And Now Good-bye

• Prologue
  
• Chapter 1. Monday
  
• Chapter 2. Tuesday
  
• Chapter 3. Wednesday
  
• Chapter 4. Thursday
  
• Chapter 5. Friday Morning And Afternoon
  
• Chapter 6. Friday Tea
  
• Chapter 7. Friday Dinner
  
• Chapter 8. Friday Evening
  
• Chapter 9. Saturday Morning
  
• Epilogue
  

The Redford rail smash was a bad business. On that cold
November morning, glittering with sunshine and a thin layer of snow on the
fields, the London- Manchester express hit a wagon that had strayed on to the
main line from a siding. Engine and two first coaches were derailed;
scattered cinders set fire to the wreckage; and fourteen persons in the first
coach lost their lives. Some, unfortunately, were not killed outright. A
curious thing was that even when all the names of persons who could possibly
have been travelling on that particular train on that particular morning, had
been collected and investigated, there were still two charred bodies
completely unaccounted for, and both of women.

Behind the second coach the force of the collision was not felt so
disastrously; there were several casualties in the third, but in the fourth,
which was a restaurant-car, occupants escaped with a shaking.

As usual on such occasions there were heroic incidents. Conspicuous among
these was the behaviour of one of the restaurant-car passengers, a
middle-aged man, who jumped down to the track within a few seconds of the
impact, and began work of rescue amidst the piled up and already burning
debris. Five persons, it was afterwards computed, owed their lives to his
gallantry, nor could he be persuaded to desist until his arms and hands were
badly burned, and all hope of saving further lives had clearly to be
abandoned. Passengers and railway officials alike were limitless in his
praise—“He was like a fury,” one said, “dashing into
the flames again and again, just as if they weren’t there—it
seemed impossible that one man could do so much in so short a
time.”

The following day was Sunday and Armistice Day, and the newspapers were
naturally full of stories of the disaster and of its hero. He had collapsed,
it was reported, after his efforts, but letters and papers in his possession
revealed him to be the Reverend Howat Freemantle, a dissenting minister in
Browdley, Lancashire. Interest in him was further stirred by the disclosure,
made by his wife, who was telegraphed for and arrived later in the day, that
he had been travelling alone. This seemed to set his heroism on a higher
pinnacle than ever; Mr. James Douglas made it the theme of a long and moving
article; and a chorus of adulation rose from all parts of the country. For,
as one ‘leader’ put it: “Many doubtless would have done as
much for their loved ones, but this man’s devotion and self-sacrifice
were for complete strangers, and in this he showed himself magnificently
worthy of his profession. In these days, when so much is heard of the failure
of organised religion to attract the masses, the selfless bravery of this
Nonconformist clergyman strikes a note that will echo far beyond the thunder
of rival sectaries.”

The Reverend Howat Freemantle spent a week in hospital, and for a few days
there were fears that he might have to lose one of his hands. Meanwhile the
gaze of the whole country was on him, for the Press, with that capriciously
epidemic enthusiasm that partly leads and partly follows the mood of its
registered readers, decided unanimously that he was the ‘big
news’ of the moment. Photographs of him, looking tired and rather sad
in his hospital bed, appeared on front pages; his face was impressive and
thoughtful, and it was even commented by some that he had ‘the eyes of
a saint’. Of the disaster and of his own exploits he would say not a
word—a pathetically understandable attitude in a man in whom modesty
and horror were doubtless equally profound. When at last the announcement was
made that his hand might, after all, be saved, and that he would soon be fit
to undertake the journey to Browdley, the sentimental heart of the
newspaper-reading public gave a great upward leap.

That journey home was rather like the return of a wounded victor after a
successful military campaign. Hundreds cheered him as he walked from the
ambulance to the train at Redford; and by courtesy of the railway company his
coach was sent on a through line to Browdley Station, where he was welcomed
by the Mayor and Corporation, the Salvation Army Silver Prize Band, and a
crowd estimated at nearly five thousand. It had not been realised, however,
that he was so ill; and as he was helped down the station slope by his wife
and sister- in-law, the Mayor hurriedly cancelled a prepared speech and
substituted a few short sentences of praise and welcome. Even the cheers of
the crowd were hushed by the man’s tragic appearance, and his words,
“Thank you all—very much,” were clearly heard amidst an
awestricken silence. But the cheers swelled out again as the ambulance passed
through the narrow streets to the Manse.

The massed limelights of the Press then focused themselves upon that
middle-sized manufacturing town, of which few persons in other parts of the
country had ever even heard; and it was soon discovered that in the Reverend
Howat Freemantle Browdley had possessed no ordinary minister. Everywhere
citizens and chapel-goers testified to his generosity, his kindliness, and
his devotion to good works, while it was recalled that during the War he had
served in Gallipoli as an ordinary soldier and been wounded twice. Nor in
Browdley had he confined himself to strictly professional work; his sermons
had been eloquent, but he had also identified himself with local literary and
artistic societies, the League of Nations Union, and other movements.
Newspaper interviewers, unable to approach the man himself (he was confined
to his room and could see nobody), found his wife and sister-in-law most
gratifyingly ready to answer questions; among other matters it was revealed
that his stipend was a very poor one, and that, like so many other clergymen
in industrial districts, he had for some time been hard put to it to make
ends meet. In particular, he could barely afford even the most urgent repairs
to the large, red-bricked residence with which an earlier and more prosperous
generation had burdened him. Such facts, together with an insurgent wave of
popular emotion, prompted a leading daily newspaper to open a fund for the
provision of ‘some tangible expression of nation-wide esteem’.
Headed by a contribution of fifty guineas from the proprietor, Sir William
Folgate, it speedily reached a sum of nearly eleven hundred pounds, a cheque
for which was eventually handed to Freemantle at a special meeting convened
in Browdley Town Hall. He was still suffering then from the effects of a
complete nervous and mental breakdown, and could not make more than a very
short speech of thanks. The money, he said, would be devoted entirely to
local charities.

But this was by no means the only tribute paid to his heroism. A certain
Miss Monks, aged eighty-nine, who belonged to Freemantle’s chapel, was
so deeply overcome by reading newspaper accounts of how the minister had
behaved that she died of heart failure; whilst another old lady, who lived at
Cheltenham, and had never even seen Freemantle, offered to pay for the
education of his children. He had none, as it happened, of school age, so
that the lady’s beneficence was frustrated; but he was able to accept
Sir William Folgate’s three months’ loan of a luxurious villa
overlooking the sea at Bournemouth. It should perhaps be added that he
received many anonymous gifts, among them being an Austin Seven car, which
had to be sold, since neither he nor any of his family could drive.

One of the many disclosures made by Mrs. Freemantle to an interviewer had
been that her husband’s hobby was the composition of music. The
enterprising journalist had wished to know more of this, so she had hunted up
as many of her husband’s compositions as she could find and handed them
over. Among them was one, dated 1909, which for some reason attracted more
attention than the rest, and within a few days Mrs. Freemantle received an
offer from a firm of publishers. But she was unwise enough to hold out for
too high terms and negotiations finally broke down, with the unfortunate
result that none of Freemantle’s music has yet been made accessible to
the general public.

By the time the minister and his wife returned to Browdley the following
April the whole affair had been almost completely forgotten, and even at
Browdley station there was no one to meet them except Mrs. Freemantle’s
sister. But the Manse, when they reached it, was not quite the same as
before; it had been painted inside and out, and there was new linoleum on the
floors, and in the minister’s study a small bust of Beethoven, which
had been accidentally smashed during the renovations, had been replaced by a
large silver-framed photograph of Gipsy Smith, subscribed for by the Young
Men’s Bible Class.

The Reverend Howat Freemantle awoke about the usual time on
Monday morning of that second week in November. From habit, as soon as he was
completely conscious, he lit the bedside candle, glanced at his watch ticking
loudly on the table, and then at his wife, whose huddled back and deep
regular breathing presented a familiar picture close by. Seven-thirty. He
reached out an arm to light the gas-ring under the kettle—a manoeuvre
dexterously performed as a result of long practice. Then he leaned back to
doze for those last and frequently most delightful minutes.

But this morning they were not particularly delightful. Parsons, he had
often reflected, were not immune from the ‘Monday morning’
feeling—on the contrary, they were subject to a peculiarly distressing
Monday morning feeling of their own. After Sunday, with its sermons and
services, Monday came, not as the beginning of a six days’ holiday, as
so many lay persons imagined, but as a sudden drop to the bottom of a hill
which had to be slowly and laboriously climbed over again.

And it had been a difficult Sunday, he recollected, dark and foggy all
day, with congregations and collections very small—serious matters to a
Nonconformist minister in a northern manufacturing town already impoverished
by the trade slump and unemployment. The chapel, too, had been bitterly cold,
owing to an ancient and defective heating apparatus (soon, however, to be
replaced), and the fog and chill had got at his throat and given him acute
pain during the evening service—’
that
pain’, he had
already begun to call it in his mind. Curious how people could stare at him
up there in the pulpit, and not know that the chief thought in his mind all
the time was—’I’ve got the most frightful sharpness in my
throat—wonder if anything serious starts like this?’

When the kettle began to boil he warmed the teapot, put in the tea, and
poured. Then, reaching out further, he gave his wife’s shoulder the
gentle shove which was nearly always sufficient to wake her. She stirred,
opened her eyes sleepily, and gave an incoherent murmur. “Good
morning,” he said, with a smile at her huddled shoulders. He did not
look at her face. He felt, though he scarcely admitted it even to himself, a
reluctance to observe her during those first few inelegant moments after
waking—with her hair crimped up in clusters of curlers, her skin greasy
with perspiration, and her lips dry and parched through breathing through her
mouth. She could not, of course, help all that; the fault, he knew, lay with
himself—in a certain initial fastidiousness which, he feared, was
hardly less a sin for being involuntary.

She did not reply to his ‘good morning’ except by further
murmurs, and after a little pause he poured out a cup of tea and placed it on
the table next to a novel by W. J. Locke which she was in the course of
reading. Then, after putting on an old brown dressing-gown, he poured two
other cups and carried them out of the room, across the landing, and into
another room where his daughter Mary slept. She was a thin-faced,
sallow-complexioned girl of twenty, working as a teacher in the school that
adjoined the chapel. He lit the gas and wakened her now, according to
established routine; he liked that early morning habit of tea and a chat. He
began desultorily to mention politics (there was a by-election pending in the
neighbourhood), though he had not uttered many words before he felt again
that sharp, cramping sensation in his throat. Mary, however, was not
interested in politics, and plunged into chapel and school matters with a
briskness that made him, as for relief, pull aside the curtains and see the
pale grey dawn outlining the roofs and factories of Browdley; there was no
fog, but a soft slanting rain. Then she asked if he would ’hear some
Latin verbs she had been learning by heart; she was cramming for a degree
examination, and had to make use of every odd moment. He agreed, and for the
next five minutes stood solemnly and shiveringly by the window with the
text-book in his hand (she had slept with it under her pillow), while she
went through the various moods and tenses of the third conjugation.
“Rego, Regis, Regit…” How chilly it was, he reflected, and
there would be no hot water in the bathroom (the kitchen fire was always
allowed to go out on Sunday afternoons), and the smell of bacon was drifting
up the stairs just as it had done for goodness knew how many years—did
there await him, he wondered, some glorious morning in the dim future, an
alternative breakfast smell that would amaze and delight his nostrils? Not
that he disliked bacon, or would have preferred any other dish for breakfast;
it was in atmosphere rather than actuality that something in him craved for a
change…“Regimus, Regitis, Regunt.”…He must call and see Mrs. Roseway some
time today, and perhaps young Trevis as well—oh yes, and Councillor
Higgs about the Armistice Day service. “Well, there you are !” he
exclaimed brightly, when she had finished. “You seem to know them all
right. Now we’d better hurry up and dress, or else Aunt Viney will have
something to say to us when we get down.”