Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

At quarter to six he left the house and set out for the station. But he had not gone more than half-way when he heard a commotion at the head of the street and, looking up, he saw two news-boys tearing down the hill with their billheads wildly fluttering. He stopped and bought a paper, all the rumours and latent fears which the Inquiry had overlaid flashing into the foreground of his mind. And there across the front page sprawled the headline: British Ultimatum Expires Midnight .

Towards one o’clock on the second Saturday of September, 1914, Arthur came home from the Neptune to the Law. Normal conditions prevailed at the pit again, work had recommenced, the whole tragic business of the disaster appeared buried and forgotten. But Arthur’s face expressed no satisfaction. He walked up the Avenue like a tired man. He entered the grounds of the Law and, as he had expected and dreaded, the new car had arrived. Bartley, who had been to Tynecastle for a month’s tuition, had brought the new car down himself and it was drawn up in the drive in front of the Law, a landaulet, all smooth maroon enamel and shiny brass. Barras stood beside the new car and as Arthur passed he called out:

“Look, Arthur, here she is at last!”

Arthur stopped. He was in his pit suit. He stared heavily at the car and he said at length:

“So I see.”

“I have so much to do I must have a car,” Barras explained. “It was quite ridiculous not to have seen that before. Bartley tells me she runs magnificently. We’ll run in to Tynecastle this evening and try her out.”

Arthur appeared to be thinking. He said:

“I’m sorry… I can’t come.”

Barras laughed. The laugh, like the car, was new. He said:

“Nonsense. We’re spending the evening with the Todds. I’ve arranged for us all to have dinner at the Central.”

Arthur stopped staring at the car and stared at his father instead. Barras’s face was not flushed but it gave the impression of being flushed: the eyes and the lips were fuller than they had been, the small eyes behind the strong lenses in particular had a protruding look. He seemed restless and vaguely excited, perhaps the arrival of the new car had excited him.

“I didn’t know you were in the habit of giving dinners at the Central,” Arthur said.

“I’m not,” Barras answered with a sudden irritation. “But this is an occasion. Alan is going to the front with his battalion. We are all proud of him. Besides I haven’t seen Todd for some time now. I want to look him up.”

Arthur thought for another minute, then he asked:

“You haven’t seen Todd since we had the disaster at the pit?”

“No, I haven’t,” Barras replied shortly.

There was a pause.

“It always struck me as odd, father, that you didn’t ask Todd to come over and support you at the Inquiry.”

Barras turned sharply.

“Support! What do you mean, support? The findings were pretty satisfactory, weren’t they?”

“Satisfactory?”

“That’s what I said,” Barras snapped. He took out his handkerchief and flicked a fine spot of dust from the radiator. “Are you coming to Tynecastle or not?”

With his eyes on the ground Arthur said:

“Yes, I’ll come, father.”

There was a silence, then the gong sounded. Arthur followed his father in to lunch, Barras walking a little faster than usual. To Arthur it seemed almost as though he were hurrying; lately his father’s walk had briskened to a point where it simulated haste.

“A remarkably fine car,” Barras informed the table, looking down towards Aunt Carrie. “You must come for a spin one of these days, Caroline.”

Aunt Caroline coloured with pleasure but before she could answer Barras had picked up the paper, a special edition which Bartley had brought down from Tynecastle. Rapidly scanning the centre page he said with sudden satisfaction:

“Aha! Here is some news for you. And good news, too.” His pupils dilated slightly. “A serious repulse for the Germans on the Marne. Heavy losses. Enfiladed by our machine-gun fire. Enormous losses. Estimated at four thousand killed and wounded.”

It struck Arthur that his father seized upon these losses, upon the slaughter of these four thousand men with a queer unconscious avidity. A faint shiver passed over him.

“Why, yes,” he said in an unnatural tone, “it is enormous. Four thousand men. That’s about forty times the number we lost in the Neptune.”

Dead silence. Barras lowered his paper. He fixed his protruding eyes upon Arthur. Then in a high voice he said:

“You have an odd sense of values, to mention our misfortune at the pit in the same breath as this. If you don’t give over brooding about what is done with and forgotten you’ll become morbid. You must take yourself in hand. Don’t you realise we are facing a national emergency?” He frowned and resumed his paper.

There was another silence. Arthur choked down the rest of his lunch and immediately went upstairs. He sat down on the edge of his bed and stared moodily out of the window. What was happening to him? It was true enough, no doubt, what his father said. He was becoming morbid, horribly morbid, but he could not help it. One hundred and five men had been killed in the Neptune pit. He could not forget them. These men lived with him, ate with him, walked with him, worked with him. They peopled his dreams. He could not forget them. All this carnage, as his father named it, this horrible carnage, this slaughter of thousands of men by shells, bullets, bombs and shrapnel seemed merely to intensify and swell his morbid introspection. The war was nothing by itself. It was the echo, the profound reverberation of the Neptune disaster. It was at once a new horror and the same horror. The war victims were the pit victims. The war was the Neptune disaster magnified to gigantic size, a deepening of the first flood, a spreading of the morass in which was sunk the beautiful ideal of the preciousness of human life.

Arthur moved uneasily. Lately his own thoughts terrified him. He felt his mind a delicate flask in which terrific thoughts were agitated and convulsed like chemicals which might coalesce and suddenly explode. He felt himself unable to withstand the action and reaction of these chemically active thoughts.

What terrified him most of all was his attitude towards his father. He loved his father, he had always loved and admired his father. And yet he found himself repeatedly at his father’s elbow, watching, criticising, observing carefully and adding one observation to another like a detective spying upon God. He wanted with all his soul to abandon this unholy espionage. But he could not: the change in his father made it impossible. He knew his father to be changed. He knew it. And he was afraid.

He sat on his bed thinking for a long time. Then he lay back and closed his eyes. He felt tired suddenly as though he must have sleep. It was late afternoon when he awoke. As he recollected himself he sighed and got up and began to dress.

At six o’clock he went downstairs and found his father waiting for him in the hall. As Arthur approached Barras looked at his watch significantly, lately he had acquired a perfect mannerism with his watch, flicking it open and frowning at the dial like a man pressed for time. Indeed time seemed to have acquired a new significance for Barras now, as though every moment must be utilised.

“I was afraid you were going to be late.” And without waiting for an answer he led the way to the car.

When Arthur got into the car with his father and they glided off in the direction of Tynecastle he felt less despondent. It was, after all, rather pleasant to be going out like this. He hadn’t seen Hetty for ages, his spirits rose at the thought of seeing her. The car behaved beautifully too, he was not insensible to the gracious springing, the smooth flow of movement. He glanced sideways at his father. Barras was seated upright with a pleased expression on his face, an intent expression, like a child with a new toy.