A Song of Sixpence by A. J. Cronin Page B

me back, but I went forward and into the room. It is a moment I have never forgotten.
    Father lay on his side with his head over the edge of the bed. He was coughing, coughing and coughing, as though he would never stop, and from his lips a bubbling scarlet stream gushed out. His face was the colour of clay. Mother knelt by the side of the bed. One hand held Father’s head, the other with difficulty supported the big white basin from the washstand. The basin was half full of that scarlet froth which, all at once, sick with horror, I knew to be blood. There was blood everywhere, on the sheets of the disordered bed, spattered on Mother’s nightdress, even on her hands and face. Without changing her position or taking her eyes from Father, Mother spoke to me, in that same strained note of anguished command.
    â€˜Laurie! Run for Dr Ewen. Go now. Immediately. Hurry, for pity’s sake.’
    I turned and ran, ran from sheer shock. Without stopping to put on my jersey and trousers, a sensible act that would have delayed me not more than half a minute, I ran straight out of the house into the street in nothing but my nightshirt. Barefooted I scudded along the pavement of the Terrace, my heart already beating against my ribs. The darkness made my speed seem beyond all human speed. I knew that never before had I run so fast. At the end of Prince Albert Road I swung into Colquhoun Crescent, then downhill to Victoria Street where, ahead of me, halfway to the Esplanade, I saw the red lamp outside Dr Ewen’s house. A square, ornamental lamp embossed with the town arms—he had once been Provost of Ardfillan. Not a soul was in sight. The empty silence was broken only by my gasping breaths as I ran and ran, into the doctor’s driveway at last, not caring for the hurt of the gravel on my feet, and up the steps of his front porch. I pressed the night bell long and hard, heard it buzz loudly within the house. For some painful moments of suspense nothing stirred, then as I pressed again a light went on upstairs. Presently the door was unlocked. The doctor stood there in his dressing-gown.
    I guessed that he would be angry at being disturbed since, from my parents’ conversation, I knew him to be a difficult man. Worse still, had not Father quarrelled with him, cast off and ceased to be his patient? Before he could speak I gasped
    â€˜Please, Dr Ewen, come to 7 Prince Albert Terrace at once. Father is bleeding terribly.’
    Yes, he had meant to show annoyance, even anger, that exasperation experienced by a doctor knocked up in the middle of the night after a hard day’s work. But instead he compressed his lips and stared at me in a kind of wonder.
    â€˜Please do come, sir. You know my father, Carroll is the name. Never mind anything else. Just come.’
    He still stared at me.
    â€˜You come,’ he said. ‘Out the cold.’
    I followed him inside.
    â€˜Is your father coughing much?’
    â€˜Oh yes, sir, very much.’
    He muttered something under his breath.
    I sat in the hall while he went upstairs. Above the hallstand a stag’s head mounted on the wall stared down at me with glassy implacable eyes. I heard the slow pendulum beat of a clock from another room.
    The doctor was not long in dressing. When he came down he was carrying a pair of carpet slippers and a tartan travelling-rug. He tossed these to me.
    â€˜Cover yourself.’
    He watched while I draped myself in the plaid. I did not feel cold but my teeth were chattering. The slippers were old but they fitted not badly—Dr Ewen was a little man—and I could shuffle along in them. He picked up his black bag from the hall-stand. We set off.
    On the way uphill, though he kept glancing at me from time to time, he said not a word. But as we drew near the Terrace he unexpectedly exclaimed:
    â€˜You seem not a bad sort of boy. Don’t you ever be a fool.’
    I did not grasp his meaning. With my mission accomplished