Джеймс Хилтон - And Now Good-bye

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.”

Howat said: “Yes, I’d heard something to that effect, but I was hoping it could be no more than a rumour.”

“A rumour ? God bless my soul, they were seen together at Manchester getting into the train!” His voice thickened with indignation. “Of course neither my wife nor I could countenance that sort of thing. Not at any price would we take her back now that we know what has happened. She’s disgraced our name—the only thing we can do is to try to forget that she’s our daughter.”

Howat found himself staring at a peculiarly sinister-looking tailor’s dummy, armless and legless, that had been flung into a corner of the office amidst a heap of brown paper. He had been propelled so abruptly, as it were, from the world of his own thoughts into this other world of angry fathers and erring daughters and rolls of gents’ suitings that he could hardly, for the moment, get his bearings. Then the last few words of Garland’s remarks echoed in his mind and brought him up with a jerk. He said, rather sadly: “Don’t you think it may be a little too early to reach such a decision, Mr. Garland?”

“Not at all. We’re a respectable family—we’re not going to make any terms with evil-doing. Out she stays, now that she’s gone, and I’d say the same to any of my other children. She need never come back to Browdley thinking she’ll be admitted here again.”