And Now Good-bye Read online

  JAMES HILTON

  AND NOW GOOD-BYE

  First published by Ernest Benn Ltd, London, 1931

  * * *

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1. Monday

  Chapter 2. Tuesday

  Chapter 3. Wednesday

  Chapter 4. Thursday

  Chapter 5. Friday Morning And Afternoon

  Chapter 6. Friday Tea

  Chapter 7. Friday Dinner

  Chapter 8. Friday Evening

  Chapter 9. Saturday Morning

  Epilogue

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  The Redford rail smash was a bad business. On that cold November morning, glittering with sunshine and a thin layer of snow on the fields, the London- Manchester express hit a wagon that had strayed on to the main line from a siding. Engine and two first coaches were derailed; scattered cinders set fire to the wreckage; and fourteen persons in the first coach lost their lives. Some, unfortunately, were not killed outright. A curious thing was that even when all the names of persons who could possibly have been travelling on that particular train on that particular morning, had been collected and investigated, there were still two charred bodies completely unaccounted for, and both of women.

  Behind the second coach the force of the collision was not felt so disastrously; there were several casualties in the third, but in the fourth, which was a restaurant-car, occupants escaped with a shaking.

  As usual on such occasions there were heroic incidents. Conspicuous among these was the behaviour of one of the restaurant-car passengers, a middle-aged man, who jumped down to the track within a few seconds of the impact, and began work of rescue amidst the piled up and already burning debris. Five persons, it was afterwards computed, owed their lives to his gallantry, nor could he be persuaded to desist until his arms and hands were badly burned, and all hope of saving further lives had clearly to be abandoned. Passengers and railway officials alike were limitless in his praise—“He was like a fury,” one said, “dashing into the flames again and again, just as if they weren’t there—it seemed impossible that one man could do so much in so short a time.”

  The following day was Sunday and Armistice Day, and the newspapers were naturally full of stories of the disaster and of its hero. He had collapsed, it was reported, after his efforts, but letters and papers in his possession revealed him to be the Reverend Howat Freemantle, a dissenting minister in Browdley, Lancashire. Interest in him was further stirred by the disclosure, made by his wife, who was telegraphed for and arrived later in the day, that he had been travelling alone. This seemed to set his heroism on a higher pinnacle than ever; Mr. James Douglas made it the theme of a long and moving article; and a chorus of adulation rose from all parts of the country. For, as one ‘leader’ put it: “Many doubtless would have done as much for their loved ones, but this man’s devotion and self-sacrifice were for complete strangers, and in this he showed himself magnificently worthy of his profession. In these days, when so much is heard of the failure of organised religion to attract the masses, the selfless bravery of this Nonconformist clergyman strikes a note that will echo far beyond the thunder of rival sectaries.”

  The Reverend Howat Freemantle spent a week in hospital, and for a few days there were fears that he might have to lose one of his hands. Meanwhile the gaze of the whole country was on him, for the Press, with that capriciously epidemic enthusiasm that partly leads and partly follows the mood of its registered readers, decided unanimously that he was the ‘big news’ of the moment. Photographs of him, looking tired and rather sad in his hospital bed, appeared on front pages; his face was impressive and thoughtful, and it was even commented by some that he had ‘the eyes of a saint’. Of the disaster and of his own exploits he would say not a word—a pathetically understandable attitude in a man in whom modesty and horror were doubtless equally profound. When at last the announcement was made that his hand might, after all, be saved, and that he would soon be fit to undertake the journey to Browdley, the sentimental heart of the newspaper-reading public gave a great upward leap.

  That journey home was rather like the return of a wounded victor after a successful military campaign. Hundreds cheered him as he walked from the ambulance to the train at Redford; and by courtesy of the railway company his coach was sent on a through line to Browdley Station, where he was welcomed by the Mayor and Corporation, the Salvation Army Silver Prize Band, and a crowd estimated at nearly five thousand. It had not been realised, however, that he was so ill; and as he was helped down the station slope by his wife and sister- in-law, the Mayor hurriedly cancelled a prepared speech and substituted a few short sentences of praise and welcome. Even the cheers of the crowd were hushed by the man’s tragic appearance, and his words, “Thank you all—very much,” were clearly heard amidst an awestricken silence. But the cheers swelled out again as the ambulance passed through the narrow streets to the Manse.

  The massed limelights of the Press then focused themselves upon that middle-sized manufacturing town, of which few persons in other parts of the country had ever even heard; and it was soon discovered that in the Reverend Howat Freemantle Browdley had possessed no ordinary minister. Everywhere citizens and chapel-goers testified to his generosity, his kindliness, and his devotion to good works, while it was recalled that during the War he had served in Gallipoli as an ordinary soldier and been wounded twice. Nor in Browdley had he confined himself to strictly professional work; his sermons had been eloquent, but he had also identified himself with local literary and artistic societies, the League of Nations Union, and other movements. Newspaper interviewers, unable to approach the man himself (he was confined to his room and could see nobody), found his wife and sister-in-law most gratifyingly ready to answer questions; among other matters it was revealed that his stipend was a very poor one, and that, like so many other clergymen in industrial districts, he had for some time been hard put to it to make ends meet. In particular, he could barely afford even the most urgent repairs to the large, red-bricked residence with which an earlier and more prosperous generation had burdened him. Such facts, together with an insurgent wave of popular emotion, prompted a leading daily newspaper to open a fund for the provision of ‘some tangible expression of nation-wide esteem’. Headed by a contribution of fifty guineas from the proprietor, Sir William Folgate, it speedily reached a sum of nearly eleven hundred pounds, a cheque for which was eventually handed to Freemantle at a special meeting convened in Browdley Town Hall. He was still suffering then from the effects of a complete nervous and mental breakdown, and could not make more than a very short speech of thanks. The money, he said, would be devoted entirely to local charities.

  But this was by no means the only tribute paid to his heroism. A certain Miss Monks, aged eighty-nine, who belonged to Freemantle’s chapel, was so deeply overcome by reading newspaper accounts of how the minister had behaved that she died of heart failure; whilst another old lady, who lived at Cheltenham, and had never even seen Freemantle, offered to pay for the education of his children. He had none, as it happened, of school age, so that the lady’s beneficence was frustrated; but he was able to accept Sir William Folgate’s three months’ loan of a luxurious villa overlooking the sea at Bournemouth. It should perhaps be added that he received many anonymous gifts, among them being an Austin Seven car, which had to be sold, since neither he nor any of his family could drive.

  One of the many disclosures made by Mrs. Freemantle to an interviewer had been that her husband’s hobby was the composition of music. The enterprising journalist had wished to know more of this, so she had hunted up as many of her husband’s compositions as she could find and handed them over. Among them was one, dated 1909, which for some reason attracted
more attention than the rest, and within a few days Mrs. Freemantle received an offer from a firm of publishers. But she was unwise enough to hold out for too high terms and negotiations finally broke down, with the unfortunate result that none of Freemantle’s music has yet been made accessible to the general public.

  By the time the minister and his wife returned to Browdley the following April the whole affair had been almost completely forgotten, and even at Browdley station there was no one to meet them except Mrs. Freemantle’s sister. But the Manse, when they reached it, was not quite the same as before; it had been painted inside and out, and there was new linoleum on the floors, and in the minister’s study a small bust of Beethoven, which had been accidentally smashed during the renovations, had been replaced by a large silver-framed photograph of Gipsy Smith, subscribed for by the Young Men’s Bible Class.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE — MONDAY

  The Reverend Howat Freemantle awoke about the usual time on Monday morning of that second week in November. From habit, as soon as he was completely conscious, he lit the bedside candle, glanced at his watch ticking loudly on the table, and then at his wife, whose huddled back and deep regular breathing presented a familiar picture close by. Seven-thirty. He reached out an arm to light the gas-ring under the kettle—a manoeuvre dexterously performed as a result of long practice. Then he leaned back to doze for those last and frequently most delightful minutes.

  But this morning they were not particularly delightful. Parsons, he had often reflected, were not immune from the ‘Monday morning’ feeling—on the contrary, they were subject to a peculiarly distressing Monday morning feeling of their own. After Sunday, with its sermons and services, Monday came, not as the beginning of a six days’ holiday, as so many lay persons imagined, but as a sudden drop to the bottom of a hill which had to be slowly and laboriously climbed over again.

  And it had been a difficult Sunday, he recollected, dark and foggy all day, with congregations and collections very small—serious matters to a Nonconformist minister in a northern manufacturing town already impoverished by the trade slump and unemployment. The chapel, too, had been bitterly cold, owing to an ancient and defective heating apparatus (soon, however, to be replaced), and the fog and chill had got at his throat and given him acute pain during the evening service—’that pain’, he had already begun to call it in his mind. Curious how people could stare at him up there in the pulpit, and not know that the chief thought in his mind all the time was—’I’ve got the most frightful sharpness in my throat—wonder if anything serious starts like this?’

  When the kettle began to boil he warmed the teapot, put in the tea, and poured. Then, reaching out further, he gave his wife’s shoulder the gentle shove which was nearly always sufficient to wake her. She stirred, opened her eyes sleepily, and gave an incoherent murmur. “Good morning,” he said, with a smile at her huddled shoulders. He did not look at her face. He felt, though he scarcely admitted it even to himself, a reluctance to observe her during those first few inelegant moments after waking—with her hair crimped up in clusters of curlers, her skin greasy with perspiration, and her lips dry and parched through breathing through her mouth. She could not, of course, help all that; the fault, he knew, lay with himself—in a certain initial fastidiousness which, he feared, was hardly less a sin for being involuntary.

  She did not reply to his ‘good morning’ except by further murmurs, and after a little pause he poured out a cup of tea and placed it on the table next to a novel by W. J. Locke which she was in the course of reading. Then, after putting on an old brown dressing-gown, he poured two other cups and carried them out of the room, across the landing, and into another room where his daughter Mary slept. She was a thin-faced, sallow-complexioned girl of twenty, working as a teacher in the school that adjoined the chapel. He lit the gas and wakened her now, according to established routine; he liked that early morning habit of tea and a chat. He began desultorily to mention politics (there was a by-election pending in the neighbourhood), though he had not uttered many words before he felt again that sharp, cramping sensation in his throat. Mary, however, was not interested in politics, and plunged into chapel and school matters with a briskness that made him, as for relief, pull aside the curtains and see the pale grey dawn outlining the roofs and factories of Browdley; there was no fog, but a soft slanting rain. Then she asked if he would ’hear some Latin verbs she had been learning by heart; she was cramming for a degree examination, and had to make use of every odd moment. He agreed, and for the next five minutes stood solemnly and shiveringly by the window with the text-book in his hand (she had slept with it under her pillow), while she went through the various moods and tenses of the third conjugation. “Rego, Regis, Regit…” How chilly it was, he reflected, and there would be no hot water in the bathroom (the kitchen fire was always allowed to go out on Sunday afternoons), and the smell of bacon was drifting up the stairs just as it had done for goodness knew how many years—did there await him, he wondered, some glorious morning in the dim future, an alternative breakfast smell that would amaze and delight his nostrils? Not that he disliked bacon, or would have preferred any other dish for breakfast; it was in atmosphere rather than actuality that something in him craved for a change…“Regimus, Regitis, Regunt.”…He must call and see Mrs. Roseway some time today, and perhaps young Trevis as well—oh yes, and Councillor Higgs about the Armistice Day service. “Well, there you are !” he exclaimed brightly, when she had finished. “You seem to know them all right. Now we’d better hurry up and dress, or else Aunt Viney will have something to say to us when we get down.”

  Half an hour later breakfast at the Manse began—Quaker oats, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade—the whole rather carelessly prepared by the maid-of-all-work, Ellen, whose intelligence was so far below normal that Aunt Viney, in her more blustery moments, usually referred to her as ‘that half-wit’. But then, you could never get satisfactory servants in Browdley, and Aunt Viney, with or without the slightest encouragement, would tell you why. It was because of the dole, which enabled out-of-work factory hands to live in luxury (silk stockings and lip-stick, Aunt Viney said) while honest people searched vainly for ‘good girls to train’.

  Aunt Viney (short for ’Lavinia’), viewed in the grey daylight that came in through the dining-room window, was always a rather imposing spectacle. She was fifty-one years of age, and had large staring eyes, quick bustling movements, more than a tendency to stoutness, a menacing optimism that was not quite matched by a sense of humour, and the most decided opinions upon everything. She was an excellent ‘manager’, and for more than a decade had lived at the Manse with her sister and brother-in-law and their children (there had been boys at one time), looking after them all with undoubted if rather relentless competence. Mrs. Freemantle, it was generally known, was ‘not strong’, but happily there was no such fragility about Aunt Viney. Vigorous in body and mentally impervious, she knew exactly how to control the children at a Sunday School treat, she could organise round games at a Missionary bazaar, prepare tea for seventy at the Women’s Annual Social, win the egg-and-spoon race at the summer outing, turn away the crowd of mendicants who knocked at the door of the Manse—and all with that same air of confident downrightness. She entertained a just slightly contemptuous admiration for Howat. In truth she had never really managed to like Browdley (she was Kentish by birth), and when, on holiday at Southport or Llandudno, she saw sleek, well-dressed parsons playing golf or motoring in smart-looking cars, she often wished that her brother-in-law, with all the brains he was supposed to have, had belonged to one or other of the wealthier denominations.

  This morning, as on so many other Monday mornings, she faced the oncoming week with a nonchalant glint of her prominent blue eyes. Breakfast was her particular scene of triumph, since Mrs. Freemantle took hers in bed, rarely appearing downstairs till the morning was well aired. Aunt Viney poured out tea with a steady hand, rebuked her niece for grumbling at the bacon (it w
as abominably cooked, she perceived, and privately made up her mind to have a real good row with that girl Ellen afterwards), and watched the progress of her brother-in-law’s breakfast with managerial solicitude. He seemed to her exactly as she had always known him at breakfast times—quiet, good- tempered, perhaps a little dreamy. Over the Quaker oats he opened his private letters, slitting the envelopes with the knife he would later use for the bacon. Over the bacon and eggs he talked a little, and after that, during the hurried moments before his daughter left for school, he glanced through the Daily News and mentioned a few odd things that were happening in the vast world outside Browdley. All this was perfectly according to custom.

  From nine till eleven every morning, except Sunday, the Reverend Howat Freemantle was to be found in his ‘study’. During those two hours he answered letters, planned addresses and sermons, interviewed callers, and (if he had any spare time left over, which did not often happen) read books and the more serious type of periodicals. The study was a moderate-sized and rather gloomy room on the ground floor, overlooking a tiny soot-blackened front garden. A dozen years ago it had been furnished by Mrs. Freemantle, who had modelled it upon that of her father, himself a dissenting preacher; and Howat, who had no especial preferences in furnishing, had been content to leave it undisturbed from that primal exactitude. There were books, of course—shelves of them—his own training college textbooks, and stacks of theological works inherited from his father-in-law. There was a pedestal writing-desk, a swivel desk-chair, and a pair of ragged leather armchairs. Two black and white lithographs, one of “Dawn” and the other of “Sunset,” embellished alcoves on either side of the fireplace; a many-volumed series of the Expositor’s Bible (a gift from his first chapel) occupied a frontal position above the mantelpiece; and a bust of Beethoven (many visitors thought it was Luther) stood on the top of a bookcase containing the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on which Howat was still paying monthly instalments. Apart from the Beethoven bust the room was impeccably what Mrs. Freemantle had originally planned it to be—the sanctum of a dissenting minister of the more ‘thoughtful’ type. Its composition as such was far too massive to be overlaid by any freakishness of personality, and all that Howat’s occupation ever inflicted on it was a merely surface litter that Aunt Viney easily and regularly cleared away.