The emergency was Jenny, he knew that with a sudden chilling certainty. He stood in the bare waiting-room listening to the sound of feet crossing and recrossing the vestibule. He heard the whine of the lift. He heard more steps. A period of silence followed, then he heard a sound which absolutely horrified him: it was the sound of someone running. Someone ran from the theatre to Hilda’s room and then ran back again. His heart contracted. When discipline yielded itself to such haste the emergency must be serious oh, desperately serious. The thought caused him to stand motionless as though frozen.
A long time passed, a very long time. He did not know how long. Half an hour, perhaps an hour, he simply did not know. Immobilised, strained to an attitude of listening, his muscles refused to allow him to look at his watch.
Suddenly the door opened and Hilda entered the room. He could not believe it was Hilda, the change in her was so great; she seemed exhausted and spiritually spent. She said almost wearily:
“You had better go to see her now.”
He came forward hurriedly.
“What has happened?”
She looked at him.
“Hæmorrhage.”
He repeated the word.
Her lips contracted. She said very distinctly and bitterly:
“The moment Sister came out of the room she raised herself in bed. She reached for a mirror. To see if she was pretty.” The bitterness, the defeatedness in Hilda’s voice was terrible. “To see if she was pretty, if her hair was straight, to use her lipstick. Can you think of it? Reaching for a mirror, after all I’d done.” Hilda broke off, wholly overcome, her hardness of that afternoon forgotten, her sole thought the destruction of her handiwork. It prostrated her. She flung the door wide with a helpless gesture. “You’d better go now if you wish to see her.”
He went out of the waiting-room and through the ward and into Jenny’s room. Jenny lay flat on her back with the end of the bed raised high on blocks. Sister Clegg was giving Jenny an injection into her arm. The room was in confusion, basins everywhere and ice and towels. The pieces of a smashed hand mirror were lying on the floor.
Jenny’s face was the colour of clay. She breathed in little shallow gasps. Her eyes were upon the ceiling. They were terrified, the eyes; they seemed to cling to the ceiling as though afraid to let the ceiling go.
His heart melted and flooded through him. He fell on his knees beside the bed.
“Jenny,” he said. “Oh, Jenny, Jenny.”
The eyes removed themselves from the ceiling and wavered towards him. Excusingly, the white lips whispered:
“I wanted to be nice for you.”
Tears ran down his face. He took her bloodless hand and held it.
“Jenny,” he said. “Oh, Jenny, Jenny, my dear.”
She whispered, as though it were a lesson:
“I wanted to be nice for you.”
Tears choked him; he could not speak. He pressed the white hand against his cheek.
“I’m thirsty,” she gasped feebly. “Can I have a drink?”
He took the drinking cup — funny, like a little tea-pot! — and held it to her white lips. She raised her hand weakly and took the drinking-cup. Then a faint shiver went through her body. The liquid in the drinking-cup spilled all over her nightgown.
Everything had turned out for the best for Jenny in the end. The little finger of her hand which still held the drinking-cup was politely curved. That would have pleased Jenny if she had known. Jenny had died polite.
TWENTY-TWO
At half-past eight on the morning after Jenny’s funeral David stepped on to the platform of Sleescale Station and was met by Peter Wilson. The whole of the previous day, October 15th, had been a swift unreality of sadness, completing the last pitiful arrangements, following all that remained of Jenny to the cemetery, placing a wreath of flowers upon her grave. He had travelled from London by the night train and he had not slept much. Yet he did not feel tired; the keen wind blowing from the sea struck along the platform and braced him with a tense energy. He had a curious sense of physical resistance as he put down his suit-case and shook hands with Wilson.
“Here you are,” Wilson said, “and not before time.” Wilson’s slow, good-natured smile was absent. His little pointed beard made those restless jerks which always indicated some disturbance in his mind. “It’s a great pity you missed your meeting yesterday, the Committee was extremely put about. You can’t know what we’re up against.”
“I imagine it’s going to be a hard fight,” David answered quietly.
“Perhaps harder,” Wilson declared. “Have you heard who they’re putting up against you?” He paused, searching David’s eyes with a perturbed inquiry; then he threw out violently: “It’s Gowlan.”
David’s heart seemed to stand still, his body to contract, ice-like, at the sound of the name.
“Joe Gowlan!” he repeated, tonelessly.
There was a strained silence. Wilson smiled grimly.
“It only came out last night. He’s at the Law now — living in style. Since he’s opened the Neptune he’s become the local swell. He’s got Ramage in tow, and Connolly and Low. He’s got most of the Conservative Executive eating out of his hand. There’s been a big push from Tynecastle, too. Yes, he’s been nominated; it’s all arranged and settled.”
A heavy bewilderment mingled with a kind of terror came over David — he could not believe it, no, the thing was too wildly, too madly impossible. He asked mechanically:
“Are you serious?”
“I was never more serious in my life.”
Another silence. It was true, then, this staggering and brutal news. With a set face, David picked up the suit-case and started off with Wilson. They came out of the station and down Cowpen Street without exchanging a word. Joe, Joe Gowlan, turning over and over, relentlessly, in David’s brain. There was no doubt about Joe’s qualifications — he had money, success, influence. He was like Lennard, for instance, who, with a fortune made from gimcrack furniture, had nonchalantly bought Clipton at the last election — Lennard, who had never made a speech in his life, who spent his rare visits to the House standing treat in the bar and doing cross-word puzzles in the smoke-room. One of the nation’s legislators. And yet, thought David bitterly, the easy-going Lennard was hardly the exemplar. Joe would use the House for more than cross-word puzzles. There was no knowing to what diverse and interesting uses Joe might turn his position if he won the seat.
Abruptly David turned away from his bitterness. That was no help. The only answer to the situation was that Joe must not get in. O God, he thought, walking into the keen sea wind, O God, if I only do one thing more let me beat Joe Gowlan at this election.
Filled more than ever with the sense of his obligations, he had breakfast with Wilson at Wilson’s house and they went over the position intensively. Wilson did not spare his facts. David’s unforeseen delay in returning to Sleescale had created an unfavourable feeling. Moreover, as David already knew, the executive of the Labour Party had not favoured his re-nomination; ever since his speech on the Mines Bill he had been marked down as a rebel, treated with hostility and suspicion. But the party, indebted to the Miners’ Federation for affiliation fees, had been unwilling to block the Federation nominee. Yet this had not prevented them sending an agent from Transport House in an effort to influence the miners towards another candidate.
“He came up like a confounded spy,” Wilson growled in conclusion. “But he didn’t get any change out of us. The Lodge wanted you. They pressed the matter with the Divisional Executive. And that was the end of it.”
After that, Wilson insisted that David go home to get some sleep before the committee meeting at three. David felt no need of sleep, but he went home; he wanted to think things out by himself.