And Now Good-bye Read Online Free Page B

last out the day.”
    “Oh, dear me, what nonsense!” The exclamation came out
trippingly. “I’m sure Dr. Ringwood never said anything of the
sort, and even if he did—”
    “He did ,” she insisted, in such a way that further
conventional protests found themselves checked at source. She added hoarsely:
“Perhaps we could have a prayer together, Mr. Freemantle.”
    “Why, certainly.”
    And he bent his head into his hands (Miss Monks would have thought any
more abject posture idolatrous) and began to pray. He felt a little unnerved
by it all. It was so difficult to think of anything really suitable. What could you say to the Almighty by way of introducing an old lady of
eighty-nine who was perfectly certain of going to Heaven and equally certain
that Heaven was full of marble and white tiles, like a combination of
underground convenience and fish-shop? And all the time he was speaking he
knew too that Miss Monks was listening with the air of a connoisseur; she
felt herself in no pressing need of his interpolations on her
behalf—she was merely trying him, seeing what he could do, enjoying a
luxury to which she considered herself entitled.
    That, he felt, was the worst of being a Nonconformist parson—in the
last resort people didn’t need you, they felt themselves able to get
just as near Heaven on their own. Not that they probably couldn’t, but
still, if they thought that, why bother to keep a parson at all? As some
species of communal pet, perhaps. It was different in the Roman Church, where
people really believed in priestly functions. And again, as often before, he
wished there were some ritual for such occasions as this…What could he say,
anyhow?…Yet, to his considerable surprise, he heard himself saying all
kinds of things, quite eloquently and not at all insincerely; he really meant
every word of them—the poor old creature was dying—there had been
something rather grand and magnificent about her—he was stirred,
touched, and aware that his voice was vibrating with emotion. And when at
last he raised his head there were actually tears in his eyes.
    “Thank you, Mr. Freemantle,” said Miss Monks rather in the
tone of an examiner to a student who has done passably well in a viva
voce .
    He bade her a kindly farewell, and held her thin hand for a moment. The
stuffy air inside the room (all the windows closed for the past dozen years,
he guessed) and the smells of drugs and bedclothes made him feel a little
faint. His throat too, was giving him pain again. After a few conventional
courtesies to the woman who had shown him up, he descended the stairs and
passed out gladly into the street.
    Too late now to call on young Trevis; he had to sec Higgs the councillor,
and there wouldn’t be time for both visits. He hastened out of Lower
George Street and into the High Street again. Higgs was an optician, who had
an office and consulting-room on the first floor of Bank Buildings, just
above Phillips’s gramophone shop. He was a clever fellow, not yet
thirty, the youngest and in many ways the ablest of the local Labour Party.
Self-educated, he had worked as a mill-hand while studying for the
examinations that entitled him to set up in business. He never attended a
place of worship, but had once surprisingly turned up at a series of lectures
Howat had given on music. The relationship between the two men was cordial up
to a point, and then sharply antagonistic.
    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