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

youngsters, but
there wouldn’t be any, clearly, if Garland stayed.
    After a few moments he was quite alone in the room with Garland and Mrs.
Garland. The others had all disappeared through the green-baize door, and
there was left no sound except the hissing of the four gas jets. Howat
remarked conversationally as he packed up his gramophone: “Bad night,
Mr. Garland.” (Garland was the sort of man who wouldn’t do for
anyone to drop the prefix.)
    “Very,” replied Garland, massively, and went on: “As a
matter of fact, Mr. Freemantle, we shouldn’t have come but, only we
thought it would give us a chance of seeing you in private.”
    “Really? Well, anything I can do, of course—” He felt so
thoroughly tired, and more in the mood for anything on earth than for a
private talk with Garland. However…
    “You see, Mr. Freemantle, it’s about our girl. She’s run
away from. home.”
    “Indeed?” he made the necessary mental
effort—Garland’s daughter—the girl he had been teaching
German—a pleasant girl, she had always seemed, and she had surprised
him once, he recollected, by humming a tune from a Brahms sonata.
    He repeated: “Indeed? She’s run away from home, you
say?”
    “Yes. On Saturday. She packed up all her things and went before we
knew anything about it.”
    “But surely—”
    “Oh, it astonishes you, does it?” interrupted Mrs. Garland,
tartly. “We thought maybe you mightn’t be so astonished as we
were, seeing the chances she’s had lately of confiding in
you.”
    “Confiding in me?” Howat was sheerly bewildered. “I
don’t understand you, Mrs. Garland—I really don’t
understand. Your daughter has been taking lessons in German from me week by
week, but apart from that—”
    “And it wasn’t our idea she should do it, please don’t
think that for a moment. What would she be wanting to learn German for, I
should like to know?”
    “She gave no definite reason—not to me, anyhow—but I
suppose she wished to improve her general education. Surely there’s
nothing very outrageous in that.”
    “It’s all very outrageous. She was full of mad ideas, always
was.”
    “But in these days, Mrs. Garland—”
    “ These days ? It’s a pity these days are what they are.
A sinful, godless age, that’s what it is.”
    Howat’s fingers drummed on the desk-lid; he was becoming just a
shade impatient. “Well, well, that’s a big subject—you were
telling me about your daughter, weren’t you? Do you mean that
she’s disappeared, and that you don’t know where she is at
all?”
    Garland here thought fit to intervene; he said, as if realising that his
wife would only bungle the business: “The fact is, Mr. Freemantle, we
can only guess. We’ve had no news at all except a card saying she was
quite well but wouldn’t be coming back. We couldn’t read the
postmark. And what crossed our minds was that perhaps she might have hinted
to you something about her intentions. It’s a most upsetting thing to
have happened altogether.”
    “I agree with you, Mr. Garland, and I wish I could help, but I
assure you she never gave me the slightest idea that such a notion was in her
mind. If she had, I need hardly say that I should have strongly dissuaded her
and even, if necessary, approached you on the matter.”
    Garland seemed to find this reply moderately satisfactory, but Mrs.
Garland’s eyes narrowed sharply. “You mean that you haven’t
heard from her at all, then?” she interposed.
    He shook his head and then suddenly remembered the Raphael picture that
had arrived by the first post that day. “Stay, though—well yes,
now I come to recollect it, I did hear from her this morning, but it was
merely a short message to say she wouldn’t be coming for her usual
German lesson to-morrow.”
    “Oh? So she has written to you then? Was that all she said? Did she
give no explanation?”
    “She merely said she would be out of Browdley