Джеймс Хилтон - And Now Good-bye

It was a relief, after so much doubting and self-incredulity, to be of some plain and obvious service to somebody. Trevis was a young fellow of twenty- one, who, after a successful and even brilliant career at Cambridge, had had a bad motorcycling smash and was compelled for the present to take a complete rest. The injuries had affected his spine, and Ringwood as well as more exalted medical authorities were not too optimistic about recovery. Fortunately old Mr. Trevis was fairly well off and could afford to keep the boy at home but the latter hated Browdley with a fierceness of which only Howat and Ringwood, perhaps, were aware; it was maddening, on the very brink of what had promised to be a fine career, to have to spend day after day in a stuffy little drawing- room full of presentation silver and unreadable law-books. For Mr. Trevis was a solicitor, a prominent local Freemason, and one of the most popular men in the town. Bluff, cheery, happy in his widowerhood, and with an elder son to take over the practice eventually, he did not worry alarmingly about the lad who, apart from a certain stiffness in moving about, did not appear to have very much wrong with him. “What you want is fresh air and exercise,” he often said; he did not realise that the boy could not have walked a hundred yards without falling down.

Howat had liked the boy at their first meeting (Ringwood had brought them together—neither Trevis nor his family had ever had any connection with the chapel); and had soon come to feel for him an affection deeper than for anyone he knew outside his own home circle. One of the few ways he could help besides visiting was this changing of library books; he knew the kind of stuff that Trevis liked and took a keen pleasure in making selections which he thought would please. This morning he chose Somerset Maugham’s “Moon and Sixpence”, Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome”, and a book by a youth named Michael Terry detailing his adventures whilst driving a Ford car across the Northern Territory of Australia from Queensland to the Indian Ocean. Carrying this oddly assorted literature under his arm, Howat called at the house in Mansion Street, and thoroughly enjoyed a half-hour’s chat. There was something almost radiantly attractive about the boy now; his earlier robust good looks had been transmuted into a more remote and poignant charm; and to Howat, always acutely eager to put himself into another’s position, it seemed as though Trevis must look on life as a receding pin-point of light glimpsed from the interior of a darkening tunnel. He talked to him for a little time about books; it was what they generally talked about; they certainly did not discuss religion. That was a topic Howat would never have been the first to broach. Ringwood, he was aware, told the boy improper stories, and though Howat hoped to satisfy a loftier need, he could never be quite sure that any gift, in such a case, could be more precious than a moment of any sort of amusement.

After they had chatted desultorily for a time, Trevis asked if Howat had chanced to notice Miss Garland on duty at the library. Howat said no, she hadn’t been there, and asked why Trevis had enquired. The boy replied: “Because there’s a definite rumour going about the town that she’s run away with a man.”

“With a man, eh?” Howat exclaimed, and in such a tone that Trevis interposed acutely: “Oh, so you did know that she’d run off, then?”

Howat’s forehead contracted into a slow frown. “Well, yes, I had heard so. But I didn’t know that there was any suggestion of a man in the case.”

“Perhaps it isn’t true. It’s just the sort of thing people in this town would say, anyhow. Did you know her at all, by the way? Her father’s something to do with your church, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s the chapel secretary. But I don’t know the girl at all well, though it so happens that for the last few months I’ve been giving her private lessons in German.”

“Oh, indeed? Enterprising idea. How did you like her?”

“Like her? Well, she seemed a pleasant sort of girl, though I can’t say I formed any definite opinion. I just taught her the German, that was all—we never talked on any other matters.”

“That’s just like you, isn’t it?” Trevis laughed. “I can see now why you’ve got the reputation in this town of being absolutely impervious to female charm. I don’t suppose you even noticed whether the girl was pretty or not?”

Howat smiled; it slightly gratified him to receive this kind of unsolicited testimonial, for it had always been his aim to avoid any of that foolishness that so often mars and complicates the relationship between a minister and the younger ladies of his congregation. He replied: “Well, anyhow, I certainly don’t recollect that she was pretty.”

“She isn’t,” Trevis said, abruptly. “But she’s attractive, in her own way.”

“You know her, then?”

“I used to. I haven’t seen much of her for the last few years, though—I’ve been away so often, and she also doesn’t spend more time in. Browdley than she needs. They say that most nights she’s off to Manchester as soon as the library closes down, and that she doesn’t come back till the last train. Gay life, eh? Possibly—I should say she’s capable of most things, and certainly of not telling anyone her own business. Unusual sort of girl.”

“And you used to know her well?”

“Yes, till my old man quarrelled with her old man-that must have been about ten years ago. Dad was old Garland’s solicitor, you know, and solicitors have pretty cast-iron consciences, but even Dad boggled at some of Garland’s business. Anyhow, they had a fine old row which ended by Garland taking his affairs somewhere else. I remember it all quite well—the girl and I were of the age when we were told that we mustn’t play with each other any more.”

“And you didn’t?”

“Oh, yes, we did, lots of times. But we gradually saw less of each other, for all that. I always rather liked her, I must say, and I’d be sorry if she’d made a fool of herself. I suppose it doesn’t exactly fall within your province to do anything in the matter?”

“At present the difficulty is that she hasn’t let anyone know where she’s gone to. Of course, if I could do anything I would—very willingly.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Trevis, and the matter dropped.

During dinner at the Manse conversation eddied and swirled around the dramatic disappearance of Elizabeth Garland, and Howat, in the centre of the whirlpool, was rather baffled by it all. He knew so little, and both his wife and Aunt Viney seemed to expect him to know so much; there were, it appeared, all kinds of astonishing rumours about the town. Not only was it now definitely accepted that the girl had absconded with a man, but the man himself had been provisionally identified as a member of a cinema orchestra in Manchester. It was quite obvious, Mrs. Freemantle said, that the girl had a completely bad character, and everyone must feel sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Garland, such respectable people, in having been so disgraced. “And to think,” commented Aunt Viney, “that only last Tuesday she was here for her German lesson, as large as life!”

“I wonder,” continued Mrs. Freemantle, “that you found it possible to get on at all with her, Howat. But then you’re so unobservant about things. I must say, I never took to her.”

Howat said nothing for the simple reason that there seemed to him nothing to say; he had already heard quite enough talk about the girl, besides which, he hated gossip, especially of the less charitable kind.

“And as for sending you that picture of a woman, I consider it nothing less than shameless in the circumstances,” Mrs. Freemantle still went on. (Aunt Viney must have told her about it, Howat reflected; but then, of course, Aunt Viney always did tell her about everything.) “She must actually have posted it on Saturday, when she was on her way with that man. I’m surprised, Howat—I really am surprised that even you could have gone on giving her those lessons week after week without noticing anything!”