Francis Brett Young

“ The patient fell into an uneasy doze. The midwife nodded in her chair, snatching up her head with a conscious jerk whenever it lolled over her fat bosom. The smelly oil-lamp on the mantelpiece gave an occasional sputter when a drop of water was sucked up into the wick. In the room below the excited talk had petered out and only a sound of soft snoring was heard, like the breathing of cows in a byre.
Edwin thought of many things. It seemed to him that his mind burned clear as frosty starlight lighting forgotten memories of his childhood. He thought of his own mother. ”

“ On the first two or three Saturdays of the football season Edwin had come home late, to find Mr. Ingleby growing cold over the embers of a fire in the dining-room, sleepy but intensely serious, and his tired eyes had examined Edwin so closely that he felt embarrassed, being certain that his face must bear signs of a number of enormities that he had never dreamed of committing. It was the same, unreasonable feeling of guilt that he had experienced at St. Luke’s in the middle of Mr. Leeming’s pitched battle for purity, and the sensation was so strong that he felt it useless to try and hide it. ”

“ The Halesby Road, with its streaming traffic, shared the same transfiguration. The speed and strength of the horses enthralled him; the faces of men and women walking homeward from their work in the city seemed triumphantly happy; the smooth wood-pavement, polished by the rolling of innumerable wheels, shone like a street in heaven. It seemed to Edwin as if the whole world had somehow been uplifted by a secret knowledge of his own experience. A night of wonder. . . .
“Well, what is the young woman’s name?” asked Boyce, when he returned to Easy Row. ”

“ Edwin was so surprised by this generosity that he almost forgot to thank her; but Miss Beecock, in a shrill, soft voice, reminded him of his duty, saying: “Now, isn’t that kind of Mrs. Barrow, Edwin?” Edwin hastily agreed that it was, and the old ladies smiled at one another, as though they were saying, “Isn’t that clever of us, to give him a toy that will take his mind off his mother?” In the silence that followed, a canary which had been pecking at a lump of sugar stuck in the bars of his cage, attracted by the bright hues of the ribbon on Mrs. Barrow’s cap, broke into a shrill twitter. ”

“ When the last train arrived at Halesby, the town would be in darkness, for, in the black country in those days the only places of amusement were the public houses and these had been shut for an hour or more. Only from the upper windows of innumerable mean dwellings lights would be seen, and sometimes the voice of a drunken husband heard grumbling. But the path beside the fish-ponds was beautiful, even on a winter night, and Edwin would feel glad as he plodded along it that he didn’t live in North Bromwich, where the night noises of the country were never heard. ”

“ An asphalt school-yard on a slope, with a tall, gothic school and children screaming their lungs out, but silent to Edwin’s ears. Endless mean streets of dusky brick houses with roofs of purple slate and blue brick footpaths. Dust and an acrid smell as of smoking pit heaps. More houses, and above them, misty, and almost beautiful, the high clock tower of the Art Gallery. A thunderous tunnel. . . . The clamour of the wheels swelled to an uproar. “While there’s life there’s hope. While there’s life there’s hope.” ”

“ Martin had been quite right. He didn’t look in the least like a dead man. He did not look like a man at all: only a pathetic, tanned skeleton with tight-drawn sinews and toughened skin: a dried mummy, from which all the contours of humanity had shrunk away. It wasn’t so bad after all. The picture that Edwin’s imagination had anticipated, that of a crude and horrible human shambles, was not here. No . . . the idea of humanity was too remote to be in the least insistent. For a moment, in spite of this consolation, Edwin went pale. Martin noticed it. ”

“ Ingleby was much respected in Halesby—wore the same grave air. Even the undertaker, a brisk little man with a fiery red beard and one shoulder lower than the other from the constant carrying of coffins, treated his daily task with the same sort of mute reverence. His face, at any rate, wore an expression that matched that of the mourners; and Edwin was only disillusioned as to the sincerity of his expression when he heard him swearing violently at the driver of the first mourning carriage. ”

“ On the Inglebys’ side of the wall lay a modern well-kept garden, not more than twenty years old. Edwin’s mother had a passion for flowers, and his father had made the gratification of her pleasure his favourite hobby, so that Edwin’s earliest memories of both of them were associated with the gathering of fruits and blooms, with the rich odours of summer, or, above all, the smell of newly-turned earth. This summer Mr. Ingleby had planted the long bed that stretched along the side of the house towards the door in Mrs. Barrow’s wall with masses of delicately-coloured stocks. ”

“ The whole world had gone shouting and laughing mad. Edwin heard on a hundred lips the name of Airs and Graces. It meant nothing to him. Now he could only think of escape; and as the crowd bulged and burst once more over the course he made a dash for the other side.
Mounted police were pressing back the tide; but Edwin was small, and quick enough to get over. He pushed and wriggled his way through masses to which there seemed to be no end. Only in the rear of the stands the density of the crowd thinned. ”

“ They never mentioned his mother, but it was so obvious that their maidenly commonplaces were only designed to divert his mind from the tragic shadow which he carried with him, that Edwin felt inclined to scandalise them by talking of it. . . . Their deliberate awkward kindness, the cautious glances which they exchanged, the little sniff of emotion which Mrs. Barrow concealed in her empty teacup, when the pitiful contemplation of Edwin’s youth and innocence overcame her, would have been amusing if there had been room for anything amusing on the darkened earth. ”

“ In the human wreckage of the casualty department there was no great variety; but all of it was new to Edwin and W.G., and they threw themselves into the labour with enthusiasm, working so hard from nine o’clock till one, that their backs ached and they lost all sense of the passage of time. Mather himself seemed to them a prodigy of skilfulness, so swift in his decisions, so certain and adroit in the work of his hands. Even the sister, whom Edwin had originally regarded as a mere woman, aroused their admiration by the ease with which she worked and her invincible good humour. ”

“ The atmosphere of luxurious indolence grew so heavy that it became too great an effort to think of carrying the rugs and deck-chairs back to the studies; and when Douglas had left them to keep an appointment with Griffin, Widdup and Edwin sat on till the meadows swam with soft golden light, till the tops of the pyramidal lime-trees became the colour of their blossoms, and the sun cast long shadows upon the yellow fields. ”

“ It was a moment that might have been difficult; but Edwin soon realised that the seriousness of the occasion, the fact that this young creature’s life was veritably in his hands, made modesty seem a thing of no account. In the eyes of this woman Edwin was not a young man but an agency of relief from pain. In the body that pain dominated there could be no room for blushes. Edwin, trying to summon all his hardly learned theory to his aid in practice, was suddenly impressed with the obligations that this confidence imposed on him. He remembered the terms of the Hippocratic oath. ”

“ Everybody, even those who couldn’t see anything, turned in the direction from which the sound came. Edwin turned with them. He couldn’t imagine why. And when he turned his eyes gazed straight into those of Miss Denning, the matron of the College Sanatorium, marvellously dressed for the occasion and leaning upon the innocent arm of Mr. Heal. Thank God, Mr. Heal was short-sighted! Edwin felt himself blushing. He knew for certain that she had seen and recognised him; for his sick headaches had often taken him to the Sanatorium and he had always been rather a favourite of hers. ”

“ Isaac followed Mr. Ingleby’s eyes towards these flowers.
“Purty, ban’t they?” he said with pride. “Your brother Will sent mother they.”
In the gloom of the fireplace, where a pile of turves smouldered, mother began to dissociate herself from the surrounding brownness. She was a very old woman. Edwin had never seen any one so old—sitting bolt upright in a straight-backed oaken chair. Her face seemed to Edwin very beautiful, for extreme age had taken from it all the extraneous charm that smoothness and colour give, leaving only the sheer chiselled beauty of feature. ”

“ They were a strangely mixed company: a few of them, of whom Edwin himself was one, mere boys, to whom the air of the schoolroom still clung: some obvious men of the world, scrupulously, even doggily dressed, in an age when the fancy waistcoat had reached the zenith of its daring; others, and one other in particular, a seedy looking person with a dejected fair moustache, were clearly old enough to be the fathers of the youngest. ”

“ Edwin found himself becoming keen on cricket—not indeed from any ambitions towards excellence, though the mere fact of sitting at Mr. Cleaver’s feet was an inspiration, but for the sheer joy of tiring himself at the nets and the peculiar charm of the game’s setting of sunburn and white flannels and green fields. Cricket was a part of this divine summer, and therefore to be worshipped. ”

“ Edwin went to her, and she kissed him. Her face was so cold and smooth that she might almost have been dead.
“And how is your dear wife, John?”
“I’ve had a terrible blow, Aunt Lydia. I’ve lost her.”
“Ah . . . that was bad for you, and bad for the boy, too.”
“I shall never get over it.” Mr. Ingleby’s voice trembled.
“Yes, of course, you say that. It’s natural that you should. You’re young. But when you live to be as old as I am you’ll know better. You will get over it. When a few years have gone by you’ll marry again.”
“Never, Aunt Lydia . . . never. . .” ”

“ At last his father rose to his feet in the dim room, and Edwin rose with him. He spoke, and the tears still choked his voice and his bearded lip trembled. “Edwin,” he said, “I shall never be able to get over this. I’m broken. . . . My life . . . my life has . . .” He stopped.
“You don’t know what she was to me, Eddie. I can’t realise, Eddie, there are only two of us left. We must help each other to bear it. We must be brave.”
Strange that a phrase which had sounded like cant on the lips of Aunt Laura should now seem the truest and most natural thing imaginable. ”

“ On a stifling morning, when the blue brick pavements of North Bromwich reflected a torrid heat, and a warm wind, blowing like a sirocco from the black desert outside, swept the streets with clouds of dust, Edwin, Maskew, and W.G. waited in the cloakroom outside the Dean’s office to see the results of the examination posted. Maskew was the only one of the three who showed no signs of nervousness; for W.G. could never overcome the difficulty of expressing his thoughts on paper, and Edwin had passed ten minutes of purgatory with an outside examiner in the anatomy viva. ”

“ Ingleby would have consented, and his father’s sacrifice would have thrown such a weight of obligation on him that life would not have been worth living. Indeed, if, in the end, he should have failed, his shame would have been intolerable. These reflections on the humility and penury of his father always plunged Edwin into a debauch of sentiment in which he would return with the zeal of a prodigal to the resolutions that he had made at the time of his mother’s death. ”

“ Heal had grown to hate mathematics. But they did learn to find their way about the paths of the sky, and often, on frosty winter evenings, when the clear vault above the downs was like jet, Edwin and Widdup would walk up and down the Quad and imagine that they could feel the heave of the spinning world, while they watched Capella scale the dome of sky. ”

“ They left the churchyard by a narrow lane that always climbed. They passed the village inn: a long, windswept building, so bare and so exposed to weather that even the tenure of the lichen on the tiles seemed precarious. Over the lintel a weathered board showed them the name of Ingleby in faded letters. Edwin pointed to it.
“Yes,” said his father. “I suppose he is some remote cousin of yours. Everybody that is left in this village must be related to us in some degree; though I don’t suppose any of them would remember me. You see, I went to Axcombe when I was a good deal younger than you.” ”

“ A soft winter drizzle had set in from the West, and in the jaded Halesby Road nebulous street lamps were reflected in a layer of black slime that covered the wood-pavement. The shop windows were misted with rain, and the few people who had ventured out into the street trod carefully as though they were afraid of slipping. A brutal night if ever there was one. Plodding up the street with the rain in his face he found that he was passing the end of Prince Albert’s Place. ”

“ Edwin prepared himself for the demonstrator’s tutorials as rigorously as if he had been approaching a vital examination; he spent long hours in his bedroom, utterly heedless of his wide prospect of wintry fields, thinking of nothing but his collection of bleached bones, now carefully marked with coloured chalks to show the origins and insertions of muscles, and particularly those intricate fretted plates that are joined to form the fragile casket of the human skull. ”

“ In the middle of the crowd that stuck congested in the porch Edwin found himself wedged between Douglas and Griffin. They whispered together behind his back. “Well, are you going?”
“Of course I’m going, I told you.”
“You’ve fixed it up with her?”
“Yes, she’s up to any sport. Why don’t you come with us?”
“Two’s company. . . .”
“Go on with you. . . . You can easily pick up another. You’re not a sportsman, Duggie.”
“I don’t take risks of that kind. You bet your boots I don’t. Why don’t you ask Ingleby? He’s a blood. Says he went to see the Birches. And he’s flush, too. Won the sweep.” ”

“ In all that summer Edwin scarcely saw a patch of living green except the leprous plane-trees that sickened in the hospital square. The current of his life flowed slowly through the culverts of grimy brick that led from Lower Sparkdale to the Infirmary. He became part of the stream of dusty humanity that set citywards and back again with the regularity of a tide. ”

“ Ingleby received him at the breakfast table with unconcealed emotion. “You’ve got your scholarship, Edwin. I’m . . . I’m as pleased as if I’d won it myself. I never had the opportunity of winning a scholarship in my life.” The hand in which he held the letter trembled. He kissed Edwin fervently. “This is a great day for me,” he said: and Edwin, glowing, felt that anything was worth while that could give such pleasure to the man that he had determined to love. ”

“ It gave Edwin a picture of Sammy, with his gray, impassive face, weaving his tunes out of the silence of the night by candlelight in the high turret-room which that solitary master inhabited, and for this alone he began to love the St. Luke’s Psalter. It is certain, at any rate, that his early acquaintance with strange harmonic ideas made a great deal of the most modern music easy to him in after years. ”