Джеймс Хилтон - And Now Good-bye

Howat found himself slowly rising out of a dream into this new and intricate reality that was being forced upon him. “But surely, Mr. Garland, you have some idea why she’s gone, at any rate? That seems to me almost as important as where she is, apart from the fact that it might afford a clue. She can’t have acted like that without some big reason of her own.”

He felt: Why are they bothering me about it? I can’t help them, but I can see now it was a mistake to give the girl German lessons—I never guessed that her parents didn’t approve of it. She ought to have told me, really…

“Oh, she has her reasons, I’ve no doubt,” retorted Mrs. Garland, sourly. “And precious fine reasons they are, too, if they were only known, I daresay. The idea—talking of giving up her job at the library and going abroad! That’s what she did talk about, though you mayn’t believe it. Of course we forbade it—absolutely. A good deal that we don’t like we may have to put up with in these days, but there are certain limits, I’m glad to say.

“She talked of going abroad, did she?”

“She’s been talking of it off and on for some time. But it came to a head last Friday night when we found she’d been writing to a travel agency about railway tickets to Paris. And then, if you please, she calmly told us that she was going to go abroad in any case.”

“To Paris?”

“That’s one of the things we have to guess. It doesn’t sound a nice sort of place for a young girl to want to go to, does it?”

“But, really, she must have had some purpose in mind? People don’t suddenly go to Paris without any reason at all. Did she give you no idea how—how she intended to support herself while she was away?”

Mr. Garland rubbed his nose decisively. “We didn’t argue with her, Mr. Freemantle. When a daughter calmly informs her parents that she’s going to do what they’ve forbidden her to do, there’s nothing left to argue about. She went up to her bedroom—as we hoped, to think it over and come to her senses. It seems, though, that she just packed her things, went to bed, and went off early in the morning by the first train before any of us was up. Altogether a most disgraceful affair. Of course one naturally thinks of all sorts of possibilities when a girl does a thing like that.”

Howat stared far away over Garland’s head. “I must say, from a very slight acquaintance with your daughter, she didn’t really seem to me the sort of girl who would do anything that either you or she would need to be ashamed of.”

“That remains to be found out,” answered Mrs. Garland. “And I don’t mind telling you to your face, Mr. Freemantle, I think you’re one of the prime causes of it all! You have a thoroughly unsettling influence on the young people—you always have had—you put ideas into their heads—it was quite enough to listen to you to-night to realise how all these things begin. As my husband said, there’s a great deal too much loose talk in the world nowadays, and ministers, of all people, ought to know better than join in it. They’re here to give us religion, that’s what I say, not the things of this world.”

Howat said, rather curtly: “I don’t think we can discuss all that. You must let me know if there’s anything practical I can do. And I’m afraid I must go now. Good-night, Mrs. Garland. Goodnight, Mr. Garland.” There was something unusual and rather sharp in his eyes.

He strode out of the schoolroom into the cold moist fog. Something was hammering away in his head—a sort of desperately controlled temper, something that made him feel hot and ice-cold simultaneously. Those intolerable people! He could not bring himself to hate them, but his impatience of them was like a flame. And then quite suddenly the flame died down and he felt merely tired, emptied of all energy and willpower and enthusiasm. He found his way into the dark house and, over the remains of the kitchen fire, made himself a cup of cocoa. It was after midnight when he got to bed, and though his tiredness had increased with every moment, he did not find it easy to sleep.

The next morning, Tuesday, there was no fog or rain, but a clear frosty sunlight and a high wind from the east that scoured the streets of Browdley till they looked like bones picked clean. Most of Howat’s morning study hours were taken up by callers, and at eleven he went out with the intention, before anything else, of getting his first breath of fresh air for several days.

Once the pedestrian leaves the outskirts of Browdley he enters a flat, loamy, and not unpicturesque countryside, stud ded with small farms and semi- industrialised villages, with here and there a barn or an old mill that Rembrandt might have etched. There are paths through almost every field and in all directions, but one cannot, during an ordinary walk, lose sight of Browdley. Indeed, Browdley looks almost more massive and dominating at a distance of a few miles than closer by. Its factories huddle together into a compact pile, and on a misty day the observer might with a little effort fancy himself in sight of some medieval walled and fortified city, so sharply do the square cliff like factories mark the outlines of the place. There are dozens of tall chimney-stacks, but at such a moment they can seem almost decorative—the spires, perhaps, of the black cathedrals of industrialism.

On Tuesday morning Howat took his favourite walk, which was along School Lane for a quarter of a mile beyond the town, across the potato fields to Shandly’s Farm, and then back over the railway and along the bank of the canal. The sun was shining, and he walked fast, enjoying the cold wind and the cheerful landscape. Those who saw him doubtless envied a parson’s freedom to take a constitutional on a fine morning.

Mentally, however, he was still ruffled from that talk with the Garlands the previous evening, and as often happened, his mood was inclined to be one of rather desperate unbelief in himself. After all, could he be quite sure that what he was doing in Browdley was for the best? Could he even be quite sure that he was doing any good in Browdley at all? Mrs. Garland had accused him of unsettling the young, of putting ideas into their heads—well, all that, in a way, was what he wanted to do; and yet, when the balance was struck, was the net result indubitably favourable? He wished there were someone over him to say, with authority, either Yes, go ahead, you’re all right’, or No, stop it at once, you’re wrong’. That was the weakness, he had always felt, with these independent Nonconformist creeds—a man, if he were sincere, had to work everything out for himself, and by the time he had finished doing that he had often worried himself into complete lack of confidence in his own judgment.

Of course, so far as the runaway daughter herself was concerned, he was fairly certain he had not been to blame. She had rarely attended chapel, and had not been a member of any of its associated societies; his influence on her, of whatever kind, could only have been slight. There had been the German lessons, true, but they had always, he recollected, been strictly matter-of- fact; indeed, it was curious how little he knew about the girl after those regular weekly meetings—she had told him practically nothing about herself, and he, perhaps unconsciously, had found this a welcome change from the usual outpourings of self-revelation to which every parson becomes accustomed. Apart from those German lessons, and a few chance words in the library where she worked, he hardly remembered ever speaking to her at all. And that reminded him, as he turned homeward along the canal bank, that he might use the remaining time before dinner to change a few library books for young Trevis.