Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Barras glowed with an excited satisfaction. As he ate his cutlets he read the communiqué aloud from the Northern Star in a firm official voice. Barras had never taken an evening paper before. The Times had always satisfied him, but now he was never without an evening Argus or Star , or both. With the paper in his hand he jumped up from the table, and went over to the opposite wall where a big-scale map hung all pricked out with the flags of the allied armies. Consulting the paper carefully Barras moved half a dozen of the tiny Union Jacks. He moved the tiny Union Jacks forward.

Watching his father covertly Arthur was seized by a terrifying thought. Barras, the flag-mover, was the genetic impulse behind the war. In his jubilation over the gain of a few hundred yards of torn-up trenches he was guilty, in essence, of the deaths of thousands of men.

When he had moved the flags Barras studied the map intently. He was heart and soul in the war now, he had lost himself in the war, he was a patriot, he lived in a whirl of forgetfulness. He was on six committees already, and had been nominated for the Northern Refugee Council. The telephone rang all day long. The car tore up and down the road to Tynecastle. Coal was coming out Five Quarter and Globe Seams and selling magnificently at forty shillings a ton pit-head price.

Barras came back to the table. As he sat down he stole a look at Hilda and Grace and Arthur as though to discover whether they had observed his generalship with the flags, then in obvious satisfaction he resumed his paper. His odd preoccupation and detachment were gone; the arteries of his temples stood out a little and showed the beat of his pulse. His air was vaguely restless, almost feverish; he was like a patient who insists on being about in defiance of his doctor’s orders, a patient whose metabolism is accentuated and every function accelerated. As he read the paper he drummed incessantly with his fingers upon the table. The drumming sound was not unlike the sound of quick jowling in the pit.

For a few minutes everything was silence but for that quick jowling of Barras’s fingers; then it happened, the incredible thing. Barras read a small item in the news twice over. Then he raised his head.

“Lord Kell has most kindly offered his London house as a temporary hospital for the wounded. The work of conversion will be completed in a month. They are asking already for volunteer nurses. Lord Kell has expressed the wish that all V.A.D. nurses should be if possible from the North.” Barras paused. He looked at Hilda and at Grace with that bland intentness. “How would you like to go?”

Arthur sat rooted in his chair. His father, the rock of family unity, the immovable rock upon which all Hilda’s pleading had previously broken in vain. Arthur went very pale. His eyes darted towards Hilda almost in apprehension.

Hilda had coloured deeply, violently. She seemed unable to believe her ears. She said:

“Do you mean that, father?”

Blandly intent, Barras said:

“Do I usually mean what I say, Hilda?”

The wave of colour receded from Hilda’s face as swiftly as it had come. She looked at Grace, large-eyed and eager beside her. Her voice trembled with joy.

“I think we should both like to go, father.”

“Very well!” Barras briskly resumed his paper. It was settled.

A quick glance between Hilda and Grace. Hilda said:

“When may we expect to go, father?”

From behind the paper:

“Shortly, I should imagine. Probably next week. I am seeing Councillor Leach at Tynecastle to-morrow. I shall speak to him and make the necessary arrangements.” A pause, then significantly: “I shall feel happy that at least you, Hilda, and Grace are doing your country’s work.”

Arthur felt the perspiration break out on his palms. He wanted to rise and walk out of the room but he was unable to rise. His eyes remained fixed upon his plate. The sense of sickness which agitation always brought came upon him now.

Hilda and Grace went out, he could hear them flying upstairs to discuss the miracle. Aunt Carrie was already upstairs attending to his mother. Once again he made the effort to rise, but his legs refused to move. He sat paralysed, bound by the current of animosity which flowed towards him from behind the paper. He waited.

As he had expected, his father lowered the paper. His father said:

“I am very pleased at the eagerness of your sisters to serve their country.”

Arthur winced. A whole ocean of emotion boiled and surged within him. Once it had been love. Now it was fear, suspicion, hatred. How had the change occurred? He knew and yet he did not know, he was tired from the tension of the day, his brain felt thick and stupid. He answered heavily:

“Hilda and Grace only want to get away from here.”

The mottled flush spread over Barras’s forehead. In rather a high tone he said:

“Indeed! And why should they?”

Arthur replied listlessly; he seemed not to care now what he said:

“They can’t stand it here any longer. Hilda has always hated it here but now Grace hates it too. Ever since the disaster. I heard them talking the other day. They said how much you had changed. Hilda said you were living in a fever.”

Barras seemed to allow the words to slip over him. It was a faculty he had lately developed of shutting out any issue which might be likely to disturb him, the supreme faculty of judicial inhibition; to Arthur it seemed like Pilate when he washed his hands. He paused, then said in a measured voice:

“Your attitude is worrying me, Arthur. You are very different.”

“It’s you who are different.”

“It isn’t only I who am worried. I saw Hetty to-night at the Central Organisation offices. She is extremely worried and unhappy about you.”

“I can’t help Hetty,” Arthur said with that same listless bitterness.

Barras’s dignity increased.

“Alan has been mentioned in dispatches. They have just had the news, Hetty told me to-day. He is recommended for the M.C.”

“I can’t help Alan either,” Arthur answered.

The duskiness on Barras’s brow spread behind his ears and into the loose tissue of his neck. The vessels in his temples thickened and throbbed. He said loudly:

“Have you no wish to fight for your country?”

“I don’t want to fight for anything,” Arthur answered in a stifled tone. “I don’t want to kill anybody. There’s been enough killing already. We started off pretty well in the Neptune. That’s sickened me against killing.” His voice rose suddenly, shrill, hysterical. “Do you understand? If that hadn’t happened I might have run out like the rest of them with a gun, run out looking nice and pretty in my uniform, run out looking for a man to kill. But it has happened. I saw these men killed and I’m not satisfied. I’ve had time to think, you see. I’ve had time to think. I’ve had time to think….” He broke off, his breath coming quickly. He dared not look at his father, but he felt his father looking at him.

There was a long heavy silence. Then Barras performed the usual gesture, a measured movement towards his left-hand waistcoat pocket, an impressive inspection of his watch. Arthur heard the click as the watch was shut and the significance of the action bore down upon him as pathological and alarming. His father had an appointment in Tynecastle, another committee meeting, another and yet another, his father whose habit it had been never to go out, who used to sit listening to Handel in the quiet of his own home, his father, who had sent all these men down the Neptune to die.

“I hope you understand,” Barras said, rising from the table, “that you are not indispensable to me at the Neptune. Turn that over in your mind. It may help you to do your duty.” Then he went out and shut the door. In two minutes Arthur heard the purr of the car as it slid away down the drive.