Free And Now Good-bye by James Hilton Page B

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