"Lord, behold us with Thy blessing,Once again assembled here ..."
"Lord, behold us with Thy blessing,Once again assembled here ..."
The words fell on his mind with a sense of heavy, unsurmountable gloom. He looked into the mirror above his head and saw the choir-stalls and the front rows of the pews; the curious gathering of Millsteadians in their not-yet-discarded vacation finery; Millsteadians unwontedly sober; some, perhaps, a little heart-sick. He saw Ervine's back, as he read the lesson from the lectern, and as he afterwards stood to pronounce the Benediction. "The grace of God, which passeth—um—understanding, and the—um—fellowship of the—um—the Holy Spirit ..."
He hated that man.
He thought of the dark study and Potter and the drawing-room where he and Helen had spent so many foolish hours during the summer term of the year before.
Foolishhours? Had he come to the point when he looked back with scorn upon his courtship days? No, no; he withdrew the word "foolish."
" ... rest upon—um—all our hearts—now and—um—for ever—um—Ah—men.... I would—um, yes—be glad—if the—um—the—the new boys this term—would stay behind to see me—um, yes—to see me for a moment...."
Yes, he hated that man.
He gathered his gown round him and descended the ladder into the vestry. A little boy said "Good-evening, Mr. Speed," and shook hands with him. "Good-evening, Robinson," he said, rather quietly. The boy went on: "I hope you had a nice Christmas, sir." Speed started, checked himself, and replied: "Oh yes, very nice, thanks. And you too, I hope." "Oh yes, sir," answered the boy. When he had gone Speed wondered if the whole incident had been a subtle and ironical form of "ragging." Cogitation convinced him that it couldn't have been; yet fear, always watching and ready to pounce, would have made him think so. He felt really alarmed as he walked back across the quadrangle to Lavery's, alarmed, not about the Robinson incident, which he could see was perfectly innocent, but because he was so prone to these awful and ridiculous fears. If he went on suspecting where there was no cause, and imagining where there was no reality, some day Millstead would drive him mad.Mad—yes,mad. Two boys ran past him quickly and he could see that they stopped afterwards to stare at him and to hold some sort of a colloquy. What was that for? Was there anything peculiar about him? He felt to see if his gown was on wrong side out: no, that was all right. Then what did they stop for? Then he realised that he was actually speaking that sentence out aloud; he had said, as to some corporeal companion:What did they stop for? Had he been gibbering like that all the way across the quadrangle? Had the two boys heard him talking about going mad? Good God, he hoped not! That would be terrible, terrible. He went in to Lavery's with the sweat standing out in globes on his forehead. And yet, underfoot, the ground was beginning to be hard with frost.
Well, anyway, one thing was comforting; he was getting along much better with Helen. They had not had any of those dreadful, pathetic scenes for over a fortnight. His dreams of happiness were gone; it was enough if he succeeded in staving off the misery. As he entered the drawing-room Helen ran forward to meet him and kissed him fervently. "The first night of our new term," she said, but the mention only gave a leap to his anxieties. But he returned her embrace, willing to extract what satisfaction he could from mere physical passion.
An hour later he was dining in the Masters' Common-Room. He would have avoided the ordeal but for the unwritten law which ordained that even the housemasters should be present on the first night of term. Not that there was anything ceremonial about the proceedings. Nothing happened that did not always happen, except the handshaking and the disposition to talk more volubly than usual. Potter arched his long mottled neck in between each pair of diners in exactly the same manner as heretofore; there was the same unchanged menu of vegetable soup, undercooked meat, and a very small tart on a very large plate.
But to Speed it seemed indeed as if everything was changed. The room seemed different; seemed darker, gloomier, more chronically insufferable; Potter's sibilant, cat-like stealthiness took on a degree of sinisterness that made Speed long to fight him and knock him down, soup-plates and all; the food tasted reminiscently of all the vaguely uncomfortable things he had ever known. But it was in the faces of the men around him that he detected the greatest change of all. He thought they were all hating him. He caught their eyes glancing upon him malevolently; he thought that when they spoke to him it was with some subtle desire to insult him; he thought also, that when they were silent it was because they were ignoring him deliberately. The mild distaste he had had for some of them, right from the time of first meeting, now flamed up into the most virulent and venomous of hatreds. And even Clanwell, whom he had always liked exceedingly, he suspected ever so slightly at first, though in a little while he liked him as much as ever, and more perhaps, because he liked the others so little.
Pritchard he detested. Pritchard enquired about his holiday, how and where he had spent it, and whether he had had a good time; also if Mrs. Speed were quite well, and how had she liked the visit to Beachings Over. Somehow, the news had spread that he had taken Helen to spend Christmas at his parents' house. He wondered in what way, but felt too angry to enquire. Pritchard's questions stung him to silent, bottled-up fury; he answered in monosyllables.
"Friend Speed has the air of a thoughtful man," remarked Ransome in his oblique, half-sarcastic way. And Speed smiled at this, not because it amused him at all, but because Ransome possessed personality which submerged to some extent his own.
Finally, when Clanwell asked him up to coffee he declined, courteously, but with a touch of unboyish reserve which he had never previously exhibited in his relations with Clanwell. "I've got such a lot of work at Lavery's," he pleaded. "Another night, Clanwell...."
And as he walked across the quadrangle at half-past eight he heard again those curious sounds that had thrilled him so often before, those sounds that told him that Millstead had come to life again. The tall blocks of Milner's and Lavery's were cliffs of yellow brillance, from which great slanting shafts of light fell away to form a patchwork on the quadrangle. He heard again the chorus of voices in the dormitories, the tinkle of crockery in the basement studies, the swish of water into the baths, the babel of miscellaneous busyness. He saw faces peering out of the high windows, and heard voices calling to one another across the dark gulf between the two houses. It did not thrill him now, or rather, it did not thrill him with the beauty of it; it was a thrill of terror, if a thrill at all, which came to him. And he climbed up the flight of steps that led to the main door of Lavery's and was almost afraid to ring the bell of his own house.
Burton came, shambling along with his unhappy feet and beaming—positively beaming—because it was the beginning of the term.
"Once again, sir," he said, mouthing, as he admitted Speed. He jangled his huge keys in his hand as if he were a stage jailer in a stage prison. "I don't like the 'ockey term myself, sir, but I'd rather have any term than the 'olidays."
"Yes," said Speed, rather curtly.
There were several jobs he had to do. Some of them he could postpone for a day, or perhaps, even for a few days, if he liked, but there was no advantage in doing so, and besides, he would feel easier when they were all done. First, he had to deliver a little pastoral lecture to the new boys. Then he had to chat with the prefects, old and new—rather an ordeal that. Then he had to patrol the dormitories and see that everything was in proper order. Then he had to take and give receipts for money which anybody might wish to "bank" with him. Then he had to give Burton orders about the morning. Then he had to muster a roll-call and enquire about those who had not arrived. Then, at ten-thirty, he had to see that all lights were out and the community settled in its beds for slumber....
All of which he accomplished automatically. He told the new boys, in a little speech that was meant to be facetious, that the one unforgivable sin at Lavery's was to pour tea-leaves down the waste-pipes of the baths. He told the prefects, in a voice that was harsh because it was nervous, that he hoped they would all co-operate with him for the good of the House. He told Burton, quite tonelessly, to ring the bell in the dormitories at seven-thirty, and to have breakfast ready in his sitting-room at eight. And he went round the dormitories at half-past ten, turning out gases and delivering brusque good-nights.
Then he went downstairs into the drawing-room of his own house where Helen was. He went in smiling. Helen was silent, but he knew from experience that silence with her did not necessarily betoken unhappiness. Yet even so, he found such silences always unnerving. To-night he wanted, if she had been in the mood, to laugh, to be jolly, to bludgeon away his fears. He would not have minded getting slightly drunk.... But she was silent, brooding, no doubt, happily, but with a sadness that was part of her happiness.
As he passed by the table in the dimly-lit room he knocked over the large cash-box full of the monies that the boys had banked with him. It fell on to the floor with a crash which made all the wires in the piano vibrate.
"Aren't you careless?" said Helen, quietly, looking round at him.
He looked at her, then at the cash-box on the floor, and said finally: "Damn it all! A bit of noise won't harm us. This isn't a funeral."
He said it sharply, exasperated, as if he were just trivially enraged. After he had said it he stared at her, waiting for her to say something. But she made no answer, and after a long pause he solemnly picked up the cash-box.
There came a January morning when he had a sudden and almost intolerable longing to see Clare. The temperature was below freezing-point, although the sun was shining out of a clear sky; and he was taking fivealphain art drawing in a room in which the temperature, by means of the steamiest of hot-water pipes, had been raised to sixty. His desk was at the side of a second-floor window, and as he looked out of it he could see the frost still white on the quadrangle and the housemaids pouring hot water and ashes on the slippery cloister-steps. He had, first of all, an urgent desire to be outside in the keen, crisp air, away from the fugginess of heated class-rooms; then faintly-heard trot of horses along the Millstead lane set up in him a restlessness that grew as the hands of his watch slid round to the hour of dismissal. It was a half-holiday in the afternoon, and he decided to walk up to Dinglay Fen, taking with him his skates, in case the ice should be thick enough. The thought of it, cramped up in a stuffy class-room, was a sufficiently disturbing one. And then, quite suddenly, there came into his longing for the fresh air and the freedom of the world a secondary longing—faint at first, and then afterwards stormily insurgent—a longing for Clare to be with him on his adventures. That was all. He just wanted her company, the tread of her feet alongside his on the fenland roads, her answers to his questions, and her questions for him to answer. It was a strange want, it seemed to him, but a harmless one; and he saw no danger in it.
Dismissal-hour arrived, and by that time he was in a curious ferment of desire. Moreover, his brain had sought out and discovered a piece of casuistry suitable for his purpose. Had not Clare, on the occasion of his last visit to her, told him plainly and perhaps significantly that she would never tell anyone of his visit? And if she would not tell of that one, why should she ofany one—any one he might care to make in the future? And as his only reason for not visiting her was a desire to please Helen, surely that end was served just as easily if he did visit her, provided that Helen did not know. There could be no moral iniquity in lying to Helen in order to save her from unhappiness, and anyway, a lie to her was at least as honest as her subterfuge had been in order to learn from him of his last visit. On all sides, therefore, he was able to fortify himself for the execution of his desire.
But, said Caution, it would be silly to see her in the daytime, and out-of-doors, for then they would run the risk of being seen together by some of the Millstead boys, or the masters, and the affair would pretty soon come to Helen's ears, along channels that would by no means minimise it in transmission. Hence again, the necessity to see Clare in the evenings, and at her house, as before. And at the thought of her cosy little upstairs sitting-room, with the books and the Persian rugs and the softly-shaded lamp, he kindled to a new and exquisite anticipation.
So, then, he would go up to Dinglay Fen alone that afternoon, wanting Clare's company, no doubt, but willing to wait for it happily now that it was to come to him so soon. Nor did he think that there was anything especially Machiavellian in the plans he had decided upon.
But he saw her sooner than that evening.
Towards midday the clouds suddenly wrapped up the sky and there began a tremendous snowstorm that lasted most of the afternoon and prevented the hockey matches. All hope of skating was thus dispelled, and Speed spent the afternoon in the drawing-room at Lavery's, combining the marking of exercise-books with the joyous anticipation of the evening. Then, towards four o'clock, the sky cleared as suddenly as it had clouded over, and a red sun shone obliquely over the white and trackless quadrangle. There was a peculiar brightness that came into the room through the window that overlooked the snow; a strange unwonted brightness that kindled a tremulous desire in his heart, a desire delicate and exquisite, a desire without command in it, but with a fragile, haunting lure that was more irresistible than command. As he stood by the window and saw the ethereal radiance of the snow, golden almost in the rays of the low-hanging sun, he felt that he would like to walk across the white meadows to Parminters. He wanted something—something that was not in Millstead, something that, perhaps, was not in the world.
He set out, walking briskly, facing the crisp wind till the tears came into his eyes and rolled down his cold cheeks. Far beyond old Millstead spire the sun was already sinking into the snow, and all the sky of the west was shot with streams of pendulous fire. The stalks of the tallest grasses were clotted with snow which the sun had tried hard to melt and was now leaving to freeze stiff and crystalline; as the twilight crept over the earth the wind blew colder and the film of snow lately fallen made the path over the meadows hard and slippery with ice.
Then it was that he met Clare; in the middle of the meadows between Millstead and Parminters, at twilight amidst a waste of untrod snow. Her face was wonderfully lit with the reflection of the fading whiteness, that his mind reacted to it as to the sudden brink was in her eyes.
He felt himself growing suddenly pale; he stopped, silent, without a smile, as if frozen stiff by the sight of her.
And she said, half laughing: "Hello, Mr. Speed! You look unusually grim...." Then she paused, and added in a different voice: "No—on further observation I think you look ill.... Tell me, what's the matter?"
He knew then that he loved her.
The revelation came on him so sharply, so acidly, with such overwhelming and uncompromising directness, that his mind reacted to it as to the sudden brink of a chasm. He saw the vast danger of his position. He saw the stupendous fool he had been. He saw, as if some mighty veil had been pulled aside, the stream of tragedy sweeping him on to destruction. And he stopped short, all the manhood in him galvanised into instant determination.
He replied, smiling: "I'mfeelingperfectly well, anyway. Beautiful after the snowstorm, isn't it?"
"Yes."
It was so clear, so ominously clear that she would stop to talk to him if he would let her.
Therefore he said, curtly: "I'm afraid it's spoilt all the chances of skating, though.... Pity, isn't it? Well, I won't keep you in the cold—one needs to walk briskly and keep on walking, doesn't one? Good night!"
"Good night," she said simply.
Through the fast gathering twilight they went their several ways. When he reached Parminters it was quite dark. He went to theGreen Manand had tea in the cosy little firelit inn-parlour with a huge Airedale dog for company. Somehow, he felt happier, now that he knew the truth and was facing it. And by the time he reached Lavery's on the way home he was treating the affair almost jauntily. After all, there was a very simple and certain cure for even the most serious attack of the ailment which he had diagnosed himself as possessing. He must not see Clare again. Never again. No, not even once. How seriously he was taking himself, he thought. Then he laughed, and wondered how he had been so absurd. For it was absurd, incredibly absurd, to suppose himself even remotely in love with Clare! It was unthinkable, impossible, no more to be feared than the collapse of the top storey of Lavery's into the basement. He was a fool, a stupid, self-analysing, self-suspecting fool. He entered Lavery's scorning himself very thoroughly, as much for his cowardly decision not to see Clare again as for his baseless suspicion that he was growing fond of her.
Why was it that whenever he had had any painful scene with Helen the yearning came over him to go and visit Clare, not to complain or to confess or to ask advice, but merely to talk on the most ordinary topics in the world? It was as if Helen drew out of him all the strength and vitality he possessed, leaving him debilitated, and that he craved the renewal of himself that came from Clare and from Clare alone.
The painful scenes came oftener now. They were not quarrels; they were worse; they were strange, aching, devitalising dialogues in which Helen cried passionately and worked herself into a state of nervous emotion that dragged Speed against his will into the hopeless vortex. Often when he was tired after the day's work the mere fervour of her passion would kindle in him some poignant emotion, some wrung-out pity, that was, as it were, the last shred of his soul; when he had burned that to please her he was nothing but dry ashes, desiring only tranquillity. But her emotional resources seemed inexhaustible. And when she had scorched up the last combustible fragment of him there was nothing left for him to do but to act a part.
When he realised that he was acting he realised also that he had been acting for a long while; indeed, that he could not remember when he had begun to act. Somehow, she lured him to it; made insatiable demands upon him that could not be satisfied without it. His acting had become almost a real part of him; he caught himself saying and doing things which came quite spontaneously, even though they were false. The trait of artistry in him made him not merely an actor but an accomplished actor; but the strain of it was immense. And sometimes, when he was alone, he wished that he might some time break under it, so that she might find out the utmost truth.
Still, of course, it was Clare that was worrying her. She kept insisting that he wanted Clare more than he wanted her, and he kept denying it, and she obviously liked to hear him denying it, although she kept refusing to believe him. And as a simple denial would never satisfy her, he had perforce to elaborate his denials, until they were not so much denials as elaborately protestant speeches in which energetically expressed affection for her was combined with subtle disparagement of Clare. As time went on her demands increased, and the kind of denial that would have satisfied her a fortnight before was no longer sufficient to pacify her for a moment. He would say, passionately: "My little darling Helen, all I want is you—why do you keep talking about Clare? I'm tired of hearing the name. It's Helen I want, my old darling Helen." He became eloquent in this kind of speech.
But sometimes, in the midst of his acting an awful, hollow moment of derision would come over him; a moment when he secretly addressed himself: You hypocrite. You don't mean a word of all this! Why do you say it? What good is it if it pleases her if it isn't true? Can you—are you prepared to endure these nightly exhibitions of extempore play-acting for ever? Mustn't the end come some day, and what is to be gained by the postponement of it?
Then the hollow, dreadful, moment would leave him, and he would reply in defence of himself: I love Helen, although the continual protestation of it is naturally wearisome. If she can only get rid of the obsession about Clare we shall live happily and without this emotional ferment. Therefore, it is best that I should help her to get rid of it as much as I can. And if I were to protest my love for her weakly I should hinder and not help her.
Sometimes, after he had been disparaging Clare, a touch of real vibrant emotion would make him feel ashamed of himself. And then, in a few sharp, anguished sentences he would undo all the good that hours of argument and protestation had achieved. He would suddenly defend Clare, wantonly, obtusely, stupidly aware all the time of the work he was undoing, yet, somehow, incapable of stopping the words that came into his mouth. And they were not eloquent words; they were halting, diffident, often rather silly. "Clare's all right," he would say sometimes, and refuse to amplify or qualify. "I don't know why we keep dragging her in so much. She's never done us any harm and I've nothing against her."
"So. You love her."
"Love her? Rubbish! I don't love her. But I don'thateher—surely you don't expect me to do that!"
"No, I don't expect you to do that. I expect you to marry her, though, some day."
"Marry her! Good God, what madness you talk, Helen! I don't want to marry her, and if I did she wouldn't want to marry me! And besides, it happens that I'm already married. That's an obstacle, isn't it?"
"There's such a thing as divorce."
"You can't get a divorce just because you want one."
"I know that."
"And besides, my dear Helen, who wants a divorce? Do you?"
"Doyou?"
"Of course I don't."
"Kenneth, I know it seems to you that I'm terribly unreasonable. But it isn't any satisfaction to me that you just don'tseeClare. What I want is that you shan't want to see her."
"Well, I don't want to see her."
"That's a lie."
"Well—well—what's the good of me telling you I don't want to see her if you can't believe me?"
"No good at all, Kenneth. That's why it's so awful."
He said then, genuinely: "Is it very awful, Helen?"
"Yes. You don't know what it's like to feel that all the time one's happiness in the world is hanging by a thread. Kenneth, all the time I'm watching you I can see Clare written in your mind. Iknowyou want her. I know she can give you heaps that I can't give you. I know that our marriage, was a tragic mistake. We're not suited to one another. We make each other frightfully, frightfully miserable. More miserable than there's any reason for, but still, that doesn't help. We're misfits, somehow, and though we try ever so hard we shall never be any better until we grow old and are too tired for love any more. Then we shall be too disinterested to worry. It wasmyfault, Kenneth—I oughtn't to have married you. Father wanted me to, because your people have a lot of money, but I only married you because I loved you, Kenneth. It was silly of me, Kenneth, but it's the truth!"
"Ah!" So the mystery was solved. He softened to her now that he heard her simple confession; he felt that he loved her, after all.
She went on, sadly: "I'm not going to stay with you, Kenneth. I'm not going to ruin your life. You won't be able to keep me. I'd rather you be happy and not have anything to do with me."
Then he began one of his persuasive speeches. The beginning of it was sincere, but as he used up all the genuine emotion that was in him, he drew more and more on his merely histrionic capacities. He pleaded, he argued, he implored. Once the awful thought came to him: Supposing I cried? Doubt as to his capacity to cry impressively decided him against the suggestion.... And once the more awful thought came to him: Supposing one of these times I do not succeed in patching things up? Supposing we do agree to separate? Do I really want to win all the time I am wrestling so hard for victory?
And at the finish, when he had succeeded once again, and when she was ready for all the passionate endearments that he was too tired to take pleasure in giving, he felt: This cannot last. It is killing me. It is killing her too. God help us both....
One day he realised that he was a failure. He had had some disciplinary trouble with the fifth form and had woefully lost his temper. There had followed a mild sort of scene; within an hour it had been noised all over the school, so that he knew what the boys and Masters were thinking of when they looked at him. It was then that the revelation of failure came upon him.
But, worst of all, there grew in him wild and ungovernable hates. He hated the Head, he hated Pritchard, he hated Smallwood, he hated, most intensely of all, perhaps, Burton. Burton was too familiar. Not that Speed disliked familiarity; it was rather that in Burton's familiarity he always diagnosed contempt. He wished Burton would leave. He was getting too old.
They had a stupid little row about some trivial affair of house discipline. Speed had found some Juniors playing hockey along the long basement corridor. True that they were using only tennis balls; nevertheless it seemed to Speed the sort of thing that had to be stopped. He was not aware that "basement hockey" was a time-honoured custom of Lavery's, and that occasional broken panes of glass were paid for by means of a "whip round." If he had known that he would have made no interference, for he was anxious not to make enemies. But it seemed to him that this extempore hockey-playing was a mere breach of ordinary discipline; accordingly he forbade it and gave a slight punishment to the participators.
Back in his room there came to him within a little while, Burton, eagerly solicitous about something or other.
"Well, what is it, Burton?" The mere sight of the shambling old fellow enraged Speed now.
"If you'll excuse the libutty, sir. I've come on be'alf of a few of the Juniors you spoke to about the basement 'ockey, sir."
"I don't see what business it is of yours, Burton."
"No, sir, it ain't any business of mine, that's true, but I thought perhaps you'd listen to me. In fact, I thought maybe you didn't know that it was an old 'ouse custom, sir, durin' the 'ockey term. I bin at Millstead fifty-one year come next July, sir, an' I never remember an 'ockey term without it, sir. Old Mr. Hardacre used to allow it, an' so did Mr. Lavery 'imself. In fact, some evenings, sir, Mr. Lavery used to come down an' watch it, sir."
Speed went quite white with anger. He was furiously annoyed with himself for having again trod on one of these dangerous places; he was also furious with Burton for presuming to tell him his business. Also, a slight scuffle outside the door of the room suggested to him that Burton was a hired emissary of the Juniors, and that the latter were eavesdropping at that very moment. He could not give way.
"I don't know why you think I should be so interested in the habits of my predecessors, Burton," he said, with carefully controlled voice. "I'm sure it doesn't matter to me in the least what Hardacre and Lavery used to do. I'm housemaster at present, and if I say there must be no more basement hockey then there must be no more. That's plain, isn't it?"
"Well, sir, I was only warning you—"
"Thanks, I don't require warning. You take too much on yourself, Burton."
The old man went suddenly red. Speed was not prepared for the suddenness of it. Burton exclaimed, hardly coherent in the midst of his indignation: "That's the first time I've bin spoke to like that by a housemaster of Lavery's! Fifty years I've bin 'ere an' neither Mr. Hardacre nor Mr. Lavery ever insulted me to my face! They were gentlemen, they were!"
"Get out!" said Speed, rising from his chair quickly. "Get out of here! You're damnably impertinent! Get out!"
He approached Burton and Burton did not move. He struck Burton very lightly on the shoulder. The old man stumbled against the side of the table and then fell heavily on to the floor. Speed was passionately frightened. He wondered for the moment if Burton were dead. Then Burton began to groan. Simultaneously the door opened and a party of Juniors entered, ostensibly to make some enquiry or other, but really, as Speed could see, to find out what was happening.
"What d'you want?" said Speed, turning on them. "I didn't tell you to come in. Why didn't you knock?"
They had the answer ready. "We did knock, sir, and then we heard a noise as if somebody had fallen down and we thought you might be ill, sir."
Burton by this time had picked himself up and was shambling out of the room, rather lame in one leg.
The days that followed were not easy ones for Speed. He knew he had been wrong. He ought never to have touched Burton. People were saying "Fancy hitting an old man over sixty!" Burton had told everybody about it. The Common-Room knew of it. The school doctor knew of it, because Burton had been up to the Sick-room to have a bruise on his leg attended. Helen knew of it, and Helen rather obviously sided with Burton.
"You shouldn't have hit an old man," she said.
"I know I shouldn't," replied Speed. "I lost my temper. But can't you see the provocation I had? Am I to put up with a man's impertinence merely because he's old?"
"You're getting hard, Kenneth. You used to be kind to people, but you're not kind now. You'reneverkind now."
In his own heart he had to admit that it was true. He had given up being kind. He was hard, ruthless, unmerciful, and God knew why, perhaps. Yet it was all outside, he hoped. Surely he was not hard through and through; surely the old Speed who was kind and gentle and whom everybody liked, surely this old self of his was still there, underneath the hardness that had come upon him lately!
He said bitterly: "Yes, I'm getting hard, Helen. It's true. And I don't know the reason."
She supplied the answer instantly. "It's because of me," she said quietly. "I'm making you hard. I'm no good for you. You ought to have married somebody else."
"No, no!" he protested, vehemently. Then the old routine of argument, protest, persuasion, and reconciliation took place again.
He made up his mind that he would crush the hardness in him, that he would be the old Speed once more. All his troubles, so it seemed to him, were the result of being no longer the old Speed. If he could only bring to life again that old self, perhaps, after sufficient penance, he could start afresh. He could start afresh with Lavery's, he could start afresh with Helen; most of all perhaps, he could start afresh with himself. Hewouldbe kind. He would be the secret, inward man he wanted to be, and not the half-bullying, half-cowardly fellow that was the outside of him. He prayed, if he had ever prayed in his life, that he might accomplish the resuscitation.
It was a dark sombrely windy evening in February; a Sunday evening. He had gone into chapel with all his newly-made desires and determinations fresh upon him; he was longing for the quiet calm of the chapel service that he might cement, so to say, his desires and resolutions into a sufficiently-welded programme of conduct that should be put into operation immediately. Raggs was playing the organ, so that he was able to sit undisturbed in the Masters' pew. The night was magnificently stormy; the wind shrieked continually around the chapel walls and roof; sometimes he could hear the big elm trees creaking in the Head's garden. The preacher was the Dean of some-where-or-other; but Speed did not listen to a word of his sermon, excellent though it might have been. He was too busy registering decisions.
The next day he apologized to Burton, rather curtly, because he knew not any other way. The old man was mollified. Speed did not know what to say to him after he had apologized; in the end half-a-sovereign passed between them.
Then he summoned the whole House and announced equally curtly that he wished to apologize for attempting to break a recognised House custom. "I've called you all together just to make a short announcement. When I stopped the basement hockey I was unaware that it had been a custom in Lavery's for a long while. In those circumstances I shall allow it to go on, and I apologize for the mistake. The punishments for those who took part are remitted. That's all. You may go now."
With Helen it was not so easy.
He said to her, on the same night, when the house had gone up to its dormitories: "Helen, I've been rather a brute lately. I'm sorry. I'm going to be different."
She said: "I wish I could be different too."
"Different?Youdifferent? What do you mean?"
"I wish I could make you fond of me again." He was about to protest with his usual eagerness and with more than his usual sincerity, but she held up her hand to stop him. "Don't say anything!" she cried, passionately. "We shall only argue. I don't want to argue any more. Don't say anything at all, please, Kenneth!"
"But—Helen—why not?"
"Because there's nothing more to be said. Because I don't believe anything that you tell me, and because I don't want to deceive myself into thinking I do, any more."
"Helen!"
She went on staring silently into the fire, as usual, but when he came near to her she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "I don't believe you love me, Kenneth. Goodness knows why I kiss you. I suppose it's just because I like doing it, that's all. Now don't say anything to me. Kiss me if you like, but don't speak. I hate you when you begin to talk to me."
He laughed.
She turned on him angrily, suddenly like a tiger. "What are you laughing at? I don't see any joke."
"Neither do I. But I wanted to laugh—for some reason. Oh, if I mustn't talk to you, mayn't I even laugh? Is there nothing to be done except kiss and be kissed?"
"You've started to talk. I hate you now."
"I shouldn't have begun to talk if you'd let me laugh."
"You're hateful."
"What—because I laughed? Don't you think it's rather funny that a man may kiss his wife and yet not be allowed to talk to her?"
"I think it's tragic."
"Tragic things are usually funny if you're in the mood that I'm in."
"It's your own fault that you're in such a hateful mood."
"Is it my fault? I wasn't in the mood when I came into this room."
"Then it's my fault, I presume?"
"I didn't say so. God knows whose fault it is. But does it matter very much?"
"Yes, I think it does."
He couldn't think of anything to say. He felt all the strength and eagerness and determination and hope for the future go out of him and leave him aching and empty. And into the void—not against his will, for his will did not exist at the time—came Clare.
Once again he knew that he loved her. A storm came over him, furious as the storm outside! he knew that he loved and wanted her, passionately this time, because his soul was aching. To him she meant the easing of all the strain within him; he could not think how it had been possible for him to go on so long without knowing it. Helen and he were like currents of different voltages; but with Clare he would be miraculously matched. For the first time in his life he recognised definitely and simply that his marriage with Helen had been a mistake.
But what could he do? For with the realisation of his love for Clare came the sudden, blinding onrush of pity for Helen, pity more terrible than he had ever felt before; pity that made him sick with the keenness of it. If he could only be ruthless and leave her with as few words and as little explanation as many men left their wives! But he could not. Somehow, in some secret and subtle way, he was tied to her. He knew that he could never leave her. Something in their intimate relationship had forged bonds that would always hold him to her, even though the spirit of him longed to be free. He would go on living with her and pitying her and making her and himself miserable.
He went out into the storm of wind for a few moments before going to bed. Never, till then, had Lavery's seemed to desolate, so mightily cruel. He walked in sheer morbidness of spirit to the pavilion steps where he and Helen, less than a year ago, had thought themselves the happiest couple in the world. There was no moonlight now, and the pavilion was a huge dark shadow. Poor Helen—poorHelen! He wished he had never met her.
The torture of his soul went on. He lost grip of his House; he was unpopular now, and he knew it. Smallwood and other influential members of the school openly cut him in the street. A great silence (so he often imagined, but it could not have been really so) fell upon the Masters' Common-Room whenever he entered it. Pritchard, so he heard, was in the habit of making cheap jokes against him with his class. Even Clanwell took him aside one evening and asked him why he had dropped the habit of coming up to coffee. "Why don't you come up for a chat sometime?" he asked, and from the queer look in his eyes Speed knew well enough what the chat was likely to be about. "Oh, I'm busy," he excused himself. He added: "Perhaps I'll drop in sometime, though." "Yes, do," said Clanwell encouragingly. But Speed never did.
Then one morning Speed was summoned into the dark study. The Head smiled and invited him to sit down. He even said, with ominous hospitality: "Have a cigarette—um, no?" and pushed the cigarette-box an inch or so away from him. Then he went on, unbuttoning the top button of his clerical coat: "I hope—um—you will not think me—um—impertinent—if I mention a matter which has—um—which has not reached my ears—um—through an official channel. You had, I—um—I believe,—an—um—altercation with one of the house-porters the other day. Am I—am I right?"
"Yes, quite right."
"Well, now, Mr. Speed—such—um—affairs are rather undignified, don't you think? I'm not—um—apportioning blame—oh, no, not in any way, but I do—um, yes—I most certainly do think that a housemaster should avoid such incidents if he can possibly do so. No—um—no personal reflection on you at all, Mr. Speed—merely my advice to you, as a somewhat elderly man to an—um, yes—to a friend. Yes, a friend. Perhaps I might add more—um—significantly—to an—um—son-in-law."
He smiled a wide, sly smile. Speed clenched his hands on his knees. The dark study grew almost intolerable. He felt he would like to take Ervine's mottled neck in his hands and wring it—carefully and calculatingly....
When he was outside the room, in the darkness between the inner and the outer doors, his resentment rose to fever-pitch. He stopped, battling with it, half inclined to re-enter the study and make a scene, yet realising with the sane part of him that he could not better his position by so doing. Merely as an outlet for tempestuous indignation, however, the idea of returning to the fray attracted him, and he paused in the darkness, arguing with himself. Then all at once his attention was rivetted by the sound, sharp and clear, of Mrs. Ervine's voice. She had entered the study from the other door, and he heard soft steps treading across the carpet. "Did you tell him?" he heard her say. And the Head's voice boomed back: "Yes, my dear. Um yes—I told him."
A grim, cautious smile crept over Speed's mouth. He put his ear to the hinge of the inner door and listened desperately.
He heard again the voice of Mrs. Ervine. "Did you tell him he might have to quit Lavery's at the end of the term?"
"I—um—well—I didn't exactly put it to him—so—um—so definitely. It seemed to me there was no—um—no necessity. He may be all right, even yet, you know.
"He won't. He's too young. And he's lost too much ground already."
"I always thought he was too—um—too youthful, my dear. But you overruled my——"
"Well, and you know why I did, don't you? Oh, I've no patience with you. Nothing's done unless I do it."
"My dear, I—um—I assure you——"
He heard footsteps approaching along the outside corridor and feared that it might be people coming to see the Head. In that case they would pull open the outer door and find him eavesdropping. That would never do. He quietly pushed the outer door and emerged into the corridor. A small boy, seeing him, asked timidly: "Is the Head in, sir?" Speed replied grimly: "Yes, he's in, but he's busy at present."
After all, he had heard enough. Behind the Head, ponderous and archaic, stood now the sinister figure of Mrs. Ervine, mistress of malevolent intrigue. In a curious half-humorous, half-contemptuous sense, he felt sorry for the Head. Poor devil!—everlastingly chained to Millstead, always working the solemn, rhythmic treadmill, with a wife beside him as sharp as a knife-edge.... Speed walked across to Lavery's, pale-faced and smiling.
The Annual Athletic Sports.
It was raining hard. He stood by the tape, stopwatch in hand, distributing measured encouragement and congratulation, and fulfilling his allotted rôle of timekeeper. "Well run, Herbert," he managed to say with a show of interest. "Not bad, indeed, sir ... eleven and two-fifths seconds." ... "Well done, Roberts.... Hard luck, Hearnshaw—pity you didn't sprint harder at the finish, eh? ... Herbert first, Roberts second, Hearnshaw third."
The grass oozed with water and the cinder-track with blackish slime; he shivered as he stood, and whenever he stooped the water fell over the brim of his hat and blurred the print on his sports-programme. It was hard to distinguish rain from perspiration on the faces of the runners. The bicycles used in the slow-bicycle race lay in a dripping and rusting pile against a tree-trunk; crystal raindrops hung despairingly from the out-stretched tape. There seemed something unnecessarily, gratuitously, even fatuously dismal about the entire procedure; the weight of dismalness pressed heavily on him—heavily—heavily—and more heavily as the afternoon crawled by. Yet he gave a ghastly smile as he marked a wet note-book with a wet copying pencil and exclaimed: "Well run, ListerSecundus. Four minutes and forty-two and a fifth seconds.... Next race, please. All candidates for the Quarter-Mile Handicap. First Heat.... Answer please.... Arnold, Asplin, Brooks, Carmichael, Cavendish, Cawstone, Primus, Felling, Fyfield...."
But at last there came the end of the dreary afternoon, when grey dusk began to fall somberly upon a grey world, when the last race had been mournfully held, and his outdoor work was over. Mechanically he was collecting into a pile the various impedimenta of the obstacle race; he was alone, for the small, dripping crowd of sight-seers had gone over to the other side of the pavilion to witness the putting of the weight. Pritchard's job, he reflected. Pritchard's staccato tenor voice rose above the murmur: "Thirty-eight feet four inches.... Excellent, Robbins...." And then the scrape of the spade smoothing over the soft, displaced mud, a sound that seemed to Speed to strike the note of utter and inextinguishable misery.
Old Millstead bells began to chime the hour of five o'clock.
And then a voice quite near him said: "Well, Mr. Speed?"
He knew that voice. He turned round sharply. Clare!
Never did he forget the look of her at that moment. He thought afterwards (though it could not have been more than imagination) that as she spoke the downfalling rain increased to a torrent; he saw her cheeks, pink and shining, and the water glistening on the edges of her hair. She wore a long mackintosh that reached almost to her heels, and a sou'wester pulled over her ears and forehead. But the poise of her as she stood, so exquisitely serene with the rain beating down upon her, struck some secret chord in his being which till that moment had been dumb.
He dropped the sacks into a pool of water and stared at her in wistful astonishment.
"You've dropped your things," she said.
He was staring at her so intently that he seemed hardly to comprehend her words. The chord in him that had been struck hurt curiously, like a muscle long unused. When at last his eyes fell to the sopping bundle at his feet he just shrugged his shoulders and muttered: "Oh,theydon't matter. I'll leave them." Then, recollecting that he had not yet given her any greeting, he made some conventional remark about the weather.
Then she made another conventional remark about the weather.
Then he said, curiously: "We don't see so much of each other nowadays, do we?"
To which she replied: "No. I wonder why? Are they overworking you?"
"Not that," he answered.
"Then I won't guess any other reasons."
He said jokingly: "I shall come down to the town and give you another of those surprise visits one of these evenings."
The crowd were returning from watching the putting of the weight. She made to leave him, saying as she did so: "Yes, do. You like a talk, don't you?"
"Rather!" he exclaimed, almost boyishly, as she went away.
Almost boyishly! Even a moment of her made a difference in him.
That evening, for the first time in his life, he was "ragged." He was taking preparation in the Big Hall. As soon as the School began to enter he could see that some mischief was on foot. Nor was it long in beginning to show itself. Hardly had the last-corner taken his seat when a significant rustle of laughter at the rear of the Hall warned him that danger was near. He left his seat on the rostrum and plunged down the aisle to the place whence the laughter had come. More laughter.... He saw something scamper swiftly across the floor, amidst exclamations of feigned alarm. Someone had let loose a mouse.
He was furious with anger. Nothing angered him more than any breach of discipline, and this breach of discipline was obviously an insult to him personally. They had never "ragged" him before; they were "ragging" him now because they disliked him. He saw the faces of all around him grinning maliciously.
"Anyone who laughs has a hundred lines."
A sharp brave laugh from somewhere—insolently defiant.
"Who was it that laughed then?"
No answer.
Then, amidst the silence, another laugh, a comic, lugubriously pitched laugh that echoed weirdly up to the vaulted roof.
He was white now—quite white with passion.
"Was that you, Slingsby?"
A smart spot! ItwasSlingsby, and Slingsby, recognising the rules of civilised warfare even against Speed, replied, rather sheepishly: "Yes, sir."
"A thousand lines and detention for a week!"
The school gasped a little, for the punishment was sufficiently enormous. Evidently Speed was not to be trifled with. There followed a strained silence for over ten minutes, and at last Speed went back to his official desk feeling that the worst was over and that he had successfully quelled the rebellion. Then, quite suddenly, the whole building was plunged into darkness.
He rose instantly shouting: "Who tampered with those switches?"
He had hardly finished his query when pandemonium began. Desk-lids fell; electric torches prodded their rays upon scenes of wild confusion; a splash of ink fell on his neck as he stood; voices shrieked at him on all sides. "Who had a fight with Burton?" "Hit one your own size." "Oh, Kenneth, meet me at the pavilion steps!" "Three cheers for the housemaster who knocked the porter down!" He heard them all. Somebody called, sincerely and without irony: "Three cheers for old Burton!"—and these were lustily given. Somebody grabbed hold of him by the leg; he kicked out vigorously, careless in his fury what harm he did. The sickly odour of sulphuretted hydrogen began to pervade the atmosphere.
He heard somebody shriek out: "Not so much noise, boys—the Head'll come in!" And an answer came: "Well, he won't mind much."
He stood there in the darkness for what seemed an age. He was petrified, not with fear, but with a strange mingling of fury and loathing. He tried to speak, and found he had no voice; nor, anyhow, could he have made himself heard above the din.
Something hit him a terrific blow on the forehead. He was dazed. He staggered back, feeling for his senses. He wondered vaguely who had hit him and what he had been hit with. Probably a heavy book.... The pain seemed momentarily to quench his anger, so that he thought: This is not ordinary "ragging." They hate me. They detest me. They want to hurt me if they can.... He felt no anger for them now, only the dreadfulness of being hated so much by so many people at once.
He must escape somehow. They might kill him in the dark there if they found him. He suddenly made his decision and plunged headlong down the centre aisle towards the door. How many boys he knocked down or trampled on or struck with his swinging arms as he rushed past he never knew, but in another moment he was outside, with the cool air of the cloisters tingling across his bruised head and the pandemonium in the Hall sounding suddenly distant in his ears.
In the cloisters he met the Head, walking quickly along with gown flying in the wind.
In front of Speed he stopped, breathless and panting. "Um—um—what is the matter, Mr. Speed? Such an—um—terrible noise—I could—um—hear it at my dinner-table—and—um—yourself—what has happened to you? Are you ill? Your head is covered with—um—blood.... What is all the commotion about?"
Speed said, with crisp clearness: "Go up into the Hall and find out."
And he rushed away from the Head, through the echoing cloisters, and into Lavery's. He washed here, in the public basins, and tied a handkerchief round the cut on his forehead. He did not disturb Helen, but left his gown on one of the hooks in the cloak-room and went out again into the dark and sheltering night, hatless and coatless, and with fever in his heart. The night was bitterly cold, but he did not feel it; he went into the town by devious ways, anxious to avoid being seen; when he was about half-way the parish clock chimed eight. He felt his head; his handkerchief was already damp on the outside; it must have been a deep cut.
"Mr. Speed!" she said, full of compassion. A tiny lamp in the corridor illumined his bandaged head as he walked in. "What on earth has happened to you? Can you walk up all right?"
"Yes," he answered, with even a slight laugh. The very presence of her gave him reassurance. He strode up the steps into the sitting-room and stood in front of the fire. She followed him and stared at him for a moment without speaking. Then she said, almost unconcernedly: "Now you mustn't tell me anything till you've been examined. That looks rather a deep cut. Now sit down in that chair and let me attend to you. Don't talk."
He obeyed her, with a feeling in his heart of ridiculously childish happiness. He remembered when Helen had once bade him not talk, and how the demand had then irritated him. Curious that Clare could even copy Helen exactly and yet be tremendously, vitally different!
She unwound the bandage, washed the cut, and bandaged it up again in a clean and workmanlike manner. The deftness of her fingers fascinated him; he gazed on them as they moved about over his face; he luxuriated amongst them, as it were.
At the finish of the operation she gave that sharp instant laugh which, even after hearing it only a few times, he had somehow thought characteristic of her. "You needn't worry," she said quietly, and in the half-mocking tone that was even more characteristic of her than her laugh. "You're not going to die. Did you think you were? Now tell me how it happened."
"You'll smile when I tell you. I was taking prep, and they ragged me. Somebody switched off the lights and somebody else must have thrown a book at me. That's all."
"That's all? It's enough, isn't it? And what made you think I should smile at such an affair?"
"I don't know. In a certain sense it's, perhaps, a little funny.... D'you know, lately I've had a perfectly overwhelming desire to laugh at things that other people wouldn't see anything funny in. The other night Helen told me not to talk to her because she couldn't believe a word I said, but she didn't mind if I kissed her. I laughed at that—I couldn't help it. And now, when I think of an hour ago with all the noise and commotion and flash-lights and stink-bombs and showers of ink—oh, God, it was damned funny!"
He burst into gusts of tempestuous, half-hysterical laughter.
"Stop laughing!" she ordered. She added quietly: "Yes, you look as if you've been in an ink-storm—it's all over your coat and collar. What made them rag you?"
"They hate me."
"Why?"
He pondered, made suddenly serious, and then said: "God knows."
She did not answer for some time. Then she suddenly went over to the china cupboard and began taking out crockery. Once again his eyes had something to rivet themselves upon; this time her small, immensely capable hands as she busied herself with the coffee-pot. "And you thought I should find it amusing?" she said, moving about the whole time. As she continued with the preparations she kept up a running conversation. "Well, Idon'tfind it amusing. I think it's very serious. You came here last summer term and at first you were well liked, fairly successful, and happy. Now, two terms later, you're apparently detested, unsuccessful, and—well, not so happy as you were, eh? What's been the cause of it all? You say God knows. Well, if He does know, He won't tell you, so you may as well try to find out for yourself."
And she went on: "I don't want to rub it in. Forgive me if I am doing so."
Something in the calm kindliness of her voice made him suddenly bury his head in his hands and begin to sob. He gasped, brokenly: "All right.... Clare.... But the future.... Oh, God—is itallblack? ... What—whatcan I do, Clare?"
She replied, immensely practical: "You must control yourself. You're hysterical—laughing one minute and crying the next. Coffee will be ready in a while—it'll quiet your nerves. And the future will be all right if only you won't be as big a fool as you have been."
Then he smiled. "Youdotell me off, don't you?" he said.
"No more than you need.... But we're talking too much. I don't want you to talk a lot—not just yet. Sit still while I play the piano to you."
She played some not very well-known composition of Bach, and though when she began he was all impatience to talk to her, he found himself later on becoming tranquil, perfectly content to listen to her as long as she cared to go on. She played quite well, and with just that robust unsentimentality which Bach required. He wondered if she had been clever enough to know that her playing would tranquillise him.
When she had finished, the coffee was ready and they had a cosy little armchair snack intermingled with conversation that reminded him of his Cambridge days. He would have been perfectly happy if he had not been burdened with such secrets. He wanted to tell her everything—to show her all his life. And yet whenever he strove to begin the confession she twisted the conversation very deftly out of his reach.
At last he said: "I've got whole heaps to tell you, Clare. Why don't you let me begin?"
She looked ever so slightly uncomfortable.
"Do youreallywant to begin?"
"Yes."
"Begin then."
But it was not so easy for him to begin after her straightforward order to do so. She kept her brown eyes fixed unswervingly on him the whole time, as if defying him to tell anything but the utterest truth. He paused, stammered, and then laughed uncomfortably.
"There's a lot to tell you, and it's not easy."
"Then don't trouble. I'm not asking you to."
"But I want to."
She said, averting her eyes from him for a moment: "It's not really that you want to begin yourself, it's that you wantmeto begin, isn't it?"
Then he said: "Yes, I wanted you to begin if you would. I wanted you to ask me a question you used to ask me?"
"What's that?"
"Whether I'm happy ... or not. I always used to say yes, and since that answer has become untrue you've never asked me the question."
"Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue."
"You knew? Youknew! Tell me, what did you know? What do you know now?"
She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: "My dear man, Iknow. I understand you. Haven't you found out that? I know, I've known for a long time that you haven't been happy."
Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost wildly, in his eagerness: "Helen and I—we don't get on well together." Then he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare's eternally calm eyes. "She doesn't understand me—in fact—I don't really think we either of us understand the other."
"No?" she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied: "I think that perhaps explains—chiefly—why I am unhappy. We—Helen and I—we don't know quite what—what to do with each other. Do you know what I mean? We don't exactly quarrel. It's more that we try so hard to be kind that—that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other.... Oh, not actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way.... Oh, Clare, Clare, the truth of it is, I can't bear her, and she can't bear me!"
"Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?"
"Oh, yes, she loves me."
"And you love her?"
He looked her straight in the eyes and slowly shook his head.
"I used to. But I don't now. It's awful—awful—but it's the honest truth."
It seemed to him that his confession had reached the vital crest and that all else would be easy and natural now that he had achieved thus far. He went on: "Clare, I've tried to make myself think I love her. I've tried all methods to be happy with her. I've given in to her in little matters and big matters to try to make her happy, I've isolated myself from other people just to please her, I've offered anything—everythingto give her the chance of making me love her as I used to! But it's not been a bit of use."
"Of course it hasn't."
"Why of course?"
"Because you can't love anybody by trying. Any more than you can stop loving anybody by trying... Do you know, I've never met anybody who's enraged me as much as you have."
"Enraged you?"
"Yes. What right have I to be enraged with you, you'll say, but never mind that. I've been enraged with you because you've been such a continual disappointment ever since I've known you. This is a time for straight talking, isn't it? So don't be offended. When you first came to Millstead you were just a jolly schoolboy—nothing more, though you probably thought you were—you were brimful of schoolboyish ideals and schoolboyish enthusiasms. Weren't you? Nobody could help liking you—you were so—sonice—niceis the word, isn't it?"
"You're mocking me."
"Not at all. I mean it. Youwerenice, and I liked you very much. Compared with the average fussily jaded Master at a public-school you were all that was clean and hopeful and energetic. I wondered what would become of you. I wondered whether you'd become a sarcastic devil like Ransome, a vulgar little counter-jumper like Pritchard, or a beefy, fighting parson like Clanwell. I knew that whatever happened you wouldn't stay long as you were. But I never thought that you'd become what you are. Good God, man, youarea failure, aren't you?"
"What's the good of rubbing it in?"
"This much good—that I want you to be quite certain of the depth you've fallen to. A man of your sort soon forgets his mistakes. That's why he makes so many of them twice over."
"Well—admitting that I am a failure, what then? What advice have you to offer me?"
"I advise you to leave Millstead."
"When?"
"At the end of the term."
"And where shall I go?"
"Anywhere except to another school."
"What shall I do?"
"Anything except repeat your mistakes."
"And Helen?"
"Take her with you."
"But she is one of my mistakes."
"I know that. But you've got to put up with it."
"And if I can't?"
"Then I don't know."
He suddenly plunged his head into his hands and was silent. Her ruthless summing-up of the situation calmed him, made him ready for the future, but filled that future with a dreariness that was awful to contemplate.
After a while he rose, saying: "Well, I suppose you're right. I'll go back now. God knows what'll happen to me between now and the end of term. But I guess I'll manage somehow. Anyway, I'm much obliged for your first-aid. Good-bye—don't trouble to let me out—I know how the door works."
"I want to lock up after you're gone," she said.
In the dark lobby the sudden terror of what he had done fell on him like a crushing weight. He had told Clare that he did not love Helen. And then, following upon that, came a new and more urgent terror—he had not told Clare that it was she whom he loved. What was the use of telling her the one secret without the other?—Perhaps he would never see Clare again. This might be his last chance. If he did not take it or make it the torture of his self-reproaching would be unendurable.
"You came without any coat and hat," she observed. "Let me lend you my raincoat—it's no different from a man's."
He perceived instantly that if he borrowed it he would have an excuse for visiting her again in order to return it. And perhaps then, more easily than now, he could tell her the secret that was almost bursting his heart.
"Thanks," he said, gratefully, and as she helped him into the coat she said: "Ask the boy to bring it back here when he calls for the orders in the morning."
He could have cried at her saying that. The terror came on him feverishly, intolerably, the terror of leaving her, of living the rest of life without a sight or a knowledge of her. He could not bear it; the longing was too great—he could not put it away from him. And she was near him for the last time, her hands upon his arms as she helped him into the coat. She did not want him to call again. It was quite plain.
He had to speak.
He said, almost at the front door: "Clare, do you know the real reason why I don't love Helen any more?"
He thought he heard her catch her breath sharply. Then, after a pause, she said rather curtly: "Yes, of course I do. Don't tell me."
"What!" In the darkness he was suddenly alive. "What! You know! You know the real reason! Youdon't! You think you do, but you don't! I'll warrant you don't! You don't know everything!"
And the calm voice answered: "I know everything about you."
"You don't know that I love you!" (There! It was spoken now; a great weight was taken off his heart, no matter whether she should be annoyed or not! His heart beat wildly in exultation at having thrown off its secret at long last.)
She answered: "Yes, I know that. But I didn't want you to tell me."
And he was amazed. His mind, half stupefied, accepted her knowledge of his love for her almost as if it were a confession of her returned love for him. It was as if the door were suddenly opened to everything he had not dared to think of hitherto. He knew then that his mind was full of dreaming of her, wild, passionate, tumultuous dreaming, dreaming that lured him to the edge of wonderland and precarious adventure. But this dreaming was unique in his experience; no slothful half-pathetic basking in the fluency of his imagination, no easy inclination to people a world with his own fancies rather than bridge the gulf that separated himself from the true objectiveness of others; this was something new and immense, a hungering of his soul for reality, a stirring of the depths in him, a monstrous leaping renewal of his youth. No longer was his imagination content to describe futile, sensual curves within the abyss of his own self, returning cloyingly to its starting-point; it soared now, embarked on a new quest, took leave of self entirely, drew him, invisibly and incalculably, he knew not where. He knew not where, but he knew with whom.... This strange, magnetic power that she possessed over him drew him not merely to herself, but to the very fountain of life; she was life, and he had never known life before. The reach of his soul to hers was the kindling touch of two immensities, something at once frantic and serene, simple and subtle, solemn and yet deep with immeasurable heart-stirring laughter.
He said, half inarticulate: "What, Clare! You know that I love you?"
"Of course I do."
(Great God, whatwasthis thrill that was coming over him, this tremendous, invincible longing, this molten restlessness, this yearning for zest in life, for action, starry enthusiasm, resistless plunging movement!)
"And you don't mind?"
"Idomind. That's why I didn't want you to tell me.
"But what difference has telling you made, if you knew already?"
"No difference to me. But it will to you. You'll love me more now that you know I know."
"Shall I?" His query was like a child's.
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"Iknow. That's all."
They were standing there together in the dark lobby. His heart was wildly beating, and hers—he wondered if it were as calm as her voice. And then all suddenly he felt her arms upon him, and she, Clare—Clare!—the reticent, always controlled Clare!—was crying, actually crying in his arms that stupidly, clumsily held her. And Clare's voice, unlike anything that it had ever been in his hearing before, was talking—talking and crying at once—accomplishing the most curious and un-Clare-like feats.
"Oh, my dear,dearman—whydid you tell me? Why did you make everything so hard for me and yourself?—Oh, God—let me be weak for just one little minute—only one little minute!—I love you, Kenneth Speed, just as you love me—we fit, don't we, as if the world had been made for us as well as we for ourselves! Oh, what a manIcould have made of you, and what a womanyoucould have made of me! Dearest, I'm so sorry.... When you've gone I shall curse myself for all this.... Oh, my dear, my dear...." She sobbed passionately against his breast, and then, suddenly escaping from his arms, began to speak in a voice more like her usual one. "You must go now. There's nothing we can do. Please,pleasego now. No, no—don't kiss me.... Just go.... And let's forgive each other for this scene.... Go, please go.... Good-night.... No, I won't listen to you.... I want you to go.... Good night.... You haven't said a word, I know, and I don't want you to. There's nothing to say at all. Good night.... Good night...."