Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

With a quick impatience he turned from the thought — that was another fault he must correct, the wandering tendency of his too inquisitive mind. Hadn’t he enough to occupy him since that conversation with his father? He finished his coffee, rolled his napkin in the bone ring and sat waiting for his father to rise. On the way to the pit he would ask… or perhaps mightn’t it be better on the way home?

At last Barras finished with the paper. He did not let it drop beside him; he folded it neatly with his white, beautifully kept hands; his fingers smoothed, preserved the paper; then he passed it to Aunt Carrie without a word.

Hilda always took the paper the moment Barras went out, and Barras knew that Hilda took it. But he chose rather loftily to ignore that obtrusive fact.

He went out of the room followed by Arthur and in five minutes both were in the dogcart spanking towards the pit. Arthur nerved himself to speak. The words were on his tongue a dozen times and in a dozen different ways. “By the bye, father,” he would say: or simply “Father, do you think…” or perhaps “It has suddenly struck me, father…” would be a more propitious opening. All the permutations and combinations ranged themselves for his choice: he saw himself speaking, heard the words he spoke. But he said nothing. It was agony. Then, to his infinite relief, Barras calmly cut right into the heart of his distress.

“We had a little trouble some years ago over the Scupper Flats. Do you remember?”

“Yes, father, I remember.” Arthur stole a quick glance at his father, who sat upright and composed beside him.

“A wretched business! I didn’t want it. Who does want trouble? But that trouble was thrust upon me. It cost me dearly.” He disposed of the matter, slid it back quietly into the archives of the past, moralising: “Life is a hard business, sometimes, Arthur. It is necessary to preserve one’s position in the face of circumstance.” Then in a moment he said: “But this time we shall have no trouble.”

“You think not, father?”

“I’m sure of it. The men had a lesson last time they won’t be in a hurry to repeat.” His tone was considered, reasonable; he balanced the argument dispassionately. “No doubt the Scupper will turn out a wet section, but for that matter Mixen and the whole of Paradise is wet. They’re used to these conditions. Quite used to them.”

As his father spoke, saying so little yet conveying so much, a tremendous wave of comfort flowed over Arthur, obliterating all the nebulous anxieties and fears which had tormented him for the last hour. They became effaced, like puny sand castles washed straight and clean by some vigorous advancing tide. Gratitude overwhelmed him. He loved his father for this serenity, for this calm, unruffled strength. He sat silent, conscious of his father’s presence near to him. He was untroubled now. The brightness of the morning was restored.

They bowled down Cowpen Street at a fine pace, entered the pit yard, went straight into the office. Armstrong was there, obviously waiting, for he stood at the window idly tapping the pane with his thumb. He spun round as Barras entered.

“A wire for you, Mr. Barras.” And, in a moment, showing that he knew the telegram’s significance, “I thought maybe I’d better wait.”

Barras took the orange slip from the desk and opened it without hurry.

“Yes,” he said calmly. “It’s all right. They’ve agreed to our price.”

“Then we start in the Flats on Monday?” Armstrong said.

Barras nodded.

Armstrong stroked his lips with the back of his hand, an odd self-conscious gesture. For no apparent reason he had a sheepish look. Suddenly the telephone rang. Almost with relief, Armstrong walked over to the desk and lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Hello, hello.” He listened for a moment, then glanced across at Barras. “It’s Mr. Todd of Tynecastle. He’s been on twice this morning already.”

Barras took the instrument from Armstrong.

“Yes, yes, this is Richard Barras… yes, Todd, I’m glad to say it’s settled.”

He broke off, listening, then in an altered tone he said:

“Don’t be absurd, Todd. Yes, of course. What? I said of course !”

Another pause while the familiar impatient furrow gathered on Barras’s forehead.

“I tell you yes .” A rasp entered his voice. “What nonsense, man! I should think so. Not over the ’phone. What? I don’t see the slightest need. Yes, I shall be in Tynecastle this afternoon. Where? At your house? What’s that? Indigestion? Dear, dear…” The sarcastic emphasis in Barras’s voice grew more pronounced and his eyes, searching the office irritably, found Arthur’s suddenly and remained there, communicating, derisive. “…Your liver again? What a pity! Something disagreed with you. Well, since you’re seedy I suppose I’d better call on you. But I refuse to take you seriously. Yes, I absolutely refuse. Listen, I’ll bring Arthur with me. Tell Hetty to expect him.”

He rang off abruptly, stood for a few seconds, the contemptuous smile still touching his lips, then he remarked to Arthur:

“We might as well look up Todd this afternoon. He seems to have been a trifle indiscreet again… in his diet. I never heard him sound so dismal.” He gave the brittle smile that served him for a laugh and turned to go. Armstrong, with an obsequious echo of Barras’s amusement, threw open the office door. The two men went into the pit yard together.

Arthur remained in the office with mixed and rather curious thoughts. He knew, of course, that Todd’s indiscretion was drink, not violent spasms of intoxication, but a quiet, melancholy and diligent application to the bottle which from time to time laid him up with jaundice. Though these bouts are not serious and had come to be accepted generally as inevitable and innocuous, Arthur never learned of them without pain. He liked Adam Todd, pitied him as a pathetic and defeated figure. He sensed that Todd, in his own youth, had known the burning ardours, the fears and hopes which afflict the sensitive soul. It was impossible to conceive that Todd, a small morose seedy man, stained with nicotine and soaked with alcohol, had once been eager and responsive to the promise of life, that his torpid eye had ever brightened or been stirred. But it was so. In his young days, when he served his apprenticeship along with Richard Barras in the Tynecastle Main, Todd had been a lively blade, full of enthusiasm for the career he had mapped out. Then the years had rolled over him. He lost his wife in child-birth. A case, the important North Hetton case, in which he was retained as the expert witness by the Briggs-Hetton Company went against him. His reputation suffered, his interest flagged, he distrusted his own decisions, his practice started to decline. His children began to grow away from him: now Laura, his favourite, had married; Alan seemed more set on the pursuit of “a good time” than the reanimation of the firm; Hetty was intent on enjoyment and her own affairs. Gradually Todd had withdrawn into himself, had stopped going out except to the County Club where, from eight until eleven on most nights, he could be found in his customary chair, drinking silently, smoking, listening, throwing out an occasional word, wearing the fixed and slightly apathetic air of a man who has finally accepted disillusionment.

As he went about his work that morning Arthur somehow couldn’t get the thought of old Todd out of his head. And when, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he accompanied his father to Tynecastle and walked up College Row towards Todd’s house he had a strange and unaccountable sense of expectation, as though some chord vibrated between his own eager personality and the snuffy personality of Adam Todd. He could not understand the feeling, it was baffling and new.