Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“Well.” Still stroking her brow he humoured her. Only the madness of his love made him go on. “I might write to a man at home who’s got some influence. A man named Barras. He might get me in somewhere in the county. But you see…”

“I do see, David,” she gulped. “I see exactly what you mean. You must take your B.A. But why not take it afterwards ? Oh, think, David, you and me together in a nice little house somewhere. You working in the evenings with all your great big important books on the table and me sitting there beside you. It’s not so very hard to teach during the day. Then you can study, oh, ever so hard at night. Why, David, it would be wonderful. Wonderful!”

The picture, painted so romantically by Jenny, stirred him to a smiling tenderness. He looked at her protectively.

“But you see, Jenny, we must be practical…”

She smiled through her tears.

“David, David… don’t say another word. I’m so happy, I don’t want you to spoil it.” She jumped up, laughing. “Now, listen! We’ll go for a beautiful walk. Let’s go to Esmond Dene, it’s so lovely there, I do love it so, what with the trees and that beautiful old mill. And we’ll talk it all over, every bit of it. After all it wouldn’t do any harm just to write to this gentleman, Mr. Barras…” She broke off, fascinating him with her lovely eyes, all liquid and melting with her suppressed tears. She kissed him quickly, then ran off to get ready.

He stood smiling; uplifted, enraptured, perhaps a little perplexed. But nothing mattered beside the fact that Jenny loved him. She loved him. And he loved her. He thrilled with tenderness, an ardent hope for the future. Jenny would wait, of course she would wait… he was only twenty-two… he must take his B.A., she would come to see that later.

While he remained there, waiting for Jenny, the door flew open and Sally came into the room. She stopped short when she saw him.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said, frowning. “I only came to get some music.”

Her frown was like a cloud sailing into the clear sky of his happiness. She had always been very odd with him, abrupt, caustic, perversely disagreeable. She seemed to have a grudge against him, an instinct for flicking him on the raw. Suddenly he wanted to be on good terms with Sally now that he was so happy, now that he was marrying her sister. And on an impulse he said:

“Why do you look at me that way, Sally? Is it because you dislike me?”

She faced him steadily: she wore an old blue drill costume, relic of her last year’s school days; her hair was very untidy.

“I don’t dislike you,” she said, with none of her usual precocious flippancy.

He saw that she was speaking the truth. He smiled.

“But you’re… you’re always so sour to me.”

She answered with uncommon gravity:

“You know where to get sugar if you want it.” And lowering her eyes suddenly she turned and went out of the room.

As Sally went through the door Jenny came swimming in.

“What’s the little cat been saying to you?” Not waiting for his reply she took his arm with a proprietary air, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Come along now, dear. I’m dying for us to have our lovely, lovely talk.”

She was bright now, yes, bright as a bird was Jenny. And why not? Hadn’t she every reason to be pleased, with a fiancé, not just a “boy” but a real fiancé, qualified to be a teacher. Oh! Marvellous to have a fiancé who was a teacher. She’d get out of Slattery’s right away, and out of Scottswood Road as well. She’d show them, show Joe too, she’d have a church wedding to spite them all, with a notice in the paper, she’d always set her mind on a church wedding, now what would she wear, something simple but nice… oh, yes, nice… nice… nice.

When David returned from his walk he wrote to Barras, “just to please” Jenny. A week later he had an answer, offering him a post as junior master at the New Bethel Street Council School in Sleescale. He showed it to Jenny, tom between reason and the rapture of his love for her, thinking of his parents, his career, wondering what she would say. She flung her arms round his neck.

“Oh, David, darling,” she sobbed. “Isn’t that marvellous, too marvellous for words? Aren’t you glad I made you write? Isn’t it really wonderful ?”

Pressed against her, his eyes shut, his lips on hers holding her, oh, so tight, he felt with surging intoxication that she was right: it was really quite wonderful.

That morning, even before the telegram arrived for his father, Arthur was conscious of a singular elation. He awoke into it, was aware from the moment he opened his eyes upon the square of blue sky through his open window that life was very precious — full of sunshine and strength and hope. Naturally he did not always wake this way. Some mornings there was no sunshine, nothing awaited him but heaviness, a kind of immobile darkness, and the dismal sense of his own deficiencies.

Why was he so happy? That, like his moods of misery, remained inexplicable. Perhaps a premonition of the morning telegram, or of seeing Hetty in the afternoon. More likely the joyful recognition of his own improvement for, lying in bed with his hands clasped behind his head and the long span of his eighteen-year body luxuriously stretched, his first real thought had been: “I didn’t eat the strawberries.”

Of course, the strawberries, though he was very fond of them, were nothing in themselves; they were a symbol, they stood for his own strength. Half-smiling, he recapitulated. The table last night, Aunt Caroline, head on one side as usual, purring, portioning the luscious bowl of home-grown strawberries — a rare luxury on Barras’s austere table. And the cream too, he nearly forgot the big silver jug of yellow cream — nothing he liked better than strawberries and cream. “Now, Arthur,” he heard Aunt Caroline say, preparing to delve generously for him. Then, himself, quickly: “No thank you, Aunt Carrie. I shan’t have any strawberries to-night.” “But, Arthur…” Surprise, even consternation in Aunt Carrie’s voice; his father’s aloof eye fixed momentarily upon him. Aunt Carrie again: “Aren’t you well, Arthur, my dear?” Himself, laughing: “Perfectly well, Aunt Carrie, I just don’t feel like strawberries to-night.” He had sat, with watering teeth, watching them eat the strawberries.

That was the way to do it, a little thing, perhaps, but the book said bigger things would follow. Yes, he was satisfied this morning. “I do wish Arthur would show more character.” His mother’s petulant remark, overheard as he passed along the corridor outside her room, and fixed through all these months in the very centre of his mind, receded now, answered by his conduct towards the strawberries!

He jumped out of bed — it was wrong, really, to lie dreaming in bed — went through his exercises vigorously before the open window, dashed into the bathroom and took a cold bath: really cold, mind you, not a trickle, even, from the hot tap to temper the icy plunge. He came back to his room, glowing, dressed in his working suit with his eyes fixed religiously upon the placard which hung on the wall opposite his bed. The placard said in large heavily inked letters: I will! Beneath this was another: “ Look every man straight between the eyes! ”

Arthur finished lacing his boots, his heavy boots, for he would be going inbye today, and was ready. He went to a drawer, unlocked it and picked out a small red book; The Cure of Self-consciousness , one of a series of such books entitled The Will and the Way —and sat down seriously upon the edge of his bed to read. He always read one chapter before breakfast when, as the book declared, the mind was most receptive; and he preferred his bedroom because of its privacy — these little red books were a secret, guarded jealously.