on our slight acquaintance to ask a favour. No doubt by
this time you and everyone else in Browdley must know that I have left home,
and though I do not regret doing so, I do not want my parents to worry about
me unnecessarily. I wish you could assure them that I am perfectly all right
and quite happy. I hate leaving as I had to do, but I really do feel that I
am too old to be treated as a child. Do you think you could possibly explain
that to them? I know it is asking a great deal, but I cannot think of anyone
else who could do it. I must thank you, too, for the German lessons which I
am sure will prove of use to rue, and I enclose two pounds which I think I
owe you for them. I have no permanent address just at present, but for the
next few clays anything addressed c/o the Charing Cross post office would
reach me. With kindest regards and many thanks,
Yours sincerely, Elizabeth Garland .”
Howat stared at the letter with a sharp sensation of dismay. This Garland
affair seemed to get more and more complicated and to be dragging him,
against his will, nearer and nearer to the centre of it. He had always been
careful to avoid any sort of private friendship with the younger girls of his
chapel—he thought it undesirable for a good many reasons—yet here
he was, the confidant, whether he chose to be or not, of a girl who had run
away from home and was eloping (to use the politest word) to Paris. It was
all rather unfortunate, and he did not quite know what would be the best
course to take. If he showed the letter or conveyed the message to Garland,
he could imagine the fellow’s conclusions. Nor, despite the
girl’s optimism, did he feel at all equal to explaining to Garland that
his daughter was ’too old to be treated as a child’. Really, it
was a most difficult situation and he went into dinner feeling sadly
perplexed. Almost as soon as he sat down, his wife said: “I suppose you
didn’t call on the Garlands, Howat? Don’t you think you ought
to—to express our sympathy?”
He answered: “I met Garland in the street outside his shop and we
went in for a little talk. I told him how sorry we were.”
“Did he tell you that the person the girl’s run off with is a
man over fifty—married and with a family?”
“Good heavens, no? Wherever did you hear that?”
Mrs. Freemantle smiled in a satisfied way and exchanged a glance with Aunt
Viney; it was so rarely that she could rouse her husband’s interest,
much less a touch of excitement, in any titbit of local gossip. “Viney
heard it from a woman in the baker’s shop this morning. It’s
true, because the woman’s son has a job at the same
cinema—he’s a ticket attendant or something.”
“I—I don’t know. It sounds so—so incredible. A man
of that age and a girl of—how old would she
be—nineteen—twenty or so—I suppose?”
“She’s twenty-two.”
Howat did not answer for a time, and at last he merely remarked, as if to
himself: “Oh, then she has a legal right to do as she likes. I
didn’t quite realise that. But still…” He checked himself,
feeling he had already discussed the matter at far too great a length.
“It’s all most unfortunate,” he ended up, “and I do
think that the less people talk and spread gossip about it, the
better.”
Wednesday afternoon was the time for the weekly meeting of his
Ladies’ Working Party and Sewing Guild, and it was his custom to look
in about three o’clock, and take an unwanted cup of tea in a schoolroom
that always smelt rather depressingly of old clothes. He did not much care
for the job, but it was expected of him; the women liked the few minutes of
social contact with the minister; it gave them food for gossip afterwards
whether he looked well or ill, whether his clothes were shabby, whether he
got on all right with his wife, if it were true that his son in Canada had
entirely gone to the bad and never wrote home, and so on.
Howat
this time you and everyone else in Browdley must know that I have left home,
and though I do not regret doing so, I do not want my parents to worry about
me unnecessarily. I wish you could assure them that I am perfectly all right
and quite happy. I hate leaving as I had to do, but I really do feel that I
am too old to be treated as a child. Do you think you could possibly explain
that to them? I know it is asking a great deal, but I cannot think of anyone
else who could do it. I must thank you, too, for the German lessons which I
am sure will prove of use to rue, and I enclose two pounds which I think I
owe you for them. I have no permanent address just at present, but for the
next few clays anything addressed c/o the Charing Cross post office would
reach me. With kindest regards and many thanks,
Yours sincerely, Elizabeth Garland .”
Howat stared at the letter with a sharp sensation of dismay. This Garland
affair seemed to get more and more complicated and to be dragging him,
against his will, nearer and nearer to the centre of it. He had always been
careful to avoid any sort of private friendship with the younger girls of his
chapel—he thought it undesirable for a good many reasons—yet here
he was, the confidant, whether he chose to be or not, of a girl who had run
away from home and was eloping (to use the politest word) to Paris. It was
all rather unfortunate, and he did not quite know what would be the best
course to take. If he showed the letter or conveyed the message to Garland,
he could imagine the fellow’s conclusions. Nor, despite the
girl’s optimism, did he feel at all equal to explaining to Garland that
his daughter was ’too old to be treated as a child’. Really, it
was a most difficult situation and he went into dinner feeling sadly
perplexed. Almost as soon as he sat down, his wife said: “I suppose you
didn’t call on the Garlands, Howat? Don’t you think you ought
to—to express our sympathy?”
He answered: “I met Garland in the street outside his shop and we
went in for a little talk. I told him how sorry we were.”
“Did he tell you that the person the girl’s run off with is a
man over fifty—married and with a family?”
“Good heavens, no? Wherever did you hear that?”
Mrs. Freemantle smiled in a satisfied way and exchanged a glance with Aunt
Viney; it was so rarely that she could rouse her husband’s interest,
much less a touch of excitement, in any titbit of local gossip. “Viney
heard it from a woman in the baker’s shop this morning. It’s
true, because the woman’s son has a job at the same
cinema—he’s a ticket attendant or something.”
“I—I don’t know. It sounds so—so incredible. A man
of that age and a girl of—how old would she
be—nineteen—twenty or so—I suppose?”
“She’s twenty-two.”
Howat did not answer for a time, and at last he merely remarked, as if to
himself: “Oh, then she has a legal right to do as she likes. I
didn’t quite realise that. But still…” He checked himself,
feeling he had already discussed the matter at far too great a length.
“It’s all most unfortunate,” he ended up, “and I do
think that the less people talk and spread gossip about it, the
better.”
Wednesday afternoon was the time for the weekly meeting of his
Ladies’ Working Party and Sewing Guild, and it was his custom to look
in about three o’clock, and take an unwanted cup of tea in a schoolroom
that always smelt rather depressingly of old clothes. He did not much care
for the job, but it was expected of him; the women liked the few minutes of
social contact with the minister; it gave them food for gossip afterwards
whether he looked well or ill, whether his clothes were shabby, whether he
got on all right with his wife, if it were true that his son in Canada had
entirely gone to the bad and never wrote home, and so on.
Howat
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