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 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 over to factories and slum property.
There is a privet hedge along the street frontage, but it is low enough for a
vague interior view of the study to be available to anyone who deliberately
stares, and the Reverend Howat Freemantle must often have been seen at work
there during the last dozen years, especially in winter when it is so dark as
a rule that the lamps have to be lit.
On that Monday morning in November Howat lit the single gas-burner over
his desk and gave his morning’s mail a second perusal. Besides a bunch
of obvious-looking circulars there were three private letters, the first from
a firm of engineers in Queen Victoria Street, London, confirming an
arrangement by which he should call at their head office on the coming Friday
to consult about a new heating apparatus. For his chapel members, after
freezing and catching influenza for several successive winters, had at last
decided to spend money on such an unspiritual but none the less necessary
object; sixty pounds had already been subscribed, and there would be a bazaar
or something to raise whatever extra might be required. To Howat had fallen
the job of going to London to make final arrangements; of course he knew
nothing at all about central heating, but his congregation had the usual
optimistic belief that a parson must know something about everything.
The second letter was from a well-known missioner, offering to conduct a
week’s revival in Browdley for twenty pounds
plus
his hotel and
travelling expenses.
The third letter was from another London address—Wimpole Street. It
fixed an appointment for the Reverend Howat Freemantle to see Doctor
Blenkiron at 4. p.m. that same Friday. Howat turned it over rather awesomely
in his hand; he had somehow nourished a slender hope that his little plan to
fit in a visit to a London specialist might not have succeeded. However,
there it was; Blenkiron could see him, even at such short notice, and no one
at home, for the present at least, need be told anything about it. It was not
only that he was anxious not to worry them—he was equally anxious that
they should not worry him. He knew from frequent observation how
magisterially Aunt Viney took command of other people’s illnesses; she
was always so noisily optimistic about them, and at the same time so full of
parallel anecdotes of persons who had either died lingering deaths, or had
cured themselves by Christian Science or herbs, or some other specific in
which Howat had no particular faith. She had, too, a robust common sense
which would certainly have made her point out the absurdity of his paying
hard-earned guineas to a London specialist before Ringwood’s verdict,
which could be obtained for as many shillings, had been even asked for. Nor
could Howat say precisely why he was unwilling to consult Ringwood
first—except that Ringwood was a personal friend as well as a family
doctor, and he shrank, somehow, from the human touch in such a business.
Ah, he told himself a shade irritably, throwing the letter into the fire,
he was getting nervy—mustn’t think any more about it—wait
till Friday, anyhow. Plenty of jobs to be done meanwhile. There was the
address on Mozart he was due to deliver at the Young People’s Guild
that night. Fortunately he knew a good deal about Mozart—no need to
prepare anything especially. He might carry over his portable gramophone and
a few records…He took the remainder of his correspondence to the fireside
and pencilled a few memoranda on the back of a circular. Mozart…There was a
Trio in E Major he might play over and also, of course, the overtures to
“Figaro” and the “Magic Flute “. His eyes brightened
a little at the prospect, and he stared across the room to observe, without
irony, the view through the window of dilapidated slum cottages overtopped by
a five-storeyed cotton-mill. Then, in a mood almost of abstraction, he began
to open the circulars hitherto neglected. One was from a tailoring firm in
London, advertising a sale of lounge suits at five guineas—to be had in
either black or ‘clerical grey’. Well, perhaps on Friday, if he
could find time, he would call and see about it—he certainly needed a
suit badly enough…Another circular was from a firm of outside stockbrokers
in Leicester, recommending shares in a brewery. A third was from an
ecclesiastical supply stores in Paternoster Row, offering a job line of
individual communion cups. A fourth came from Boston, Mass., and accosted him
with a list of pertinent questions—“Are your sermons full of pep?
Are you sure you are delivering the goods? Are you satisfied with your
freewill offerings? Do you feel tired Sunday nights? Are you inclined to be
low-spirited, diffident, disheartened?” And for a twenty-dollar course
of ten lessons it could all, apparently, be put right.
Howat read through the enclosed and illustrated brochure, but did not tear
it up afterwards as he had done the other advertising matter. Instead he put
it away in the middle drawer of his desk; it would do for Ringwood to see
some time—he would be amused.
Still with the trace of a smile he tore open one of the remaining
envelopes. A coloured picture dropped out and fell at his feet, making a
little patch of brightness on the drab carpet. He picked it up, guessing it
to be a sample sent him by some firm of art publishers—Raphael’s
“Saint Catherine of Alexandria”, he recognised, for he had often
admired the original in the National Gallery. The reproduction pleased him,
and he was still examining it when he perceived a handwritten note in the
envelope. It was just the shortest of messages—“Dear Mr.
Freemantle, I am afraid I shall not be able to come for a lesson on Tuesday,
as I shall be out of Browdley that day. I saw the enclosed in a shop recently
and thought you might like it. Yours sincerely, Elizabeth Garland.”
His first thought was that he would have an extra free hour on the
following day. Every Tuesday for some months past he had been giving lessons
in German to Miss Garland, the daughter of his chapel secretary. It was a
means of adding to his rather poor income, besides which it meant rubbing up
his own knowledge of German, which was good for him. She was a pleasant and
intelligent girl, and had seemed to pick up the language quite
satisfactorily; still, he could not but feel grateful for one engagement less
during a more than usually crowded week.
He studied the picture again and reflected that it was kindly of the child
to have sent it him—yes, very kindly. There was something boyish and
simple in him that showed instantly when anyone gave him anything, or even
thanked him; he was always pleased in a rather bewildered kind of
way—bewildered because he quite genuinely could not think what he had
done to deserve it.
He put the picture on the mantelpiece, and several times looked towards it
with pleasure during the clerical tasks that kept him employed during the
next hour or so. Finally Aunt Viney came in, saw it, and smiled steadfastly
while he explained the circumstances of its arrival. “Very kind of her
indeed, Howat,” was her verdict at length, “but are you quite
sure it is very suitable? After all, it looks rather a Catholic picture,
don’t you think?”
Perhaps it was, he admitted, and put it away in a drawer. As a
Nonconformist clergyman he could not be too careful.
Punctually at eleven he put on his overcoat and hat (an ordinary dark grey
and somewhat shabby felt) and went out into School Lane. There, in the murky
daylight that was only a degree brighter than the gloom of the study, it was
possible for one to observe him in some detail. Tall and slim-built, with
just the very slightest stoop of the shoulders that suggested thoughtfulness,
he was, beyond doubt, fine-looking, and would have been conspicuous among his
fellows even had his collar not buttoned at the back. His hair was touched
with silver over the temples, but otherwise he looked younger than his age,
which was forty-three. His eyes were grey, deep-set, and very bright; he had
a strong, rugged profile, and an expression which, in its stern setting, was
rather astonishingly winsome. Dr. Ringwood often told him he had missed his
vocation in being a parson—he should have been an actor. “With
that face you could have been the answer to the maiden’s prayer,”
he used to say, and Howat was always, beyond his amusement, a little puzzled,
and beyond his puzzlement, a little grieved. There seemed such a lot of
irrelevance in the world. He was dimly aware that he might be considered not
bad-looking, but, so far as the matter affected him at all, he found it
rather tiresome. Some of the girls at the chapel, for instance, whenever
there was a bazaar or a social—so silly and pointless, all that sort of
thing. Anyhow, he had never tried to trade on his looks, and most certainly
never attempted any gallant airs.