And Now Good-bye Read Online Free PDF Page B

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