He tried even to recollect his own desires, so far as he had ever been
conscious of them; and, though he felt it almost sacrilegious to do so, he
cast back in memory to his early days of courtship and marriage. Of course he
had always loved his wife, and he was still, he would have said, ‘in
love’ with her; but he recognised, nevertheless, that there was a
fiercer passion that belonged peculiarly to youth. In his own life it had
coincided with his ‘conversion’, and when he tried to think of
those early days he had a vision of peaceful evening walks across fields to
chapel, with Mary by his side; he could not, at such a distance in time,
recollect exactly what had been his feelings during those walks, but he was
quite certain that the course of true love, in his case, had been
exceptionally smooth.
As for temptation of any kind since marriage, he could honestly and with
confidence assert that he had never even known what it was; indeed, the mere
contemplation of it was distasteful. Yet there was a world, he knew, in which
unpleasant things of that sort did abound—a strange world in which
Elizabeth Garland, for one, was dangerously adrift, and which lay pitilessly
beyond the scope of all the societies of which he was president and
secretary. He dared not, merely to preserve his own comfort, shirk total
knowledge of that world; on the contrary, it might sometimes be his
unpleasant duty to explore.
He went home for tea, and in the evening there was the weekly Brotherhood
Meeting. His throat, which was definitely worse, gave him a good excuse for
not attending, but he would not take it; he went, sang, spoke, and made his
throat so painful that it kept him awake for half the night. In the early
morning darkness of his bedroom he felt desperately afraid of all that the
coming day might bring, and when at last he fell asleep and dreamed, his
dreams were of restless, inexplicable things.
Unless on some definitely professional errand Howat always
travelled in mufti. He did so quite openly, even sometimes when he went no
further than Manchester, and though many of his colleagues in the town did
not approve, the lay population were quite accustomed to seeing him dressed
as one of themselves. “There’s something about a parson’s
collar that puts people off,” Howat had once said to Doxley, of the
Congregational Church, “especially in such a confined space as a
railway compartment, where they have nothing to do but stare. It makes them
uncomfortable among themselves, they feel under constraint with one
another—they either talk at’ you, or else relapse into a brooding
silence which you can feel to be anti-clerical. When I was a young fellow,
just beginning, I used to wear the whitest and highest of clerical collars
because I was so proud of my profession, but now I think I’m less proud
of that than I am of my common humanity. I feel that if I’ve got to
wear something that marks me out as different or superior to others, then in
fairness to them I ought to travel first-class—like officers in the
army.”
“But surely,” Doxley had said, “that argument would
apply just as much against wearing the clerical habit at all, even in
Browdley?”
“Not quite. In Browdley, I’m on business, as it were—my
professional badge is as appropriate as a doctor’s black bag or a
collier’s black face. But when I’m shopping, say, in Manchester,
or on holiday at the seaside, then I’d feel as unseemly in my
parson’s rig-out as a judge if he had to play golf in his wig and
gown.”
“You mean that when you’re out of Browdley, you don’t
want people to know what you are?”
“Well, I don’t see why I should fling my profession in their
faces, anyhow.” Doxley always put Howat in the impish mood of the small
boy who knocks at doors and then runs away; he had added, then, with a touch
of that impishness: “I consider it an impertinence to approach
strangers with a sort of label tied on to you saying—’ Beware!
I’m not an ordinary person like you’.”
And as the Reverend Jefferson Doxley had never for a moment believed
himself to be an ordinary person like anyone else, the argument had here
tapered away into an infinite shaft of disagreement. Doxley had, however,
said one thing that Howat afterwards remembered. “Well, Freemantle,
whatever you say, you can’t deny that a parson’s collar does mean
something to people; they look on it as a guarantee of character, even if
they pretend to scoff at it. Take, for instance, the case of some timid,
nervous girl walking alone along a country lane late at night. She sees a man
approaching her in the distance, wonders who and what he is, begins to feel
rather terrified, and then—suddenly—sees that collar. Don’t
you think it’s a relief? She may be agnostic or an atheist or anything
you like, but she knows she needn’t be afraid of meeting a parson in
the dark.”
“It seems a rather negative tribute to parsons in general,”
Howat had answered, still impishly. That conversation had taken place some
half- dozen years before, since when Doxley had never wholly ‘approved
of’ his brother minister; he suspected him, indeed, of being
dangerously imbued with eccentric, undignified, and even socialistic
ideas.
But now, on this Friday morning in November as the Manchester-London
express raced over the plains of Northamptonshire, there could have seemed
little eccentric, much less dangerous, in the quiet, tired-looking man who
took lunch by himself at the far end of the dining-car. He had been sleeping
for part of the journey, and there were lines beneath his eyes that made many
a traveller, especially women, give him a fleetingly compassionate glance as
they hurried along the centre aisle. There was something in his face that
curiously attracted most people—a sort of rather sad winsomeness that
made them feel they could rely on him for infinite depths of sympathy and
understanding. Though, as a matter of fact, he did not always understand as
well as they imagined; people often poured out intimate personal confessions
to which his carefully kind attention was only a mask to cover up extreme
uncomfortableness and a bewildered lack of comprehension.
He took coffee and a cigarette after lunch (he only very rarely smoked,
and never knew quite whether it gave him any pleasure or not); then he looked
through the
Manchester Guardian
, and tried to interest himself in the
passing scenes of the countryside; but soon his head was slipping forward
again and he dozed fitfully till the train slowed down for the terminus.
After leaving the train he walked to an hotel in Southampton Row, at which
he had stayed on the occasion of his first overnight visit to London as a
youth. It consisted of three adjacent Georgian houses, a good deal spoiled in
the process of conversion into one establishment, and always smelling (more
or less, according to the time of day) of cabbage and floor-polish. Its
principal and perhaps only merits were that it was cheap (seven-and-six for
bed-and- breakfast), respectable, and near the big northern railway
stations.
This last was an important consideration for Howat, who reckoned himself
unable to afford cabs (he knew little about the prices of things and had
never bothered to discover that London taxis were only half as expensive as
those in Manchester and about a quarter the cost of hiring any sort of car in
Browdley).
Having lunched on the train, he had nothing to do at the hotel except book
a room. They gave him a small low-ceilinged, top-floor apartment, overlooking
the roof of a garage, sparingly but perhaps just adequately furnished for its
purpose, with a shilling-in-the-slot gas-fire, and an electric light in the
most difficult of all positions for either tying a tie or reading in bed.
Howat hurriedly dumped down his bag; it was already two o’clock (the
train had been rather late); he must get along to those engineering people.
In the hotel lobby as he descended, the proprietress called to him to sign
the register; he did so, writing ‘Howat Freemantle, Browdley,
British’ in his usual clear script. He disliked the title
‘Reverend’ and never used it of himself, though he could not
prevent others doing so. He disliked it for a certain pretentiousness it
seemed to have, just as he never much cared for the word ‘study’
as applied to the room at home in which he worked.
It was a fine day, fortunately, for it had been intermittently on his mind
throughout the journey that he had forgotten to bring an umbrella. He boarded
a bus outside the hotel and rode to Aldwych; then he changed to another bus
and got down at Mansion House station. It was a quarter to three when he
arrived at the showrooms and city headquarters of Neal & Sons, Sanitary,
Hydraulic, and Central Heating Engineers. In another hour and a quarter, he
reflected, he would be arriving at Wimpole Street. Another hour and a quarter
of uncertainty, followed, perhaps, by a certainty that would be even more
dreadful. He felt his throat like something burning and malevolent that did
not belong to him; he was sure now, with a sudden inward lurch of panic, that
the verdict would be all that he had feared.. As he gave his name to the
clerk in the outside office he heard his own voice as that of another man
speaking; he wondered if he would be able to mobilise his wits for this
earlier interview. The clerk ushered him through an inner office into the
presence of a smartly dressed and very shining, voluble person who shook him
eagerly by the hand, offered him an arm-chair, and proceeded to talk in a
hearty way about the weather. “And was it raining in Manchester when
you came through this morning, Mr. Freemantle? Ha, Ha!” The weather,
politics, bad trade, and finally, as if with apologies that such an
irrelevant thing should after all be mentioned, this question of a new
heating apparatus.
Howat sat back and wished that the chair were not such an easy chair; he
was in grave danger of falling into a sleep, or at any rate, into a dream; he
kept hearing the other man’s voice and had to wonder whether he were
still just talking or had begun to ask questions that demanded answers.
“Well, Mr. Freemantle, we could probably do you quite a satisfactory
system for a hundred pounds or so—of course I couldn’t give an
exact quotation till our man has been up to see the place. I can assure you
we’re used to the job just take a look at this catalogue—it
contains merely a few examples of churches and chapels throughout the country
that have given us their heating contract…” Howat fingered the
smooth, glossy pages and had a misty vision of one church after
another—plain-looking churches with oblong windows, elaborate- looking
churches with stone facings and Gothic stained-glass, churches with stone
crosses, churches without stone crosses, churches surrounded by a litter of
schoolrooms and vestries, churches with turrets, cupolas, even (so it
appeared) minarets, churches with machicolated towers, crocheted spires, and
Ionic porticoes, churches enveloped by apparently tropical verdure, churches
with the minister standing on the front step, churches of all sizes,
denominations, architectures, and degrees of prosperity. It had hardly seemed
possible that there could be so many churches in the world, and all, it
appeared, were warmed by radiators supplied by Neal and Sons.
Howat said at length: “Well, yes, I think it will be all right. We
shall be very glad to have your system.”
“I can promise you, sir, that both you and your congregation will be
well pleased with it.”
“Oh, I’m sure, I’m sure.”
“A good heating apparatus, sir, is half the battle, I always think.
Warm your church well and people will flock into it. How can people worship
when their feet are cold?”
“Quite—oh, quite.” At any other time Howat might have
found it refreshing to talk to this enthusiastic young fellow, and even to
discuss with him such vital matters as he had just touched upon; but as it
was, he felt anxious at all costs to end the interview. He said:
“Perhaps, then, you’ll get on with the job as soon as you can,
eh?”
The other seemed genuinely grieved by this display of haste. “Would
you care to step down into the basement, sir, and see the kind of
installations we put in? We have a few models on view and we can also show
you the apparatus that actually heats this office, and is heating it at the
present moment—identical, of course, with the type we shall he
supplying to you. I think you’ll admit, sir, that the temperature of
this room is just about what one would wish for.”
Too hot, Howat thought sleepily—far too hot; but he said: “Oh
yes, just about right.”
“We can regulate it, of course. A single turn of the knob—like
this—”
Howat watched him rather sadly. Was it merely professional, such
enthusiasm? Did the youth go home and dream about heating-apparatus? Did
heating-apparatus fill a ’niche in his soul? Howat felt: I wish at this
present moment I could believe in anything as fervently as this fellow seems
to believe in these pipes and radiators…
“Perhaps, sir, you would care to come down and
inspect—”
Howat rose and shook his head sombrely. “Well, no, I don’t
think I’ll bother, if you don’t mind. I—I have several
other appointments this afternoon, and not much time left for them. Your
apparatus, I have no doubt, will suit us admirably. I’d better be
getting along now.”
“Very good, sir. And when would it be convenient for us to send our
man up to Browdley?”
“Your man? Oh yes, about the pipes and things—yes—oh,
any time next week would do.”
“Very good, Mr. Freemantle. We will advise you definitely by
postcard. Good-bye, sir—very pleased indeed to have met you.”
And in another moment Howat was outside in the street again. It was nearly
half-past three.
He boarded a bus at the corner and rode past the Temple and Charing Cross
and up Regent Street. By that time it was ten minutes to four, and at Oxford
Circus he took to the pavements and began to thread his way diagonally into
that stately district almost equally consecrated to music and medicine. He
tried to think of the concert he might attend that evening, and of his more
immediate rendezvous at Charing Cross at half-past five; but he hardly
succeeded in either effort; a greater imminence was on him, a vertical
barrier of time beyond which even futurity seemed scarcely to exist. He knew
now that this interview with the specialist had been an unrealised background
of all his thoughts and emotions for weeks. He felt beyond panic just numb
with a secret, paralysing excitement of mind.