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 displayhasimpressed 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 whyIwould."
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 reallydressfor 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 theentréeit 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 talkingthatsort of nonsense! Don't you forget thatIstarted 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—"andsmart—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 donotbelieve 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 atme!Igot 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.
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 togeton? 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 toget 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."
"Meantwell? 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 itfair? I just say: is itnatural? 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.Doyou?"
"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.
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.
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, sheispretty."
"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.
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, Ihavetried, 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, IwishI did—Idowish 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, an
gry 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.
"The worst term uv the three, sir, that's my opinion," said Burton, pulling the curtains across the window at dusk.
"What makes you think that?" asked Speed, forcing himself to be affable.
"Well, you see, sir, the winter term—or, prop'ly speakin', sir, I should say the Michaelmas term—isn't so bad because there's the Christmas 'olidays to look forward to. But the Lent Term always seems to me to be ten times worse, because there's nothin' at the end of it to look forward to. Is there now, sir?"
"There's the Easter holidays and the spring weather."
Burton grinned. "That's if you're an optimist, sir."
He was an old man, deeply attached to the school and very reliable, but prone to take odd liberties on the strength of age and service. Speed always felt that in Burton's eyes he was a youngster, hardly less a youngster than one of the prefects, and that Burton considered himself as the central planet of Lavery's round which Speed revolved as merely a satellite. The situation had amused him until now; but on this afternoon of the return from Beachings Over a whole crowd of sinister suspicions assailed him. In Burton's attitude he seemed to detect a certain carefully-veiled mockery; was it possible that Burton knew or guessed the secret of his appointment to Lavery's? Was it also possible that Burton had pierced through his marriage with Helen and had seen the sinister scheme behind it?
He stared hard at Burton. The man was old in a rather theatrical way; he clumped about exactly like the faithful retainer in the old-fashioned melodrama; if you addressed him he would turn round, put one hand to his ear, to leer at you, and say grotesquely: "Sir?" He was the terror of all the housemaids, the pet of all the Junior boys, and a sort of communal butler and valet to the prefects. And, beyond all doubt, he was one of the sights of Lavery's. For the moment Speed detested him.
"I say, Burton."
The turn, the hand to ear, the leer, and the grotesque interrogative: "Sir?"
"How long have you been at Millstead?"
"Fifty-one year, sir, come next July. I started when I was fourteen year old, sir, peelin' potaties in the old kitchins that used to be underneath Milner's. I come to Lavery's when I was twenty-four as underporter. I remember old Mr. Hardacre that wuz 'ousemaster before Mr. Lavery, Sir. Mr. Lavery was 'ousemaster for thirty-eight year, sir, an' a very great friend of mine. He came to see me only larst Toosday, sir, a-knockin' at the pantry door just like an old pal o' mine might. He wuz wantin' to know 'ow the old place was gettin' on."
Speed's glance hardened. He could imagine Lavery and Burton having a malicious conversation about himself.
Burton went on, grinning: "He was arskin' after you, Mr. Speed. I told 'im you wuz away spendin' the Christmas with Sir Charles and Lady Speed. An' I told him you wuz doin' very well an' bein' very popular, if you'll pard'n the liberty I took."
"Oh, certainly," said Speed, rather coldly.
When Burton had gone out he poked up the fire and pondered. Now that he was back at Millstead he wished he had stayed longer in Beachings Over. Millstead was absolutely a dead place in vacation time, and in the Christmas vacation nothing more dreary and uniformly depressing had ever come within his experience. Dr. and Mrs. Ervine, so Potter informed him, had gone to town for a few days and would not be back until after the New Year. None of the other housemasters was in residence. The huge empty footer pitches, hardly convalescent after the frays of the past term, were being marked off for hockey by the groundsman; the chapel was undergoing a slothful scrubbing by a platoon of chattering charwomen; the music-rooms were closed; the school organ was in the hands of the repairers; the clock in the chapel belfry had stopped, apparently because it was nobody's business to wind it up during vacation-time.
Perhaps it would freeze enough for skating on Dinglay Fen, was his most rapturous hope. Helen was shopping in the village, and he expected her back very soon. It was nearly dark now, but the groundsman was still busy. There was something exquisitely forlorn in that patient transference from cricket to footer, from footer to hockey, and then from hockey to cricket again, which marked the passage of the years at Millstead. He wondered how long it would all last. He wondered what sort of an upheaval would be required to change it. Would famine or pestilence or war or revolution be enough?
Helen came in. It was curious that his suspicion of her, at first admitted to be without confirmation, had now become almost a certainty; so that he no longer felt inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, or even that there was any doubt whose benefit he could give her.
While they were having tea he suddenly decided that he would go out that evening alone and walk himself into a better humour. A half-whimsical consciousness of his own condition made him rather more kind to her; he felt sorry for anybody who had to put up with him in his present mood. He said: "I think I'll have a walk after tea, Helen. I'll be back about eight. It'll do me good to take some exercise."
She gave him a sudden, swift, challenging look, and he could see exactly what was in her eyes. She thought he was going to see Clare.
The thought had not been in his mind before. But now he was at the mercy of it; it invaded him; after all, why shouldn't he visit Clare? Furthermore, what right had Helen to stop him? He put on his hat and coat in secret tingling excitement; he would go down into the village and visit Clare. Curious that he hadn't thought of it before! Helen had simply no right to object. And as he turned his mind to all the suspicions that had so lately crowded into it, he felt that he was abundantly justified in visiting a friend of his, even if his wife were foolishly jealous of her.
"Back about eight," he repeated, as he opened the door to go out. Somehow, he wanted to kiss her. He had always kissed her before going out from Lavery's. But now, since she made no reply to his remark, presumably she did not expect it.
The Millstead road was black as jet, for the moon was hidden behind the thickest of clouds. It was just beginning to freeze, and as he strode along the path by the school railings he thought of those evenings in the winter term when he had seen Clare home after the concert rehearsals. Somehow, all that seemed ages ago. The interlude at Beachings Over had given all the previous term the perspective of immense distance; he felt as if he had been housemaster at Lavery's for years, as if he had been married to Helen for years, and as if Clare were a friend whom he had known long years ago and had lost sight of since.
As he reached the High Street he began to feel nervous. After all, Clare might not want to see him. He remembered vaguely their last interview and the snub she had given him. He looked further back and remembered the first time he had ever seen her; that dinner at the Head's house on the first evening of the summer term....
But he could not help being nervous. He tried to think that what he was doing was something perfectly natural and ordinary; that he was just paying a call on a friend as anybody might have done on a return from a holiday. He was angry with himself for getting so excited about the business. And when he rang the bell of the side-door next to the shop he had the distinct hope that she would not be in.
But she was in.
She came to the door herself, and it was so dark outside that she could not see him. "Who is it?" she asked, and he replied, rather fatuously expecting her to recognise his voice immediately: "Me. I hope I'm not disturbing you."
She answered, in that characteristically unafraid way of hers: "I'm sure I don't know in the least who you are. Will you tell me your name?"
Then he said, rather embarrassedly: "Speed, my name is."
"Oh?"
Such a strange surprised little "Oh?" He could not see her any more than she could see him, but he knew that she was startled.
"Am I disturbing you?" he went on.
"Oh, no. You'd better come inside. There's nobody in except myself, so I warn you."
"Warn me of what?"
"Of the conventions you are breaking by coming in."
"Would you rather I didn't?"
"Oh, don't trouble about me. It's yourself you must think about."
"Very well then, I'll come in."
"Right. There are five steps, then two paces along the level, and then two more steps. It's an old house, you see."
In the dark and narrow lobby, with the front door closed behind him, and Clare somewhere near him in the darkness, he suddenly felt no longer nervous but immensely exhilarated, as if he had taken some decisive and long contemplated step—some step that, wise or unwise, would at least bring him into a new set of circumstances.
Something in her matter-of-fact directions was immensely reassuring; a feeling of buoyancy came over him as he felt his way along the corridor with Clare somewhat ahead of him. She opened a door and a shaft of yellow lamplight came out and prodded the shadows.
"My little sitting-room," she said.
It was a long low-roofed apartment with curtained windows at either end. Persian rugs and tall tiers of bookshelves and some rather good pieces of old furniture gave it a deliciously warm appearance; a heavily shaded lamp was the sole illumination. Speed, quick to appreciate anything artistic, was immediately impressed; he exclaimed, on the threshold: "I say, what a gloriously old-fashioned room!"
"Not all of it," she answered quietly. She turned the shade of the lamp so that its rays focussed themselves on a writing-desk in an alcove. "The typewriter and the telephone are signs that I am not at all an old-fashioned person."
"I didn't say that, did I?" he replied, smiling.
She laughed. "Please sit down and be comfortable. It's nice to have such an unexpected call. And I'm glad that though I'm banned from Lavery's you don't consider yourself banned from here."
"Ah," he said. He was surprised that she had broached the question so directly. He flushed slightly and went on, after a pause: "I think perhaps the ban had better be withdrawn altogether."
"Why?"
"Oh, well—well, it doesn't matter—I didn't come here to talk about it."
"Oh, yes, you did. That's just what you did come here to talk about. Either that or something more serious. You don't mean to tell me that you pay an unconventional call like this just to tell me what an enjoyable holiday you've had."
"I didn't have an enjoyable holiday at all," he answered.
"There! I guessed as much! After all, you wouldn't have come home so soon if you'd been having a thoroughly good time, would you?"
"Helen wanted to come home."
She ceased her raillery of him and went suddenly serious. For some time she stared into the fire without speaking, and then, in a different tone of voice altogether she said: "Why did she want to come home?"
He began to talk rather fast and staccato. "I—I don't know whether I ought to tell you this—except that you were Helen's friend and can perhaps help me.... You see, Helen was very nervous the whole time, and there were one or two dinner-parties, and she—well, not exactly put her foot in it, you know, but was—well, rather obviously out of everything. I don't know how it is—she seems quite unable to converse in the ordinary way that people do—I don't mean anything brilliant—few people converse brilliantly—what I mean is that—well, she—"
She interrupted: "You mean that when her neighbour says, 'Have you heard Caruso in Carmen?'—she hasn't got the sense to reply: 'Oh, yes, isn't he simply gorgeous?'"
"That's a rather satirical way of putting it."
"Well, anyway, it seems a small reason for coming home. If I were constitutionally incapable of sustaining dinner-party small-talk and my husband brought me away from his parents for that reason, I'd leave him for good."
"I didn't bring her away. She begged me to let her go."
"Then you must have been cruel to her. You must have made her think that it mattered."
"Well, doesn't it matter?"
She laughed a little harshly. "What a different man you're becoming, Mr. Speed! Before you married Helen you knew perfectly well that she was horribly nervous in front of strangers and that she'd never show off well at rather tiresome society functions. And yet if I or anybody else had dared to suggest that it mattered you'd have been most tremendously indignant. You used to think her nervousness rather charming, in fact."
He said, rather pathetically: "You've cornered me, I confess. And I suppose I'd better tell you the real reason. Helen's nervousness doesn't matter to me. It never has mattered and it doesn't matter now. It wasn't that, or rather, that would never have annoyed me but for something infinitely more serious. While I was at home I found out about my appointment at Lavery's."
"Well, what about it?"
"It was my father got it for me. He interviewed Portway and Ervine and God knows who else."
"Well?"
"Well?—Do you think I like to be dependent on that sort of help? Do you think I like to remember all the kind things that people at Millstead have said about me, and to feel that they weren't sincere, that they were simply the result of a little of my father's wire-pulling?"
She did not answer.
"I left home," he went on, "because my father wanted to shove me into a nice comfortable job in a soap-works. I wanted to earn my own living on my own merits. And then, when I manage to get free, he thoughtfully steps in front of me, so to speak, and without my knowing it, makes the path smooth for me!"
"What an idealist you are, Mr. Speed!"
"What?"
"An idealist. So innocent of the world! Personally, I think your father's action extremely kind. And also I regard your own condition as one of babyish innocence. Did you really suppose that an unknown man, aged twenty-three, with a middling degree and only one moderately successful term's experience, would be offered the Mastership of the most important House at Millstead, unless there'd been a little private manœuvring behind the scenes? Did you think that, in the ordinary course of nature, a man like Ervine would be only too willing to set you up in Lavery's with his daughter for a wife?"
"Ah, that's it! He wanted me to marry Helen, didn't he?"
"My dear man, wasn't it perfectly obvious that he did? All through last summer term you kept meeting her in the school grounds and behaving in a manner for which any other Master would have been instantly sacked, and all he did was to smile and be nice and keep inviting you to dinner!"
Speed cried excitedly: "Yes, that's what my father said. He said it was a plant; that Ervine in the end proved himself the cleverer of the two."
"Your father told you that?"
"No, I overheard it."
"Your father, I take it, didn't like Helen?"
"He didn't see the best of her. She was so nervous."
He went on eagerly: "Don't you see the suspicion that's in my mind?—That Ervine plotted with Helen to get me married to her! That she married me for all sorts of sordid and miserable reasons!"
And then Clare said, with as near passion as he had ever yet seen in her: "Mr. Speed, you're a fool! You don't understand Helen. She has faults, but there's one certain thing about her—she's straight—absolutelystraight! And if you've been cruel to her because you suspected her of being crooked, then you've done her a fearful injustice! She's straight—straight to the point of obstinacy."
"You think that?"
"Thinkit? Why, man, I'mcertainof it!"
And at the sound of her words, spoken so confidently and indignantly, it seemed so to him. Of course she was straight. And he had been cruel to her. He was always the cause of her troubles. It was always his fault. And at that very moment, might be, she was crying miserably in the drawing-room at Lavery's, crying for jealousy of Clare. A sudden fierce hostility to Clare swept over him; she was too strong, too clever, too clear-seeing. He hated her because it was so easy for her to see things as they were; because all problems seemed to yield to the probing of her candid eyes. He hated her because he knew, and had felt, how easy it was to take help from her. He hated her because her sympathy was so practical and abundant and devoid of sentiment. He hated her, perhaps, because he feared to do anything else.
She said softly: "What a strange combination of strength and weakness you are, Mr. Speed! Strong enough to follow out an ideal, and weak enough to be at the mercy of any silly little suspicion that comes into your mind!"
He was too much cowed down by the magnitude of his blunder to say a great deal more, and in a short while he left, thanking her rather embarrassedly for having helped him. And he said, in the pitch-dark lobby as she showed him to the front door: "Clare, I think this visit of mine had better be a secret, don't you?"
And she replied: "You needn't fear that I shall tell anybody."
When the door had closed on him outside and he was walking back along the Millstead lane it occurred to him quite suddenly: Why, I called her Clare! He was surprised, and perhaps slightly annoyed with himself for having done unconsciously what he would never have done intentionally. Then he wondered if she had noticed it, and if so, what she had thought. He reflected that she had plenty of good practical sense in her, and would not be likely to stress the importance of it. Good practical sense! The keynote of her, so it seemed to him. How strong and helpful it was, and yet, in another way, how deeply and passionately opposed to his spirit! Why, he could almost imagine Clare getting on well with his father. And when he reflected further, that, in all probability, his father would like Clare because she had "her wits about her," it seemed to him that the deepest level of disparagement had been reached. He smiled to himself a little cynically; then in a wild onrush came remorse at the injustice he had done to Helen. All the way back to Millstead he was grappling with it and making up his mind that he would be everlastingly kind to her in the future, and that, since she was as she was, he would not see Clare any more.
He found her, as he had more than half expected, sitting in the drawing-room at Lavery's, her feet bunched up in front of the fire and her hands clasping her knees. She was not reading or sewing or even crying; she was just sitting there in perfect stillness, thinking, thinking, thinking. He knew, as by instinct, that this was not a pose of hers; he knew that she had been sitting like that for a quarter, a half, perhaps a whole hour before his arrival; and that, if he had come later, she would probably have been waiting and thinking still. Something in her which he did not understand inclined her to brood, and to like brooding. As he entered the room and saw her thus, and as she gave one swift look behind her and then, seeing it was he, turned away again to resume her fireside brooding, a sudden excruciatingly sharp feeling of irritation rushed over him, swamping for the instant even his remorse: why was she so silent and aggrieved? If he had treated her badly, why did she mourn in such empty, terrible silence? Then remorse recovered its sway over him and her attitude seemed the simple and tremendous condemnation of himself.
He did not know how to begin; he wanted her to know how contrite he was, yet he dared not tell her his suspicion. Oh, if she had only the tact to treat him as if it had never happened, so that he in return could treat her as if it had never happened, and the unhappy memory of it all be speedily swept away! But he knew from the look on her that she could never do that.
He walked up to the back of her chair, put his hand on her shoulder, and said: "Helen!"
She shrugged her shoulders with a sudden gesture that made him take his hand away. She made no answer.
He blundered after a pause: "Helen, I'm so sorry I've been rather hard on you lately—it's all been a mistake, and I promise—"
"You've been down to see Clare!" she interrupted him, with deadly quietness, still watching the fire.
He started. Then he knew that he must lie, because he could never explain to her the circumstances in a way that she would not think unsatisfactory.
"Helen, I haven't!" he exclaimed, and his indignation sounded sincere, perhaps because his motive in lying was a pure one.
She made no answer to that.
He went on, more fervently: "I didn't see Clare, Helen! Whatever made you think that?—I just went for a walk along the Deepersdale road—I wanted some exercise, that was all!"
She laughed—an awful little coughing laugh.
"You went to see Clare," she persisted, turning round and, for the first time, looking him in the eyes. "I followed you, and I saw you go in Clare's house."
"You did?" he exclaimed, turning suddenly pale.
"Yes. Now what have you got to say?"
He was, rather to his own surprise, quite furious with her for having followed him. "I've simply got this to say," he answered, hotly. "You've done no good by following me. You've made me feel I can't trust you, and you've made yourself feel that you can't trust me. You'll never believe the true explanation of why I went to Clare—you'll go on suspecting all sorts of impossible things—you'll worry yourself to death over nothing—and as for me—well, whenever I go out alone I shall wonder if you're following a few hundred yards behind!"
Then she said, still with the same tragic brooding quietness: "You needn't fear, Kenneth. I'll never follow you. I didn't follow you to-night. I only said I did. I found out what I wanted to find out just as well by that, didn't I?"
He was dazed. He had never guessed that she could be so diabolically clever. He sank into a chair and shut his eyes, unable to speak. She went on, without the slightest inflexion in the maddening level of her voice: "I'm going to leave you, Kenneth. You want Clare, and I'm going to leave you to her. I won't have you when you want another woman."
He buried his head in his hands and muttered, in a voice husky with sobbing: "That's not true, Helen. I don't want Clare. I don't want any other woman. I only want you, Helen. Helen, you won't leave me, will you? Promise me you won't leave me, Helen. Helen, don't you—can't you believe me when I tell you I don't want Clare?"
Still she reiterated, like some curious, solemn litany: "I'm going to leave you, Kenneth. You don't really want me. It's Clare you want, not me. You'll be far happier with Clare. And I shall be far happier without you than with you when you're wanting Clare. I—I can't bear you to want Clare, Kenneth. I'd rather you—have her—than want her. So I've decided. I'm not angry with you. I'm just determined, that's all. I shall leave you and then you'll be free to do what you like."
Somehow, a feeling of overwhelming tiredness overspread him, so that for a short moment he felt almost inclined to acquiesce from mere lack of energy to do anything else. He felt sick as he stared at her. Then a curiously detached aloofness came into his attitude; he looked down on the situation a trifle cynically and thought: How dramatic! Something in him wanted to laugh, and something else in him wanted to cry; most of him wanted to kiss her and be comfortable and go to sleep; and nothing at all of him wanted to argue. He wondered just then if such a moment ever came to her as it came to him; a moment when he could have borne philosophically almost any blow, when all human issues seemed engulfed in the passionate desire to be let alone.
Yet some part of him that was automatic continued the argument. He pleaded with her, assured her of his deep and true love, poured infinite scorn on Clare and his relations with her, held up to view a rosy future at Lavery's in which he would live with Helen as in one long, idyllic dream. And as he sketched out this beautiful picture, his mind was ironically invaded by another one, which he did not show her, but which he felt to be more true: Lavery's in deep winter-time, with the wind and rain howling round the walls of it, and the bleak shivering corridors, and the desolation of the afternoons, and the cramped hostility of the Masters' Common-Room, and the red-tinted drawing-room at night, all full of shadows and silence and tragic monotony. And all the time he was picturing that in his mind he was telling her of Lavery's with the sun on it, and the jessamine, and the classrooms all full of the sunlit air, and love, like a queen, reigning over it all. The vision forced itself out; Helen saw it, but Speed could not. As he went on pleading with her he became enthusiastic, but it was an artistic enthusiasm; he was captivated by his own skill in persuasion. And whenever, for a moment, this interest in his own artistry waned, there came on him afresh the feeling of deep weariness, and a desire only to rest and sleep and be friends with everybody.
At last he persuaded her. It had taken from nine o'clock until midnight. He was utterly tired out when he had finished. Yet there seemed to be no tiredness in her, only a happiness that she could now take and caress him as her own. She could not understand how, now that they had made their reconciliation, he should not be eager to cement it by endearments. Instead of which he lit a cigarette and said that he was hungry.
While she busied herself preparing a small meal he found himself watching her continually as she moved about the room, and wondering, in the calmest and most aloof manner, whether he was really glad that he had won. Eventually he decided that he was. She was his wife and he loved her. If they were careful to avoid misunderstandings no doubt they would get along tolerably well in the future. The future! The vision came to him again of the term that was in front of him; a vision that was somehow frightening.
Yet, above all else, he was tired—dead tired.
The last thing she said to him that night was a soft, half-whimpered: "Kenneth, I believe you do want Clare."
He said sleepily, and without any fervour: "My dear, I assure you I don't."
And he fell asleep wondering very vaguely what it would be like to want Clare, and whether it would ever be possible for him to do so.
Term began on the Wednesday in the third week in January.
Once again, the first few days were something of an ordeal. Constant anticipations had filled Speed's mind with apprehensions; he was full of carefully excogitated glooms. Would the hostility of the Masters be more venomous? Would the prefects of his own house attempt to undermine his discipline? Would the rank and file try to "rag" him when he took preparation in the Big Hall? Somehow, all his dreams of Millstead and of Lavery's had turned now to fears; he had slipped into the position when it would satisfy him merely to avoid danger and crush hostility. No dreams now about Lavery's being the finest House in Millstead, and he the glorious and resplendent captain of it; no vision now of scouring away the litter of mild corruptions and abuses that hedged in Lavery's on all sides; no hopes of a new world, made clean and wholesome by his own influence upon it. All his desire was that he should escape the pitfalls that were surrounding him, that he should, somehow, live through the future without disaster to himself. Enthusiasm was all gone. Those old days when he had plunged zestfully into all manner of new things, up to his neck in happiness as well as in mistakes—those days were over. His one aim now was not to make mistakes, and though he did not know it, he cared for little else in the world.
That first night of term he played the beginning-of-term hymn in the chapel.