“No, no—I don’t blame you.”
“Well, isn’t it the same sort of thing in your
case?”
They talked for a little time longer, but Freemantle seemed exhausted, and
Ringwood, too, felt that the argument might prove all the more effective if
it were now curtailed. When Freemantle rose to go, Ringwood wanted to drive
him home, or at least walk with him, but Freemantle said no; there was no
need; it was bright moonlight; and Ringwood had an impression he rather
wished to be alone to think things over. “Just as you prefer
then,” he answered, jovially, and gave the parson a hearty handshake at
the surgery-door. “Good-bye, old chap, remember what I’ve
said.”
Howat walked slowly along the High Street, trying to remember what had
been said by both of them, but hardly a word or a sentence of the long
discussion came to memory. All he could sec and think of was that silver
slope of the roofs as the moonlight streamed upon them, and the pale glare
that filled the middle of the roadway. He was more tranquil in mind than he
had been for many days, but it was the moonlight making him so, he
felt—not anything that had been said that night. And yet he was glad to
have had that talk with Ringwood; he liked the doctor—a thorough good
fellow.
Just one small matter was still on his mind, even when all else had been
pacified; he was aware, though dimly, of having forgotten
something—some time ago—yet not so very long ago,
really—what was it, he wondered? He had been wondering for many days
and had often felt himself on the brink of recollection; and now, all at
once, as he was turning the corner from the High Street into School Lane, he
remembered; it was those evening papers he had promised to bring back for
Trevis. Only a little thing, but he felt helplessly sorry about it; it was
the one thing, of all things, that stirred him to real remorse. Perhaps he
might visit Trevis in the morning.
And suddenly then the whole familiar routine of life swung into focus and
became once more possible. The meetings and services and committees and what
not, the daily hours in the study and the visits to old ladies and the
baptisms and weddings and funerals and all the rest of it—there it was,
facing him inexorably, but somehow with the beauty of that night around it
all, lending it a rich and fragrant hopefulness. That factory over there,
black against the sky, but with all its windows gleaming, and that line of
workmen’s cottages pushing out into the sea of moonlight like a long
black jetty, and the tramlines shimmering into the distance as he crossed the
road—lovely, lovely, all that was. He hummed a tune that was in his
head—ah, that thing of Brahms again—strange how it seemed to fit
in with everything he felt. How short life was, and how brief the moments in
it that really mattered! Nor could the framework of years enclose such divine
fragments; they were timeless, notes in the never-finished symphony of the
world. It was the quality of life that counted; forty years, a whole
lifetime, could be as nothing weighed in the balance against a moment’s
lifting of the veil that hid beauty.
As he came within sight of his house and chapel a small boy passed by with
a timid smile. Howat stopped and spoke to him in the friendly way he always
had with children, and after a few shy answers the boy asked: “When are
you going to tell us some more, sir, about the two little boys who sailed in
a boat to an island?”
Howat was puzzled at first; he could not think was being referred to; but
at length he called to mind that foggy afternoon when he had given his
daughter’s class a so-called geography lesson. He said, happily:
“Very soon—perhaps this week,” and gave the boy all the
money he had in his pocket—four pennies and two half-pennies.
When he reached the Manse he found his wife waiting up for him in one of
her less amiable moods; but of course she was so highly-strung—he knew
it was really not her fault. “If you’re well enough to stay
gossiping with that man Ringwood until this hour,” she said, with some
asperity, “I should think you might begin on the pile of correspondence
that’s been waiting for you to answer for the last four
months.”
“Perhaps so, perhaps so,” he replied softly, blinking his eyes
to the light. “It’s time I was back again at work, isn’t
it?” He gave her a very gentle smile and added: “If you like, my
dear, you can tell Ellen to put a fire in the study to-morrow…”