And Now Good-bye (8 page)

“I believe so, yes.”

“I’m not surprised. There was always something queer about
that girl. I put it all down to not being made to go to chapel—Garland
seemed to have no control over her at all. And then having that job at the
library, too.” She paused and continued impressively: “There are
books in that library, Mr. Freemantle, whether you believe me or not, which
ought not to exist anywhere—let alone where young people can get hold
of them. I don’t hold with public libraries.”

Howat made no answer to that, but smiled gently and waited for her to get
to the real reason why she had sent for him. It was soon forthcoming. It
appeared that she had been on the point of death about three o’clock
that morning and had then made a sudden recovery. She was convinced it was a
miracle—the special intervention of a Providence evidently desirous of
preserving her for some future activity. “I’m grateful, too, for
such mercies,” she added, “and I’d like you, Mr.
Freemantle, to join with me in a little prayer of thankfulness.”

So he prayed again, and when that was over she went on to say that, as a
more practical expression of gratitude, she had been thinking of making an
alteration in her will. She had only a few hundred pounds to dispose of, and
as the will stood, it was all left to Mrs. Kerfoot, her widowed niece who
lived next door and had looked after her for many years. In view, however, of
the recent dramatic intervention of Providence, she had come to feel that
this would be a selfish arrangement; a hundred pounds would surely be enough
for Mrs. Kerfoot, and the rest could then be devoted to loftier things. She
had been thinking out details, in fact, ever since early morning, and had
already sent a message to her lawyer. What she had in mind was some sort of
charity, associated with the chapel and administered by the parson. She knew
there were several existing charities of the kind in Browdley—one
provided for loaves and candles to be given every Christmas to fifty
deserving Church of England spinsters—she had often seen mentions of it
in the local paper, and she had noticed that it was always called after the
name of the original benefactor. Something like that she had in mind; it
seemed to her a really charitable way of disposing of money, much better than
leaving it all in bulk to a private person, however deserving.

Howat listened rather unhappily as she expounded this evidently well-
prepared scheme. He mentioned with diffidence that most charities of such a
kind dated from hundreds of years back, when social conditions were
different, and survived nowadays merely as antiquities. He also indicated
that it was already becoming a matter of some intricacy to discover the fifty
deserving spinsters who would accept the Christmas loaves and candles, and
that the vicar of the parish church had often commented that there ought to
be some way of altering things to fit in with more modern needs. In his
(Howat’s) opinion, if she would forgive him for expressing it, he
didn’t think such a bequest would really be the best way of using the
money; there were many other things in these days—the infirmary, for
instance, which badly required new X-ray equipment, or the cottage
hospital—

But that, if he had remembered, was tactless of him, for Miss Monks had a
violent grudge against all such institutions, and answered tartly: “Not
with
my
money, thank you, Mr. Freemantle—I don’t hold with
them at all. Those who give to such things can do what they like with their
own, but I have a right to do what I like with mine.”

“Oh quite, quite,” agreed Howat.

In the end he did, after much persuasion, manage to convince her that a
Letitia Monks Bequest on the lines of the loaves and candles would be a
rather pointless affair. But he could not convert her to any alternative idea
of his own; two things, he realised, were fixed in her mind—first, that
the bequest should be connected with the chapel, and second, that it should
be permanently associated with her own name. Finally, as the only terms on
which she could be diverted from something absolutely fatuous, he agreed that
the chapel was in some need of a new vestry. Yes, of course, it could be the
Letitia Monks Vestry, and the name could be inscribed in stone
somewhere—oh yes, he was sure it could. And he would certainly consult
with her lawyer about it, if she wished—yes, he would do anything she
asked. A splendid idea—extremely generous of her—future
generations would undoubtedly appreciate it—oh yes,
yes—undoubtedly…

“You see,” said Miss Monks, with shrewd triumph, “I feel
it’s the chapel that has made me what I am.”

He stayed a little longer till a distant chiming reminded him that it was
nine o’clock; he had been there for an hour and a half; it really was
time he looked in at that Temperance meeting. He was just shaking hands and
preparing to leave when Ringwood’s brusque voice came booming up the
stairs.

Ringwood, red-cheeked and cheerful as ever, came striding into the room in
his heavy motoring coat. “Hullo, Miss Monks! Thought I’d just
look in to see you again on my way home! Still feeling better? That’s
right—take things easily. Hullo, Freemantle—you here, too?
Wonderful old lady, isn’t she? No, don’t run
away—we’ll go down together in a minute just give me time to hold
her hand!”

He had an air with him, Ringwood had; and Howat had often half-envied it.
He was bluff and sometimes rude in his jovial way, but nobody ever
minded—not that he cared if they did. He was by far the most popular
doctor in Browdley; he was generous, kind-hearted, and hard-working, but he
stood no nonsense and never let anyone waste his time. And the brusquer he
was, the more, in a way, he was liked. In a few years, when his hair had
turned completely white, he and his sayings would doubtless begin to grow
legendary.

Miss Monks, at eighty-nine, was no more impervious to that forceful charm
than many a girl in her teens. She simpered almost coyly as Ringwood felt her
pulse and passed a hand across her forehead. “Keep quiet,” he
adjured her. “You’ve been talking too much. Freemantle’s
fault, I daresay. Good night, now. Sleep well. And I’ll be round in the
morning.”

He nodded, drew on his gloves, and took Howat’s arm; and the latter,
with a murmured farewell to the old lady, allowed himself to be piloted
downstairs and into the street. The doctor’s Morris, five years old,
waited at the kerb. “Get inside,” said Ringwood, “I’m
going to drive you home.”

Howat clambered in; he was weary, and not sorry to be given a lift.
“It’s a cold night,” he commented. “Damn cold,”
agreed Ringwood, and slipped into gear. It was difficult to talk during the
drive, as the car made at least twice as much noise as any other Howat had
ever experienced; he stared ahead through the murky windscreen, a little
confused in mind with that sudden rush of lamp-posts and shop-fronts past
him. “That was a stuffy room,” he shouted, as if in indirect
explanation of his silence. Ringwood shouted back: “Sour as a midden.
Why don’t she have a window opened? How long had you been there?”
Howat answered: “Since about half-past seven,” and Ringwood, with
a curious and characteristic noise in his throat, exclaimed: “Good
God!”

Then it was gradually borne upon Howat’s mind that Ringwood was
driving him, not to the Manse, but to his own house in Dawson Street. He said
“I say, Ringwood, I thought you were taking me home,” and
Ringwood replied, gruffly: “So I am—to
my
home. What more
do you want?” Howat began to explain his Temperance meeting, but
Ringwood interrupted: “My dear man, you’re coming in with me for
a while, and your temperance people can all go and drink themselves to
death.”

They drew up outside the ugly detached villa in which the doctor lived. He
had only a housekeeper to look after him, and the house was many rooms too
big; it had formerly belonged to an older-fashioned doctor with a large
family, a top-hat and tail-coat, and a brougham. Ringwood had made no effort
to adapt the premises to his more modest uses; some of the rooms were
altogether unfurnished, and all were shabby. He had a decent income, but he
never cared about the more complicated comforts of life; he would keep the
chairs in his dining-room till they actually fell to pieces, just as he would
drive his old car till the repairers finally declined to patch it up any
more. He liked good, plain food and fifteen-year-old whisky, and (when he had
any spare time, which was not often) he would read any sort of book except
novels.

“Go on,” he said, almost pushing Howat out of the car. He
followed the parson up the short gravelled path and, unlocking a side-door,
manoeuvred him into the unlit waiting-room that adjoined the surgery.
“Straight through—you know the way,” he directed, switching
on a light. The unlovely room faced them with its stiff array of
straight-backed chairs and table of ancient magazines. Ringwood passed
through into the surgery beyond. It was a crowded, glass-roofed apartment,
not unlike a greenhouse, full of the usual smell of drugs and india-rubber,
and lined with shelves of books, bottles, and the accumulated litter of three
decades in Browdley. It was extraordinary, though true, that amidst this
confusion Ringwood always did know exactly where everything was.

“Now,” said the doctor, “sit down and make yourself
comfortable.”

He put Howat in a big leather chair that could be made to tilt
backwards—the chair in which, before the days of specialised dentistry,
many a Browdley sufferer had lost an aching tooth. Then he lit the gas-fire
and wandered away into the small dispensary that opened off the surgery at
the further end. He kept shouting out from this inner room, his words
punctuated with the clink of bottles and glasses.

“Yes, I was wrong about the old girl after all, Freemantle—you
win that bob. Could have sworn she’d peg out during the
night—never was more surprised than when I saw her perking up in bed at
ten o’clock this morning. They’ll have to shoot her, that’s
all…Seriously, though, her heart’s pretty dicky—take her off
sudden one of these days. I wouldn’t mind betting all the money
I’ve got that you and I’ll be in at the kill before this time
next month.”

Howat half-smiled; Ringwood’s flippant phrases sometimes shocked,
but never exactly offended him. He said, after a pause: “You know,
Ringwood, I often envy you doctors. There’s something so downright
about the things you do for people. We parsons have to grope about wondering
what we
can
do. You just go and do it. To-night, for instance, you
took that woman’s pulse and temperature in about a
minute—probably a far more useful service than I managed to perform in
the whole hour and a half I was there with her.”

“Oh, I don’t know—it depends a lot on what you did do.
Chattered, I suppose—I noticed her heart was a bit jerkier after it. If
she dies in the night I shall put on the certificate ‘Talked to death
by a parson.’ Can’t think what you found to say to her all that
time, I must admit.”

“Well, for one thing, I prayed.” He said that in a queerly
troubled voice, and added: “Does that sound to you a rather odd
confession?”

“Not at all. After all, it’s in your line of business, just as
I tap chests and look at tongues.”

“I wonder if it really is quite the same sort of thing as
that.”

“Sometimes, Freemantle, I think you wonder a damn sight too
much.” Ringwood came bounding out of the dispensary with a tumbler of
whisky and water in one hand and a half-filled medicine-glass in the other.
The latter he held out to Howat. “Here, drink this. You need
it—it’s only a pick-me-up—quite harmless and nonalcoholic.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed the state you’ve been getting
yourself into these last few months.”

Howat took the glass. “Thanks, Ringwood—though I’m not
sure I do need it. Touch of nerves, perhaps. A few rather troublesome things
have been happening lately. Last night, for instance, I had a worrying kind
of interview with the chapel secretary, Garland.”

“Oh, Garland the draper?—yes, I know him. Little chap with
black moustaches—looks rather like a seedy croupier at a fifth- rate
casino. Well, what was all the fuss over? They say, by the way, his
daughter’s hopped it—maybe the old boy was feeling a bit peeved
over that when you saw him.”

“It was about that—that we had the—the argument,”
said Howat. Then he told Ringwood briefly all the details. Ringwood listened
intently, perching himself on the edge of the desk and sipping whisky from
time to time. At the end of the story he said: “So they’re trying
to blame you for what’s happened, are they? Well, I don’t think
I’d worry about it if I were you. Queer sort of girl, I
remember—rather nice voice—good figure, too—I had to give
her the once-over, you know, before she took on that job at the library. Cut
above her pa and ma, I thought jolly good luck to her if she
has
left
the old folks at home. Wish there were more would do it—look at the
unemployed—thousands of ’em—no initiative—no
ambition—rather hang about Browdley street-corners than try their luck
anywhere else. Of course they might say much the same of us—we stick to
the old place, don’t we?—but then, we’re getting
on—at least I am—I’m sixty next birthday. But you’re
not so old, Freemantle—I often wonder why you stay on here. Don’t
you ever feel you’d like to try for a change?”

“Often. Terribly often. But there again, you doctors have the
advantage. You could clear out to-morrow and feel that you were doing just as
much good somewhere else, but I couldn’t—it’s taken me
twelve years even to begin to do anything here, and if I went away all that
would probably be wasted.”

“Oh, nonsense. You parsons take yourselves far too seriously. After
all, if you do your best, what more
can
you do? That’s how I
always feel in my job. Sometimes I cure, sometimes I kill—people take
the risk when they call me in—I make no promises except to do as well
as I know how. If I come a cropper over something it’s not my
fault—I can’t help it—and I assure you I never let it lose
me a wink of sleep. Why should I?”