“You won’t do that,” said Speed. “Say what you want to say.” He stared at Clanwell nervously, for at a call such as this a cloud of vague, apprehensions would swarm round and over him, filling the future with dark dreads.
“It’s about your wife,” said Clanwell. “I’m not going to say much. It isn’t anything to worry about, I daresay. Perhaps it doesn’t justify my mentioning it to you. Your wife…”
“Well?”
“I should—keep an eye on her, if I were you. She’s young, Speed, remember. She’s—”
“What do you mean-keep an eye on her? What should I keep an eye on her for?”
“I told you, Speed, I wasn’t going to say much. You mustn’t imagine yourself on the verge of a scandal—I don’t suppose there’s anything really the matter at all. Only, as I was saying, she’s young, and she—she’s apt to do unwise things. Once or twice lately, while you’ve been out, she’s had Smallwood in to tea.”
“Smallwood!—Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
Speed blushed furiously and was silent. A sudden new feeling, which he diagnosed as jealousy, swept across him; followed by a further series of feelings which were no more than various forms of annoyance and exacerbation. He clenched his fists and gave a slight shrug of his shoulders.
“How do you know all this?” he queried, in the staccato bark that was so accurate a register of his temper.
“Smallwood isn’t the fellow to keep such an affair secret,” replied Clanwell. “But don’t, Speed, go and do anything rash. If I were you I should go back and—”
“I shan’t do anything rash,” interrupted Speed, curtly. “You needn’t worry. Good night…I suppose I ought to thank you for your kindness in telling me what you have.”
When he had gone he regretted that final remark. It was, he decided, uselessly and pointlessly cynical.
II
It was a pity, perhaps, that in his present mood he went straight back to Lavery’s and to Helen. He found her sitting, as usual, by the fire when he entered; he made no remark, but came and sat opposite to her. Neither of them spoke for a few moments. That was not unusual for them, for Helen had frequent fits of taciturnity, and Speed, becoming familiar with them, found himself adopting similar habits. After, however, a short space of silence, he broke it by saying: “Helen, do you mind if we have a serious talk for a little while?”
She looked up and said, quietly: “Where have you been?”
“Clanwell’s,” he replied, and as soon as he had done so he realised that she would easily guess who had informed him. A pity that he had answered her so readily.
“What do you want to ask me?”
He said, rather loudly, as always when he was nervous: “Helen, I’m going to be quite straightforward. No beating about the bush, you understand?—You’ve had Smallwood in here to tea lately, while I’ve been out.”
“Well?” Her voice, irritatingly soft, just as his own was irritatingly loud, contained a mixture of surprise and mockery. “And what if I have?”
He gripped the arms of the wicker-chair with his fists, causing a creaking sound that seemed additionally to discompose him. “Helen, you can’t do it, that’s all. You mustn’t. It won’t do…It…”
Suddenly she was talking at him, slowly and softly at first, then in a rising, gathering, tempestuous torrent; her eyes, lit by the firelight, blazed through the tears in them. “Can’t I? Mustn’t I? You say it won’t do? You can go out whenever and wherever you like, you can go out to Clanwell’s in the evening, you can walk down to the town with Clare, you can have anybody you like in to tea, you choose your own friends, you live your own life—and then you actually dare to tell me I can’t!—What is it to you if I make a friend of Smallwood?—Haven’t I the right to make friends without your permission?—Haven’t I the right to entertain my friends in here as much as you have the right to entertain your friends?—Kenneth, you think I’m a child, you call me a child, you treat me as a child. That’s what won’t do. I’m a woman and I won’t be domineered over. So now you know it.”
Her passion made him suddenly icily cool; he was no longer the least bit nervous. He perceived, with calm intuition, that this was going to be their first quarrel.
“In the first place,” he began quietly, “you must be fair to me. Surely, it is not extraordinary that I should go up to see Clanwell once or twice during the week. He’s a colleague and a friend. Secondly, walking down into the town to see Clare home after rehearsals is a matter of common politeness, which you, I think, asked me particularly to do. And as for asking people in to tea, you have, as you say, as free a choice in that as I have, except when you do something absolutely unwise. Helen, I’m serious. Don’t insist on this argument becoming a quarrel. If it does, it will be our first quarrel, remember?”
“You think you can move me by talking like that!”
“My dear, I think nothing of the sort. I simply do not want to quarrel. I want you to see my point of view, and I’m equally anxious to see yours. With regard to this Smallwood business, you must, if you think a little, realise that in a place like Millstead you can’t behave absolutely without regard for conventions. Smallwood, remember, is nearly your own age. You see what I mean?”
“You mean that I’m not to be trusted with any man nearly my own age?”
“No, I don’t mean that. The thought that there could be anything in the least discreditable in the friendship between Smallwood and you never once crossed my mind. I know, of course, that it is perfectly honest and aboveboard. Don’t please, put my attitude down to mere jealousy. I’m not in the least jealous.”
What surprised him more than anything else in this amazing chain of circumstances, was that he was sitting there talking to her so calmly and deliberately, almost as if he were arguing an abstruse point in a court of law! Of this new cold self that was suddenly to the front he had had no former experience. And certainly it was true to say that at that moment there was not in him an atom of jealousy.
She seemed to shrivel up beneath the coldness of his argument. She said, doggedly: “I’m not going to give way, Kenneth.”
They both looked at each other then, quite calmly and subconsciously a little awed, as if they could see suddenly the brink on which they were standing.
“Helen, I don’t want to domineer over you at all. I want you to be as free to do what you like as I am. But there are some things, which, for my sake and for the sake of the position I hold here, you ought not to do. And having Smallwood here alone when I am away is one of those things.”
“I don’t agree. I have as much right to make a friend of Smallwood as you have to make a friend of—say Clare!”
The mention of Clare shifted him swiftly out of his cool, calculating mood and back into the mood which had possessed him when he first came into the room. “Not at all,” he replied sharply. “The cases are totally different. Smallwood is a boy—a boy in my House. That makes all the difference.”
“I don’t see that it makes any difference.”
“Good heavens, Helen!—You don’t see? Don’t you realise the sort of talk that is getting about? Doesn’t it occur to you that Smallwood will chatter about this all over the school and make out that he’s conducting a. clandestine flirtation with you? Don’t you see how it will undermine all the discipline of the House—will make people laugh at me when my back’s turned—will—”
“And I’m to give up my freedom just to stop people from laughing at you, am I?”
“Helen, why can’t you see my point of view? Would you like to see me a failure at Lavery’s? Wouldn’t you feel hurt to hear everybody sniggering about me?”
“I should feel hurt to think that you could only succeed at Lavery’s by taking away my freedom.”
“Helen, marriage isn’t freedom, it’s partnership. I can’t do what I like. Neither can you.”
“I can try, though.”
“Yes, and you can succeed in making my life at Millstead unendurable.”
She cried fiercely: “I won’t talk about it any longer, Kenneth. We don’t agree and apparently we shan’t, however long we argue. I still think I’ve a right to ask Smallwood in to tea if I want to.”
“And I still think you haven’t.”
“Very well, then”—with a laugh—“that’s a deadlock, isn’t it?”
He stared at the fire silently for some moments, then rose, and came to the back of her chair. Something in her attitude seemed to him blindingly, achingly pathetic; the tears rushed to his eyes; he felt he had been cruel to her. One part of him urged him to have pity on her, not to let her suffer, to give way, at all costs, rather than bring shadows over her life; to appeal, passionately and perhaps sentimentally, that she would, for his sake, if she loved him, make his task at Lavery’s no harder than it need be. The other part of him said: No, you have said what is perfectly fair and true; you have nothing at all to apologise for. If you apologise you will only weaken your position for ever afterwards.
In the end the two conflicting parts of him effected a compromise. He said, good-humouredly, almost gaily, to her: “Yes, Helen, I’m afraid it is a deadlock. But that’s no reason why it should be a quarrel. After all, we ought to be able to disagree without quarrelling. Now, let’s allow the matter to drop, eh? Eh, Helen? Smile at me, Helen!”
But instead of smiling, she burst into sudden passionate sobbing. Her head dropped heavily into her hands and all her hair, loosened by the fall, dispersed itself over her hands and cheeks in an attitude of terrific despair. On Speed the effect of it was as that of a knife cutting him in two. He could not bear to see her misery, evoked by something said or done, however justifiably, by him; pity swelled over him in a warm, aching tide; he stooped to her and put a hand hesitatingly on her shoulder. He was almost afraid to touch her, and when, at the first sensation of his hand, she drew away hurriedly, he crept back also as if he were terrified by her. Then gradually he came near her again and told her, with his emotion making his voice gruff, that he was sorry. He had treated her unkindly and oh—he was so sorry. He could not bear to see her cry. It hurt him…Dear, darling Helen, would she forgive him? If she would only forgive him she could have Smallwood in to tea every day if she wished, and damn what anybody said about it! Helen, Helen…
Yet the other part of him, submerged, perhaps, but by no means silent, still urged: You haven’t treated her unkindly, and you know you haven’t. You have nothing to apologise for at all. And if she does keep on inviting Smallwood in you’ll have the same row with her again, sooner or later.
“Helen, dear Helen—do answer me!-Don’t cry like that—I can’t bear it!—Answer me, Helen, answer me!”
Then she raised her head and put her arms out to him and kissed him with fierce passion, so that she almost hurt his neck. Even then she did not, for a moment, answer, but he did not mind, because he knew now that she had forgiven him. And strangely enough, in that moment of passionate embrace, there returned to him a feeling of crude, rudimentary jealousy; he felt that for the future he would, as Clanwell had advised him, have to keep an eye on her to make sure that none of this high, mountainous love escaped from within the four walls of his own house. He felt suddenly greedy, physically greedy; the thought, even instantly contradicted, of half-amorous episodes between her and Smallwood affected him with an insurgent bitterness which made the future heavy with foreboding.
She whispered to him that she had been very silly and that she wouldn’t have Smallwood in again if he wished her not to.
Even amidst his joy at her submission, the word “silly” struck him as an absurdly inadequate word to apply to her attitude.
He said, deliberately against his will: “Helen, darling, it was I who was silly. Have Smallwood in as much as you like. I don’t want to interfere with your happiness.”
He expected her then to protest that she had no real desire to have Smallwood in, and when she failed to protest, he was disappointed. The fear came to him that perhaps Smallwood did attract her, being so good-looking, and that his granting her full permission to see him would give that attraction a chance to develop. Jealousy once again stormed at him.
But how sweet the reconciliation, after all! For concentrated loveliness nothing in his life could equal the magic of that first hour with her after she had ceased crying. It was moonlight outside and about midnight they leaned for a moment out of the window with the icy wind stinging their cheeks. Millstead asleep in the pallor, took on the semblance of his own mood and seemed tremulous with delight. Somewhere, too, amidst the dreaming loveliness of the moon-washed roofs and turrets, there was a touch of something that was just a little exquisitely sad, and that too, faint, yet quite perceptible, was in his own mood.
III
There came the concert in the first week of December. No one, not even those of the Common-Room who were least cordially disposed to him, could deny that Speed had worked indefatigably and that his efforts deserved success. Yet the success, merited though it was, was hardly likely to increase his popularity among those inclined to be jealous of him.
Briskly energetic and full of high spirits throughout all the rehearsals; and most energetic of all on the actual evening of the performance, he yet felt, when all was over, and he knew that the affair had been a success, the onrush of a wave of acute depression. He had, no doubt, been working too hard, and this was the natural reaction of nerves. It was a cold night with hardly any wind, and during the evening a thick fog had drifted up from the fenlands, so that there was much excited talk among the visitors about the difficulties of getting to their homes. Nothing was to be seen more than five or six yards ahead, and there was the prospect that as the night advanced the fog would become worse. The Millstead boys, enjoying the novelty, were scampering across the forbidden quadrangle, revelling in the delightful risk of being caught and in the still more delightful possibility of knocking over, by accident, some one or other of the Masters. Speed, standing on the top step of the flight leading down from the Big Hall, gazed into the dense inky-black cloisters where two faint pin-pricks of light indicated lamps no more than a few yards away. He felt acutely miserable, and he could not think why. In a way, he was sorry that the bustle of rehearsals, to which he had become quite accustomed, was all finished with; but surely that was hardly a sufficient reason for feeling miserable? Hearing the boyish cries from across the quadrangle he suddenly felt that he was old, and that he wished he were young again, as young as the youngest of the boys at Millstead.
Since the quarrel about Smallwood he and Helen had got on tolerably well together. She had not asked Smallwood in to tea again, and he judged that she did not intend to, though to save her dignity she would still persist in her right to do so whenever she wished. The arrangement was quite satisfactory to him. But, despite the settlement of that affair, their relationship had suddenly become a thing of fierce, alternating contrasts. They were either terrifically happy or else desperately miserable. The atmosphere, when he came into Lavery’s after an absence of even a quarter of an hour, might either be dull and glowering or else radiant with joy. He could never guess which it would be, and he could never discover reasons for whichever atmosphere he encountered. But invariably he was forced into responding; if Helen were moody and silent he also remained quiet, even if his inclinations were to go to the piano and sing comic songs. And if Helen were bright and joyful he forced himself to boisterousness, no matter what press of gravity was upon him. He sometimes found himself stopping short on his own threshold, frightened to enter lest Helen’s mood, vastly different from his own, might drag him up or down too disconcertingly. Even their times of happiness, more wonderful now than ever, were drug-like in possessing after-effects which projected themselves backward in a tide of sweet melancholy that suffused everything. He knew that he loved her more passionately than ever, and he knew also that the beauty of it was mysteriously impregnated with sadness.
She stole up to him now in the fog, dainty and pretty in her heav
y fur cloak. She put a hand on his sleeve; evidently this was one of her happy moods.
“Oh, Kenneth—what a fog! Aren’t you glad everything’s all over? It went off wonderfully, didn’t it? Do you think the Rayners will be able to get home all right—they live out at Deepersdale, you know?”
Replying to the last of her queries, he said: “Oh yes, I don’t think it’s quite bad enough to stop them altogether.”
Then after a pause she went on: “Clare’s just putting her things on, and I told her to meet you here. You’ll see her home, won’t you?”
He wondered in a vague kind of way why Helen was so desperately anxious that he should take Clare on her way home, but he was far too exhausted mentally to give the matter sustained excogitation. It seemed to him that Helen suddenly vanished, that he waited hours in the fog, and that Clare appeared mysteriously by his side, speak, ing to him in a voice that was full of sharp, recuperative magic. “My dear man, aren’t you going to put your coat on?” Then he deliberately laughed and said: “Heavens, yes, I’d forgotten—just a minute if you don’t mind waiting!”
He groped his way back into the hall and to the alcove where he had laid his coat and hat. The yellow light blurred his eyes with a film of half-blindness; phantasies of doubt and dread enveloped him; he felt, with that almost barometric instinct that he possessed, that things momentous and incalculable were looming in the future. This Millstead that had seemed to him so bright and lovely was now heavy with dark mysterious menace; as he walked back across the hall through the long avenues of disturbed chairs it occurred to him suddenly that perhaps this foreboding that was hovering about him was not mental at all, but physical; that he had overworked himself and was going to be ill. Perhaps, even, he was ill already. He had a curious desire that someone should confirm him in this supposition; when Clare, meeting him at the doorway, said: “You’re looking thoroughly tired out Mr. Speed,” he smiled and answered, with a touch of thankfulness: “I’m feeling, perhaps, a little that way.”