right. Burning with disappointment, he almost gave way to loud profanity. But he got out, helped her to alight, flung a shilling to the scarecrow of a jarvie, followed her up the steps. The curve of her figure from behind, her simple act of taking the key and sliding it into the keyhole maddened him with desire. Then he remembered that Alf, her father, was away for the night.

In the kitchen, lit only by the firelight, she faced him: for all her offended maidenhood she seemed reluctant to go to bed. The excitement, the unusualness of it all worked in her, and her triumph at the Social still buzzed in her head. She postured a little coyly.

“Will I light the gas and make you some cocoa, Joe?”

With an effort he mastered his sullenness, his frantic desire to seize her. Plaintively he said:

“You don’t give a fella a chance, Jenny. Come on and sit on the sofa a bit. I haven’t had a word with you all night.”

Half-awakened, half-afraid, she stood undecided; it was so dull to say good night and go to bed; and Joe really looked awful handsome tonight; taking that cab, too, he had behaved handsome. She giggled again:

“Well… it won’t hurt us to talk .” She moved to the sofa.

On the sofa he took her close in his arms: it was easier now that he had done it before; she tried only half-heartedly to snatch herself away. He felt the excitement, the unusualness of the whole evening vibrating through her body.

“Don’t Joe, don’t. We got to behave.” She kept on repeating it, not knowing what she said.

“Ah, Jenny, you must. You know I’m mad about you. You know we love each other.”

Fascinated, terrified in one breath, resisting, yielding, lost in fear, pain and something unknown:

“But, Joe… You’re hurting me, Joe.”

He knew he had her now, knew with a wild delicious knowledge that this, at last, was Jenny.

The fire was going out. The grate empty. Now that it was long over and her period of snivelling done, she whispered:

“Hold me tight, Joe… tighter, Joe dear.”

God! Could you beat it, and him lying there uncomfortable as the devil, with some of her hair getting in his mouth. As she snuggled up to him, offering her pale, tear-stained, pretty face — now shorn of all silly affectation — for his kiss she was for once simple and beautiful like one of her father’s little pearly doves. Yet now he almost, yes, he almost could have kicked her. There was, of course, the extenuating circumstances; this was, as he had said, Joe’s first real love.

Saturday night had its routine at the Law. After cold supper Hilda played to her father upon the organ. And to-night, the last Saturday of November 1909, at eight o’clock, Hilda was playing the first movement of Handel’s Water Music while Barras sat in his chair supporting his forehead in his hand, listening. Hilda did not like playing to her father. But Hilda played. It was part of Barras’s routine that Hilda should play.

Richard Barras held closely to his routine. This did not stamp Barras as a creature of habit. In stature he was above habit. And routine was not his master but the echo rather, the constantly resounding echo of his principle. To comprehend Richard Barras it is necessary to begin by admitting this principle. He was a man of principle and not, be it understood, of hypocritical principle. He was sincere.

He was, too, a moral man. He despised those weaknesses into which humanity is so frequently and unhappily betrayed. He was incapable, for example, of thinking of any woman but his wife. Though Harriet was an invalid she was in effect his wife. His wife. He despised the grosser appetites of men; rich food and wines, overeating, overdrinking, oversleeping, luxury, sensuality, all the excesses of bodily indulgence were abhorrent to him. He ate plainly and usually drank water. He did not smoke. Though his suit was always well made and of good material, he had few clothes and no vanity for dress.

He had his pride, of course, the natural pride of a liberal, enlightened man. He knew himself as a man of position and substance; he was a mine owner, the owner of the Neptune, whose family had worked the Neptune pits for just one hundred years. He took a real satisfaction in the family succession, beginning with Peter Barras who in 1805 had originally sunk No. 1 shaft into the Snook, known now as the Old Neptune, leaving a tidy little pit to his son William who in his turn had sunk shafts Nos. 2 and 3. As for Peter William, Richard’s own father, he had bored No. 4, a shrewd and well-judged stroke from which Richard was now benefiting hugely. The foundation of the family name and fortune by these shrewd, hard-headed men gratified Richard deeply. He prided himself on inheriting, on developing the qualities of his forebears, on his own shrewdness and hard-headedness, his ability to drive a hard bargain.