by James Hilton
Howat felt still somewhat exhausted as he walked along the passage by the side of the gramophone shop, and climbed the stairs to the first floor. He rang the bell and Higgs himself answered it. “Oh, Hullo, Freemantle—glad to see you—do come inside.” Howat did not in the least mind being called Freemantle’ without the ’Mister ’—indeed he rather preferred it—but he could not help reflecting that at Higgs’s age he should never have had the nerve to leave out the prefix with a man nearly twice as old…Nerve, that was it—and Higgs had plenty of it. Cool-headed fellow climbing steadily up the ladder which began with a seat on a local council and ended, quite possibly, at Westminster. He was determined to get on in the world, and Howat liked him for it.
“Good morning, Higgs. I hope I’m not interrupting—I thought I’d better call where I’d be sure of finding you.”
“Quite right. Do take a chair. I’ve an appointment in ten minutes, but I daresay he’ll be late.”
“Well, I don’t suppose my business will take more than the ten minutes in any case. I only wanted to know the plans for the Armistice Day service.”
“Ah, yes. There’s been the usual fuss about it, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know. Doxley of the Congregationals thought it was unfair for the Baptist fellow to be given the opening prayer two years in succession. So we’ve given him the opening prayer instead. The Vicar of the Parish Church, of course, does the address—that seems to be generally agreed upon. Then there’s the second prayer—Salcombe rather wants that. Unfortunately that means you’ll have to take the hymns, as you did last year and the year before. I don’t know how you feel about it—if you object, then Salcombe will have to take his turn with the hymns, whether he likes it or not, only he’s not so good at the job—fusses with the tuning-fork for about five minutes before he can get the note—I daresay you’ve seen him.”
Howat smiled. “I don’t mind what I do—I’ll fit myself in just wherever’s convenient. As it happens, I have absolute pitch, so I don’t need a tuning-fork.”
“Absolute pitch? What’s that?”
One thing in Higgs that always especially attracted Howat was his eagerness to assimilate any casual scrap of knowledge that might come his way. He answered: “It means that if I want a certain note—middle C, for instance—I know it, instantly, without having to think. Nothing very unusual a good many people can do it.”
“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.
Dinner was served for four, since by that time Mrs. Freemantle had dressed and come downstairs. She was a thin, angular woman with everything rather sharp about her—her nose, her chin, her cheekbones, her eyes, her way of moving about, and her voice and speech. She was the youngest of her family, while Aunt Viney was the eldest, and despite a difference of physique which could hardly have been greater, there was yet an obvious sisterhood between them. They might bicker when they were alone (indeed, they sometimes did), but whenever they were together they had an air of being ranged foursquare against the rest of the world, even when the rest of the world consisted only of Howat. Their dispositions were complementary rather than similar; Aunt Viney could bluster, fly into tempers, and shout; but Mrs. Freemantle’s voice, even in most perturbed moments, never rose above a high-pitched and hurried wail.
Howat was always extremely thoughtful and polite to both of them, and submitted good-humouredly to their varying attentions. It was Aunt Viney who sewed buttons on for him (when she remembered), cooked, ordered from shops, and did the more domestic work of the household; in a shadowy way, if ever he were inclined to be irritated by her, he could always reflect comfortingly that she worked very hard, and that no one could imagine what they would all do without her. For his wife, of course, he had tenderer feelings, and if ever she were a little trying he always remembered how highly strung she was, and that quite small things were apt to upset her in a way that she couldn’t really help.
This particular Monday dinner found both Aunt Viney and Mrs. Freemantle a little cross, the former from a noisy and indeterminate quarrel with the servant which had been in progress; most of the morning, and the latter because the roof of one of the bedrooms was leaking again and the builder, in her opinion, couldn’t have done his job properly when last he had come to repair it. But she was the kind of woman who could never he satisfied with saying a thing once; she had to talk rapidly and indignantly about the leaking roof for over ten minutes, while Howat listened with sympathy tempered by the knowledge that the roof always would leak till it was overhauled thoroughly, and that such an operation would cost more than he was ever likely to he able to afford. His stipend was just under three hundred a year, and though both his wife and Aunt Viney had small incomes of their own, there was really nothing like enough for the upkeep of so big a house. He himself would have preferred to move into a much smaller one, but his wife would never listen to the suggestion, and always talked of any residence less in size than the Manse as ‘one of those poky little working-class houses’.
During or just after the midday meal it was Howat’s habit to outline and discuss with her some part of his daily routine; he did this even when it was an effort, for he believed it his duty to let her share in all his affairs. He hardly realised that she had other and more satisfying points of contact with the small world of Browdley, and that a good deal of his well- meant conversation bored her. It bored her now, for instance, when he began to talk about the address he was going to deliver that evening on Mozart. He began to sketch out a plan of his ideas, and as often happened when once he began, he went chattering on, with slowly mounting enthusiasm, till Mary began to fidget and his wife to exchange supercilious glances with her sister. Their private opinion was that ideas might be all right for the platform or pulpit, but were hardly suitable for the dinner-table. In the end Mary neatly torpedoed the monologue by enquiring the date of Mozart’s birth. Howat, after a rather vacant pause, said he didn’t know exactly, but he fancied it must be somewhere about the middle of the eighteenth century. They were all very much amused at his confessed ignorance, and Mary rejoined pertly: “You know, dad, I think you always go far above people’s heads when you talk to them about music. Why don’t you tell them the useful facts—when he was born, when he died, the names of the things he wrote, and so on?”
Howat answered: “Yes, of course—I ought to include all that, I admit.”
“Anyhow,” added Mary, “I don’t suppose it matters a great deal, for if this fog keeps on, there won’t be more than half a dozen there.”
Howat nodded and stared blankly at the window, where yellow was already merging through orange to grey.
It was too foggy, indeed, to go visiting in the town that afternoon, especially with the excuse of his bad throat; so he spent a pleasant couple of hours in the little school associated with his chapel. It was a second-rate school, doomed, no doubt, to extinction when any enterprising education policy should take possession of the Browdley authorities; but that day was unlikely to happen soon. Architecturally the school was hopelessly out of date; its rooms were small and badly lit, its corridors long and draughty, and its playgrounds mere patches of wasteland strewn with ink-black cinders. In this establishment there were three classes, the senior in charge of the headmaster, a Mr. Wilkinson, and the two junior ones taught by his daughter and another young woman.
He first of all, as a matter of courtesy, paid a visit to Mr. Wilkinson. Wilkinson was a shabby little man with a pompous manner and a very large, pale, and flabby nose. He experienced certain difficulties of discipline, of which both he and Howat were well aware, but of which they both steadfastly pretended not to be aware; the wastepaper-basket in his room was usually sticky with the remains of half-sucked sweets which, from time to time, he made his pupils disgorge. (Howat would never have known this but for a complaint by the caretaker’s wife.) After spending a few perfunctory moments in the senior room, Howat passed on to his daughter’s, and here, indeed, his pleasure began. For he liked children, with an intensity that was no affectation; he often thought: If I were not a parson I should like most of all to be a schoolmaster. It was true enough, in a way, though, on reflection, he recognised that he would never have made a very good schoolmaster. He would always have shrunk from teaching the dull stuff that had to be learnt. Besides, he had the most preposterous ideas about education—preposterous, he was prepared to admit, from any normal parent’s standpoint. As it was, he could put his theories into strictly limited practice with the certainty that as soon as he was out of the s
chool the teacher would undo any harm he might have perpetrated.
His daughter was pleased to let him take the class for a time, since it gave her extra moments to work at her Latin verbs. He began by walking round amongst the desks and observing what the children were doing; it was a geography lesson, apparently, and most of them were laboriously copying a map of Ireland out of ancient and very dirty text-books. He asked one boy why they were doing this, but the boy said he did not know. Then he began to talk to the boy, at first in an undertone, but later, without definitely realising it, in a voice to which all the class soon came to listen. He asked if anyone had ever been to Ireland; none had; then he asked if anyone had ever crossed the sea in a ship. And from that he progressed to a general talk about islands, and then islands very far away, and then uninhabited islands, and soon he was off on one of those extraordinary impromptu stories which he enjoyed just as much as did any of his listeners. This one was about two small boys sailing across the sea in a small boat, and coming to a land where nobody from England had ever been before. Howat then went to the blackboard, wiped out a careful list of exports and imports which his daughter had drawn up, and began to sketch a map of this strange land just as it came to the knowledge of the two boys. First the vague outline of the shore in the distance, then a narrow river inlet leading into the heart of dense jungle, and so on. Mountains, lakes, and vast swamps all figured in the boys’ wanderings, and as each exciting adventure happened Howat marked it down on the board. By the time that the young travellers had lost themselves in the midst of a forest infested with giant spiders and boa- constrictors, the whole class was in a ferment of excitement, as was Howat himself; for half an hour during that November afternoon Browdley did not exist for some four dozen of its inhabitants; the fog and the cotton-mill across the road were lost behind a blaze of tropic sunshine. When at last the school-bell rang, Howat stopped as one disturbed suddenly from a dream; he seemed to recollect himself and added, in an ordinary voice: “Well, boys and girls, that’s all to-day, I think. Perhaps I’ll tell you more about what happened to the two boys some other time. I hope you know now something about maps, anyhow.” But it was a lame excuse; he didn’t particularly hope they did, or care whether they did or not; his aim had been different—something not very easy to put into words—something, indeed, which he was never quite sure of understanding himself.