BOOK I

The Summer Term

BOOK II

The Winter Term

INTERLUDE

Christmas At Beachings Over

BOOK III

The Lent Term

BOOK I

THE SUMMER TERM

CHAPTER ONE

I

"Ah, um yes, Mr. Speed, is it not?... Welcome, sir! Welcome to

Millstead!" Kenneth Speed gripped the other's hand and smiled. He was a

tall passably good-looking fellow in his early twenties, bright-eyed and

brown-haired. At the moment he was feeling somewhat nervous, and always

when he felt nervous he did things vigorously, as if to obscure his

secret trepidation. Therefore when he took hold of the soft moist hand

that was offered him he grasped it in such a way that its possessor

winced and gave a perceptible gasp.

"Delighted to meet you, sir," said the young man, briskly, and his

voice, like his action, was especially vigorous because of nervousness.

It was not nervousness of interviewing a future employer, or of

receiving social initiation into a new world; still less was it due to

any consciousness of personal inferiority; it was an intellectual

nervousness, based on an acute realisation of the exact moment when life

turns a fresh corner which may or may not lead into a blind alley. And

as Kenneth Speed felt the touch of this clammy elderly hand, he

experienced a sudden eager desire to run away, out of the dark study and

through the streets to the railway-station whence he had come. Absurd

and ignoble desire, he told himself, shrugging his shoulders slightly as

if to shake off an unpleasant sensation. He saw the past

kaleidoscopically, the future as a mere vague following-up of the

immediate present. A month ago he had been a resident undergraduate at

Cambridge. Now he was Kenneth Speed, B.A., Arts' Master at Millstead

School. The transformation seemed to him for the time being all that was

in life.

It was a dull glowering day towards the end of April, most appropriately

melancholy for the beginning of term. It was one of those days when the

sun had been bright very early, and by ten o'clock the sky dappled with

white clouds; by noon the whiteness had dulled and spread to leaden

patches of grey; now, at mid-afternoon, a cold wintry wind rolled them

heavily across the sky and piled them on to the deep gloom of the

horizon. The Headmaster's study, lit from three small windows through

which the daylight, filtered by the thick spring foliage of lime trees,

struggled meagrely, was darker even than usual, and Speed, peering

around with hesitant inquisitive eyes, received no more than a confused

impression of dreariness. He could see the clerical collar of the man

opposite gleaming like a bar of ivory against an ebony background.

The voice, almost as soft and clammy as the hand, went on: "I hope you

will be very comfortable here, Mr. Speed. We are--um yes--an old

foundation, and we have our--um yes--our traditions--and--um--so

forth.... You will take music and drawing, I understand?"

"That was the arrangement, I believe."

His eyes, by now accustomed to the gloom, saw over the top of the

dazzling white collar a heavy duplicated chin and sharp clean-cut lips,

lips in which whatever was slightly gentle was also slightly shrewd.

Above them a huge promontory of a nose leaned back into deep-set eyes

that had each a tiny spark in them that pierced the dusk like the

gleaming tips of a pair of foils. And over all this a wide blue-veined

forehead curved on to a bald crown on which the light shone mistily.

There was fascination of a sort in the whole impression; one felt that

the man might be almost physically a part of the dark study,

indissolubly one with the leather-bound books and the massive mahogany

pedestal-desk; a Pope, perhaps, in a Vatican born with him. And when he

moved his finger to push a bell at his elbow Speed started as if the

movement had been in some way sinister.

"Ah yes, that will be all right--um--music and drawing.

Perhaps--um--commercial geography for the--um--lower forms, eh?"

"I'm afraid I don't know much about commercial geography."

"Oh, well--um yes--I suppose not. Still--easy to acquire, you know. Oh

yes, quite easy... Come in...."

This last remark, uttered in a peculiar treble wail, was in response to

a soft tap at the door. It opened and a man stepped into the shadows and

made his way to the desk with cat-like stealthiness.

"Light the gas, Potter... And by the way, Mr. Speed will be in to

dinner." He turned to the young man and said, as if the enquiry were

merely a matter of form: "You'll join us for dinner to-night, won't

you?"

Speed replied: "I shall be delighted."

He wondered then what it was in the dark study that made him feel eerily

sensitive and observant; so that, for instance, to watch Potter standing

on a chair and lighting the incandescent globes was to feel vividly and

uncannily the man's feline grace of movement. And what was it in the

Headmaster's quivering blade-like eyes that awakened the wonder as to

what these dark book-lined walls had seen in the past, what strange,

furtive conversations they had heard, what scenes of pity and terror and

fright and, might be, of blind suffering they had gazed upon?

The globes popped into yellow brilliance. The dark study took sudden

shape and coherence; the shadows were no longer menacing. And the

Headmaster, the Reverend Bruce Ervine, M.A., D.D., turned out to be no

more than a plump apoplectic-looking man with a totally bald head.

Speed's eyes, blinking their relief, wandered vacantly over the

bookshelves. He noticed Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" in twelve volumes,

the Expositor's Bible in twenty volumes, the Encyclopædia Britannica in

forty volumes, a long shelf of the Loeb classical series, and a huge

group of lexicons surmounting like guardian angels a host of small

school text-books.

"Dinner is at seven, then Mr. Speed. We--we do not dress--except for--um

yes--for special occasions.... If you--um--have nothing to do this

afternoon--you might find a stroll into the town interesting--there are

some Roman--um--earthworks that are extremely--um yes--extremely

fascinating. Oh yes, really... Harrington's the stationers will sell you

a guide.... I don't think there are any--um--duties we need trouble you

with until to-morrow ... um yes ... Seven o'clock then, Mr. Speed..."

"I shall be there, sir."

He bowed slightly and backed himself through the green-baize double

doors into the stone corridor.

II

He climbed the stone flights of steps that led to the School House

dormitories and made his way to the little room in which, some hours

earlier, the school porter, squirming after tips, had deposited his

trunks and suit-case. Over the door, in neat white letters upon a black

background, he read: "Mr. K. Speed."--It seemed to him almost the name

of somebody else. He looked at it, earnestly and contemplatively, until

he saw that a small boy was staring at him from the dormitory doorway at

the end of the passage. That would never do; it would be fatal to appear

eccentric. He walked into the room and shut the door behind him. He was

alone now and could think. He saw the bare distempered walls with

patches of deeper colour where pictures had been hung; the table covered

with a green-baize cloth; the shabby pedestal-desk surmounted by a

dilapidated inkstand; the empty fire-grate into which somebody, as if in

derision, had cast quantities of red tissue-paper. An inner door opened

into a small bedroom, and here his critical eye roved over the plain

deal chest of drawers, the perfunctory wash-hand stand (it was expected,

no doubt, that masters would wash in the prefects' bathroom), and the

narrow iron bed with the hollow still in it that last term's occupant

had worn. He carried his luggage in through the separating door and

began to unpack.

But he was quite happy. He had always had the ambition to be a master at

a public-school. He had dreamed about it; he was dreaming about it now.

He was bursting with new ideas and new enthusiasms, which he hoped would

be infectious, and Millstead, which was certainly a good school, would

doubtless give him his chance. Something in Ervine's dark study had

momentarily damped his enthusiasm, but only momentarily; and in any case

he was not afraid of an uncomfortable bed or of a poorly-furnished room.

When he had been at Millstead a little while he would, he decided,

import some furniture from home; it would not, however, be wise to do

everything in a hurry. For the immediate present a few photographs on

the mantelpiece, Medici prints on the walls, a few cushions, books of

course, and his innumerable undergraduate pipes and tobacco-jars, would

wreak a sufficiently pleasant transformation.

He looked through the open lattice-windows and saw, three storeys below,

the headmaster's garden, the running-track, and beyond that the smooth

green of the cricket-pitch. Leaning out and turning his head sharply to

the left he could see the huge red blocks of Milner's and Lavery's, the

two other houses, together with the science buildings and the squat

gymnasium. He felt already intimate with them; he anticipated in a sense

the peculiar closeness of their relationship with his life. Their very

bricks and mortar might, if he let them, become part of his inmost soul.

He would walk amongst them secretly and knowingly, familiar with every

step and curve of their corridors, growing each day more intimate with

them until one day, might be, he should be a part of them as darkly and

mysteriously as Ervine had become a part of his study. Would he? He

shrank instinctively from such a final absorption of himself. And yet

already he was conscious of fascination, of something that would

permeate his life subtly and tremendously--that must do so, whether he

willed it or not. And as he leaned his head out of the window he felt

big cold drops of rain.

He shut the windows and resumed unpacking. Just as he had finished

everything except the hanging up of some of the pictures, he heard the

School clock chime the hour of four. He recollected that the porter had

told him that tea could be obtained in the Masters' Common-Room at that

hour. It was raining heavily now, so that a walk into the town, even

with the lure of old Roman earthworks, was unattractive. Besides, he

felt just pleasantly hungry. He washed his hands and descended the four

long flights to the ground-floor corridors.

III

The Masters' Common-Room was empty save for a diminutive man reading the

_Farmer and Stockbreeder_. As Speed entered the little man turned round

in his chair and looked at him. Speed smiled and said, still with a

trace of that almost boisterous nervousness: "I hope I'm not intruding."

The little man replied: "Oh, not at all. Come and sit down. Are you

having tea?"

"Yes."

"Then perhaps we can have it together. You're Speed, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Thought so. I'm Pritchard. Science and maths."

He said that with the air of making a vivid epigram. He had small,

rather feminine features, and a complexion dear as a woman's. Moreover

he nipped out his words, as it were, with a delicacy that was almost

wholly feminine, and that blended curiously with his far-reaching

contralto voice.

He pressed a bell by the mantelpiece.

"That'll fetch Potter," he said. "Potter's the Head's man, but the Head

is good enough to lend him to us for meals. I daresay we'll be alone.

The rest won't come before they have to."

"Why do you, then?" enquired Speed, laughing a little.

"Me?--Oh, I'm the victim of the railway time-table. If I'd caught a later

train I shouldn't have arrived here till to-morrow. I come from the Isle

of Man. Where do you come from?"

"Little place in Essex."

"You're all right then. Perhaps you'll be able to manage a week-end home

during the term. What's the Head put you on to?"

"Oh, drawing and music. And he mentioned commercial geography, but I'm

not qualified for that."

"Bless you, you don't need to be. It's only exports and imports...

Potter, tea for two, please.... And some toast... Public-school man

yourself, I suppose."

"Yes."

"Here?"

"No."

"Where, then, if you don't object to my questions?"

"Harrow."

Pritchard whistled.

After Potter had reappeared with the tea, he went on: "You know, Speed,

we've had a bit of gossip here about you. Before the vac. started.

Something that the Head's wife let out one night when Ransome--he's the

classics Master--went there to dinner. She rather gave Ransome the

impression that you were a bit of a millionaire."

Speed coloured and said hastily: "Oh, not at all. She's quite mistaken,

I assure you."

Pritchard paused, teacup in hand. "But your father is Sir Charles Speed,

isn't he?"

"Yes."

The assent was grudging and a trifle irritated. Speed helped himself to

toast with an energy that gave emphasis to the monosyllable. After

munching in silence for some minutes he said: "Don't forget I'm far more

curious about Millstead than you have any right to be about me. Tell me

about the place."

"My dear fellow, I----" his voice sank to a melodramatic whisper--"I

positively daren't tell you anything while _that_ fellow's about." (He

jerked his head in the direction of the pantry cupboard inside which

Potter could be heard sibilantly cleaning the knives.) "He's got ears

that would pierce a ten-inch wall. But if you want to make a friend of

me come up to my room to-night--I'm over the way in Milner's--and we'll

have a pipe and a chat before bedtime."

Speed said: "Sorry. But I'm afraid I can't to-night. Thanks all the

same, though. I'm dining at the Head's."

Pritchard's eyes rounded, and once again he emitted a soft whistle. "Oh,

you are, are you?" he said, curiously, and he seemed ever so slightly

displeased. He was silent for a short time; then, toying facetiously

with a slab of cake, he added: "Well, be sure and give Miss Ervine my

love when you get there."

"Miss Ervine?"

"Herself."

Speed said after a pause: "What's she like?" Again Pritchard jerked his

head significantly towards the pantry cupboard. "Mustn't talk shop here,

old man. Besides you'll find out quite soon enough what she's like."

He took up the _Farmer and Stockbreeder_ and said, in rather a loud

tone, as if for Potter's benefit to set a label of innocuousness upon

the whole of their conversation: "Don't know if you're at all interested

in farming, Speed?--I am. My brother's got a little farm down in

Herefordshire..."

They chatted about farming for some time, while Potter wandered about

preparing the long tables for dinner. Speed was not especially

interested, and after a while excused himself by mentioning some letters

that he must write. He came to the conclusion that he did not want to

make a friend of Pritchard.

IV

At a quarter to seven he sank into the wicker armchair in his room and

gazed pensively at the red tissue-paper in the fire-grate. He had just a

few minutes with nothing particular to do in them before going

downstairs to dinner at the Head's. He was ready dressed and groomed for

the occasion, polished up to that pitch of healthy cleanliness and

sartorial efficiency which the undergraduate of not many weeks before

had been wont to present at University functions of the more fashionable

sort. He looked extraordinarily young, almost boyish, in his smartly cut

lounge suit and patent shoes; he thought so himself as he looked in the

mirror--he speculated a little humorously whether the head-prefect would

look older or younger than he did. He remembered Pritchard's

half-jocular reference to Miss Ervine; he supposed from the way

Pritchard had mentioned her that she was some awful spectacled

blue-stocking of a girl--schoolmasters' daughters were quite often like

that. On the whole he was looking forward to seven o'clock, partly

because he was eager to pick up more of the threads of Millstead life,

and partly because he enjoyed dining out.

Out in the corridor and in the dormitories and down the stone steps

various sounds told him, even though he did not know Millstead, that the

term had at last begun. He could hear the confused murmur of boyish

voices ascending in sudden gusts from the rooms below; every now and

then footsteps raced past his room and were muffled by the webbing on

the dormitory floor; he heard shouts and cries of all kinds, from

shrillest treble to deepest bass, rising and falling ceaselessly amid

the vague jangle of miscellaneous sound. Sometimes a particular voice or

group of voices would become separate from the rest, and then he could

pick up scraps of conversation, eager salutations, boisterous chaff,

exchanged remarks about vacation experiences, all intermittent and

punctuated by the noisy unpacking of suit-cases and the clatter of

water-jugs in their basins. He was so young that he could hardly believe

that he was a Master now and not a schoolboy.

The school-clock commenced to chime the hour. He rose, took a last view

of himself in the bedroom mirror, and went out into the corridor. A

small boy carrying a large bag collided with him outside the door and

apologised profusely. He said, with a laugh: "Oh, don't mention it."

He knew that the boy would recount the incident to everybody in the

dormitory. In fact, as he turned the corner to descend the steps he

caught a momentary glimpse of the boy standing stock still in the

corridor gazing after him. He smiled as he went down.

V

He went round to the front entrance of the Headmaster's house and rang

the bell. It was a curious house, the result of repeated architectural

patchings and additions; its ultimate incongruity had been softened and

mellowed by ivy and creeper of various sorts, so that it bore the sad

air of a muffled-up invalid. Potter opened the door and admitted him

with stealthy precision. While he was standing in the hall and being

relieved of his hat and gloves he had time to notice the Asiatic and

African bric-a-brac which, scattered about the walls and tables, bore

testimony to Doctor Ervine's years as a missionary in foreign fields.

Then, with the same feline grace, Potter showed him into the

drawing-room.

It was a moderate-sized apartment lit by heavy old-fashioned gas

chandeliers, whose peculiar and continuous hissing sound emphasised the

awkwardness of any gap in the conversation. A baby-grand piano, with its

sound-board closed and littered with music and ornaments, and various

cabinets of china and curios, were the only large articles of furniture;

chairs and settees were sprinkled haphazard over the central area round

the screened fireplace. As Speed entered, with Potter opening the door

for him and intoning sepulchrally: "Mr. Speed," an answering creak of

several of the chairs betrayed the fact that the room was occupied.

Then the Head rose out of his armchair, book of some sort in hand, and

came forward with a large easy smile.

"Urn, yes--Mr. Speed--so glad--um, yes--may I introduce you to my

wife?--Lydia, this is Mr. Speed!"

At first glance Speed was struck with the magnificent appropriateness of

the name Lydia. She was a pert little woman, obviously competent; the

sort of woman who is always suspected of twisting her husband round her

little finger. She was fifty if she was a day, yet she dressed with a

dash of the young university blue-stocking; an imitation so insolent

that one assumed either that she was younger than she looked or that

some enormous brain development justified the eccentricity. She had

rather sharp blue eyes that were shrewd rather than far-seeing, and her

hair, energetically dyed, left one in doubt as to what colour nature had

ever accorded it. At present it was a dull brown that had streaks of

black and grey.

She said, in a voice that though sharp was not unpretty: "I'm delighted

to meet you, Mr. Speed. You must make yourself at home here, you know."

The Head murmured: "Um, yes, most certainly. At home--um, yes... Now let

me introduce you to my daughter... Helen, this is--um--Mr. Speed."

A girl was staring at him, and he did not then notice much more than the

extreme size and brightness of her blue eyes; that, and some

astonishingly vague quality that cannot be more simply described than as

a sense of continually restrained movement, so that, looking with his

mind's eye at everybody else in the world, he saw them suddenly grown

old and decrepit. Her bright golden hair hung down her back in a

rebellious cascade; that, however, gave no clue to her age. The curious

serene look in her eyes was a woman's (her mother's, no doubt), while

the pretty half-mocking curve of her lips was still that of a young and

fantastically mischievous child. In reality she was twenty, though she

looked both older and younger.

She said, in a voice so deep and sombre that Speed recoiled suddenly as

though faced with something uncanny: "How are you, Mr. Speed?"

He bowed to her and said, gallantly: "Delighted to be in Millstead, Miss

Ervine."

The Head murmured semi-consciously: "Um, yes, delightful

place--especially in summer weather--trees, you know--beautiful to sit

out on the cricket ground--um, yes, very beautiful indeed..."

Potter opened the door to announce that dinner was served.

VI

As Mrs. Ervine and the girl preceded them out of the room Speed heard

the latter say: "Clare's not come yet, mother."--Mrs. Ervine replied, a

trifle acidly: "Well, my dear, we can't wait for her. I suppose she knew

it was at seven..."

The Head, taking Speed by the arm with an air of ponderous intimacy, was

saying: "Don't know whether you've a good reading voice, Speed. If so,

we must have you for the lessons in morning chapel."

Speed was mumbling something appropriate and the Head was piloting him

into the dining-room when Potter appeared again, accompanied by a

dark-haired girl, short in stature and rather pale-complexioned. She

seemed quite unconcerned as she caught up the tail end of the procession

into the dining-room and remarked casually: "How are you, Doctor

Ervine?--So sorry I'm a trifle late. Friday, you know,--rather a busy

day for the shop."

The Head looked momentarily nonplussed, then smiled and said: "Oh, not

at all ... not at all... I must introduce you to our new recruit--Mr.

Speed.... This is Miss Harrington, a friend of my daughter's. She--um,

yes, she manage--most successfully, I may say--the--er--the bookshop

down in the town. Bookshop, you know."

He said that with the air of implying: Bookshops are not ordinary shops.

Speed bowed; the Head went on boomingly: "And she is, I think I may

venture to say, my daughter's greatest friend. Eh?"

He addressed the monosyllable to the girl with a touch of shrewdness:

she replied quietly: "I don't know." The three words were spoken in that

rare tone in which they simply mean nothing but literally what they say.

In the dining-room they sat in the following formation: Dr. and Mrs.

Ervine at the head and foot respectively; Helen and Clare together at

one side, and Speed opposite them at the other. The dining-room was a

cold forlorn-looking apartment in which the dim incandescent light

seemed to accomplish little more than to cast a dull glitter of

obscurity on the oil-paintings that hung, ever so slightly askew, on the

walls. A peculiar incongruity in it struck Speed at once, though the

same might never have occurred to anybody else: the minute salt and

pepper-boxes on the table possessed a pretty feminine daintiness which

harmonised ill with the huge mahogany sideboard. The latter reminded

Speed of the board-room of a City banking-house. It was as if, he

thought, the Doctor and his wife had impressed their personalities

crudely and without compromise; and as if those personalities were so

diametrically different that no fusing of the two into one was ever

possible. Throughout the meal he kept looking first to his left, at Mrs.

Ervine, and then to his right at the Doctor, and wondering at what he

felt instinctively to be a fundamental strangeness in their life

together.

Potter, assisted by a speckle-faced maid, hovered assiduously around,

and the Doctor assisted occasionally by his wife, hovered no less

assiduously around the conversation, preventing it from lapsing into

such awkward silences as would throw into prominence the continual

hissing of the gas and his own sibilant ingurgitation of soup. The

Doctor talked rather loudly and ponderously, and with such careful and

scrupulous qualifications of everything he said that one had the

impressive sensation that incalculable and mysterious issues hung upon

his words; Mrs. Ervine's remarks were short and pithy, sometimes a

little cynical.

The Doctor seemed to fear that he had given Speed a wrong impression of

Miss Harrington. "I'm sure Mr. Speed will be surprised when I tell him

that he can have the honour of purchasing his _Times_ from you each

morning, Clare," he said, lapping up the final spoonful of soup and

bestowing a satisfied wipe with his napkin on his broad wet lips.

Clare said: "I should think Mr. Speed would prefer to have it

delivered."

Mrs. Ervine said: "Perhaps Mr. Speed doesn't take the _Times_, either."

Speed looked across to Clare with a humorous twist of the corners of the

mouth and said: "You can book me an order for the _Telegraph_ if you

like, Miss Harrington."

"With pleasure, Mr. Speed. Any Sunday paper?"

"The _Observer_, if you will be so kind."

"Right."

Again the Doctor seemed to fear that he had given Speed a wrong

impression of Miss Harrington. "I'm sure Mr. Speed will be interested to

know that your father is a great littérateur, Clare."

Clare gave the Doctor a curious look, with one corner of her upper lip

tilted at an audacious upward angle.

The Doctor went on, leaning his elbows on the table as soon as Potter

had removed his soup-plate: "Mr. Harrington is the author of books on

ethics."

All this time Helen had not spoken a word. Speed had been watching her,

for she was already to him by far the most interesting member of the

party. He noticed that her eyes were constantly shifting between Clare

and anyone whom Clare was addressing; Clare seemed almost the centre of

her world. When Clare smiled she smiled also, and when Clare was pensive

there came into her eyes a look which held, besides pensiveness, a touch

of sadness. She was an extremely beautiful girl and in the yellow light

the coils of her hair shone like sheaves of golden corn on a summer's

day. It was obvious that, conversationally at any rate, she was

extremely shy.

Mrs. Ervine was saying: "You're going to take the music, Mr. Speed, are

you not?"

Speed smiled and nodded.

She went on: "Then I suppose you're fond of music."

"Doesn't it follow?" Speed answered, with a laugh.

She replied pertly: "Not neccessarily at all, Mr. Speed. Do you play an

instrument?"

"The piano a little."

The Head interposed with: "Um, yes--a wonderful instrument. We must have

some music after dinner, eh, Lydia?--Do you like Mendelssohn?" (He gave

the word an exaggeratedly German pronunciation). "My daughter plays some

of the--um--the _Lieder ohne Wörte_--um, yes--the Songs Without Words,

you know."

"I like _some_ of Mendelssohn," said Speed.

He looked across at the girl. She was blushing furiously, with her eyes

still furtively on Clare.

VII

After dinner they all returned to the drawing-room, where inferior

coffee was distributed round in absurdly diminutive cups, Potter

attitudinising over it like a high-priest performing the rites of some

sinister religious ceremony. Clare and Helen sat together on one of the

settees, discoursing inaudibly and apparently in private; the Head

commenced an anecdote that was suggested by Speed's glance at a

photograph on the mantelpiece, a photograph of a coloured man attired in

loose-fitting cotton draperies. "My servant when I was in India," the

Head had informed Speed. "An excellent fellow--most--um, yes--faithful

and reliable. One of the earliest of my converts. I well remember the

first morning after I had engaged him to look after me he woke me up

with the words 'Chota Hazra, sahib'--"

Speed feigning interest, managed to keep his eyes intermittently on the

two girls. He wondered if they were discussing him.

"I said--'I can't--um--see Mr. Chota Hazra this time in the morning.'"

Speed nodded with a show of intelligence, and then, to be on the safe

side if the joke had been reached, gave a slight titter.

"Of course," said the Head, after a pause, "it was all my imperfect

knowledge of Hindostanee. 'Chota hazra' means--um, yes--breakfast!"

Speed laughed loudly. He had the feeling after he had laughed that he

had laughed too loudly, for everything seemed so achingly silent after

the echoes had died away, silent except for the eternal hiss of the gas

in the chandeliers. It was as if his laughter had startled something; he

could hear, in his imagination, the faint fluttering of wings as if

something had flown away. A curious buzzing came into his head; he

thought perhaps it might be due to the mediocre Burgundy that he had

drunk with his dinner. Then for one strange unforgettable second he saw

Helen's sky-blue eyes focussed full upon him and it was in them that he

read a look of half-frightened wonderment that sent the blood tingling

in his veins.

He said, with a supreme inward feeling of recklessness: "I would love to

hear Miss Ervine play Mendelssohn."

He half expected a dreadful silence to supervene and everybody to stare

at him as the author of some frightful conversational _faux pas_; he had

the feeling of having done something deliberately and provocatively

unconventional. He saw the girl's eyes glance away from him and the

blush rekindle her cheeks in an instant. It seemed to him also that she

clung closer to Clare and that Clare smiled a little, as a mother to a

shy child.

Of course it was all a part of his acute sensitiveness; his remark was

taken to be more than a touch of polite gallantry. Mrs. Ervine said:

"Helen's very nervous," and the Head, rolling his head from side to side

in an ecstasy of anticipation, said: "Ah yes, most certainly. Delightful

that will be--um, yes--most delightful. Helen, you must not disappoint

Mr. Speed on his first night at Millstead."

She looked up, shook her head so that for an instant all her face seemed

to be wrapped in yellow flame, and said, sombrely: "I can't play--please

don't ask me to."

Then she turned to Clare and said, suddenly: "I can't really, can I,

Clare?"

"You can," said Clare, "but you get nervous."

She said that calmly and deliberatively, with the air of issuing a final

judgment of the matter.

"Come now, Helen," boomed the Head, ponderously. "Mr. Speed--um--is very

anxious to hear you. It is very--um, yes--silly to be nervous. Come

along now."

There was a note in those last three words of sudden harshness, a faint

note, it is true, but one that Speed, acutely perceptive of such

subtleties, was quick to hear and notice. He looked at the Head and once

again, it seemed to him, the Head was as he had seen him that afternoon

in the dark study, a flash of malevolent sharpness in his eyes, a

menacing slope in his huge low-hanging nose. The room seemed to grow

darker and the atmosphere more tense; he saw the girl leave the settee

and walk to the piano. She sat on the stool for a moment with her hands

poised hesitatingly over the keyboard; then, suddenly, and at a furious

rate, she plunged into the opening bars of the Spring Song. Speed had

never heard it played at such an alarming rate. Five or six bars from

the beginning she stopped all at once, lingered a moment with her hands

over the keys, and then left the stool and almost ran the intervening

yards to the settee. She said, with deep passion: "I can't--I don't

remember it."

Clare said protectingly: "Never mind, Helen. It doesn't matter."

Speed said: "No, of course not. It's awfully hard to remember music--at

least, I always find it so."

And the Head, all his harshness gone and placidity restored in its

place, murmured. "Hard--um yes--very hard. I don't know how people

manage it at all. Oh, _very_ difficult, don't you think so, Lydia?"

"Difficult if you're nervous," replied Mrs. Ervine, with her own

peculiar note of acidity.

VIII

Conversation ambled on, drearily and with infinite labour, until

half-past nine, when Clare arose and said she must go. Helen then rose

also and said she would go with Clare a part of the way into the town,

but Mrs. Ervine objected because Helen had a cold. Clare said: "Oh,

don't trouble, Helen, I can easily go alone--I'm used to it, you know,

and there's a bright moon."

Speed, feeling that a show of gallantry would bring to an end an evening

that had just begun to get on his nerves a little, said: "Suppose I see

you home, Miss Harrington. I've got to go down to the general

post-office to post a letter, and I can quite easily accompany you as

far as the High Street."

"There's no need to," said Clare. "And I hope you're not inventing that

letter you have to post."

"I assure you I'm not," Speed answered, and he pulled out of his pocket

a letter home that he had written up in his room that afternoon.

Clare laughed.

In the dimly-lit hall, after he had bidden good night to Doctor and Mrs.

Ervine, he found an opportunity of speaking a few words to Helen alone.

She was waiting at the door to have a few final words with Clare, and

before Clare appeared Speed came up to her and began speaking.

He said: "Miss Ervine, please forgive me for having been the means of

making you feel uncomfortable this evening. I had no idea you were

nervous, or I shouldn't have dreamed of asking you to play. I know what

nervousness is, because I'm nervous myself."

She gave him a half-frightened look and replied: "Oh, it's all right,

Mr. Speed. It wasn't your fault. And anyhow it didn't matter."

She seemed only half interested. It was Clare she was waiting for, and

when Clare appeared she left Speed by the door and the two girls

conversed a moment in whispers. They kissed and said good night.

As Potter appeared mysteriously from nowhere and, after handing Speed

his hat and gloves, opened the front-door with massive dignity, Helen

threw her hands up as if to embrace the chill night air and exclaimed:

"Oh, what a lovely moon! I wish I was coming with you, Clare!"

There was a strange bewildering pathos in her voice.

Over the heavy trees and the long black pillars of shadow the windows of

the dormitories shone like yellow gems, piercing the night with radiance

and making a pattern of intricate beauty on the path that led to the

Headmaster's gate. Sounds, mysteriously clear, fell from everywhere upon

the two of them as they crossed the soft lawn and came in view of the

huge block of Milner's, all its windows lit and all its rooms alive with

commotion. They could hear the clatter of jugs in their basins, the

sudden chorus of boyish derision, the strident cry that pierced the

night like a rocket, the dull incessant murmur of miscellaneous sounds,

the clap of hands, the faint jabber of a muffled gramophone. Millstead

was most impressive at this hour, for it was the hour when she seemed

most of all immense and vital, a body palpitating with warmth and

energy, a mighty organism which would swallow the small and would sway

even the greatest of men. Tears, bred of a curious undercurrent of

emotion, came into Speed's eyes as he realised that he was now part of

the marvellously contrived machine.

Out in the lane the moon was white along one side of the road-way, and

here the lights of Millstead pierced through the foliage like so many

bright stars. Speed walked with Clare in silence for some way. He had

nothing particular to say; he had suggested accompanying her home partly

from mere perfunctory politeness, but chiefly because he longed for a

walk in the cool night air away from the stuffiness of the Head's

drawing-room.

When they had been walking some moments Clare said: "I wish you hadn't

come with me, Mr. Speed."

He answered, a trifle vacantly: "Why do you?"

"Because it will make Helen jealous."

He became as if suddenly galvanised into attention. "What! Jealous!

Jealous!--Of whom?--Of what?--Of you having me to take you home?"

Clare shook her head. "Oh, no. Of you having me to take home."

He thought a moment and then said: "What, really?--Do you mean to tell

me that----"

"Yes," she interrupted. "And of course you don't understand it, do

you?--Men never understand Helen."

"And why don't they?"

"Because Helen doesn't like men, and men can never understand that."

He rejoined, heavily despondent: "Then I expect she dislikes me

venomously enough. For it was I who asked her to play the piano, wasn't

it?"

"She wouldn't dislike you any more for that," replied Clare. "But let's

not discuss her. I hate gossiping about my friends."

They chattered intermittently and inconsequently about books after that,

and at the corner of High Street she insisted on his leaving her and

proceeding to the general post-office by the shortest route.

CHAPTER TWO

I

In the morning he was awakened by Hartopp the School House porter

ringing his noisy hand-bell through the dormitories. He looked at his

watch; it was half-past six. There was no need for him to think of

getting up yet; he had no early morning form, and so could laze for

another hour if he so desired. But it was quite impossible to go to

sleep again because his mind, once he became awake, began turning over

the incidents of the day before and anticipating those of the day to

come. He lay in bed thinking and excogitating, listening to the slow

beginnings of commotion in the dormitories, and watching bars of yellow

sunshine creeping up the bed towards his face. At half-past seven

Hartopp tapped at the door and brought in his correspondence. There was

a letter from home and a note, signed by the Head, giving him his work

time-table. He consulted it immediately and discovered that he was put

down for two forms that morning; four _alpha_ in drawing and five

_gamma_ in general supervision.

His letter from home, headed "Beachings Over, near Framlingay, Essex.

Tel. Framlingay 32. Stations: Framlingay 2½ miles; Pumphrey Bassett 3

miles," ran as follows:

"MY DEAR KEN,--This will reach you on the first morning of term, won't

it, and your father and I both want you to understand that we wish you

every success. It seems a funny thing to do, teaching in a

boarding-school, but I suppose it's all right if you like it, only of

course we should have liked you to go into the business. I hope you can

keep order with the boys, anyhow, they do say that poor Mr. Rideaway in

the village has an awful time, the boys pour ink in his pockets when he

isn't looking. Father is going on business to Australia very soon and

wants me to go with him, perhaps I may, but it sounds an outlandish sort

of place to go to, doesn't it. Since you left us we've had to get rid of

Jukes--we found him stealing a piece of tarpaulin--so ungrateful, isn't

it, but we've got another under-gardener now, he used to be at Peverly

Court but left because the old duke was so mean. Dick goes back to

Marlborough to-day--they begin the same day as yours. By the way, why

did you choose Millstead? I'd never heard of it till we looked it up, it

isn't well-known like Harrow and Rugby, is it. We had old Bennett and

Sir Guy Blatherwick with us the last week-end, Sir Guy told us all about

his travels in China, or Japan, I forget which. Well, write to us, won't

you, and drop in if you get a day off any time--your affectionate

mother, FANNY."

After he had read it he washed and dressed in a leisurely fashion and

descended in time for School breakfast at eight. Hartopp showed him his

place, at the head of number four table, and he was interested to see by

his plate a neatly folded _Daily Telegraph_. Businesslike, he commented

mentally, and he was glad to see it because a newspaper is an excellent

cloak for nervousness and embarrassment. His mother's hint about his

being possibly a bad disciplinarian put him on his guard; he was

determined to succeed in this immensely important respect right from the

start. Of course he possessed the enormous advantage of knowing from

recent experience the habits and psychology of the average

public-schoolboy.

But breakfast was not a very terrible ordeal. The boys nearest him

introduced themselves and bade him a cheerful good morning, for there is

a sense of fairness in schoolboys which makes them generous to

newcomers, except where tradition decrees the setting-up of some

definite ordeal. Towards the end of the meal Pritchard walked over from

one of the other tables and enquired, in a voice loud enough for at any

rate two or three of the boys to hear: "Well, Speed, old man, did you

have a merry carousal at the Head's last night?"

Speed replied, a little coldly: "I had a pleasant time."

"I suppose now," went on Pritchard, dropping his voice a little, but

still not sufficiently to prevent the nearest boys from hearing, "you

realise what I meant yesterday."

"What was that?"

"When I said that you'd find out soon enough what she was like."

Speed said crisply: "You warned me yesterday against talking shop. I

might warn you now."

"But that isn't shop."

"Well, whether it is or not I don't propose to discuss it--_now_--and

_here_."

Almost without his being aware of it his voice had risen somewhat, so

that at this final pronouncement the boys nearest him looked up with

curiosity tinged with poorly-concealed amusement. It was rather obvious

that Pritchard was unpopular.

Speed was sorry that he had not exercised greater control over his

voice, especially when Pritchard, reddening, merely shrugged his

shoulders and went away.

The boy nearest to Speed grinned and said audaciously: "That'll take Mr.

Pritchard down a peg, sir!"

Speed barked out (to the boy's bewilderment): "Don't be impertinent!"

For the rest of the meal he held up the _Telegraph_ as a rampart between

himself and the world.

II

He knew, at the end of the first school day, that he had been a success,

and that if he took reasonable care he would be able to go on being a

success. It had been a day of subtle trials and ordeals, yet he had,

helped rather than hindered by his peculiar type of nervousness, got

safely through them all.

Numerous were the pitfalls which he had carefully avoided. At school

meals he had courteously declined to share jam and delicacies which the

nearest to him offered. If he had he would have been inundated

immediately with pots of jam and boxes of fancy cakes from all quarters

of the table. Many a new Master at Millstead had finished his first meal

with his part of the table looking like the counter of an untidy

grocer's shop. Instinct rather than prevision had saved Speed from such

a fate. Instinct, in fact, had been his guardian angel throughout the

day; instinct which, although to some extent born of his recent

public-school experience, was perhaps equally due to that curious

barometric sensitiveness that made his feelings so much more acute and

clairvoyant than those of other people.

At dinner in the Masters' Common-Room he had met the majority of the

staff. There was Garforth, the bursar, a pleasant little man with a

loving-kindness overclouded somewhat by pedantry; Hayes-Smith,

housemaster of Milner's, a brisk, bustling, unimaginative fellow whose

laugh was more eloquent than his words; Ransome, a wizened Voltairish

classical master, morbidly ashamed of being caught in possession of any

emotion of any kind; Lavery, housemaster of North House (commonly called

Lavery's), whose extraordinary talent for delegating authority enabled

him to combine laziness and efficiency in a way both marvellous and

enviable; and Poulet, the French and German Master, who spoke far better

English than anybody in the Common-Room, except, perhaps, Garforth or

Ransome. Then, of course, there was Clanwell, whom Speed had already

met; Clanwell, better known "Fish-cake," a sporting man of great vigour

who would, from time to time, astonish the world by donning a black suit

and preaching from the Millstead pulpit a sermon of babbling meekness.

Speed liked him; liked all of them, in fact, better than he did

Pritchard.

At dinner, Pritchard sat next to him on one side and Clanwell on the

other. Pritchard showed no malice for the incident of that morning's

breakfast-time, and Speed, a little contrite, was affable enough. But

for all that he did not like Pritchard.

Pritchard asked him if he had got on all right that day, and Speed

replied that he had. Then Pritchard said: "Oh, well of course, the first

day's always easy. It's after a week or so that you'll find things a bit

trying. The first night you take prep, for instance. It's a sort of

school tradition that they always try and rag you that night."

Clanwell, overhearing, remarked fiercely: "Anyway, Speed, take my tip

and don't imagine it's a school tradition that any Master lets himself

be ragged."

Speed laughed. "I'll remember that," he said.

He remembered it on the following Wednesday night when he was down to

take evening preparation from seven until half-past eight. Preparation

for the whole school, except prefects, was held in Millstead Big Hall, a

huge vault-like chamber in which desks were ranged in long rows and

where the Master in charge sat on high at a desk on a raised dais. No

more subtle and searching test of disciplinary powers could have been

contrived than this supervision of evening preparation, for the room was

so big that it was impossible to see clearly from the Master's desk to

the far end, and besides that, the acoustics were so peculiar that

conversations in some parts of the room were practically inaudible

except from very close quarters. A new master suffered additional

handicap in being ignorant of the names of the vast majority of the

boys.

At dinner, before the ordeal, the Masters in the Common-Room had given

Speed jocular advice. "Whatever you do, watch that they don't get near

the electric-light switches," said Clanwell. Pritchard said: "When old

Blenkinsop took his first prep they switched off the lights and then

took his trousers off and poured ink over his legs." Garforth said:

"Whatever you do, don't lose your temper and hit anybody. It doesn't

pay." "Best to walk up and down the rows if you want them to stop

talking," said Ransome. Pritchard said: "If you do that they'll beat

time to your steps with their feet." Poulet remarked reminiscently:

"When I took my first prep they started a gramophone somewhere, and I

guessed they'd hidden it well, so I said: 'Gentlemen, anyone who

interrupts the music will have a hundred lines!' They laughed and were

quite peaceable afterwards."

Speed said, at the conclusion of the meal: "I'm much obliged to

everybody for the advice. I'll try to remember all of it, but I guess

when I'm in there I shall just do whatever occurs to me at the moment."

To which Clanwell replied, putting a hand on Speed's shoulder: "You

couldn't do better, my lad."

Speed was very nervous as he took his seat on the dais at five to seven

and watched the school straggling to their places. They came in quietly

enough, but there was an atmosphere of subdued expectancy of which Speed

was keenly conscious; the boys stared about them, grinned at each other,

seemed as if they were waiting for something to happen. Nevertheless, at

five past seven all was perfectly quiet and orderly, although it was

obvious that little work was being done. Speed felt rather as if he were

sitting on a powder-magazine, and there was a sense in which he was

eager for the storm to break.

At about a quarter-past seven a banging of desk-lids began at the far end

of the hall.

He stood up and said, quietly, but in a voice that carried well: "I

don't want to be hard on anybody, so I'd better warn you that I shall

punish any disorderliness very severely."

There was some tittering, and for a moment or so he wondered if he had

made a fool of himself.

Then he saw a bright, rather pleasant-faced boy in one of the back rows

deliberately raise a desk-lid and drop it with a bang. Speed consulted

the map of the desks that was in front of him and by counting down the

rows discovered the boy's name to be Worsley. He wondered how the name

should be pronounced--whether the first syllable should rhyme with

"purse" or with "horse." Instinct in him, that uncanny feeling for

atmosphere, embarked him on an outrageously bold adventure, nothing less

than a piece of facetiousness, the most dangerous weapon in a new

Master's armoury, and the one most of all likely to recoil on himself.

He stood up again and said: "Wawsley or Wurssley--however you call

yourself--you have a hundred lines!"

The whole assembly roared with laughter. That frightened him a little.

Supposing they did not stop laughing! He remembered an occasion at his

own school when a class had ragged a certain Master very neatly and

subtly by pretending to go off into hysterics of laughter at some

trifling witticism of his.

When the laughter subsided, a lean, rather clever-looking boy rose up in

the front row but one and said, impudently: "Please sir, I'm Worsley. I

didn't do anything."

Speed replied promptly: "Oh, didn't you? Well, you've got a hundred

lines, anyway."

"What for, sir"--in hot indignation.

"For sitting in your wrong desk."

Again the assembly laughed, but there was no mistaking the

respectfulness that underlay the merriment. And, as a matter of fact,

the rest of the evening passed entirely without incident. After the

others had gone, and when the school-bell had rung for evening chapel,

Worsley came up to the dais accompanied by the pleasant-faced boy who

dropped the desk-lid. Worsley pleaded for the remission of his hundred

lines, and the other boy supported him, urging that it was he and not

Worsley who had dropped the lid.

"And what is your name?" asked Speed.

"Naylor, sir."

"Very well, Naylor, you and Worsley can share the hundred lines between

you." He added smiling: "I've no doubt you're neither of you worse than

anybody else but you must pay the penalty of being pioneers."

They went away laughing.

That night Speed went into Clanwell's room for a chat before bedtime,

and Clanwell congratulated him fulsomely on his successful passage of

the ordeal. "As a matter of fact," Clanwell said, "I happen to know that

they'd prepared a star benefit performance for you but that you put them

off, somehow, from the beginning. The prefects get to hear of these

things and they tell me. Of course, I don't take any official notice of

them. It doesn't matter to me what plans people make--it's when any are

put into execution that I wake up. Anyhow, you may be interested to know

that the member's of School House subscribed over fifteen shillings to

purchase fireworks which they were going to let off after the switches

had been turned off! Alas for fond hopes ruined!"

Clanwell and Speed leaned back in their armchairs and roared with

laughter.

III

At the end of the first week of life at Millstead, Speed was perfectly

happy. He seemed to have surmounted easily all the difficulties that had

confronted or that could confront him, and now there stretched away into

the future an endless succession of glorious days spent tirelessly in

the work that he loved. For he loved teaching. He loved boys. When he

got over his preliminary, and in some ways rather helpful nervousness he

was thoroughly at home with all of them. He invited those in his house

to tea, two or three at a time, almost every afternoon. He took a deep

and individual interest in all who showed distinct artistic or musical

abilities. He plunged adventurously into the revolutionising of the

School's arts curriculum; he dreamed of organising an exhibition of art

work in time for Speech Day, of reviving the moribund School musical

society, of getting up concerts of chamber music, of entering the School

choir for musical festivals. All the hot enthusiasm of youth he poured

ungrudgingly into the service of Millstead, and Millstead rewarded him

by liking him tremendously. The boys liked him because he was young and

agreeable, yet not condescendingly so; besides, he could play a game of

cricket that was so good-naturedly mediocre that nobody, after

witnessing it, could doubt that he was a fellow of like capabilities

with the rest. The Masters liked him because he was energetic and

efficient and did not ally himself with any particular set or clique

among them.

Clanwell said to him one evening: "I hope you won't leave at the end of

the term, Speed."

Speed said: "Why on earth should I?"

"We sometimes find that people who're either very good or very bad do

so. And you're very good."

"I'm so glad you think so." His face grew suddenly boyish with blushes.

"We all think so, Speed. And the Head likes you. We hope you'll stay."

"I'll stay all right. I'm too happy to want to go away."

Clanwell said meditatively: "It's a fine life if you're cut out for it,

isn't it? I sometimes think there isn't a finer life in the whole

world."

"I've always thought that."

"I hope you always will think it."

"And I hope so too."

Summer weather came like a strong flood about ten days after the opening

of term, and then Millstead showed herself to him in all her serene and

matchless beauty. He learned to know and expect the warm sunshine waking

him in the mornings and creeping up the bed till it dazzled his eyes; he

learned to know and to love the _plick-plock_ of the cricket that was

his music as he sat by the open window many an afternoon at work. And at

night time, when the flaring gas jets winked in all the tiny windows and

when there came upwards the cheerful smell of coffee-making in the

studies, it was all as if some subtle alchemy were at work, transforming

his soul into the mould and form of Millstead. Something fine and mighty

was in the place, and his soul, passionately eager to yield itself,

craved for that full possession which Millstead brought to it. The spell

was swift and glorious. Sometimes he thought of Millstead almost as a

lover; he would stroll round at night and drink deep of the witchery

that love put into all that he saw and heard; the sounds of feet

scampering along the passage outside his door, the cold lawns with the

moon white upon them, the soft delicious flower-scents that rose up to

his bedroom window at night. The chapel seemed to him, to put it

epigrammatically, far more important because it belonged to Millstead

than because it belonged to Christ. Millstead, stiff-collared and

black-coated on a Sunday morning, and wondering what on earth it should

do with itself on Sunday afternoon, touched him far more deeply than did

the chatter of some smooth-voiced imported divine who knew Millstead

only from spending a bored week-end at the Head's house. To Speed,

sitting in the Masters' pew, and giving vent to his ever-ready

imagination, Millstead seemed a personification of all that was youthful

and clear-spirited and unwilling to pay any more than merely respectful

attention to the exhortations of elders.

He did not sentimentalise over it. He was not old enough to think

regretfully of his own school-days. It was the present, the present

leaning longingly in the arms of the future, that wove its subtle and

gracious spell. He did not kindle to the trite rhapsodies of middle-aged

"old boys." The "Thoughts of an Old Millsteadian on Revisiting the

School Chapel," published in the school magazine, stirred him not at

all. But to wander about on a dark night and to find his feet

beautifully at ease upon curious steps and corridors gave him pangs of

exquisite lover-like intimacy; he was a "new boy," eager for the future,

not an "old boy" sighing for the past.

And all this was accomplished so swiftly and effortlessly, within a few

weeks of his beginning at the school it was as if Millstead had filled a

void in his soul that had been gaping for it.

Only one spot in the whole place gave him a feeling of discomfort, and

that was the Headmaster's study. The feeling of apprehension, of

sinister attraction, that had come upon him when first he had entered

it, lessened as time and custom wore it away; yet still, secretly and in

shadow, it was there. All the sadness and pathos of a world seemed to be

congregated in the dark study, and to come out of it into the sunlit

corridors of the school was like the swift passing from the minor into

the major key.

IV

On Fridays he had an early morning form before breakfast and then was

completely free until four o'clock in the afternoon, so that if the

weather were sufficiently enticing he could fill the basket on his

bicycle with books and go cycling along the sweet-smelling sunlit lanes.

Millstead was just on the edge of the fen district; in one direction the

flat lands stretched illimitably to a horizon unbroken as the sea's

edge; a stern and lonely country, with nothing to catch the eye save

here and there the glint of dyke-water amongst tall reeds and afar off

some desert church-tower stiff and stark as the mast of a ship on an

empty sea. Speed did not agree with the general Common-Room consensus of

opinion that the scenery round Millstead was tame and unattractive;

secretly to him the whole district was rich with wild and passionate

beauty, and sometimes on these delectable Fridays he would cycle for

miles along the flat fen roads with the wind behind him, and return in

the afternoon by crawling romantic-looking branch-line trains which

always managed to remind him of wild animals, so completely had the

civilised thing been submerged in the atmosphere of what it had sought

to civilise.

But that was only on one side of Millstead. On the other side, and

beyond the rook-infested trees that were as ramparts to the south-west

wind, the lanes curved into the folds of tiny hills and lifted

themselves for a space on to the ridge of glossy heaths and took sudden

twists into the secrecies of red-roofed tree-hidden hamlets. And amidst

this country, winding its delicate way beneath arches of overhanging

greenery, ran the river Wade.

One Friday morning Speed cycled out to Parminters, a village about three

miles out of Millstead. Here there was a low hill (not more than a

couple of hundred feet), carpeted with springy turf and overlooking

innumerable coils of the glistening stream. At midday on a May morning

there was something indescribably restful, drowsy almost, in the scene;

the hill dropped by a sudden series of grassy terraces into the meadows,

and there was quite a quarter of a mile of lush grass land between the

foot of the slope and the river bank. It was an entrancing spectacle,

one to watch rather than to see; the silken droop of the meadows, the

waves of alternate shadow and sunlight passing over the long grasses,

the dark patches on the landscape which drifted eastwards with the

clouds. The sun, when it pierced their white edges and came sailing into

the blue, was full of warmth and beauty, warmth that awakened myriads of

insects to a drowsy buzzing contentment and beauty that lay like a soft

veil spread across the world. Speed, with a bundle of four _alpha_

geography essays in his pocket (he had, after all, decided that he was

competent to teach commercial geography to the lower forms), lay down

amongst the deep grass and lit a pipe.

He marked a few of the essays and then, smoking comfortably, settled to

a contented gaze across the valley. It was then, not until he had been

there some while, though, that he saw amidst the tall grasses of the

meadows a splash of blue in the midst of the deep green. It is strange

that at first he did not recognise her. He saw only a girl in a pale

blue dress stooping to pick grasses. She was hatless and golden-haired,

and in one hand she bore a bunch of something purple, some kind of long

grass whose name he did not know. He watched her at first exactly as he

might have watched some perfect theatrical spectacle, with just that

kind of detached admiration and rich impersonal enchantment. The pose of

her as she stooped, the flaunt of the grasses in her hand, the movement

of her head as she tossed back her laughing hair, the winding yellow

path she trampled across the meadows: all these things he watched and

strangely admired.

He lay watching for a long while, still without guessing who she was,

till the sun went in behind a cloud and he felt drowsy. He closed his

eyes and leaned back cushioned amongst the turf.

V

He woke with a sensation of intense chilliness; the sun had gone in and

even its approximate position in the sky could not be determined because

of the heaviness of the clouds. He looked at his watch; it was ten

minutes past one; he must have slept for over an hour.

The sky was almost the most sinister thing he ever saw. In the east a

faint deathly pallor hung over the horizon, but the piling clouds from

the west were pushing it over the edge of the world. That faint pallor

dissolved across the sky into the greyness deepening into a western

horizon of pitch black. Here and there this was shot through with

streaks of dull and sombre flame as if each of the hills in that dark

land was a sulky volcano. It was cold, and yet the wind that blew in

from the gloom was strangely oppressive; the grasses bent low as if

weighed down by its passing. Deep in the cleft by Parminters the river

gleamed like a writhing venomous snake, the sky giving it the dull

shimmer of pewter. To descend across those dark meadows to the coils of

the stream seemed somehow an adventure of curious and inscrutable

horror. Speed stood up and looked far into the valley. The whole scene

seemed to him unnatural; the darkness was weird and baffling; the clouds

were the grim harbingers of a thunderstorm. And to him there seemed

momentarily a strangeness in the aspect of everything; something deep

and fearsome, imminent, perhaps, with tragedy. He felt within him a

sombre presaging excitement.

It began to rain, quietly at first, then faster, faster and at last

overwhelmingly. He had brought no mackintosh. He stuffed the essays into

his coat pocket, swung his bicycle off the turf where he had laid it,

and began to run down the hill with it. His aim was to get to the

village and shelter somewhere till the storm was over. Halfway down he

paused to put up his coat-collar, and there, looking across the meadows,

he saw again that girl in the pale-blue dress. He was nearer to her now

and recognised her immediately. She was dressed in a loose-fitting and

rather dilapidated frock which the downpour of rain had already made to

cling to the soft curves of her body; round her throat, tightly twined,

was a striped scarf which Speed, quick to like or to dislike what he

saw, decided was absolutely and garishly ugly. And yet immediately he

felt a swift tightening of his affection for her, for Millstead was like

that, full of stark uglinesses that were beautiful by their intimacy....

She saw him and stopped. Details of her at that moment encumbered his

memory ever afterwards. She was about twenty yards from him and he could

see a most tremendous wrist-watch that she wore--an ordinary pocket

watch clamped on to a strap. And from the outside pocket of her dress

there protruded the chromatic cover of a threepenny novelette. (Had she

read it? Was she going to read it? Did she like it? he wondered

swiftly.) She still carried that bunch of grasses, now rather soiled and

bedraggled, tightly in her hand. He imagined, in the curiously vivid way

that was so easy to him, the damp feel of her palm; the heat and

perspiration of it: somehow this again, a symbol of secret and bodily

intimacy, renewed in him that sudden kindling affection for her.

He called out to her: "Miss Ervine!"

She answered, a little shyly: "Oh, how are you, Mr. Speed?"

"Rather wet just at present," he replied, striding over the tufts of

thick grass towards her. "And you appear to be even wetter than I am.

I'm afraid we're in for a severe thunderstorm."

"Oh well, I don't mind thunderstorms."

"You ought to mind getting wet." He paused, uncertain what to say next.

Then instinct made him suddenly begin to talk to her as he might have

done to a small child. "My dear young lady, you don't suppose I'm going

to leave you here to get drenched to the skin, do you?"

She shrugged her shoulders and said: "I don't know what you're going to

do."

"Have you had anything to eat?"

"I don't want anything."

"Well, I suggest that we get into the village as quick as we can and

stay there till the rain stops. I was also going to suggest that we

spent the time in having lunch, but as you don't want anything, we

needn't."

"But I don't want to wait in the village, Mr. Speed. I was just going to

start for home when it came on to rain."

Speed said: "Very well, if you want to get home you must let me take

you. You're not going to walk home through a thunderstorm. We'll have a

cab or something."

"And do you really think you'll get a cab in Parminters?"

He answered: "I always have a good try to get anything I want to."

For all her protests she came with him down the meadow and out into the

sodden lane. As they passed the gate the first flash of lightning lit up

the sky, followed five seconds after by a crash of thunder.

"There!" he exclaimed triumphantly, as if the thunder and lightning

somehow strengthened his position with her: "You wouldn't like to walk

to Millstead through that, would you?"

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him as if she hated his

interference yet found it irresistible.

VI

It was altogether by good luck that he did get a cab in the village; a

Millstead cab had brought some people into Parminters and was just

setting back empty on the return journey when Speed met it in the narrow

lane. Once again, this time as he opened the cab-door and handed her

inside, he gave her that look of triumph, though he was well aware of

the luck that he had had. Inside on the black leather cushions he placed

in a conspicuously central position his hat and his bundle of essays,

and, himself occupying one corner, invited her to take the other. All

the time the driver was bustling round lifting the bicycle on to the

roof and tying it securely down, Speed sat in his corner, damp to the

skin, watching her and remembering that Miss Harrington had told him

that she hated men. All the way during that three-mile ride back to

Millstead, with the swishing of the rain and the occasional thunder and

the steady jog-trot of the horse's hoofs mingling together in a

memorable medley of sound, Speed sat snugly in his corner, watching and

wondering.

Not much conversation passed between them. When they were nearing

Millstead, Speed said: "The other day as I passed near your drawing-room

window I heard somebody playing the Chopin waltzes. Was it you?"

"It might have been."

He continued after a pause: "I see there's a Chopin recital advertised

in the town for next Monday week. Zobieski, the Polish pianist, is

coming up. Would you care to come with me to it?"

It was very daring of him to say that, and he knew it. She coloured to

the roots of her wet-gold hair, and replied, after a silence: "Monday,

though, isn't it?--I'm afraid I couldn't manage it. I always see Clare

on Mondays."

He answered instantly: "Bring Clare as well then."

"I--I don't think Clare would be interested," she replied, a little

confused. She added, as if trying to make up for having rejected his

offer rather rudely: "Clare and I don't get many chances of seeing each

other. Only Mondays and Wednesday afternoons."

"But I see you with her almost every day."

"Yes, but only for a few minutes. Mondays are the only evenings that we

have wholly to ourselves."

He thought, but did not dare to say: And is it absolutely necessary that

you must have those evenings wholly to yourselves?

He said thoughtfully: "I see."

He said nothing further until the cab drew up outside the main gate of

Millstead School. He was going to tell the driver to proceed inside as

far as the porch of the Head's house, but she said she would prefer to

get out there and walk across the lawns. He smiled and helped her out.

As he looked inside the cab again to see if he had left any papers

behind he saw that the gaudily-coloured novelette had fallen out of her

pocket and on to the floor. He picked it up and handed it to her. "You

dropped this," he said merely. She stared at him for several seconds and

then took it almost sulkily.

"I suppose I can read what I like, anyway," she exclaimed, in a sudden

hot torrent of indignation.

He smiled, completely astonished, yet managed to say, blandly: "I'm sure

I never dreamt of suggesting otherwise."

He could see then from her eyes, half-filling with tears of humiliation,

that she realised that she had needlessly made a fool of herself.

"Please--please--don't come with me any further," she said, awkwardly.

"And thanks--thanks--very much--for--for bringing me back."

He smiled again and raised his hat as she darted away across the wet

lawns. Then, after paying the driver, he walked straightway into the

school and down into the prefects' bathroom, where he turned on the

scalding hot water with jubilant anticipation.

VII

The immediate result of the incident was an invitation to dine at the

Head's a few days later. "It was very--um, yes--thoughtful and

considerate of you, Mr. Speed," said the Head, mumblingly. "My

daughter--a heedless child--just like her to omit the--um--precaution of

taking some--um, yes--protection against any possible change in the

weather."

"I was rather in the same boat myself, sir," said Speed, laughing. "The

thunderstorm was quite unexpected."

"Um yes, quite so. _Quite_ so." The Head paused and added, with apparent

inconsequence: "My daughter is quite a child, Mr. Speed--loves to gather

flowers--um--botany, you know, and--um--so forth."

Speed said: "Yes, I have noticed it."

Dinner at the Head's house was less formal than on the previous

occasion. It was a Monday evening and Clare Harrington was there.

Afterwards in the drawing-room Speed played a few Chopin studies and

Mazurkas. He did not attempt to get into separate conversation with Miss

Ervine; he chatted amiably with the Head while the two girls gossiped by

themselves. And at ten o'clock, pleading work to do before bed, he arose

to go, leaving the girls to make their own arrangements. Miss Ervine

said good-bye to him with a shyness in which he thought he detected a

touch of wistfulness.

When he got up to his own room he thought about her for a long while. He

tried to settle down to an hour or so of marking books, but found it

impossible. In the end he went downstairs and let himself outside into

the school grounds by his own private key. It was a glorious night of

starshine, and all the roofs were pale with the brightness of it. Wafts

of perfume from the flowers and shrubbery of the Head's garden accosted

him gently as he turned the corner by the chapel and into the winding

tree-hidden path that circumvented the entire grounds of Millstead. It

was on such a night that his heart's core was always touched; for it

seemed to him that then the strange spirit of the place was most alive,

and that it came everywhere to meet him with open arms, drenching all

his life in wild and unspeakable loveliness. Oh, how happy he was, and

how hard it was to make others realise his happiness! In the Common-Room

his happiness had become proverbial, and even amongst the boys, always

quicker to notice unhappy than happy looks, his beaming smile and firm,

kindling enthusiasm had earned him the nickname of "Smiler."

He sat down for a moment on the lowest tier of the pavilion seats, those

seats where generations of Millsteadians had hurriedly prepared

themselves for the fray of school and house matches. Now the spot was

splendidly silent, with the cricket-pitch looming away mistily in front,

and far behind, over the tips of the high trees, the winking lights of

the still noisy dormitories. He watched a bat flitting haphazardly about

the pillars of the pavilion stand. He could see, very faintly in the

paleness, the score of that afternoon's match displayed on the

indicator. Old Millstead parish bells, far away in the town, commenced

the chiming of eleven.

He felt then, as he had never felt before he came to Millstead, that the

world was full, brimming full, of wonderful majestic beauty, and that

now, as the scented air swirled round him in slow magnificent eddies, it

was searching for something, searching with passionate and infinite

desire for something that eluded it always. He could not understand or

analyse all that he felt, but sometimes lately a deep shaft of ultimate

feeling would seem to grip him round the body and send the tears

swimming into his eyes, as if for one glorious moment he had seen and

heard something of another world. It came suddenly to him now, as he sat

on the pavilion seats with the silver starshine above him and the air

full of the smells of earth and flowers; it seemed to him that something

mighty must be abroad in the world, that all this tremulous loveliness

could not live without a meaning, that he was on the verge of some

strange and magic revelation.

Clear as bells on the silent air came the sound of girls' voices. He

heard a rich, tolling "Good night, Clare!" Then silence again, silence

in which he seemed to know more things than he had ever known before.

CHAPTER THREE

I

One afternoon he called at Harrington's, in the High Street, to buy a

book. It was a tiny low-roofed shop, the only one of its kind in

Millstead, and with the sale of books it combined that of newspapers,

stationery, pictures and fancy goods. It was always dark and shadowy,

yet, unlike the Head's study at the school, this gloom possessed a

cheerful soothing quality that made the shop a pleasant haven of refuge

when the pavements outside were dazzling and sun-scorched. It was on such

an afternoon that Speed visited the shop for the first time. Usually he

had no occasion to, for, though he dealt with Harrington's, an

errand-boy visited the school every morning to take orders and saved him

the trouble of a walk into the village. This afternoon, however, he

recollected a text-book that he wanted and had forgotten to order;

besides, the heat of the mid-afternoon tempted him to seek shelter in

one or other of the tranquil diamond-windowed shops whose sun-blinds

sprawled unevenly along the street. It was the hottest day of the term,

so far. A huge thermometer outside Harrington's gave the shade

temperature as a little over seventy-nine; all the roadway was bubbling

with little gouts of soft tar. The innumerable dogs of Millstead,

quarrelsome by nature, had called an armistice on account of the heat,

and lay languidly across shady sections of the pavement. Speed, tanned

by a week of successive hot days, with a Panama pushed down over his

forehead to shield his eyes from dazzle, pushed open the small door and

entered the cool cavern of the shop.

His eyes, unaccustomed to the gloom, were blind for a moment, but he

heard movement of some kind behind the counter. "I want an atlas of the

British Isles," he said, feeling his way across the shop. "A school

atlas, I mean. Cheap, rather, you know--about a shilling or

one-and-sixpence."

He heard Clare's voice reply: "Yes, Mr. Speed, I know what you want. Hot

weather, isn't it?"

"Very."

She went on, searching meanwhile along some shelves: "Nice of you not to

bother about seeing me home the other night, Mr. Speed."

He said, with a touch of embarrassment: "Well, you see, you told me.

About--about Miss Ervine getting jealous, you know."

"It was nice of you to take my information without doubting it."

He said, rather to his own surprise: "As a matter of fact, I'm not sure

that I don't doubt it. Miss Ervine seems to me a perfectly delightful

and natural girl, far too unsophisticated to be jealous of anybody. The

more I see of her the more I like her."

After a pause she answered quietly: "Well, I'm not surprised at that."

"I suppose," he went on, "with her it's rather the opposite. I mean, the

more she sees of me the less she likes me. Isn't that it?"

"I shouldn't think she likes you any less than she did at first....

Here's the atlas. It's one and three--I'd better put it on your account,

eh?"

"Yes, yes, of course.... So you think--"

She interrupted him quickly with: "Mr. Speed, you'd better not ask me

what I think. You're far more subtle in understanding people than I am,

and it won't take you long to discover what Helen thinks of you if you

set about with the intention.... Those sketch-blocks you ordered haven't

come in yet.... Well, good afternoon!"

Another customer had entered the shop, so that all he could do was to

return a rather dazed "Good afternoon" and emerge into the blazing High

Street. He walked back to the school in a state of not unpleasant

puzzlement.

II

The term progressed, and towards the end of May occurred the death of

Sir Huntly Polk, Bart., Chairman of the Governors of Millstead School.

This would not have in any way affected Speed (who had never even met

Sir Huntly) had not a Memorial Service been arranged at which he was to

play Chopin's Funeral March on the chapel organ. It was a decent modern

instrument, operated usually by Raggs, the visiting organist, who

combined a past reputation of great splendour with a present passion for

the _vox humana_ stop; but Speed sometimes took the place of Raggs when

Raggs wanted time off. And at the time fixed for the Sir Huntly Polk

Memorial Service Raggs was adjudicating with great solemnity at a

Northern musical festival.