And Now Good-bye Read Free

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 was
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.
    Passing along Browdley High Street, and then up School Lane beyond the
tram junction, the pedestrian reaches the Manse, after a short and rather
depressing walk through a district given