Джеймс Хилтон: And Now Good-bye

“What fun it’s all going to be, Howat, as well as everything else!”

Just then they became aware of the grinding of brakes on the train- wheels, and she said, getting up: “I think we’re slowing down for somewhere. We mustn’t forget we’ve left things in the compartment—it’s not the coats that matter, but those passport papers in the pocket of yours are really too precious…perhaps I’d better dash back and make sure that they’re safe.”

He answered: “All right. I’ll attend to the bill and follow you along in a moment…”

She nodded smilingly and left him signalling to the waiter. Those were the last words he ever spoke to her.

One April evening Ringwood sat sipping his whisky and water in a very characteristic attitude. He was balancing himself on the edge of his pedestal desk, with his legs dangling and kicking the drawers, and his eyes directed over the edge of the tumbler in a rather quizzical stare. It was a favourite pose, though instead of a tumbler he would more usually hold up a medicine- bottle or a thermometer or a box of pills. The front of his desk was full of marks where he had been kicking it for thirty years.

To-night, however, the object of his scrutiny, though a patient, was also rather more than a patient. Ringwood was not quite certain how much more, but he knew, as he would have said, that he ‘kind of cottoned on’ to that chap Freemantle. He disliked parsons, as a rule (though no more than they disliked him); but Freemantle was an exception; you could talk to him; he wasn’t stiff and starchy or shocked at a little strong language; and he had been particularly decent with young Trevis. Pity he had such a wife and that dreadful sister-in-law…

But Ringwood was puzzled. It was a week now since Freemantle had returned from his three months’ rest-cure in Bournemouth, and every evening of that week he had called round at the surgery. Not that Ringwood minded, of course; he enjoyed a chat, especially if Freemantle wanted one; but the chats had not been the usual desultory discussions of politics and local affairs. On the contrary, Freemantle had seemed to have something on his mind all the time; he had kept harking back to matters which, Ringwood was sure, it was far better that he should try to forget altogether.

Ringwood, indeed, was just a little contemptuous of the newspaper fuss that had been made over Freemantle. It was all over now, of course, but at the time it had slightly irritated him. He disliked mob-emotion, and it seemed to him rather silly that a man should work hard and meritoriously for twenty years without any recognition at all and then suddenly leap into fame because of something perfectly accidental and irrelevant. Of course he’d behaved very pluckily; but wasn’t there something rather fatuous in the way the Press and public had gone wild over him? It had been nothing less than disgusting, anyhow, to see those two women exploiting the poor devil as hard as they could go—that article, for instance, in one of the Sunday papers—“My Husband, by the Wife of the Clergyman-Hero of Browdley”—it was rumoured that she’d been given a hundred guineas for it, and every word had been written by a Fleet Street journalist. Disgusting…And Ringwood had thought, after reading it: God, I wish they’d give me a hundred and five quid to write “My Patient, by the Doctor of the Clergyman-Hero of Browdley”—I wouldn’t need to have it done for me; I’d just tell the stark truth; I’d say: This chap’s been slaving away at a damned hard job for donkey’s years, and that’s why he’s a hero, if he is one, not because of a few hectic minutes after a railway smash…And I’d also say: It’s true he’s had a bad breakdown, but that’s not all through doing the heroic stuff, as the mob likes to think—he was heading for trouble long before that, and if anyone wants to know the reason, call at the Manse and take a look at those two damned women, or three, counting the scraggy daughter…’

He drank a little whisky, and then resumed his gaze at the man for whom, as much as for any person in the world, he felt a concern mounting to affection. Yes, he did look ill, there was no doubt of that; and his hand, his right hand, unfortunately, would never be much good to him again; he had gone greyer, too, much greyer, since the affair. The Bournemouth holiday had toned him up physically, but there was a good deal, obviously, that was still wrong. Yet if the whole experience had been so terrible, as could well be believed, why did he want to go on talking about it night after night, and to Ringwood only, it appeared, out of the entire population of Browdley?

“Look here,” Ringwood said, with more seriousness than was usual with him, “why don’t you drop it all, Freemantle? I can see how it’s still on your mind, and I can understand it’s something you can’t easily forget, but why don’t you try to? After all, you did your best, and a damn good best it was—you’ve nothing to reproach yourself with.”

“Oh, I know…” Freemantle’s quiet, troubled voice trailed off, but his eyes continued to speak; and they were queer eyes, Ringwood thought—indeed, he could almost agree with a sensational journalist’s description of them as ‘haunted’. He thought to himself: We’ll have him going off his rocker yet if we’re not careful…

“You see, Ringwood,” Freemantle continued, you haven’t heard the true story. The newspapers got hold of everything but that.”

“They seem to get hold of quite enough, if you ask me. Frankly, in your place, I’d just drop the matter—”

“But I can’t, Ringwood. I want to begin at the beginning—before the newspapers came into it at all. Last night and for several nights I’ve been trying to tell you, but somehow I couldn’t get started. But I’ve made up my mind to-night. I’ll be happier afterwards. Do you remember, before I went to London, you said when I came back I was to report to you what sort of a time I’d had there?”

“Oh yes, I think I remember. I was only chaffing you, of course.”

“Well, I’ve come to make that report now. You don’t mind listening, do you? Am I taking up too much of your time?”

“Oh, Lord, no, don’t think that. It’s only that I feel…still, if you say it’s going to do you good, fire away, by all means.”

And Freemantle began, with what Ringwood at first took to be a mere irrelevance that would further delay the matter: “Do you remember that girl who ran away from home—Elizabeth Garland, her name was?”

Some little time afterwards, Ringwood interrupted: “Well, Freemantle, if that’s your yarn, all I can say is, I don’t quite know what you’re being so dashed serious about. First you went to a specialist who diagnosed a sore throat—which I could have done for less than three guineas, by the way—then, feeling pretty bucked with life, you met this girl, and discovered that she wasn’t, after all, eloping with a Jew old enough to be her father, but was off to Vienna on her own to study music. Personally I’d have thought the former project rather less of a risk, but that’s by the by. Anyhow, you took her to dinner in Soho, and then went on to a concert. Quite the thing to do—I’d have done the same myself except that I’d have chosen a music-hall. Really, Freemantle, you don’t expect me to be very shocked by this revelation of a parson’s night out in the metropolis, do you?”

(Behind his banter, Ringwood was thinking: Wonder what they talked about, those two? Fearfully highbrow stuff, I suppose—can’t imagine Freemantle being very gallant—she probably thought he was rather sweet, but a bit of a bore—unless, of course, she was a bit of the same sort of bore herself. Must say, I can’t abide ‘arty’ women at any price, but then, I’m not artistic, and as for music, I hardly know ‘God Save the King’ till I see people standing up…)