Джеймс Хилтон: And Now Good-bye

“I see. A sort of gift? Must be very useful. You’re fond of music, aren’t you, Freemantle?”

“Yes, extremely.”

“I think I’m beginning to be, too. When I’ve time to spare I sometimes go down to the shop below and play over records. I like Bach.” He pronounced it ‘Back’ and added: “By the way, how should one say that fellow’s name—was I right?”

Howat replied: “Well, I think ‘Bark’ is nearer the German pronunciation. But you don’t need to be too particular. Far more important to enjoy him.”

“Far more important to enjoy everything.” The youth’s face clouded over with a look of half-truculent eagerness. “Which reminds me, Freemantle, there’s that Sunday games question coming up before the Council again. I suppose it’s no use trying to persuade you to come over to our side?”

“No good at all,” Howat answered, with a shake of the head. “And you ought to know better than ask, after that last argument we had.”

“The trouble is, that last argument didn’t convince me. And not only that, but it didn’t convince me that it convinced you, either.”

“Come now, that’s too subtle for a parson on Monday morning.”

Higgs leaned forward and tapped Howat’s knee with his forefinger. “Look here, why can’t you be serious about it? I’ve always had a sort of feeling you were the only parson in the town there was any hope at all for.”

“That’s very flattering.”

“I mean it sincerely, flattering or not. We Labour fellows constantly find you on our side in all sorts of things—the housing question, unemployment grants—oh, any amount of matters that crop up. What we sometimes wonder is why you don’t come over to us altogether. Frankly, we’d welcome you just as wholeheartedly as we respect you now.”

Howat smiled, but rather wearily. He was in no mood for a political argument, especially with such a notoriously adroit debater as Councillor Higgs. He said, quietly: “I don’t really believe that parsons ought to identify themselves entirely with any political party. It’s quite true that I often find myself on your side. On the other hand, I sometimes don’t, and what would you have me do then?”

“Well, we’d try to convince you. This question of Sunday games, now—”

“My dear chap, I’m not going to go over all that again with you. My position is exactly the same as it was last year—in such a matter I regard myself as the delegate of my congregation, and as they’re overwhelmingly against the idea, there’s nothing more to be discussed.”

“I always thought a shepherd led his flock, not was led by it.”

“Don’t you think a shepherd would be foolish if he led both himself and his flock over a precipice?” Howat’s voice became more animated. “Why don’t you try to understand my position? I hope—I even try to believe—that I do some good in this town. Amongst other things, I try to broaden people’s minds—I’m keen, as I daresay you know, on literary societies, debating clubs, music, the drama; anything that I think will get and keep people out of the commonplace rut. If I step warily, I may succeed—indeed, I sometimes feel that I am succeeding. But if I were to back you up in supporting Sunday games, I should merely split my congregation, smash up all the good work I’m interested in, and—quite likely—make my whole position in Browdley an impossible one. Do you think that would really be the best thing that could happen?”

“Yes, since you ask me, I do. It’s the only course I’d honour you for. As it is, I know for certain what I’d for a long time suspected—that you’re secretly on our side, but haven’t the courage to stand with us.” His voice rose excitedly, and after a pause for breath he added quickly: “I’m sorry, Freemantle, I really don’t mean to be insulting at all—I’m only being as frank as I know how.”

“Yes, I quite see that.” And at the back of Howat’s mind was the thought: I’ve said too much, somehow or other; I oughtn’t to have let myself be enticed into an argument with this fellow—Heaven knows where it will lead to, or what tales he’ll spread about afterwards…Higgs was one whom eloquence always stirs to greater eloquence. He went on: “I wouldn’t mind so much if your people were all as virtuous as they pretend to be. But they’re not. Look at the Makepeaces, the Battersbys, that dreadful old Monks woman—are they really the moral cream of Browdley society? Oh, and Garland the draper—mustn’t forget him . He’s the chap who shakes hands at your chapel door after Sunday services—the ’right hand of fellowship’, isn’t that what you call it? There’s not much fellowship about him on week-days, I can tell you. We’re on to him now about some cottages he owns in Silk Street; the rain comes in at all the roofs, but he won’t do any repairs—we’re trying to make him, but he’s got a cute solicitor. I suppose, though, since he’s a pillar of your chapel, this kind of talk must sound rather offensive?”

Howat thought despairingly: I mustn’t argue, whatever happens; the rain comes in at my roof too, by the way; Higgs and Garland are natural enemies, and I’m not going to interfere between them…He said: “It doesn’t strike me as particularly offensive, but that’s not to say I’d consider it good taste to join in a discussion of individual chapel members with outsiders.”

“Have a look at those houses in Silk Street and see things for yourself”

“Well, I might do that.”

“Good of you if you do. And I don’t mind a bit being called an outsider. Perhaps you’ll feel one yourself some day, so far as the chapel’s concerned. The fact is, this town’s sunk in narrow- mindedness, and it really makes a fellow sick sometimes to find out what he’s up against. And I can’t help feeling, too, that the sort of chap in these days who wants to do real good, to improve and elevate people and all that, doesn’t find much scope or encouragement in the church. The church, if he lets it, will just use him up, waste his energies, and cramp him all the time. He can find better machinery elsewhere. There’s dirt and hypocrisy in politics, I admit, but I think on the whole it gives bigger opportunities.”

Howat smiled again. “Perhaps so, perhaps so. But I sometimes wonder whether the people who live most usefully of all are neither parsons nor politicians, but just ordinary folk, like village postmen and engine-drivers and charwomen. It’s an interesting question, but I mustn’t wait to argue it—I’ve already taken up far too much of your time, and I’m pretty busy myself, too…It’s settled, then, that I take the hymns?”

“Yes, if you will. Thanks for making so little trouble about it. And as for the Sunday games—”

“You’ll find me, I’m afraid, ranged alongside my brother ministers. Perhaps that will make you reconsider the comparison you made between me and them—I hope it will, anyway.”

They both laughed and shook hands cordially, and Howat went down the stairs to the street with a feeling of almost reluctant liking for the young; councillor. Dangerous, though, to say too much to him…It was becoming foggy, as had seemed likely, and through the yellow gloom came the muffled chiming of the parish clock—a quarter to one. He hurried, so as not to be late for his midday dinner.

Monday’s dinner at the Manse was always predictable; it consisted of the remains of Sunday’s joint minced into a sort of rissole and warmed up. Howat had had this so often and so unfailingly that it seemed now, by sheer familiarity, to have become appropriate—it both smelt and tasted, somehow, of Monday. He did not, however, bother a great deal about food, which was perhaps as well in the circumstances. He was not even aware that a few minor ailments from which he had suffered at times during the past dozen years had all been dyspeptic in origin.