So Well Remembered by James Hilton Read Free Book Online

clipped speech presided at the interview. (Ever
afterwards he was the personification of an ideal in George’s mind —the
pure scholar, unworldly, incomparable, serenely aloof; so that on meeting
Lord Winslow, for instance, he felt he already knew the type.)
    The prototype had talked pleasantly and informally with George’s
examination papers before him, and also (though George had not known this)
notes of reminder that the examinee was thirty-one years old, had had nothing
but an elementary-school education, but was already owner and editor of a
local newspaper as well as a town councillor with reputedly advanced views
—altogether a rather remarkable specimen. Clearly George both puzzled
and attracted him, though he gave no sign of it; he merely steered the
conversation from one subject to another—which was not difficult, for
George loved to talk. After half an hour or so the older man nodded, picked
up the examination papers, cleared his throat, and began rather
uncomfortably: “A pity, Mr. Boswell, that you have done so badly in one paper
—English—that your total marks do not reach the required
minimum.”
    George’s conviction of failure, which had somehow become suspended during
the conversation, now returned with a hard hit to the pit of the stomach.
“Aye,” he said heavily. “I guessed as much.”
    “Do you think you will try again, Mr. Boswell?”
    “I dunno, sir. I dunno if I’ll have the time to.”
    “Why not?”
    “You see, I’m on the local Council and I run a newspaper—there’s a
heap of work in all that—work that I can’t cut down on. If it was just
a question of giving up fun or a hobby I wouldn’t mind, but when it means
important things…”
    “Such as?”
    “Well, sir, I doubt if you’d be interested in all the details, but I’m
trying to get a post-war slum-clearance scheme adopted by the Council, and
that’s a job, I can tell you—if you knew the sort of place Browdley
is.”
    “H’m, yes… I understand. And I do not dispute the importance of such
work, or the priority you feel you must give to it. What does puzzle me
—a little—is your motive in entering for this examination at all.
Did you feel that a university degree would help you politically— or
professionally?”
    “No, sir, it isn’t that. But I thought it might help me—sometimes
—inside myself—to feel I was properly educated.”
    “And what do you mean by ‘properly educated’?”
    George pondered a moment, then replied: “I’ll put it this way, sir—
sometimes I read a book that seems to me just plain stupid, but because I’m
not properly educated I can’t be sure whether IT’S stupid or whether I’M
stupid.”
    A smile creased over the older man’s face as he burrowed afresh among the
papers, finally discovering one and holding it up before his spectacles.
“H’m… h’m… Such a pity, Mr. Boswell—such a pity… Mind you, I
didn’t mark these English papers myself, so of course I don’t know
whether…” And then a long pause, punctuated by more throat-clearings and
spectacle- fidgetings. “Take this question, for instance—‘What do you
know of the Pathetic Fallacy?’ I see, Mr. Boswell, that your answer is
‘Nothing’, for which you have been given no marks at all.”
    George felt it was rather unfair to rub it in; if he had failed, he had
failed; and when (since the examination) he had found out what the Pathetic
Fallacy really was, it had turned out to be so different from anything he
could possibly have guessed that he thought he had at least done well not to
try. So with this vague self-justification in mind he now blurted out: “Well,
sir, it was the truth, anyway. I did know nothing and I said so.”
    “Precisely, Mr. Boswell. I have no reason to suppose that your answer was
not a perfectly correct one to the question as asked, and if the questioner
had wished to judge your answer on any other merits it seems to