The Citadel by A. J. Cronin

Author:A. J. Cronin [Cronin, A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

Chapter Sixteen

Andrew woke up in the middle of that night groaning:

‘Am I a fool, Chris? Chucking away our living – a sound job? after all, I was getting a few private patients lately. And Llewellyn has been pretty decent. Did I tell you? – he half promised to let me consult at the hospital. And the Committee – they aren’t a bad lot when you cut out the Chenkin crowd. I believe in time when Llewellyn retired they might have made me head doctor in his place.’

She comforted him, quiet, reasonable, lying beside him in the darkness.

‘You don’t really want us to stay in a Welsh mining practice all our lives, my dear. We’ve been happy here, but it’s time for us to move on.’

‘But listen, Chris,’ he worried, ‘we haven’t enough to buy a practice yet. We ought to have collected some more money before we hoofed it.’

She answered sleepily. ‘What has money got to do with it? Besides, we’re going to spend all we’ve got – almost – on a real holiday. Do you realise you’ve hardly been away from these old mines for nearly four years.’

Her spirit infected him. Next morning the world seemed a gay and careless place. At breakfast, which he ate with new relish, he declared:

‘You’re not a bad old girl, Chris. Instead of getting up on the platform and telling me you expect Big Things of me, now that it’s time for me to go out and make my mark in the world, you just –’

She was not listening to him. Irrelevantly she protested.

‘Really, dear, I wish you wouldn’t bunch the paper so! I thought it was only women did that. How do you expect me to read my gardening column?’

‘Don’t read it.’ On his way to the door he kissed her, smiling. ‘Think about me.’

He felt adventurous, prepared to take his chance with life. Besides, the cautious side of him could not avoid glancing at the assets side of his balance sheet. He had his MRCP, an honours MD and over £300 in the bank. With all this behind them surely they would not starve.

It was well that their intention stood firm. A revulsion of sentiment had swept upon the town. Now that he was going of his own free will everybody wished him to remain.

The climax came a week after the meeting when Owen unsuccessfully headed a deputation to Vale View to ask Andrew to reconsider his decision. Thereafter the feeling against Ed Chenkin swelled to the verge of violence. He was booed in the Rows. Twice he was played home from the mine by the penny-whistle band, an ignominy usually reserved by the workmen for a blackleg.

In the face of all these local reverberations it was strange how lightly his thesis appeared to have shaken the outer world. It had gained him his MD. It had been printed in the Journal of Industrial Health, in England and published as a brochure in the United States by the Association of American Hygiene.

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