The Judas Tree by A. J. Cronin Page A

on? No, no. Your professor’s advice is sound. Did he manage to find ye something?’
    Moray nodded, unwillingly.
    â€˜There’s a boat, the Pindari , leaving next week from the Tail of the Bank – for Calcutta – a seven weeks’ round trip.’
    Another pause followed, then Douglas reflected:
    â€˜A voyage to India. Ye’d get sunshine there.’
    â€˜Do you want to go?’ the aunt asked.
    â€˜Good God, no.… Sorry, Aunt Minnie. It’s the last thing I want. Except that if I must go the pay is good, ninety pounds in all. We could furnish our house with it, Mary.’
    All that evening the matter was threshed out and at last was definitely settled. Despite the divergence of opinion, all, even Mary, yielded in the end to the baker’s simple argument; health came before all other considerations.
    â€˜What good will ye be to anyone – to Mary, yourself, or to Glenburn – if ye don’t get yourself well? Ye maun go, lad, that’s all about it.’
    On the following Tuesday he crossed to Greenock with Mary. It was a wet, stormy afternoon. He looked and felt ill, and the misery of the coming separation lay upon him. And upon her too, yet she was brave, resolved not to give way. Under her windblown tweed hat, raincoat buttoned to her chin, her face was set in a mould of resolute cheerfulness. The Pindari , which had arrived overnight from Liverpool to take on a cargo of woollens and mill machinery, lay in the estuary veiled by a driving mist. The wind swept in staggering gusts across the docks, but she insisted on coming to the pier end to see him off, her hand beside his, under the handle of his old leather suitcase, sharing its weight. As the tender plunged and bumped in the strong tide beneath, they held each other closely, passionately, under the grey and dismal sky. Rain, like tears, ran down her cold cheeks, but her lips and breath were warm. Sick at heart, he could not bear to part from her.
    â€˜I’ll take a chance and stay, Mary. God knows I don’t want to go.’
    â€˜But you must, dear, for both our sakes. I’ll write to you, and count every minute till you’re back to me.’ Just before she broke away and ran back along the jetty, she took a small package from her raincoat pocket and pressed it into his hand. ‘Just so you’ll mind me, Davie.’
    In the cabin of the heaving tender, on the way out to the ship, he undid the wrappings and looked at what she had given him, It was an old thin gold locket, smaller than a florin piece, that had belonged to her mother. Inside she had placed a little snapshot of herself and in the back, carefully pressed, a single flower of the bluebells he had picked for her at Gairsay.

Chapter Nine
    He clambered up the swaying gangway and came aboard. The merchandise from Winton had already been loaded; he had barely time to report to the captain before the tugs were alongside and they began to nose cautiously down the Firth. He stood on deck, striving to penetrate the mist that shrouded the vague line of the shore where Mary would be standing, watching the departure of this spectral ship. His heart was filled with sadness and love. There were few people on deck – he knew they were returning to Tilbury to pick up the main body of passengers – and the damp emptiness and dripping stanchions increased his melancholy. The deep, despondent sounding of the fog-horn gave him a strange sense of foreboding. As the mist closed down, obliterating the shore, he turned and went below to find his quarters.
    His cabin was aft, on the starboard side, next to the chief engineer’s, furnished in polished teak wood with red curtains to the ports, a fitted locker and book rack, and a red-shaded bunk lamp, all particularly snug. A washstand with a metal basin that tipped up to let the water away stood in the comer, and above, on a guarded bracket, an electric fan. His consulting room and