And Now Good-bye by James Hilton Read Free Book Online

and so on? It wouldn’t cost more than a few shillings; I
daresay I could afford it myself. Still, I shall have to economise for a
time—that trip to London will cost a bit, and the specialist’s
fee will probably be stiff- five guineas, maybe, or three if I plead poverty.
Wonder if there is anything really serious the matter—queer how that
pain comes and goes—I hadn’t it this afternoon while I was
talking to those children in school, but it came back during tea. Never mind,
stick it out, whatever it is—no sense in whining over things…
    The mere thinking of his throat made it feel dry and parched; he would
have poured out a drink from the carafe had not the water repelled by its
stale, yellowish tinge. And just for a moment there carne over him the most
absurd and ridiculous longing for something he would never dream of
having—a glass of beer. One of those dark brown frothing tumblers he
sometimes saw through the windows of public-houses—public-houses all
warm and brightly lit, with men in them talking sociably and perhaps playing
darts. In his mind, just for the moment, the picture stood out in vivid
contrast to the chill, comfortless room in which he was shortly to begin his
address.
    He half-smiled at the quaintness of the vision, and then, with a quick
return to reality, nodded and smiled to Mr. and Mrs. Garland, who had just
entered. They were by no means ‘young people’, and he did not
recollect their ever having attended a Guild meeting before; still, he was
glad enough to see them, though faintly surprised.
    Swallowing hard to ease the dryness of his throat, Howat rose from his
chair and began to speak. He began haltingly, unfluently, as he so often did;
those who heard him for only the first minute of any speech or sermon must
certainly have thought him a very poor orator. It was as if he had, by a
tremendous effort, to launch himself into a world of mind and spirit in which
words came of their own accord. He kept saying: Mozart…Mozart…His face
had a peculiar nervous twitch during those initial struggles; his rugged
features looked, for the time, almost agonised; till, with a suddenness that
was sometimes rather amusing, he was ‘off’. He had, beyond doubt,
a voice and an enunciation of great beauty.
    Certain of his words and phrases sounded, in his own ears, far above
others, and went on echoing long after he had spoken them. Was he soaring
above their heads, he wondered, momentarily, remembering his daughter’s
caution? Well no, he thought not; he hoped not; and besides, even if he were,
perhaps he could get them to soar with him—above their own heads and
his too. If only that sharpness in his throat would disappear; it was absurd,
at his age, to be bothered in such a way; he was only forty-three and already
seeing specialists and worrying about his health. And suddenly, looking round
at the young faces in front of him, he saw them all labelled, as it were,
with the inevitable doom of age and death; life was so tragically short, and
it seemed in some sense a kind of divine toss-up whether one succeeded or
failed in getting anything out of it during the time allowed. How necessary
to make the most of youth, to pursue while the pursuit had zest, to apprehend
the beauty of the world that lay everywhere around, in sight and sound and
feeling…He made a pause in his remarks, wound up his portable gramophone,
and played over the Trio in E Major and then the two great Overtures; the
music floated past him, dissolving, as it were, into the air of which it was
born; he always felt that Mozart was like that, perfectly and enchantingly
meaningless except for that one central unanalysable meaning—beauty.
’fever, he said when the records were finished, there had been an angel
born upon this earth, that angel was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We might not
know a very great deal about the future life, but we must feel—indeed
it was almost impossible