The Stars Look Down (78 page)

David had an odd sense of warmth within his breast. It was his nature always to be moved by the evidence of generosity or kindness in others. And he felt these qualities shining in Sally’s affection for her father, the little man in the black misfitting suit and squeaky boots and made-up tie.

“You’re a brick, Sally,” he said. “You’ve never hurt anyone in all your life.”

“I don’t know about that.” She was still unsmiling. “I think perhaps I’m going to hurt you now.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” he inquired in surprise.

“Well,” she paused, opened her bag and slowly drew out a letter. “I’ve got something to tell you. I hate to, David. But I must, you’d hate me if I didn’t.” Another pause. “I’ve heard from Jenny.”

“Jenny?” he gasped.

“That’s right,” she answered in a low voice. “She sent me this letter.” And saying no more, she handed it to him.

Mechanically he took the letter. It was on thick violet notepaper with deckled edges, heavily scented, and written
in Jenny’s round, childish hand. The envelope had a deep violet lining. The address was: The Excelsior Hotel, Cheltenham, and the date a few weeks before.

***

“My dearest Sally,” the letter ran, “I feel I must take up my pen to bridge the long silence chiefly due to me being
abroad
. What you must have thought I really cannot imagine. But wait, Sally, till I tell you. When I was in Barnham I saw an advertisement in the paper for an old lady needing a companion. Well, just for fun like I applied and to my surprise I received a most polite answer enclosing railway fare to London. So I went to see her and oh my dear she would not take no. She was going abroad to Spain and Italy and Venice and Paris. She had white hair and the loveliest lace and a mauve dress and the most beautiful kind eyes. Such a fancy she took for me you could not believe. My dear, she kep saying your sweet, I cannot let you go, so to cut a long story short I just had to Sally. Oh I know I done wrong, but there I could not resist the travel. My dear we been
everywhere
—Spain and Italy and Venice and Paris, oh, and Egypt too. And
such
style! The best hotels everywhere, servants bowing and scraping, the opera in foreign places, a box mind you, with counts in uniform. Oh, Mrs. Vansittar cannot bear me out of her sight, she
dotes
on me. She says I am like a daughter to her. I am in her will too. I only read to her and go for drives and out to tea and that. Oh, and arrange the flowers. I must say I am lucky don’t you think so Sally. Oh, I would not make you jealous for untold gold Sally but if you could only see the style we keep your eyes would drop out your head. I meant to plan so we could meet but we are only hear a few days just to drink the waters then we are off again. Dear, dear life is very gay for me Sally I wish you were as lucky as me. Give my love to mar and Clarice and Phyllis and pa and of course your self. If you see David tell him I think about him sometimes. There is nobody in my life now, Sally, tell him that too. I think men is beasts. He was good to me though. Now I must close as it is time for me to dress for dinner, I have a new one black, with sequins, think on me in it Sally oh it’s a dream. Good-bye and God bless you then Yours for ever and a day Jenny.”

***

Silence. Then a long sigh came from David. He stared and stared at the grotesque effusion, every line of which breathed
a memory of Jenny, painful and pitiful, yet somehow tender.

“Why didn’t you let me know before?” he asked heavily at length.

“What was the use?” Sally answered in a quiet voice. She hesitated. “You see, I went to Cheltenham, to the Excelsior Hotel. Jenny had been there all right for a couple of days during the race week. But not with Mrs. what’s her name.”

“So I can gather,” he said grimly.

“Don’t let it upset you, David.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “Cheer up now, there’s a good lad. It’s something to know she’s alive and well.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s something.”

“Did I do right showing you?” she persisted anxiously.

He folded the letter and slipped it in the envelope, then placed it in his pocket.

“I’m glad you did, Sally,” he said. “Surely I’m the one who ought to know.”

“Yes. That’s what I thought.”

Another silence fell, during which Alf rejoined them. He glanced quickly from one to the other but he asked no questions. Alf’s taciturnity sometimes revealed itself as a gift greater than many tongues.

They left the hotel half an hour later, and David walked down with Alf and Sally to their bus. He forced himself to appear unconcerned, even to smile. Sally was happy—he had no wish to spoil her happiness with his private sorrow nor to make her feel that in showing him the letter—so obviously her duty—she had reopened a deep and painful wound. He knew the letter to be cheap and vulgar and untrue. With unerring vision he drew the picture: Jenny, alone for an hour in this cheap hotel while her companion visited the races or an adjoining pub; a momentary impulse to kill her boredom, utilise the visit to Cheltenham—such a refined resort!—to impress her family, appease the insatiable cravings of her romantic mind. He sighed. The scent from the cheap notepaper nauseated him.
Tell David I sometimes think about him.
Why should that touch him? But did she ever think about him? He wondered sadly. Yes, perhaps she did; even as he thought of her. For in spite of everything he could not forget her. He still felt tenderness towards Jenny; her memory lived with him, lay like a light shadow across his heart. He knew he might despise her, he might
even hate her. But he could never wipe that shadow, that secret tenderness away.

That night he sat brooding by the fire with the Report lying on the table untouched. He could not settle to it. A strange restlessness had seized him. Late at night he went out and took a long walk through the empty streets.

For days his restlessness continued, and he made no attempt to work. He walked. He revisited the Tate Gallery, standing silently before the small Degas,
Lecture de la Letter
, which had always fascinated him. He sought distraction and enlightenment in Tolstoi, whose nervous impressionism seemed to vibrate in sympathy with his present mood. Rapidly he re-read
Anna Karenina
,
Three Sons
,
Resurrection
and
The Power of Darkness
. He, too, saw human society as crossed by fateful and contrary tendencies, earthbound by a sordid self-interest, yet soaring occasionally with a gesture of nobility, of sacrifice, towards the sublime.

He was able, at last, to concentrate upon work. April passed into May. Then events came tumbling rapidly one upon another. It became more and more evident that the Government was about to die. Immersed in the preparation for the great campaign David had no opportunity for brooding. He found time to dash up to Tynecastle to attend Sally’s wedding. But for the rest he had not a moment to himself.

On May 10th Parliament dissolved, nominations were in by the 20th of the same month and on May 30th the General Election took place. The policy of Nationalisation was the main plank in the Labour Programme. Labour appealed to the nation in the great manifesto:

The state of the coal-mining industry is so tragic that measures would be immediately undertaken to alleviate the distress in the coal-fields, reorganise the industry from top to bottom, both on its productive and marketing sides, and shorten the hours of labour. A Labour majority would Nationalise the Mines and Minerals as the only condition for satisfactory working. It would develop the scientific utilisation of coal and its valuable by-products, now largely wasted.

The manifesto was signed.

J. R
AMSAY
M
ACDONALD
.

J. R.
CLYNES
.

H
ERBERT
M
ORRISON
.

A
RTHUR
H
ENDERSON
.

On that manifesto and its policy of Nationalisation Labour went into office. David increased his majority by almost two thousand. Nugent, Bebbington, Dudgeon, Chalmers, Cleghorn polled more votes than ever before. With a sense of exultation mingled with expectation, David returned to London. He visualised the Coal Mines Bill so long projected by the party, presented, pressed in the face of all protests and triumphantly debated. The thought mounted to his head like wine. At last, he thought, at last! On July 2nd, 1929, the Session formally opened.

On a foggy evening early that autumn David and Harry Nugent came out of the House and stood for a moment on the low steps in conversation. Ten weeks ago the King had made his speech from the throne. The Labour ministers had kissed hands. Jim Dudgeon, clothed in knee-breeches and resplendent cocked hat, had stood in supreme affability before a dozen press photographers. The Prime Minister, hurrying through a visit to the United States, had flashed a message to the Labour Party Conference:
We have to raise the coal industry from the depths into which long years of drifting and blind policy have plunged it.

But David’s face, seen indistinctly through the curling swathes of fog, wore an expression curiously at variance with so commendable a beginning. With hands in his pockets and head sunk into the upturned collar of his overcoat he had an air both troubled and restive.

“Shall we see the Bill this year?” he asked of Nugent. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

Tucking his scarf around his neck, Nugent answered in his quiet voice:

“Yes, by December, if what I’m told is correct.”

David stared out into the blank uncertainty of the fog which somehow seemed to symbolise his mood.

“Well, we must wait until we see the text of it,” he said with a sigh. “But I can’t understand this procrastination. It bothers me. It strikes me we’re all so busy trying to appear constitutional and respectable that no one has the time to show any initiative.”

“It isn’t just the question of time,” Nugent replied slowly. “It’s rather significant the Government keeps asking us to remember we’re in office and not in power.”

“I’ve heard that so often, Harry, I feel one day it’ll be on my tombstone.”

“You’ll hardly be in office then.” Nugent’s lips twitched slightly but immediately he was serious again. “Still, you’re right when you say we must wait for the Bill. And in the meantime hope for the best.”

“I am,” David answered grimly. There was a pause, during which a long dark car drew up silently opposite the entrance. Both men stared at it in silence. And presently, from the lobby behind, Bebbington appeared. He glanced at Nugent and David with his usual superficial air.

“Wretched evening,” he remarked suavely. “Can I give you a lift up west?”

David shook his head without speaking and Nugent answered:

“No, thanks. We’re waiting on Ralston.”

Bebbington smiled, rather aloof and condescending, then with a faint nod he descended the steps and briskly entered the car. The chauffeur placed a fur rug about his knees, and sprang into the driving-seat. The car purred into the fog.

“It’s extremely strange,” David reflected in an odd voice. “That car of Bebbington’s. It’s a Minerva, isn’t it? I wonder how exactly it came along?”

Harry Nugent glanced sideways at David, his eyes gently satirical beneath the bony ridges of his brow.

“Perhaps it’s for his services to the State,” he suggested.

“No, but seriously, Harry,” David persisted, unsmiling. “Bebbington’s perpetual wail is that he has no private means. And now that car and chauffeur.”

“Is it worth while being serious?” Nugent’s mouth twisted with unusual cynicism. “If you must know the truth, our friend Bebbington has just joined the board of Amalgamated
Collieries. Now, don’t look so desperate. There’s plenty of precedent. It’s all perfectly in order and neither you nor I nor anyone else dare say a word!”

“Amalgamated Collieries!” In spite of himself David’s tone was bitter. He glanced across at Nugent, stung by a swift resentment. Nugent’s passive acceptance of the fact added to his troubled restlessness. Nugent had been a tired man lately, rather jaded in his manner, slower, even, in his walk, accepting his failure to secure inclusion in the Cabinet almost with resignation. There was little doubt that Nugent’s health had failed greatly, his old vitality seemed spent. For that reason alone David did not pursue the subject. When Ralston arrived he switched the conversation to the meeting which they had all three promised to attend at the League of Democratic Control, and together they set out towards Victoria Street through the fog.

But David was not happy in his mind. The session, begun with such elation, continued strangely ineffectual, strangely like those sessions which had preceded it. Often, during the weeks which followed, his thoughts returned to Sleescale, to the men whom he had promised justice. He had pledged himself. The party as a whole had pledged itself. That pledge had won them the election. It must be implemented, even if it meant throwing themselves upon the country once again. The conditions in Sleescale were so appalling now—the town stricken with destitution, the men harbouring a hidden mutiny against the social order which condoned such misery—that he felt the growing urgency for action. He was in touch with the men, with Heddon, Ogle and the local officials. He
knew
. The situation was not imaginary but existed in grim reality. It was desperate.

In the face of the crisis David built all his hopes upon the new Coal Mines Bill. He saw it as the sole solution of the problem, the one logical means to achieve the vindication of his party and the salvation of the men. From time to time he had news of the Bill which was in the process of being drafted by a Cabinet Committee consulting with a special committee of the Miners’ Federation. But neither Nugent nor he was on this committee and information was of the scantiest. The internal administration of the party had become universally stringent and members of committee resented any form of approach. It was, in fact, impossible to discover the shape or context of the Bill. Nevertheless, the
Bill was coming forward, this much was assured. And, as December drew near, David told himself that his premonitions had been absurd, merely the echo of his own impatience. He waited with a growing expectancy.