absurdly inadequate word to apply to her attitude.
He said, deliberately against his will: "Helen, darling, it was I who
was silly. Have Smallwood in as much as you like. I don't want to
interfere with your happiness."
He expected her then to protest that she had no real desire to have
Smallwood in, and when she failed to protest, he was disappointed. The
fear came to him that perhaps Smallwood did attract her, being so
good-looking, and that his granting her full permission to see him would
give that attraction a chance to develop. Jealousy once again stormed at
him.
But how sweet the reconciliation, after all! For concentrated loveliness
nothing in his life could equal the magic of that first hour with her
after she had ceased crying. It was moonlight outside and about midnight
they leaned for a moment out of the window with the icy wind stinging
their cheeks. Millstead asleep in the pallor, took on the semblance of
his own mood and seemed tremulous with delight. Somewhere, too, amidst
the dreaming loveliness of the moon-washed roofs and turrets, there was
a touch of something that was just a little exquisitely sad, and that
too, faint, yet quite perceptible, was in his own mood.
III
There came the concert in the first week of December. No one, not even
those of the Common-Room who were least cordially disposed to him, could
deny that Speed had worked indefatigably and that his efforts deserved
success. Yet the success, merited though it was, was hardly likely to
increase his popularity among those inclined to be jealous of him.
Briskly energetic and full of high spirits throughout all the
rehearsals, and most energetic of all on the actual evening of the
performance, he yet felt, when all was over and he knew that the affair
had been a success, the onrush of a wave of acute depression. He had, no
doubt, been working too hard, and this was the natural reaction of
nerves. It was a cold night with hardly any wind, and during the evening
a thick fog had drifted up from the fenlands, so that there was much
excited talk among the visitors about the difficulties of getting to
their homes. Nothing was to be seen more than five or six yards ahead,
and there was the prospect that as the night advanced the fog would
become worse. The Millstead boys, enjoying the novelty, were scampering
across the forbidden quadrangle, revelling in the delightful risk of
being caught and in the still more delightful possibility of knocking
over, by accident, some one or other of the Masters. Speed, standing on
the top step of the flight leading down from the Big Hall, gazed into
the dense inky-black cloisters where two faint pin-pricks of light
indicated lamps no more than a few yards away. He felt acutely
miserable, and he could not think why. In a way, he was sorry that the
bustle of rehearsals, to which he had become quite accustomed, was all
finished with; but surely that was hardly a sufficient reason for
feeling miserable? Hearing the boyish cries from across the quadrangle
he suddenly felt that he was old, and that he wished he were young
again, as young as the youngest of the boys at Millstead.
Since the quarrel about Smallwood he and Helen had got on tolerably well
together. She had not asked Smallwood in to tea again, and he judged
that she did not intend to, though to save her dignity she would still
persist in her right to do so whenever she wished. The arrangement was
quite satisfactory to him. But, despite the settlement of that affair,
their relationship had suddenly become a thing of fierce, alternating
contrasts. They were either terrifically happy or else desperately
miserable. The atmosphere, when he came into Lavery's after an absence
of even a quarter of an hour, might either be dull and glowering or else
radiant with joy. He could never guess which it would be, and he could
never discover reasons for whichever atmosphere he encountered. But
invariably he was forced into responding; if Helen were moody and silent
he also remained quiet, even if his inclinations were to go to the piano
and sing comic songs. And if Helen were bright and joyful he forced
himself to boisterousness, no matter what press of gravity was upon
him. He sometimes found himself stopping short on his own threshold,
frightened to enter lest Helen's mood, vastly different from his own,
might drag him up or down too disconcertingly. Even their times of
happiness, more wonderful now than ever, were drug-like in possessing
after-effects which projected themselves backward in a tide of sweet
melancholy that suffused everything. He knew that he loved her more
passionately than ever, and he knew also that the beauty of it was
mysteriously impregnated with sadness.
She stole up to him now in the fog, dainty and pretty in her heavy fur
cloak. She put a hand on his sleeve; evidently this was one of her
happy moods.
"Oh, Kenneth--_what_ a fog! Aren't you glad everything's all over? It
went off wonderfully, didn't it? Do you think the Rayners will be able
to get home all right--they live out at Deepersdale, you know?"
Replying to the last of her queries, he said: "Oh yes, I don't think
it's quite bad enough to stop them altogether."
Then after a pause she went on: "Clare's just putting her things on and
I told her to meet you here. You'll see her home, won't you?"
He wondered in a vague kind of way why Helen was so desperately anxious
that he should take Clare on her way home, but he was far too exhausted
mentally to give the matter sustained excogitation. It seemed to him
that Helen suddenly vanished, that he waited hours in the fog, and that
Clare appeared mysteriously by his side, speaking to him in a voice that
was full of sharp, recuperative magic. "My dear man, aren't you going to
put your coat on?" Then he deliberately laughed and said: "Heavens, yes,
I'd forgotten--just a minute if you don't mind waiting!"
He groped his way back into the hall and to the alcove where he had laid
his coat and hat. The yellow light blurred his eyes with a film of
half-blindness; phantasies of doubt and dread enveloped him; he felt,
with that almost barometric instinct that he possessed, that things
momentous and incalculable were looming in the future. This Millstead
that had seemed to him so bright and lovely was now heavy with dark
mysterious menace; as he walked back across the hall through the long
avenues of disturbed chairs it occurred to him suddenly that perhaps
this foreboding that was hovering about him was not mental at all, but
physical; that he had overworked himself and was going to be ill.
Perhaps, even, he was ill already. He had a curious desire that someone
should confirm him in this supposition; when Clare, meeting him at the
doorway, said: "You're looking thoroughly tired out Mr. Speed," he
smiled and answered, with a touch of thankfulness: "I'm feeling,
perhaps, a little that way."
"Then," said Clare, immediately, "please don't trouble to see me home. I
can quite easily find my own way, I assure you. You go back to Lavery's
and get straight off to bed."
The thought, thus presented to him, of foregoing this walk into the town
with her, sent a sharp flush into his cheeks and pulled down the
hovering gloom almost on to his eyes; he knew then, more acutely than he
had ever guessed before, that he was desiring Clare's company in a way
that was a good deal more than casual. The realisation surprised him
just a little at first, and then surprised him a great deal because at
first it had surprised him only a little.
"I'd rather come with you if you don't mind," he said. "The walk will do
me good."
"What, _this_ weather!" she exclaimed softly, and then laughed a sharp,
instant laugh.
That laugh galvanised him into determination. "I'm coming anyway," he
said quietly, and took her arm and led her away into the fog.
Out in the high road it was blacker and denser; the school railings,
dripping with grimy moisture, provided the only sure clue to position.
Half, at least, of Speed's energies were devoted to the task of not
losing the way; with the other half he was unable to carry out much of
the strange programme of conversation that had been gathering in his
mind. For many days past he had been accumulating a store of things to
say to her upon this memorable walk which, so far as he could judge, was
bound to be the last; now, with the opportunity arrived, he said hardly
anything at all. She chattered to him about music and Millstead and odd
topics of slight importance; she pressed her scarf to her lips and the
words came out curiously muffled and deep-toned, with the air of having
incalculable issues depending on them. But he hardly answered her at
all. And at last they reached Harrington's shop in the High Street, and
she shook hands with him and told him to get back as quickly as he could
and be off to bed. "And don't work so hard," were her last words to him,
"or you'll be ill."
Thicker and blacker than ever was the fog on the way back to the school,
and somehow, through what error he never discovered, he lost himself
amongst the narrow, old fashioned streets in the centre of the town. He
wandered about, as it seemed to him, for hours, creeping along walls and
hoping to meet some passer-by who could direct him. Once he heard
Millstead Parish Church beginning the chime of midnight, but it was from
the direction he least expected. At last, after devious manœuvring, he
discovered himself again on the main road up to the School, and this
time with great care he managed to keep to the route. As he entered the
main gateway he heard the school clock sounding the three-quarters. A
quarter to one! All was silent at Lavery's. He rang the bell timorously.
After a pause he heard footsteps approaching on the other side, but they
seemed to him light and airy; the bolts were pushed back, not with
Burton's customary noise, but softly, almost frightenedly.
He could see that it was Helen standing there in the porch, not Burton.
She flashed an electric torch in his face and then at his feet so that
he should see the step.
She said: "Come in quickly--don't let the fog in. You're awfully late,
aren't you? I told Burton to go to bed. I didn't know you were going to
stay at Clare's."
He answered: "I didn't stay at Clare's. I got lost in the fog on the way
back."
"Lost!" she echoed, walking ahead of him down the corridor towards his
sitting-room. The word echoed weirdly in the silence. "_Lost_, were
you?--So that's why you were late?"
"That's why," he said.
He followed her into the tiny lamp-lit room, full of firelight that was
somehow melancholy and not cheerful.
IV
She was silent. She sat in one of the chairs with her eyes looking
straight into the fire; while he took off his coat and hat and drew up
his own chair opposite to hers she neither moved nor spoke. It seemed to
him as he watched her that the room grew redder and warmer and more
melancholy; the flames lapped so noisily in the silence that he had for
an instant the absurd fear that the scores of sleepers in the
dormitories would be awakened. Then he heard, very faintly from above,
what he imagined must be an especially loud snore; it made him smile. As
he smiled he saw Helen's eyes turned suddenly upon him; he blushed as if
caught in some guilty act. He said: "Can you hear somebody snoring up in
the Senior dormitory?"
She stared at him curiously for a moment and then replied: "No, and
neither can you. You said that to make conversation."
"I didn't!" he cried, with genuine indignation. "I distinctly heard it.
That's what made me smile."
"And do you really think that the sound of anybody snoring in the Senior
dormitory would reach us in here? Why, we never hear the maids in a
morning and they make ever such a noise!"
"Yes, but then there are so many other noises to drown it. However, it
may have been my imagination."
"Or it may have been your invention, eh?"
"I tell you, Helen, I _did_ think that I heard it! It _wasn't_ my
invention. What reason on earth should I have for inventing it? Oh,
well, anyway, it's such a trifling matter--it's not worth arguing
about."
"Then let's stop arguing. You started it."
Silence again. The melancholy in the atmosphere was charged now with an
added quality, something that weighed and threatened and was dangerous.
He knew that Helen had something pressing on her mind, and that until
she flung it off there would be no friendliness with her. And he wanted
friendliness. He could not endure the torture of her bitter silences.
"Helen," he said, nervously eager, "Helen, there's something the matter.
Tell me what it is."
"There's nothing the matter."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure."
"Then why are you so silent?"
"Because I would rather be silent than make conversation."
"That's sarcastic."
"Is it? If you think it is----"
"Helen, please be kind to me. If you go on as you are doing I'm sure I
shall either cry or lose my temper. I'm tired to death after all the
work of the concert and I simply can't bear this attitude of yours."
"Well, I can't change my attitude to please you."
"Apparently not."
"_Now_ who's sarcastic? Good heavens, do you think I've nothing to do
but suit your mood when you come home tired at one o'clock in the
morning--You spend half the night with some other woman and then when
you come home, tired out, you expect me to soothe and make a fuss of
you!"
"Helen, that's a lie! I walked straight home with Clare. You specially
asked me to do that."
"I didn't specially ask you to stay out with her till one o'clock in the
morning."
"I didn't stay with her till then. To begin with, it isn't one o'clock
even yet.... Remember that the concert was over about eleven. I took
Clare straight home and left her long before midnight. It wasn't my
fault I lost my way in the fog."
"Nor mine either. But perhaps it was Clare's, eh?"
"Helen, I can't bear you to insinuate like that! Tell me frankly what
you suspect, and then I'll answer frankly!"
"You wouldn't answer frankly. And that's why I can't tell you frankly."
"Well, I think it's scandalous----"
She interrupted him fiercely with: "Oh, yes, it's scandalous that I
should dare to be annoyed when you give all your friendship to another
woman and none to me, isn't it? It's scandalous that when you come home
after seeing this other woman I shouldn't be perfectly happy and bright
and ready to kiss and comfort you and wheedle you out of the misery
you're in at having to leave her! You only want me for a comforter, and
it's so scandalous when I don't feel in the humour to oblige, isn't it?"
"Helen, it's not true! My friendship belongs to you more than to----"
"Don't tell me lies just to calm me into suiting your mood. Do you think
I haven't noticed that we haven't anything in common except that we love
each other? We don't know what on earth to talk about when we're alone
together. We just know how to bore each other and to torture each other
with our love. Don't you realize the truth of that? Don't you find
yourself eagerly looking forward to seeing Clare; Clare whom you can
talk to and be friendly with; Clare who's your equal, perhaps your
superior, in intellect? Lately, I've given you as many chances to see
her as I could, because if you're going to tire of me I'd rather you do
it quickly. But I'm sorry I can't promise to be always gay and amusing
while it's going on. It may be scandalous that I can't, but it's the
truth, anyway!"
"But, my dear Helen, what an extraordinary bundle of misunderstandings
you've got hold of! Why----"
"Oh yes, you'd like to smooth me down and persuade me it's all my own
misunderstanding, I daresay, as you've always been able to do! But the
effect doesn't last for very long; sooner or later it all crops up
again. It's no use, Kenneth. I'm not letting myself be angry, but I tell
you it's not a bit of use. I'm sick to death of wanting from you what I
can't get. I've tried hard to educate myself into being your equal, but
it doesn't seem to make you value me any more. Possibly you like me best
as a child; perhaps you wouldn't have married me if you'd known I was
really a woman. Anyway, Kenneth, I can't help it. And there's another
thing--I'm miserably jealous--of Clare. If you'd had a grain of ordinary
sense you might have guessed it before now."
"My dear Helen----"
Then he stopped, seeing that she was staring at him fearlessly. She was
different, somehow, from what she had ever been before; and this
quarrel, if it could be called a quarrel, was also different both in
size and texture. There was no anger in her; nothing but stormy
sincerity and passionate outpouring of the truth. A new sensation
overspread him; a thrill of surprised and detached admiration for her.
If she were always like this, he thought--if she were always proud,
passionate, and sincere--how splendidly she would take possession of
him! For he wanted to belong to her, finally and utterly; he was anxious
for any enslavement that should give him calm and absolute anchorage.
His admiration was quickly superseded by astonishment at her
self-revelation.
"But Helen--" he gasped, leaning over the arm of his chair and putting
his hand on her wrist, "Helen, I'd no idea! _Jealous_! You jealous of
Clare! What on earth for? Clare's only an acquaintance! Why, you're a
thousand times more to me than Clare ever is or could be!"
"Kenneth!" She drew her arm away from the touch of his hand with a
gesture that was determined but not contemptuous. "Kenneth, I don't
believe it. Perhaps you're not trying to deceive me; probably you're
trying to deceive yourself and succeeding. Tell me, Kenneth, truthfully,
don't you sometimes wish I were Clare when you're talking to me? When
we're both alone together, when we're neither doing nor saying anything
particular, don't you wish you could make me vanish suddenly and have
Clare in my place, and--and--" bitterness crept into her voice
here--"and call me back when you wanted the only gift of mine which you
find satisfactory? You came back to-night, miserable, because you'd said
good-bye to Clare, and because you couldn't see in the future any
chances of meeting her as often as you've been able to do lately. You
wanted--you're wanting it now--Clare's company and Clare's conversation
and Clare's friendship. And because you can't have it you're willing to
soothe yourself with my pretty little babyish ways, and when you find
you can't have _them_ either you think it's scandalous! Kenneth, my
dear, dear Kenneth, I'm not a baby any longer, even if I ever was
one--I'm a woman now, and you don't like me as much. I can't help it. I
can't help being tortured with jealousy all the time you're with Clare.
I can't help wanting what Clare has of you more than I want what I have
of you myself. I can't help--sometimes--hating her--loathing her!"
He was speechless now, made so by a curious dignity with which she spoke
and the kindness to him that sounded in everything that she said. He was
so tired and sorry. He leaned his head in his arms and sobbed. Some
tragedy that had seemed to linger in the lamp-lit room ever since he had
come into it out of the fog, was now about his head blinding and
crushing him; all the world of Millstead, spread out in the panorama of
days to come, appeared in a haze of forlorn melancholy. The love he had
for Helen ached in him with a sadness that was deeper now than it had
ever been.
And then, suddenly, she was all about him, kneeling beside him, stroking
his hair, taking his hand and pressing it to her breast, crying softly
and without words.
He whispered, indistinctly: "Helen, Helen, it's all right. Don't you
worry, little Helen. I'm not quite well to-night, I think. It must be
the strain of all that concert work.... But I'll be all right when I've
had a rest for a little while.... Helen, darling, you mustn't cry about
me like that!"
Then she said, proudly, though her voice still quivered: "I'm not
worrying, dear. And you'll see Clare again soon, because I shall ask her
to come here. You've got to choose between us, and Clare shall have a
fair chance, anyway.... And now come to bed and sleep."
He gave her a smile that was more babyish than anything that she had
ever been or done. And with her calm answering smile the sadness seemed
somehow a little lifted.
CHAPTER FOUR
I
He was in bed for three days with a temperature (but nothing more
serious); Howard, the School doctor, chaffed him unmercifully. "You're a
lucky man. Speed, to be ill in bed with Mrs. Speed to nurse you! Better
than being up in the Sick-room, isn't it?" Once the idea occurred to
Speed that he might be sickening for some infectious complaint, in which
case he would be taken away and isolated in the Sanatorium. When he
half-hinted the possibility of this to Howard, the latter said, laughing
loudly: "You needn't worry, Speed. I know you don't want to lose your
pretty little nurse, do you? I understand you, young man--I was your age
once, you know."
But the strange thing was that what Howard supposed Speed didn't want
was just what he did want. He wanted to lose Helen for a little while.
Not because he didn't love her. Not because of any reason which he could
dare to offer himself. Merely, he would admit, a whimsical desire to be
without her for a short time; it would, he thought, clutching hold of
the excuse, save her the work of attending to him. He could hardly
understand himself. But the fact was, Helen saddened him. It was
difficult to explain in detail; but there was a kind of aura of
melancholy which seemed to follow her about wherever she went. In the
short winter afternoons he lay awake watching her, listening to the
distant cheering on the footer pitches, sniffing the aroma of tea that
she was preparing for him; it was all so delicious and cosy, and yet, in
a curious, blinding way, it was all so sad. He felt he should slide into
madness if he were condemned to live all his days like these, with warm
fires and twilit meals and Helen always about him in attendance. He
could not understand why it was that though he loved her so dearly yet
he should not be perfectly happy with her.
How strange it was to lie there all day listening to all the sounds of
Millstead! He heard the School-bell ringing the end of every period, the
shouts of the boys at call-over, the hymns in the chapel--(his Senior
organ-pupil was deputising for him)--Burton locking up at night, the
murmur of gramophones in the prefects' studies; and everything, it
seemed to him, was full of this same rich sadness. Then he reasoned with
himself; the sadness must be a part of him, since he saw and felt it in
so many things and places. It was unfair to blame Helen. Poor Helen, how
kind she was to him, and how unkindly he treated her in return!
Sometimes he imagined himself a blackguard and a cad, wrecking the
happiness of the woman who would sacrifice everything for his sake. Once
(it was nearly dark, but the lamp had not yet been lit) he called her to
him and said, brokenly: "Helen, darling--Helen, I'm so sorry." "Sorry
for what, Kenneth?" she enquired naturally. And he thought and pondered
and could only add: "I don't know--nothing in particular. I'm just
sorry, that's all." And once also he lashed himself into a fervour of
promises. "I _will_ be kind to you, Helen, dearest. We _will_ be
friends, we two. There's nothing that anybody shall have of me that you
shan't have also. I _do_ want you to be happy, Helen." And she _was_
happy, then, happy and miserable at the same time; crying for joy at the
beautiful sadness of it all.
Those long days and nights! The wind howled up from the fenlands and
whiffed through the ivy on the walls; the skies were grey and desolate,
the quadrangle a waste of dingy green. It was the time of the terminal
House-Matches, and when Milner's beat School House in the Semi-Final the
cheering throng passed right under Speed's window, yelling at the tops
of their voices and swinging deafening rattles. In a few days Milner's
would play Lavery's in the Final, and he hoped to be up by then and able
to watch it.
Of course, he had visitors. Clanwell came and gave him endless chatter
about the House-Matches; a few of the less influential prefects paid him
a perfunctory visit of condolence and hoped he would soon be all right
again. And then Doctor and Mrs. Ervine. "Howard tells me it is
nothing--um--to be--um, er, perturbed about. Just, to use
an--um--colloquialism, run down, eh, Speed? The strain of
the--um--concert must have been quite--um--considerable. By the way,
Speed, I ought to congratulate you--the whole evening passed in the
most--um, yes--the most satisfactory manner." And Mrs. Ervine said, in
her rather tart way: "It's quite a mercy they only come once a year, or
we should all be dead very soon, I think."
And Clare.
Helen had kept her promise. She had written to Clare asking her to tea
on a certain afternoon, and she had also contrived that when Clare came
she should be transacting important and rather lengthy business with the
Matron. The result was that Speed, now in his sitting-room though still
not allowed out of doors, was there alone to welcome her.
He had got into such a curious state of excitement as the time neared
for her arrival that when she did come he was almost speechless. She
smiled and shook hands with him and said, immediately: "I'm so sorry to
hear you haven't been very well. I feel partly responsible, since I
dragged you all that way in the fog the other night. But I'm not going
to waste too much pity on you, because I think you waste quite enough on
yourself, don't you?"
He laughed weakly and said that perhaps he did.
Then there was a long pause which she broke by saying suddenly: "What's
the matter with you?"
"Matter with me? Oh, nothing serious--only a chill----"
"That's not what I mean. I want to know what's the matter with you that
makes you look at me as you were doing just then."
"I--I--I didn't know I was. I--I----"
He stopped. What on earth were they going to talk about? And what was
this look that he had been giving her? He felt his cheeks burning; a
fire rising up all around him and bathing his body in warmth.
She said, obviously with the desire to change the subject: "What are you
and Helen going to do at Christmas?"
Pulling himself together with an effort, he replied: "Well, we're not
certain yet. My--er--my people have asked us down to their place."
"And of course you'll go."
"I'm not certain."
"But why not?"
He paused. "Well, you see--in a way, it's a private reason. I mean----"
"Oh, well, if it's a private reason, you certainly mustn't tell me.
Let's change the subject again. How are the House-Matches going?"
"Look here, I didn't mean to be rude. And I do want to tell you, as it
happens. In fact, I wouldn't mind your advice if you'd give it me. Will
you?"
"Better put the case before me first."
"Well, you see, it's like this." He was so desperately and unaccountably
nervous that he found himself plunging into the midst of his story
almost before he realised what he was doing. "You see, my people were in
Australia for a holiday when I married Helen. I had to marry her
quickly, you remember, because of taking this housemastership. And I
don't think they quite liked me marrying somebody they'd never seen."
"Perfectly natural on their part, my dear man. You may as well admit
that much of their case to start with."
"Yes, I suppose it is rather natural. But you don't know what my people
are like. I don't think they'll care for Helen very much. And Helen is
bound to be nervous at meeting them. I expect we should have a pretty
miserable Christmas if we went."
"I should think in your present mood you'd have a pretty miserable
Christmas whatever you did. And since you asked for my advice I'll give
it you. Buck yourself up; don't let your imagination carry you away; and
take Helen to see your people. After all, she's perfectly presentable,
and since you've married her there's nothing to be gained by keeping her
out of their sight, is there? Don't think I'm callous and unfeeling
because I take a more practical view of things than you do. I'm a
practical person, you see, Mr. Speed, and if I had married you I should
insist on being taken to see your people at the earliest possible
opportunity."
"Why?"
"Because," she answered, "I should be anxious for them to see what an
excellent choice you'd made!"
That was thoughtlessly said and thoughtfully heard. After a pause Speed
said, curiously: "That brings one to the question--supposing I had
married you, should I have made an excellent choice?"
With a touch of surprise and coldness she replied: "That wasn't in my
mind, Mr. Speed. You evidently misunderstood me."
And at this point Helen came into the room.
II
During that strange twilight hour while the three of them were
tea-drinking and conducting a rather limp conversation about local
matters, Speed came suddenly to the decision that he would not see Clare
again. Partly, perhaps, because her last remark just before Helen
entered had hurt him; he felt that she had deliberately led him into a
position from which she could and did administer a stinging snub. But
chiefly his decision was due to a careful and pitiful observation of
Helen; he saw her in a dazzling white light of admiration, for she was
deliberately (he could see) torturing herself to please him. She was
acutely jealous of Clare, and yet, because she thought he liked Clare,
she was willing to give her open hospitality and encouragement, despite
the stab that every word and gesture must mean to her. It reminded him
of Hans Andersen's story about the mermaid who danced to please her
lover-prince even though each step cost her agonies. The pathos of it,
made more apparent to him by the literary comparison, overwhelmed him
into a blind fervour of resolution: he would do everything in his power
to bring happiness to one who was capable of such love and such
nobility. And as Helen thus swung into the focus of his heroine-worship,
so Clare, without his realising it, took up in his mind the other
inevitable position in the triangle; she was something, at least, of the
adventuress, scheming to lure his affections away from his brave little
wife. The fact that he was not conscious of this conventional outlook
upon the situation prevented his reason from assuring him that Clare, so
far from scheming to lure his affections from Helen, had just snubbed
him unmercifully for a remark which any capable adventuress would have
rejoiced over.
Anyway, he decided there and then, he would put a stop to this tangled
and uncomfortable situation. And after tea, when Helen, on a pretext
which he knew quite well to be a fabrication, left him alone again with
Clare, he could think of no better method of procedure than a
straightforward request.
So he summed up the necessary determination to begin: "Miss Harrington,
I hope you won't be offended at what I'm going to say----"
Whereat she interrupted: "Oh, I don't often take offence at what people
_say_. So please don't be frightened."
"You see ..." He paused, watching her. He noticed, curiously enough for
the first time, that she was--well, not perhaps pretty, but
certainly--in a way--attractive. In the firelight especially, she seemed
to have the most searching and diabolically disturbing eyes. They made
him nervous. At last he continued: "You see, I'm in somewhat of a
dilemma. A quandary, as it were. In fact--in fact I----"
"Supposing we use our ordinary English language and say that you're in a
mess, eh? 'Quandary'! 'Dilemma'!" She laughed with slight contempt.
"I don't--I don't quite see the point of--of your--objection," he said,
staring at her with a certain puzzled ruefulness. "What has my choice of
a word got to do with it?"
"To do with what?" she replied, instantly.
"With what--with what we're going to talk about."
"Since I haven't the faintest idea what we're going to talk about, how
can I say?"
"Look here!" He got up out of his chair and stood with his back to the
fire. He kept a fretful silence for a moment and then said, with a sharp
burst of exasperation: "Look here, I don't know what you're driving at!
I only know that you're being most infernally rude!"
"Don't forget that a moment ago you were asking me not to take offence."
"You're damned clever, aren't you?" he almost snarled.
That was all he could think of in the way of an answer to her. He stood
there swaying lightly in front of the fire, nursing, as it were, his
angry bafflement.
"Thank you," she replied. "I regard that as a very high tribute. And I'm
nearly as pleased at one other thing--I seem to have shaken you partly
out of your delightful and infuriating urbanity.... But now, we're not
here to compliment each other. You've got something you want to say to
me, haven't you?"
He stared at her severely and said: "Yes, I have. I want to ask you not
to come here any more."
"Why?" She shot the word out at him almost before he had finished
speaking.
"Because I don't wish you to."
"You forget that I come at Helen's invitation, not at yours."
"I see I shall have to tell you the real reason, then. I would have
preferred not to have done. My wife is jealous of you."
He expected her to show great surprise, but the surprise was his when
she replied almost casually: "Oh yes, she was jealous of _you_
once--that first evening we met at the Head's house--do you remember?"
No, he did not remember. At least, he did now that she called it to his
memory, but he had not remembered until then. Curious ...
He was half-disappointed that she was so calm and unconcerned about it
all. He had anticipated some sort of a scene, either of surprise,
remorse, indignation, or sympathy. Instead of which she just said "Oh,
yes," and indulged in some perfectly irrelevant reminiscence. Well, not
perhaps irrelevant, but certainly inappropriate in the circumstances.
"You see," he went on, hating her blindly because she was so serene;
"you see she generously invites you here, because she thinks I like you
to come. Well, of course, I do, but then, I don't want to make it hard
for her. You understand what I mean? I think it is very generous of her
to--to act as she does."
"I think it is very foolish unless she has the idea that in time she can
conquer her jealousy.... But I quite understand, Mr. Speed. I won't come
any more."
"I hope you don't think----"
"Fortunately I have other things to think about. I assure you I'm not
troubling at all. Even loss of friendship----"
"But," he interrupted eagerly, "surely it's not going to mean that, Miss
Harrington? Just because you don't come here doesn't mean that you and
I----"
She laughed in his face as she replied, cutting short his remarks: "My
dear Mr. Speed, you are too much of an egoist. It wasn't your friendship
I was thinking about--it was Helen's. You forget that I've been Helen's
friend for ten years.... Well, good-bye...."
The last straw! He shook hands with her stiffly.
When she had gone his face grew hard and solemn, and he clenched his
fists as he stood again with his back to the fire. He felt--the word
_came_ to his mind was a staggering inevitability--he felt _dead_.
Absolutely dead. And all because she had gone and he knew that she would
not come again.
III
Those were the dark days of the winter term, when Burton came round the
dormitories at half-past seven in the mornings and lit all the flaring
gas-jets. There was a cold spell at the beginning of December when it
was great fun to have to smash the film of ice on the top of the water
in the water-jugs, and one afternoon the school got an extra
half-holiday to go skating on one of the neighbouring fens that had been
flooded and frozen over. Now Speed could skate very well, even to the
point of figure-skating and a few easy tricks, and he took a very simple
and human delight in exhibiting his prowess before the Millstead boys.
He possessed a good deal of that very charming boyish pride in athletic
achievement which is so often mistaken for modesty, and there was no
doubt that the reports of his accomplishments on the wide expanse of
Dinglay Fen gave a considerable fillip to his popularity in the school.
A popularity, by the way, which was otherwise very distinctly on the
wane. He knew it, felt it as anyone might have felt it, and perhaps,
additionally, as only he in all the world could feel it; it was the dark
spectre in his life. He loved success; he was prepared to fight the
sternest of battles provided they were victories on the road of
progress; but to see his power slipping from him elusively and without
commotion of any kind, was the sort of thing his soul was not made to
endure. Fears grew up in him and exaggerated reality. He imagined all
kinds of schemes and conspiracies against him in his own House. The
enigma of the Head became suddenly resolved into a sinister hostility to
himself. If a boy passed him in the road with a touch of the cap and a
"Good morning" he would ask himself whether the words contained any
ominous subtlety of meaning. And when, on rare occasions, he dined in
the Masters' Common-Room he could be seen to feel hostility rising in
clouds all about him, hostility that would not speak or act, that was
waiting mute for the signal to uprise.
He was glad that the term was nearly over, not, he told himself, because
he was unhappy at Millstead, but because he needed a holiday after the
hard work of his first term of housemastership. The next term, he
decided, would be easier; and the term after that easier still, and so
on, until a time would come when his work at Millstead would be exactly
the ideal combination of activity and comfort. Moreover, the next term
he would not see Clare at all. He had made up his mind about that It
would be easier to see her not at all than to see her only a little. And
with the absolute snapping of his relations with her would come that
which he desired most in all the world; happiness with Helen. He wanted
to be happy with Helen. He wanted to love her passionately, just as he
wanted to hate Clare passionately. For it was Clare who had caused all
the trouble. He hugged the comfortable thought to himself; it was Clare,
and Clare only, who had so far disturbed the serenity of his world.
Without Clare his world would have been calm and unruffled, a paradise
of contentment and love of Helen.
Well, next term, anyway, his world should be without Clare.
IV
On the day that term ended he felt quite boyish and cheerful. For during
that final week he and Helen had been, he considered, perfectly happy;
moreover, she had agreed to go with him to his parents for Christmas,
and though the visit would, in some sense, be an ordeal, the
anticipation of it was distinctly pleasant. Somehow--he would not
analyse his sensation exactly--somehow he wanted to leave the
creeper-hung rooms at Lavery's and charge full tilt into the world
outside; it was as if Lavery's contained something morbidly beautiful
that he loved achingly, but desired to leave in order that he might
return to love it more and again. When he saw the railway vans being
loaded up with luggage in the courtyard he felt himself tingling with
excitement, just as if he were a schoolboy and this the close of his
first miserable term. Miserable! Well, yes, looking back upon it he
could agree that in a certain way it had been miserable, and in another
way it had been splendid, rapturous, and lovely. It had been full,
brimming full, of _feelings_. The feelings had whirled tirelessly about
him in the dark drawing-room, had wrapped him amidst themselves, had
tossed him high and low to the most dizzy heights and the most submerged
depths; and now, aching from it all, he was not sorry to leave for a
short while this world of pressing, congesting sensation.
He even caught himself looking forward to his visit to his parents, a
thing he had hardly ever done before. For his parents were, he had
always considered, "impossible" parents, good and generous enough in
their way, but "impossible" from his point of view. They were--he
hesitated to use the word "vulgar," because that word implied so many
things that they certainly were not--he would use instead the rather
less insulting word "materialist." They lived in a world that was full
of "things"--soap-factories and cars and Turkey carpets and gramophones
and tennis-courts. Moreover, they were almost disgustingly wealthy, and
their wealth had followed him doggedly about wherever he had tried to
escape from it. They had regarded his taking a post in a public-school
as a kind of eccentric wild oats, and did not doubt that, sooner or
later, he would come to his senses and prefer one or other of the
various well-paid business posts that Sir Charles Speed could get for
him. Oh, yes, undoubtedly they were impossible people. And yet their
very impossibility would be a relief from the tensely charged atmosphere
of Lavery's.
On the train he chatted gaily to Helen and gave her some indication of
the sort of people his parents were. "You mustn't be nervous of them,"
he warned her. "They've pots of money, but they're not people to get
nervous about. Dad's all right if you stick up for yourself in front of
him, and mother's nice to everybody whether she likes them or not. So
you'll be quite safe ... and if it freezes there'll be ice on the
Marshpond...."
At the thought of this last possibility his face kindled with
anticipation. "Cold, Helen?" he queried, and when she replied "Yes,
rather," he said jubilantly: "I shouldn't be surprised if it's started
to freeze already."
Then for many minutes he gazed out through the carriage window at the
pleasant monotony of the Essex countryside, and in a short while he felt
her head against his shoulder. She was sleeping. "I do love her!" he
thought triumphantly, giving her a side-glance. And then the sight of a
pond with a thin coating of ice gave him another sort of triumph.
INTERLUDE
CHRISTMAS AT BEACHINGS OVER
I
"BEACHINGS OVER, near Framlingay, Essex. Tel. Framlingay 32. Stations:
Framlingay 2½ miles; Pumphrey Bassett 3 miles."
So ran the inscription on Lady Speed's opulent bluish notepaper. The
house was an old one, unobtrusively modernised, with about a half-mile
of upland carriage-drive leading to the portico. As Helen saw it from
the window of the closed Daimler that had met them at Framlingay
station, her admiration secured momentary advantage of her nervousness.
In another moment Speed was introducing her to his mother.
Lady Speed was undoubtedly a fine woman. "Fine" was exactly the right
word for her, for she was just a little too elderly to be called
beautiful and perhaps too tall ever to have been called pretty. Though
she was upright and clear-skinned and finely-featured, and although the
two decades of her married life had seemed to leave very little
conspicuous impression on her, yet there was a sense, perhaps, in which
she looked her age; it might have been guessed rightly as between forty
and fifty. She had blue eyes of that distinctively English hue that
might almost be the result of gazing continually upon miles and miles of
rolling English landscape; and her nose, still attractively
_retroussé_, though without a great deal of the pertness it must have
had in her youth, held just enough of patricianly bearing to enable her
to manage competently the twenty odd domestics whose labours combined to
make Beachings Over habitable.
She kissed Helen warmly. "My dear, I'm so pleased to meet you. But
you'll have to rough it along with us, you know--I'm afraid we don't
live at all in style. We're just ordinary country folks, that's all....
And when you've had your lunch and got refreshed I must take you over
the house and show you everything...."
Speed laughed and said: "Mother always tells visitors that they've got
to rough it. But there's nothing to rough. I wonder what she'd say if
she had to live three months at Lavery's."
"Lavery's?" said Lady Speed, uncomprehendingly.
"Lavery's is the name of my House at Millstead. I was made housemaster
of it at the beginning of the term." He spoke a little proudly.
"Oh, yes, I seem to know the name. I believe your father was mentioning
something about it to me once, but I hardly remember--"
"But how on earth did he know anything about it? I never wrote telling
him."
"Well, I expect he heard it from somebody.... I really couldn't tell you
exactly.... I've had a most awful morning before you came--had to
dismiss one of the maids--she'd stolen a thermos-flask. So ungrateful of
her, because I'd have given it to her if she'd only asked me for it. One
of my best maids, she was."
After lunch Richard arrived. Richard was Speed's younger brother, on
vacation from school; a pleasant-faced, rather ordinary youngster,
obviously prepared to enter the soap-boiling industry as soon as he left
school. In the afternoon Richard conducted the pair of them round the
grounds and outbuildings, showing them the new Italian garden and the
pergola and the new sunken lawn and the clock-tower built over the
garage and the new gas-engine to work the electric light plant and the
new pavilion alongside the rubble tennis courts and the new wing of the
servants' quarters that "dad" was "throwing out" from the end of the old
coach-house. Then, when they returned indoors, Lady Speed was ready to
conduct them over the interior and show them the panelled bed-rooms and
the lacquered cabinets in the music-room and the bathroom with a solid
silver bath and the gramophone worked by electricity and the wonderful
old-fashioned bureau that somebody had offered to buy off "dad" for
fifteen hundred guineas.
"Visitors always have to go through it," said Speed, when his mother had
left them. "Personally I'm never the least bit impressed, and I can't
understand anyone else being it."
Helen answered, rather doubtfully: "But it's a lovely house, Kenneth,
isn't it? I'd no idea your people were like this."
"Like what?"
"So--so well-off."
"Oh, then the display _has_ impressed you?" He laughed and said,
quietly: "I'd rather have our own little place at Lavery's, wouldn't
you?"
While he was saying it he felt: Yes, I'd rather have it, no doubt, but
to be there now would make me utterly miserable.
She replied softly: "Yes, because it's our own."
He pondered a moment and then said: "Yes, I suppose that's one of the
reasons why _I_ would."
After a pleasant tea in the library he took Helen into the music-room,
where he played Chopin diligently for half-an-hour and then, by special
request of Richard, ran over some of the latest revue songs. Towards
seven o'clock Lady Speed sailed in to remind Richard that it was getting
near dinner-time. "I wish you'd run upstairs and change your clothes,
dear--you know father doesn't like you to come in to dinner in
tweeds.... You know," she went on, turning to Helen, "Charles isn't a
bit fussy--none of us trouble to really _dress_ for dinner, except when
we're in town--only--only you have to put a limit somewhere, haven't
you?"
As the hour for dinner approached it seemed as if a certain mysteriously
incalculable imminence were in the air, as if the whole world of
Beachings Over were steeling itself in readiness for some searching and
stupendous test of its worth. It was, indeed, ten minutes past eight
when the sound of a motor-horn was heard in the far distance. "That's
Edwards," cried Lady Speed, apprehensively. "He always sounds his horn
to let us know.... Now, Dick dear, don't let him know we've been waiting
for him--you know how he hates to think he's late...."
And in another moment a gruff voice in the hall could be heard
dismissing the chauffeur with instructions for the morrow. "Ten-thirty
sharp, Edwards. The Daimler if it's wet. Gotter go over and see
Woffenheimer."
And in yet another moment Lady Speed was rushing forward with an eager,
wifely kiss. "You aren't late, Charles. All the clocks are a little
fast.... Kenneth has come ... and this ..." she spoke a trifle
nervously ... "this is Helen...."
Sir Charles distributed a gruff nod to the assembly, afterwards holding
out his hand to be shaken. "Ahdedoo, Kenneth, my lad.... How are you?
Still kicking eh? ... Ahdedoo, Helen ... don't mind me calling you Helen,
do you? Well, Richard, my lad...."
A bald-headed, moustached, white-spatted, morning-coated man, Sir
Charles Speed.
Dinner opened in an atmosphere of gloomy silence. Lady Speed kept
inaugurating conversations that petered out into a stillness that was
broken only by Sir Charles' morose ingurgitation of soup. Something was
obviously amiss with him. Over the _entrée_ it came out.
"Had to sack one of the foremen to-day."
Lady Speed looked up with an appropriate gesture of horror and
indignation. "And I had to dismiss one of my maids too! What a curious
coincidence! How ungrateful people are!"
"Sneaking timber out of the woodyard," continued Sir Charles, apparently
without the least interest in his wife's adventure with the maid.
But with the trouble of the sacked foreman off his chest Sir Charles
seemed considerably relieved, though his gloom returned when Richard had
the misfortune to refer to one of the "fellows" at his school as "no
class at all--an absolute outsider." "See here, my lad," exclaimed Sir
Charles, holding up his fork with a peach on the end of it, "don't you
ever let me hear you talking _that_ sort of nonsense! Don't you forget
that _I_ started life as an office-boy cleaning out ink-wells!" Richard
flushed deeply and Lady Speed looked rather uncomfortable. "Don't you
forget it," added Sir Charles, mouthing characteristically, and it was
clear that he was speaking principally for the benefit of Helen. "I
don't want people to think I am what I'm not. If I hadn't been
lucky--and--and" he seemed to experience a difficulty in choosing the
right adjective--"and _smart_--_smart_, mind--I might have been still
cleaning out ink-wells. See?" He filled up his glass with port and for a
moment there was sultry silence again. Eventually, he licked his lips
and broke it. "You know," turning to address Kenneth, "it's all this
education that's at the root of the trouble. Makes the workers too big
for their shoes, as often as not.... Mind you, I'm a democrat, I am.
Can't abide snobbery at any price. But I don't believe in all this
education business. I paid for you at Cambridge and what's it done for
you? You go an' get a job in some stuffy little school or other--salary
about two hundred a year--and God knows how long you'd stay there
without a promotion if I hadn't given somebody the tip to shove you up!"
"What's that?" Kenneth exclaimed, almost under his breath.
Sir Charles appeared not to have heard the interruption. He went on,
warming to his subject and addressing an imaginary disputant: "No, sir,
I do _not_ believe in what is termed Education in this country. It don't
help a man to rise if he hasn't got it in him.... Why, look at _me_! _I_
got on without education. Don't you suppose other lads, if they're smart
enough, can do the same? Don't you think I'm an example of what a man
can become when he's had no education?"
The younger Speed nodded. The argument was irrefutable.
II
After dinner Speed managed to get his father alone in the library. "I
want to know," he said, quietly, "what you meant when you said something
about giving somebody the tip to shove me up. I want to know exactly,
mind."
Sir Charles waved his arm across a table.
"Don't you talk to me like that, my lad. I'm too old for you to
cross-examine. I'm willin' to tell you anythin' you like, only I won't
be bullied into it. So now you know. Light yourself a cigar an', for
God's sake, sit down and look comfortable."
"Perhaps I could look it if I felt it."
"Your own fault if you don't feel it. Damned ingratitude, I call it. Sit
down. I shan't answer a question till you're sitting down and smoking as
if you was a friend of mine an' not a damned commercial traveller."
Speed decided that he had better humour him; he sat down and toyed with
a cigar. "Now, if you'll please tell me."
"What is it you want me to tell you?" grunted Sir Charles.
"I want you to tell me what you meant by saying that you gave somebody a
tip to shove me up?"
"Well, my lad, you don't want to stay an assistant-master all your life,
do you?"
"That's not the point. I want to know what you did."
"Why, I did the usual thing that I'd always do to help somebody I'm
interested in."
"What's that?"
"Well, you know. Pull a few wires.... Man like me has a few wires he can
pull. I know people, you see--and if I just mention a little
thing--well, they generally remember it all right."
And he spread himself luxuriously in the arm-chair and actually smiled!
The other flushed hotly. "I see. May I ask whose help you solicited on
my behalf?"
"Don't talk like a melodrama, my lad. I'm your best friend if you only
knew it. What is it you want to know now?"
"I want to know whose help you asked for?"
"Well, I had a little conversation with Lord Portway. And I had five
minutes' chat over the telephone with old Ervine. Don't you see--" he
leaned forward with a touch of pleading in his voice--"don't you see
that I want you to _get_ on? I've always wanted you to do well in the
world. Your brother's doing well and there's not a prouder father in
England to-day than I am of him. And when young Richard leaves school I
hope he'll get on well too. Now, you're a bit different. Dunno why you
are, but you are, an' I've always recognised it. You can't say I've ever
tried to force you to anythin' you didn't want, can you? You wanted to
go to the 'varsity--well, I don't believe it's a good thing for a young
man to waste his years till he's twenty-two--nevertheless it was your
choice, an' I let you do it. I paid for you, I gave you as much money as
you wanted, an' I didn't complain. Well, then you wanted to be a Master
in a school. You got yourself the job without even consulting me about
it, but did I complain? No, I let you go your own way. I let you do what
I considered an absolutely damsilly thing. Still, I thought, if you're
going to be a teacher you may as well have ambitions an' rise to the top
of the profession. So I thought I'd just put in a word for you. That was
all. I want you to _get on_, my lad, no matter what line you're in. I've
always bin as ambitious for you as I have bin for myself."
The other said: "I can see you meant well."
"_Meant_ well? And is it extraordinary that I should mean well to my own
son? Then, there's another thing. You go and get married. Well, I don't
mind that. I believe in marriage. I was married myself when I was
nineteen an' I've never once regretted it: But you go an' get married
all of a hurry while I'm travellin' the other side o' the world, an' you
don't even send me so much as a bit o' weddin'-cake! I don't say: is it
_fair_? I just say: is it _natural_? I come home to England to find a
letter tellin' me you've married the Headmaster's daughter!"
"Well, why shouldn't I?"
"I'm not sayin' you shouldn't, my lad. I'm not a snob, an' I don't care
who you marry s'long as she's as good as you are. I don't want you to
marry a duchess. I don't even care if the girl you marry hasn't a cent.
See--I don't mind if she's a dustman's daughter, s'long--s'long, mind,
as she's your equal! That's all. Now you understand me. _Do_ you?"
"I think I understand you."
"Good. Now have some more port. An' while you're spendin' Christmas with
us, for God's sake, have a good time and give the girl a good time, too.
Is she fond of theatres?"
"I--I don't know--well--she might be--"
"Well, you can have the closed Daimler any night you like to take you
into town and bring you back. And if she's fond of motorin' you can have
the Sunbeam durin' the daytime. Remember that. I want you to have a dam'
good time.... Dam' good.... See? Now have some more port before we join
your mother...."
"No thanks. I should be drunk if I had any more."
"Nonsense, my lad. Port won' make you drunk. Dam' good port, isn'
it? ... Wouldn' make you drunk, though.... Don' talk dam' nonsense
to me...."
He was slightly drunk himself.
III
That interview with his father had a disturbing effect upon Speed. He
had expected a row in which his father would endeavour to tyrannise over
him, instead of which Sir Charles, if there had been any argument at
all, had certainly got the better of it. In a sort of way it did seem
rather unfair to have married without letting his parents know a word
about it beforehand. But, of course, there had been good reasons. First,
the housemastership. He couldn't have been given Lavery's unless he had
married. Ervine had stressed very strongly the desirability of married
housemasters. And it had therefore been necessary to do everything
rather hurriedly in order to be able to begin at Lavery's in the
September.
It was when he reflected that, but for his father's intervention, he
would probably never have been offered Lavery's that he felt the keenest
feeling of unrest. The more he thought about it the more manifestly
certain incidents in the past became explainable to him. The hostility
of the Common-Room for instance. Did they guess the sort of
"wire-pulling" that had been going on? Probably they did not know
anything definitely, but wasn't it likely that they would conclude that
such a startling appointment must have been the result of some ulterior
intrigue? And wasn't it natural that they should be jealous of him?
He hated Ervine because, behind all the man's kindness to him, he saw
now merely the ignoble desire to placate influence. Ervine had done it
all to please his father. It was galling to think that that adulatory
speech on the Prize-Day, which had given him such real and genuine
pleasure, had been dictated merely by a willingness to serve the whim of
an important man. It was galling to think that Lord Portway's smiles and
words of commendation had been similarly motivated. It was galling to
think that, however reticent he was about being the son of Sir Charles
Speed, the relationship seemed fated to project itself into his career
in the most unfortunate and detestable of ways.
Then he thought of Helen. Her motives, of all, were pure and untainted;
she shared neither her father's sycophancy nor his own father's
unscrupulousness. She had married him for no other reason than that she
loved him. And in the midst of the haze of indecent revelations that
seemed to be enveloping him, her love for him and his for her brightened
like stars when the night deepens.
And then, slowly and subtly at first, came even the suspicion of her.
Was it possible that she had been the dupe of her father? Was it
possible that Ervine very neatly and cleverly had Sir Charles hoist with
his own petard, making the young housemaster of Lavery's at the same
time his own son-in-law? And if so, had Helen played up to the game? The
thought tortured him evilly. He felt it to be such an ignoble one that
he must never breathe it to Helen, lest it should be utterly untrue. Yet
to keep it to himself was not the best way of getting rid of it. It grew
within him like a cancer; it filled all the unoccupied niches of his
mind; it made him sick with apprehension.
And then, at last, on Christmas Eve he was cruel to her. There had been
a large party at Beachings Over and she had been very shy and nervous
all the evening. And now, after midnight, when they had gone up to their
bedroom, he said, furiously: "What was the matter with you all
to-night?"
She said: "Nothing."
He said: "Funny reason for not speaking a word all the evening. Whatever
must people have thought of you?"
"I don't know. I told you I should be nervous. I can't help it. You
shouldn't have brought me if you hadn't been prepared for it."
"You might have at least said you'd got a headache and gone off to bed."
She said, frightenedly: "Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, what's the matter--why
are you talking to me like this?"
"I hope I'm not being unfair," he replied, imperturbably.
She flung herself on the bed and began to sob.
He went on unfastening his dress tie and thinking: She married me
because my father has money. She married me because her father told her
to. She schemed to get me. The housemastership was a plant to get me
married to her before I knew whether I really wanted her or not.
He was carefully silent the whole rest of the night, though it was hard
to lie awake and hear her sobbing.
IV
The next evening, Christmas Day, there was another party. She looked
rather pale and unhappy, but he saw she was trying to be lively. He felt
acutely sorry for her, and yet, whenever he felt in the mood to relent,
he fortified his mind by thinking of her duplicity. He thought of other
things besides her duplicity. He thought of her stupidity. Why was she
so stupid? Why had he married a woman who couldn't gossip at a small
Christmas party without being nervous? Why had he married a woman who
never spoke at table unless she were spoken to? Other women said the
silliest things and they sounded ordinary; Helen, forcing herself in
sheer desperation to do so, occasionally said the most ordinary things
and they sounded silly. If she ventured on any deliberate remark the
atmosphere was always as if the whole world had stopped moving in order
to see her make a fool of herself; what she said was probably no more
foolish than what anybody else might have said, yet somehow it seemed
outlined against the rest of the conversation as a piece of stark,
unmitigated lunacy. Speed found himself holding his breath when she
began to speak.
After the rest of the party had gone away he went: into the library for
a cigarette. Helen had gone up to bed; it was past two o'clock, but he
felt very wakeful and disturbed. The morning-room adjoined the library,
and as he sat smoking by the remains of the fire, he heard conversation.
He heard his father's gruff voice saying: "God knows, Fanny, I don't."
A remark apposite to a great many subjects, he reflected, with a
half-smile. He had no intention to eavesdrop, but he did not see why he
should move away merely because they were talking so loudly about some
probably unimportant topic that their voices carried into the next room.
Then he heard his mother say: "I think she means well, Charles. Probably
she's not used to the kind of life here."
His father replied: "Oh, I could tell if it was just that. What I think
is that she's a silly little empty-headed piece of goods, an' I'd like
to know what the devil that fool of a boy sees in her!"
The blood rushed to his cheeks and temples; he gripped the arms of his
chair, listening intently now to every word, with no thought of the
right or wrong of it.
The conversation went on.
"She's more intelligent when you get her alone, Charles. And I'm rather
afraid you frighten her too."
"Frighten her be damned. If she'd any guts in her she'd like me. The
right sort of women always do like me."
"Perhaps she does like you. That wouldn't stop her from being frightened
of you, would it? I'm frightened of you myself, sometimes."
"Don't say damsilly things to me, Fanny. All I say is, I'm not a snob,
an' I've always felt I'd let all my lads choose for themselves
absolutely in a matter like marriage. But I've always hoped and trusted
that they'd marry somebody worth marryin'. I told the boy the other
night--if he'd married a dustman's daughter I'd have welcomed her if
she'd been pretty or clever or smart or something or other about her."
"But Charles, she _is_ pretty."
"Think so? Not my style, anyway. An' what's prettiness when there's
nothing else? I like a girl with her wits about her, smart business-like
sort o' girl, pretty if you like--all the better if she is--but a girl
that needn't depend on her looks. Why, I'd rather the lad have married
my typist than that silly little thing! Fact, I've a few factory girls
I'd rather have had for a daughter-in-law than the one I've got!"
"Well, it's no good troubling about it, Charles. He's done it now, and
if he can put up with her I think we ought to. She's fond enough of him,
I should think."
"Good God, she ought to be! Probably she's got enough sense to know
what's a bargain, anyway."
"I think you're a bit too severe, Charles. After all, we've only seen
her for a week."
"Well, Fanny, answer me a straight question--are you really pleased with
her?"
"No, I can't say I am, but I realise we've got to make the best of her.
After all, men do make silly mistakes, don't they?"
"Over women they do, that's a fact.... You know, it's just struck
me--that old chap Ervine's played a dam' smart game."
"What do you mean?"
"I bet he put her on to it. I thought I was getting somethin' out of him
when I had that talk over the 'phone, but I'll acknowledge he's gone one
better on me. Smart man, Ervine. I like a smart man, even if it's me he
puts it across. I like him better than his daughter."
"I should hate him. I think the whole business is dreadful. Perfectly
dreadful.... Did you tell Rogers he could go to bed? ... I said
breakfast at nine-thirty ... yes, ten if you like ..."
The voices trailed off into the distance.
V
He crept up the stairs carefully, trying not to let them creak. At the
landing outside his room he paused, looking out of the window. It was a
night full of beautiful moonlight, and on the new clock-tower over the
garage the weather-vane glinted like a silver arrow. Snow lay in patches
against the walls, and the pools amidst the cobble-stones in the
courtyard were filmed over with thin ice. As he looked out upon the
scene the clock chimed the quarter.
He took a few paces back and turned the handle of the door. He felt
frightened to enter. What should he say to her? Would she be in bed and
asleep? Would she be pretending to be asleep? Should he say nothing at
all, but wait till morning, when he had thought it all over?
He switched on the light and saw that she was in bed. He saw her golden
hair straggling forlornly over the pillow. Something in that touched
him, and suspicion, always on guard against the softness of his heart,
struck at him with a sudden stab. She had plotted. She was a schemer.
The forlorn spread of her hair over the pillow was part of the duplicity
of her.
He hardened. He said, very quietly and calmly: "Are you awake, Helen?"
The hair moved and shook itself. "Kenneth!"
"I want to speak to you."
"What is it, Kenneth?"
"Did you--?--Look here--" He paused. How could he put it to her? If he
said straight out: "Did you plot with your father to marry me?" she
would, of course, say no. He must be careful. He must try to trap her
without her being aware.
"Look here--did you know that it was due to my father's influence that I
got Lavery's?"
"No, was it? It was good of your father to help you, wasn't it?"
Stupid little fool! he thought. (Good God, that was nearly what his
father had said she was!)
He said: "He meant it kindly, no doubt. But you didn't know?"
"How should I know?"
"I thought perhaps your father might have told you."
"I was never interested in his business."
Pause. A sudden sharp wave of irritation made him continue:
"I say, Helen, you might remember whom you're talking to when you're at
dinner. The Lord Randolph you were saying the uncomplimentary things
about happens to be the cousin of the lady sitting on your left."
"Really? Oh, I'm so sorry, Kenneth. I didn't know. D'you think she'd be
offended?"
"I shouldn't think she'd trouble very much about your opinion, but the
publicity which you gave to it would probably annoy her a little."
She suddenly hid her head in her arms and burst into tears.
"Oh, Kenneth--let's go away to-morrow! Let's go back to Millstead! Oh, I
can't bear this any more--I've been miserable ever since I came. I told
you it would all go wrong, Kenneth!--Kenneth, I _have_ tried, but it's no
good--I can't be happy!--Take me away to-morrow, Kenneth. Kenneth, if
you don't I shall run away myself--I simply can't bear any more of it.
You've hated me ever since you came here, because I don't make you feel
proud of me. Oh, I _wish_ I did--I _do_ wish I could! But I've tried so
many times--I've made myself sick with trying--and now that I know it's no
good, let me go back to Millstead where I can give up trying for a
while. Kenneth, be kind to me--I can't help it--I can't help not being
all that you want me to be!"
She held out her arms for him to have taken hold of, but he stood aside.
"I think perhaps a return to Millstead would be the best thing we could
do," he said, calmly. "We certainly don't seem to be having a very
exhilarating time here.... Breakfast is at ten, I think. That means that
the car can take us down to catch the 11.50.... I'd better 'phone Burton
in the morning, then he can air the place for us. Would you like to dine
at School to-morrow? I was thinking that probably your father would
invite us if he knew we were coming back so soon?"
It was in his mind that perhaps he could scheme some trap at the Head's
dinner-table that would enmesh them both.
She said drearily: "Oh, I don't mind, Kenneth. Just whatever you want."
"Very well," he replied, and said no more.
He lay awake until he fancied it must be almost dawn, and all the time
he was acutely miserable. He was so achingly sorry for her, and yet the
suspicion in his mind fortified him against all kindly impulses. He felt
that he would never again weakly give way to her, because the thought of
her duplicity would give him strength, strength even against her tears
and misery. And yet there was one thing the thought of her duplicity did
not give him; it did not give him peace. It made him bitter, unrestful,
angry with the world.
And he decided, just before he went to sleep, that these new
circumstances that had arisen justified him in taking what attitude he
liked towards Clare. If he wanted to see her he would see her. He would
no longer make sacrifices of his friends for Helen's sake.