CHAPTER XX

A hundred rows of mud-colored brick “boxes,” set face to face and back to back. Scores of cobbled streets, a gray band of stone, and two gray bands of slate. Interminable brown doors and dingy windows; interminable black and sour back yards, festoons of sodden underclothing, moping chickens caged up in corners, rubbish, broken boxes, cinder heaps, and smoke.

Hardness in every outline, in the dirty, yellow-walled houses, in the faces of the women, and in the crude straightness of every street. An atmosphere of granite, brick, cast-iron, and slate. No softness of contour, no flow of curves, no joy in the sweep of land or sky. The color scheme a smirch of gray, yellow, and dingy red. Scarcely a streak of green in the monotonous streets. The sky itself, at best a dusty blue, sliced up into lengths by slate roofs and cast-iron gutters.

To the south of this wilderness of brick and stone rose the chimneys and cage wheels of the Wilton collieries. Here the sketch had been worked in charcoal, black wharves beside a black canal, hillocks of coal, black smoke, black faces. The whirr of wheels, the grinding of shovels, the banging of trucks being shunted to and fro along the sidings. The eternal spinning of the cage wheels, the panting and screaming of engines, the toil and travail of a civilization that disembowels the very earth.

In Wilton High Street, where electric trams sounded their gongs all day, and cheap shops ogled the cheap crowd, there was a broad window that had been colored red and topped by a line of gold some eight feet above the pavement. On this sanguinary window ran an inscription in big, black letters:

 

Dr. Tugler, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

Consulting hours, 8 to 10 and 6 to 9

Consultations one shilling. Medicines included.

 

Those be-shawled ladies who carried their rickety infants into Dr. Tugler’s shop, might find the doctor and one of his two professional assistants seated in the two cheap, cane-bottomed arm-chairs before two baize-topped tables. There were wooden benches round the room, a glass-fronted cabinet in one corner, medical almanacs on the walls, a placard over the mantel-piece instructing patients “To bring their own bottles.” An inner door with ground glass panels led to a dingy surgery, a white sink in one corner, and a dresser littered with instrument cases, packages of lint, reels of plaster, and boxes of bandages. A third door opened from the surgery into the dispensary, a veritable bower of bottles, lit by a skylight, a ledger desk under the gas-jet in one corner, medicine glasses standing on the sloppy drug-stained dresser, a spirituous reek filling the little room. Oil-cloth, worn patternless, covered all the floors. The gas-jet in the surgery flared perpetually through all the winter months, for the sky-light was too small and dirty to gather much light from the December skies.

It was Saturday night at Wilton, and hucksters were shouting up their wares in High Street, despite the fine and almost impalpable rain that wrapped everything in a dismal mist. The gongs of the tram-cars clanged impatiently past Dr. Tugler’s surgery, where a row of stalls ranged beside the pavement gathered a crowd of marketers under their naphtha lamps. Trade had been busy behind the red window that Saturday evening. Piles of shillings and sixpences lay in the drawer of Dr. Tugler’s consulting-table, small change left by an?mic, work-worn women, who needed food and rest more than Dr. Tugler’s cheap and not very effectual mixtures. The room had been full of the bronchitic coughing of old men, the whining of children, the scent of wet, warm, dirty clothes.

The front room had emptied itself at last, an old woman with a cancerous lip being the last to go. Dr. Tugler was sitting at the table nearest to the red window, counting up the miscellaneous and greasy pile of small coins, and packing them pound by pound into a black hand-bag that lay across his knees. He was a vulgar little man with a cheerful, blustering manner, and a kind of plump and smiling self-assurance that was never at a loss for the most dogmatic of opinions.

Among the Wilton colliery folk he was known distinctively as “the doctor.” A man of finer fibre might have been wasted amid such surroundings. Dr. Tugler, florid, bumptious, ever ready with a semi-decent joke, and boasting an aggressive yet generous aplomb, contrived to impress his uncultured clients with a sense of sufficiency and of rough-and-ready power. But for his frock-coat, and for the binoral stethoscope that dangled from the top button of his fancy waistcoat, he might have been taken for a prosperous publican, a bookmaker, or a butcher.

Dr. Tugler swept the remaining small change into his bag, locked it, and jumped up with the air of a man eminently satisfied with the day’s trade. The assistant at the other table was pencilling a few notes into a pocket-book, and humming the tune of a popular, music-hall song. The surgery door opened as Dr. Tugler deposited the black bag on the mantel-shelf, and a swarthy collier, with one hand bandaged, came slouching out, swinging an old cap.

“Good-night, doctor.”

Dr. Tugler faced round with his hands stuffed into his trousers pockets.

“Hallo, Smith, find the knife sharp, eh?”

The man grinned, and glanced at his bandaged hand.

“There was a tidy lot of muck in it,” he said.

“Good thing we’ve saved the finger. Paid your bob, eh? Right. Keep off the booze, and go straight home to the missus.”

Tugler turned down the gas-jets, and entered the surgery. A big man in a white cotton coat was bending over the sink and washing a porcelain tray under the hot-water tap. Blood-stained swabs of wool lay in an old paper basket under the sink. A couple of scalpels, a pair of dressing forceps and scissors, a roll of lint, dental forceps still clutching a decayed tooth, an excised cyst floating in a bowl of blood-stained water, such were the details that completed the picture of a general surgeon at work.

Dr. Tugler cast a quick and observant glance round the room, turned down the gas a little, and counted the bandages in a card-board box on the dresser.

“Feel fagged, Murchison, eh?”

The big man turned, his lined and powerful face wearing a look of patient self-restraint.

“No—thanks.”

“Be easy on the bandages,” and Dr. Tugler gave a frowning wink; “we can’t do the beggars à la West End on a bob a time.”

The big man nodded, and began to clean his knives.

“A message has just come round from Cinder Lane, No. 10. Primip. Glad if you’d see to it. I feel dead fagged myself.”

An almost imperceptible sigh and a slight deepening of the lines about Murchison’s mouth escaped Dr. Tugler’s notice.

“I will start as soon as I have cleaned these instruments. No. 10, is it?”

“Yes. Here’s the week’s cash.”

Dr. Tugler rapped down three sovereigns and three shillings on the dresser, and turning into the dispensary, busied himself by inspecting the contents of the bottles with the critical eye of a man who realizes that details decide the difference between profit and loss.

In ten minutes Murchison had taken off his white cotton coat, pocketed his money, put on a blue serge jacket and overcoat, and taken a rather shabby bowler from the peg on the surgery door. He picked up an obstetric bag from under the dresser, and crossing the outer room with a curt “good-night” to his fellow-assistant, plunged into the glare and drizzle of Wilton High Street.

Despite the rain, the sidewalks were crowded with Saturday-night bargainers who loitered round the stalls under the flaring naphtha lamps. The strident voices of the salesmen mingled with the clangor of the passing teams and the plaintive whining of the overhead wires. Here and there the glare from a public-house streamed across the pavement, and through the swing-doors, Murchison, as he passed, had a glimpse of the gaudy fittings, the glittering glasses, the rows of bottles set out like lures to catch the eye. The bars were crowded with men and women, the discordant hubbub of their voices striking out like the waters of a mill-race into the more even murmur of the streets.

The man with the bag shuddered as he passed these glittering dens, and felt the hot breath of the “drink beast” on his face. His eyes seemed to fling back the glare of the lights with a fierceness that was not far from fanatical disgust. Possibly there was an element of mockery for him in the coarse chattering and the braying laughter. His fingers contracted about the handle of his bag. He seemed to hurry with the air of some grim wayfarer in the Pilgrim’s Progress, escaping from sights and sounds poignant with the prophecies of despair.

In Cinder Lane, Murchison found the door of No. 10 half open, and a man sitting reading in his shirt-sleeves in the little front parlor. A significant whimpering came from the room above, the first faint crying of a new-born child. A flash of relief passed across Murchison’s face. The sound reprieved him from a possible night-watch in the stuffy heat of a room that smelled of paraffin, stale beer, and unwashed clothes.

“All over, I think.”

The man with the paper rose, removed his clay pipe, jerked back his chair, and grinned.

“Jus’ so, doctor.”

“So much the better for every one.”

“Lord love you, doctor, I feel as though I’d bin sittin’ on ’ot coals for ten mortal hours.”

Murchison swung his overcoat over a chair, and climbed the stairs, a half open door showing a band of light blotted by the shadow of a woman’s head. The proud father returned to his pipe and to his paper and the mug of beer on the table at his elbow. He looked a mere lad, sickly, beardless, hatchet-faced, with high shoulders and no chest. Coal-dust seemed to have been grimed into the pores of his greasy and wax-white skin.

The lad’s smirk was a quaint mixture of pride and sheepishness when Murchison came down the stairs half an hour later and congratulated him on the possession of a son.

“Glad it’s over, doctor. ’Ave a drop?” and he reached for a clean glass.

Murchison’s face hardened.

“No, thanks very much. Your wife has come through it very well.”

The man put his paper down and held Murchison’s overcoat for him.

“Well, it’s a mercy, doctor, that it ain’t twins.”

“Not a double responsibility, eh?”

The lad winked.

“Why, there’s a cove bin writin’ in this paper as ’ow every man ought t’ have a woppin’ fam’ly. I sh’ld like to ask ’im, ‘’ow about the bread and cheese?’”

“And the beer, perhaps?”

“Ther, doctor, only two bob a week—reg’lar. That ain’t ruination. It’s a bit sweaty down in the coal-’ole. I give the missus most of the money.”

“So do I,” and Murchison smiled at the lad with something fatherly in his eyes.

“You do that, doctor?”

“I do.”

“Well, there ain’t much mistake in makin’ the missus yer banker when she’s clean and tidy, and looks to a man’s buttons.”

Murchison turned out again into the drizzling rain, and swung along a dozen dreary streets that resembled each other much as one curbstone resembles another. A church clock was striking eleven as he reached a row of little, red brick villas on the outskirts of the town, with a dirty piece of waste-land in front and the black canal behind. He stopped before a gate that bore, as though in irony, the name “Clovelly.” There was no blue, boundless Atlantic within glimpse of Wilton town, no flashing up of golden coast-lines in the sunlight, no towering cliffs piling green foam towards a sapphire sky.

The front door opened at the click of the garden gate, if ten square feet of garden and a gravel-path could be flattered with the name of a garden. A woman’s figure stood outlined by the lamp burning in the hall. She was dressed in a cheap cotton blouse, and skirt of dark-blue serge, but the clothes looked well on her, better than silks on the body of another.

Her husband’s face drew out of the darkness into the light. Catherine’s eyes had rested half-questioningly on it for a moment, the eyes of a woman whose love is ever on the watch.

“I am late, dear,” and he went in with a feeling of tired relief.

They kissed.

“Come, your supper is ready. Dear me, what a long day you have had!” and she glanced at the bag, understanding at once what had kept him to such an hour.

“How are the youngsters?”

“Asleep since nine.”

Catherine took his coat and hat, and put her arm through his as they went into the little front room together. A coke fire glowed in the diminutive grate, a saucepan full of soup stood steaming on the trivet. Murchison sat down at the table that was half covered by a white cloth. At the other end lay his wife’s work-basket, with a dozen pairs of socks and stockings. Her eyes had been tired before the opening of the garden gate. Now they were bright and vital, for love had wiped all weariness away—that heroic, quiet love that conquers a thousand sordid trifles.

“Saturday is always busy.”

“I know,” and she smiled as she poured him out his soup.

“I think we had nearly a hundred people to-night. Thanks, dear, thanks,” and he touched her hand.

Catherine sat down on the sofa, and took up her stockings, seeing that he was tired, too tired to care to talk. Her woman’s instinct was rarely at a loss, and a tired man appreciates restfulness in a wife.

When he had finished, she rose and drew the solitary arm-chair before the fire, and brought him his pipe and his tobacco. Murchison’s face softened. He never lost the consciousness of all she had forgiven.

He drew out the week’s money when they had talked for a while, and handed the three sovereigns to her, keeping only the three shillings for himself. Catherine wore the key of their cash-box tied to a piece of ribbon round her neck. It was Murchison who had insisted on this precaution. Every week he gave the money to her, and saw her lock it in the cash-box on her desk.

“Shall I still keep the key, dear?”

“Keep it.”

“Yes,” and she colored like a girl, “you know that I trust you.”

“I know it, but I have sworn to myself, dear, to risk nothing.”

She rose slowly and put the money away, glad in her heart of his quiet and determined strength.

“I understand—”

“That I mean to crush this curse now—once—and forever.”

Murchison finished his pipe, and Catherine put her work away. The front door was locked, the gas turned out. Husband and wife went up the stairs together, Catherine carrying the lighted candle. She opened a door leading from the narrow landing, and they went in, hand in hand, to look at their two children who were asleep.

A wistful smile hovered about Murchison’s mouth.

“Poor little beggars, they don’t see much of me!”

He was thinking of the past and of the future. Indeed, he thought the same thoughts nightly as he looked at the two heads upon the pillows.

“Gwen is looking better again.”

“Is she?” and he sighed.

“We had quite a long walk to-day before it began to rain.”

They spoke in undertones, Murchison leaning over Gwen’s little bed. He looked at her very lovingly, as though wishing to feel her small arms about his neck.

“Good-night, little one. Good-night, Mischief Jack,” and he turned to his wife with the air of a man repeating a solemn and nightly prayer.