And Now Good-bye (9 page)

“I know,” Howat said. “But then, you’re so certain
of the good you do—you know it—you can see it with your own
eyes—people whom you’ve cured walk about the streets as a living
reminder and proof.”

“And a damn sight worse off some of ’em are than if I’d
killed ’em! My dear chap, it isn’t a matter of doing good,
it’s a matter of carrying on with a job. If I once began to think in
terms of ethics, I should probably send old mother Roseway an overdose of
strychnine to-night—yes, and a dozen others I could name. Fortunately
I’m content to plod along at the job I’m paid for, and it’s
a pity you can’t be satisfied in the same way. After all, you preach,
you visit, you bury and marry and all that, you run no end of societies and
things—I should imagine you give pretty good value for money, on the
whole.”

“It isn’t even that. I’ve got to satisfy
myself.”

Ringwood approached Howat and laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “You
know, Freemantle, I should say you were in for a fairly serious breakdown if
you don’t take care. You want a holiday—some kind of change from
this infernal round of visiting old women and singing temperance
hymns.” His voice, which had been serious for a moment, relapsed into
its more usual bantering tone as he added: “Personally I never take
holidays of the ordinary kind—haven’t done for twenty
years—but when I feel myself getting a bit edgy I ring up Hudson and
hand him over my practice for two or three days; then I pop off to London and
have a real good beano. Dinner at a chophouse, then the silliest show I can
find, then a few drinks wherever I can get them, then—well, I
wouldn’t like to tell you all that is on the programme sometimes when
I’m in town. But it doesn’t often happen—I find a few days
of dissipation lasts me longer now than it used to. Growing old, I suppose
that’s what it is.”

Howat smiled. “I’m sure you can’t really see me doing
anything of that sort. Though as a matter of fact I do happen to be going to
London this Friday—I’ve got to come to terms with a firm about
supplying a new heating apparatus for the chapel.”

“Well, there’s your chance. You won’t be all day
choosing a heating apparatus. And I don’t expect you’ll hurry
back to this benighted spot by the very next train, will you?”

“I shall put up for the night at one of those bed-and-breakfast
hotels in Southampton Row, and probably catch the 10.30 back on Saturday
morning.”

“Rubbish, man! Stay in town and make a week-end of it!”

“Perhaps I might except for the fact that I have a Bazaar committee-
meeting and a young men’s class on Saturday evening and two services to
take on Sunday, as well as Sunday school and the Armistice service. People
don’t realise that a parson has work to do—indeed, I hardly dare
mention to most people that I’m going to London; they look at me with
that ‘lucky dog’ expression, as if I were just treating myself to
a holiday.”

“Which is precisely what you ought to be doing. Anyhow, you’ll
have one night in town—and take my tip: make a real night of
it—dinner and theatre—don’t stint
yourself—don’t go to bed till the small hours. Remember that: I
shall ask you, mind, when you get back, for a full report, and if you
haven’t taken my prescription there’ll be trouble!”

They laughed and chatted on for a few minutes longer, until Howat looked
at his watch and said he must be going. He rose and glanced shyly at
Ringwood, for momentarily he had an impulse to tell the doctor about that
pain in his throat. Why not, after all?—it would save a few guineas,
and if it were anything serious…but the mere possibility checked the words
long before they could have reached his lips. Ringwood had been a good friend
for years, and Howat suspected real affection behind the ferocity of manner;
it would all be so much less unnerving with someone whom he did not know.

He said good-bye, but Ringwood insisted on driving him back to the Manse.
When at last he was alone in his study, glancing at a few things that had
arrived by the evening post, he began to think in some detail about his
Friday plans. He would travel up by a morning train, arriving in London soon
after lunch; he could see the engineering people in the early afternoon, and
then be at Wimpole Street for four. And after that? It would depend, of
course, on how he felt; he might not be in the mood for anything at all. A
pity, perhaps, that he couldn’t get back to Browdley the same
night…He tore open the wrapper of the London
Times
, which was sent
him by post each day, and on the front page an announcement caught his
eye—a violin and piano recital at the Cavendish Hall on Friday evening;
a good programme, too—Schumann, Beethoven, Brahms. Sometimes, in
earlier years and at very rare intervals, he had made special trips to London
to attend some particular concert or recital; he had not done so lately, for
financial reasons, but now the thought of sitting once again in a
concert-hall and listening to Brahms (Brahms of all composers) gave him a
sudden pricking of anticipation 3 whatever dreadful things were in store for
him on Friday, that would at least help to redress the balance. He wondered
if they would play the Sonata in A major. The opening theme of the first
movement began to pour through his mind in a clear stream; it reminded him of
something, of somebody, of somewhere he had once heard it before, and not so
very long before—curious, yes—he remembered now—he had
heard that ’girl humming it at the beginning of one of those German
lessons, and he had been too surprised at the time to make a remark or ask a
question. Perhaps, he now reflected, she had picked it up from the cinema
musician.

He slept rather well (it might have been, he guessed, that
Ringwood’s pick-me-up had contained something to make him do so) and
woke up feeling considerably refreshed; then, after breakfast, a rare mood
seized him, and for the first time for many months he did not spend his
allotted morning hours in the study. Instead he adjourned to the room on the
opposite side of the lobby—the parlour, a chilly bay-windowed apartment
used only on fairly infrequent occasions, and furnished in a style which
future period connoisseurs will perhaps extol as Edwardian. There was a
litter of spindly chairs, a large-patterned and highly-coloured Axminster,
and a good deal of poor-quality inlaid work and china in cabinets. The only
object, however, which lured him to this unrewarding scene at nine
o’clock on a November morning was the pianoforte—an upright
German instrument, not very good in tone, but on the other hand not nearly as
bad as its surroundings might have suggested. On and off since he got out of
bed Howat had been thinking of that concert on Friday evening; he had already
begun to feel a little excited about it, and excitement had put him in one of
his periodic moods for what his wife called ‘making up bits of
tunes’. She could never see much point in the occupation, for although
some of the tunes had occasionally won prizes in competitions, they were
never ‘printed,’ as she said, nor did they seem to her at all
attractive when Howat played them over to her. She also disliked the sound of
improvising and experimentation on the piano, and complained that even in the
bedroom she could hear it, and that it always gave her a headache. Howat,
therefore, never devoted himself to his ’tunes while she was in the
house, which meant that for years he had had very few opportunities of doing
so at all. But this morning, Mrs. Freemantle, contrary to usual habit, had
taken breakfast downstairs and had gone out immediately afterwards with Aunt
Viney; there was a sale at a dress shop in a neighbouring town, and it was
most important that she should arrive in time.

Howat, in that cold and unwelcoming room, was almost childishly happy with
his music-paper and pencil. They revealed a part of him that few people ever
saw; indeed, he kept it particularly to himself, because (for one reason) he
did not wish his congregation to think he still had designs on their hymn-
book. Years before, when he had first arrived in Browdley, there had been a
tremendous row over that; he had nourished great visions of making the chapel
a centre of musical culture (why, he had argued, should that sort of thing be
left entirely to the Anglicans and Romans?) and had incautiously let it be
known that he did not consider certain old and well-known revivalist
hymn-tunes to be musically first-rate. The resulting upheaval, which he had
barely managed to live down, had convinced him that his more important work
would be sadly hampered if he allowed himself to be sidetracked into the
position of a musical Savonarola; so thenceforward he had scrupulously left
all questions of hymns and anthems to the organist, a local insurance-agent,
whose dream was to play the “Poet and Peasant” overture on a
three-manual instrument that had a Vox Humana stop.

It was remarkable how completely Howat had learned that early lesson.
Rigid self-discipline over a period of years had given him power to tolerate
what the strictly musical part of him must have detested; Sunday after Sunday
heard him joining, with that deep baritone of his, in music whose words and
tunes matched each other in utter commonplaceness; and whenever the critical
temptation arose he could manage to stifle it by thinking of the spirit that
ranked beyond the mere letter, and of that deep religious feeling which must
be held so much more worthy than any technique of art.

This morning, however, no such distracting thoughts occurred to him, and
he yielded himself; for two hours and more, to a task which he found totally
absorbing. There was a school concert due to take place about Christmas time,
and he usually taught the children some kind of song for the occasion; why
not, then, something composed by himself, if it seemed good enough when he
had finished it? But the idea, after all, did not strike him till he had been
some time at work; it was a mere excuse for going on, not a reason for
beginning. The truth was, to put it quite plainly: his wife was out and he
felt in the mood.

When he left the Manse, a little later than his usual hour (for he had
somewhat lost count of time whilst at the piano) he felt pleased, though far
from satisfied, with what he had done. It sent him back, in memory, to those
very early years when he had day-dreamed himself the author of some colossal
symphony, bowing acknowledgments before a frantic first-night audience at the
Queen’s Hall. Absurd, of course; he knew more accurately now the true
extent of his talent; but it was tempting, and rather fragrant, to recollect
those ancient ecstasies. Sing-song homeward walks along the Kentish lanes,
with stars overhead and his boyhood friends arm-linked on either side; hours
with the piano or violin (he played both instruments passably well); trips to
Canterbury, Dover, Maidstone, sometimes even London, to sample the art of
some celebrity. One after another, and in completely unchronological order,
the great masters had moved into his youthful comprehension—Chopin
first, then Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Brahms last of all. In those days
music had seemed everything to him, but that of course was before the crisis
in his early life which, though he did not greatly care for the term, could
only be called his ‘conversion’. Looking back now over a span of
a quarter of a century he had a disappointingly vague recollection of how
that had happened; but he could remember perfectly a certain winter’s
night when he had first heard the Kreutzer Sonata and had walked home
afterwards along moonlit and frost-bound roads from the railway station…It
was a pity, really, that there was no kind of musical club or society in
Browdley; he had often thought of starting one, but he was rather afraid it
would take up too much of his time. Besides, nowadays people had gramophones
and the wireless…He wondered if Higgs, who had said he was keen on music,
would support him in the idea of holding short evening concerts on Sundays
after the time of church and chapel services? Of course one had to move
warily in things like that; there would probably be opposition from some of
the older people, or else they would insist that all the music played on such
occasions should be ‘sacred’ music…as if all good music were
not sacred…

Howat, striding along the High Street with these and other reflections in
mind, was far too preoccupied to keep his usual keen look-out for people he
knew; indeed, he was not even looking where he was going and narrowly escaped
collision with a man who was standing in a rather peculiar posture on the
pavement. He was about to mutter a vague apology when he caught sight of a
pair of very recognisable black moustaches. “Ah, Mr. Garland,” he
exclaimed, and wondered whether Garland really wanted him to stop or not. For
Garland was outside his own shop, scrutinising through the glass a roll of
cloth which an assistant was fixing in position. At intervals of a few
seconds he shouted directions, ignoring the fact that the assistant could not
possibly hear him; but as this had been his method of supervising
window-dressing for thirty years or so, he probably did not see any reason to
alter it. “Ah, good morning, Mr. Freemantle,” he answered,
swinging round sharply. He stopped, as if waiting for Howat to make the first
move in the conversation, and for a few moments the two men stared at each
other with some discomfort, while the assistant behind the plate glass stared
at both of them impartially. At last Garland opened with: “You’ve
heard the latest news about my daughter, I suppose?”

“Latest news? Have you—have you heard from her
then?”

“No, we’ve not heard, but we’ve got to know, and
that’s been quite enough. Come inside a moment—I don’t want
to shout these things on the pavement.”

Howat followed dubiously, reflecting that there was really no need to
shout them at all. The interior of Garland’s shop, as they both walked
through it to an inner apartment, afflicted him with a spasm of melancholy;
it was very dark, and the assistants were pale and sickly-looking youths,
whom Garland glared at fiercely as he passed them. In a sort of inner office
filled with bills and ledgers and patterns of cloth Garland motioned Howat to
a chair, closed the door carefully, and resumed: “She’s run away
with a man—a man who plays the fiddle in a picture-house.”