“Then,” said Clare, immediately, “please don’t trouble to see me home. I can quite easily find my own way, I assure you. You go back to Lavery’s and get straight off to bed.”
The thought, thus presented to him, of forgoing this walk into the town with her, sent a sharp flush into his cheeks and pulled down the hovering gloom almost on to his eyes; he knew then, more acutely than he had ever guessed before, that he was desiring Clare’s company in a way that was a good deal more than casual. The realisation surprised him just a little at first, and then surprised him a great deal because at first it had surprised him only a little.
“I’d rather come with you if you don’t mind,” he said. “The walk will do me good.”
“What, this weather!” she exclaimed softly, and then laughed a sharp, instant laugh.
That laugh galvanised him into determination. “I’m coming anyway,” he said quietly, and took her arm and led her away into the fog.
Out in the high road it was blacker and denser; the school railings, dripping with grimy moisture, provided the only sure clue to position. Half, at least, of Speed’s energies were devoted to the task of not losing the way; with the other half he was unable to carry out much of the strange programme of conversation that had been gathering in his mind. For many days past he had been accumulating a store of things to say to her upon this memorable walk which, so far as he could judge, was bound to be the last; now, with the opportunity arrived, he said hardly anything at all. She chattered to him about music and Millstead and odd topics of slight importance; she pressed her scarf to her lips and the words came out curiously muffled and deep-toned, with the air of having incalculable issues depending on them. But he hardly answered her at all. And at last they reached Harrington’s shop in the High Street, and she shook hands with him and told him to get back as quickly as he could and be off to bed. “And don’t work so hard,” were her last words to him, “or you’ll be ill.”
Thicker and blacker than ever was the fog on the way back to the school, and somehow, through what error he never discovered, he lost himself amongst the narrow, old-fashioned streets in the centre of the town. He wandered about, as it seemed to him, for hours, creeping along walls and hoping to meet some passer-by who could direct him Once he heard Millstead Parish Church beginning the chime of midnight, but it was from the direction he least expected. At last, after devious manoeuvring, he discovered himself again on the main road up to the school, and this time with great care he managed to keep to the route. As he entered the main gateway he heard the school clock sounding the three-quarters. A quarter to one! All was silent at Lavery’s. He rang the bell timorously. After a pause he heard footsteps approaching on the other side, but they seemed to him light and airy; the bolts were pushed back, not with Burton’s customary noise, but softly, almost frightenedly.
He could see that it was Helen standing there in the porch, not Burton. She flashed an electric torch in his face and then at his feet so that he should see the step.
She said: “Come in quickly-don’t let the fog in. You’re awfully late, aren’t you? I told Burton to go to bed. I didn’t know you were going to stay at Clare’s.”
He answered: “I didn’t stay at Clare’s. I got lost in the fog on the way back.”
“Lost!” she echoed, walking ahead of him down the corridor towards his sitting-room. The word echoed weirdly in the silence. “Lost, were you?—So that’s why you were late?”
“That’s why,” he said.
He followed her into the tiny lamp-lit room, full of flrelight that was somehow melancholy and not cheerful.
IV
She was silent. She sat in one of the chairs with her eyes looking straight into the fire; while he took off his coat and hat and drew up his own chair opposite to hers she neither moved nor spoke. It seemed to him as he watched her that the room grew redder and warmer and more melancholy; the flames lapped so noisily in the silence that he had for an instant the absurd fear that the scores of sleepers in the dormitories would be awakened. Then he heard, very faintly from above, what he imagined must be an especially loud snore; it made him smile. As he smiled he saw Helen’s eyes turned suddenly upon him; he blushed as if caught in some guilty act. He said: “Can you hear somebody snoring up in the Senior dormitory?”
She stared at him curiously for a moment and then replied: “No, and neither can you. You said that to make conversation.”
“I didn’t!” he cried, with genuine indignation. “I distinctly heard it. That’s what made me smile.”
“And do yon really think that the sound of anybody snoring in the Senior dormitory would reach us in here? Why, we never hear the maids in a morning and they make ever such a noise!”
“Yes, but then there are so many other noises to drown it. However, it may have been my imagination.”
“Or it may have been your invention, eh?”
“I tell you, Helen, I did think that I heard it! It wasn’t my invention. What reason on earth should I have for inventing it? Oh, well, anyway, it’s such a trifling matter—it’s not worth arguing about.”
“Then let’s stop arguing. You started it.”
Silence again. The melancholy in the atmosphere was charged now with an added quality, something that weighed and threatened and was dangerous. He knew that Helen had something pressing on her mind, and that until she flung it off there would be no friendliness with her. And he wanted friendliness. He could not endure the torture of her bitter silences.
“Helen,” he said, nervously eager, “Helen, there’s something the matter. Tell me what it is.”
“There’s nothing the matter.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then why are you so silent?”
“Because I would rather be silent than make conversation.”
“That’s sarcastic.”
“Is it? If you think it is—”
“Helen, please be kind to me. If you go on as you are doing I’m sure I shall either cry or lose my temper. I’m tired to death after all the work of the concert and I simply can’t bear this attitude of yours.”
“Well, I can’t change my attitude to please you.”
“Apparently not.”
“Now who’s sarcastic? Good heavens, do you think I’ve nothing to do but suit your mood when you come home tired at one o’clock in the morning-You spend half the night with some other woman and then when you come home, tired out, you expect me to soothe and make a fuss of you!”
“Helen, that’s a lie! I walked straight home with Clare. You specially asked me to do that.”
“I didn’t specially ask you to stay out with her till one o’clock in the morning.”
“I didn’t stay with her till then. To begin with, it isn’t one o’clock even yet…Remember that the concert was over about eleven. I took Clare straight home and left her long before midnight. It wasn’t my fault I lost my way in the fog.”
“Nor mine either. But perhaps it was Clare’s, eh?”
“Helen, I can’t bear you to insinuate like that! Tell me frankly what you suspect, and then I’ll answer frankly!”
“You wouldn’t answer frankly. And that’s why I. can’t tell you frankly.”
“Well, I think it’s scandalous—”
She interrupted him fiercely with: “Oh, yes, it’s scandalous that I should dare to be annoyed when you give all your friendship to another woman and none to me, isn’t it? It’s scandalous that when you come home after seeing this other woman I shouldn’t be perfectly happy and bright and ready to kiss and comfort you and wheedle you out of the misery you’re in at having to leave her! You only want me for a comforter, and it’s so scandalous when I don’t feel in the humour to oblige, isn’t it?”
“Helen, it’s not true! My friendship belongs to you more than to—”
“Don’t tell me lies just to calm me into suiting your mood. Do you think I haven’t noticed that we haven’t anything in common except that
we love each other? We don’t know what on earth to talk about when we’re alone together. We just know how to bore each other and to torture each other with our love. Don’t you realise the truth of that? Don’t you find yourself eagerly looking forward to seeing Clare; Clare whom you can talk to and be friendly with; Clare who’s your equal, perhaps your superior, in intellect? Lately, I’ve given you as many chances to see her as I could, because if you’re going to tire of me I’d rather you do it quickly. But I’m sorry I can’t promise to be always gay and amusing while it’s going on. It may be scandalous that I can’t, but it’s the truth, anyway!”
“But, my dear Helen, what an extraordinary bundle of misunderstandings you’ve got hold of! Why—”
“Oh, yes, you’d like to smooth me down and persuade me it’s all my own misunderstanding, I daresay, as you’ve always been able to do! But the effect doesn’t last for very long; sooner or later it all crops up again. It’s no use, Kenneth. I’m not letting myself be angry, but I tell you it’s not a bit of use. I’m sick to death of wanting from you what I can’t get. I’ve tried hard to educate myself into being your equal, but it doesn’t seem to make you value me any more. Possibly you like me best as a child; perhaps you wouldn’t have married me if you’d known I was really a woman. Anyway, Kenneth, I can’t help it. And there’s another thing-I’m miserably jealous—of Clare. If you’d had a grain of ordinary sense you might have guessed it before now.”
“My dear Helen—”
Then he stopped, seeing that she was staring at him fearlessly. She was different, somehow, from what she had ever been before; and this quarrel, if it could be called a quarrel, was also different both in size and texture. There was no anger in her; nothing but stormy sincerity and passionate outpouring of the truth. A new sensation overspread him; a thrill of surprised and detached admiration for her. If she were always like this, he thought—if she were always proud, passionate, and sincere—how splendidly she would take possession of him! For he wanted to belong to her, finally and utterly; he was anxious for any enslavement that should give him calm and absolute anchorage.
His admiration was quickly superseded by astonishment at her self-revelation.
“But Helen—” he gasped, leaning over the arm of his chair and putting his hand on her wrist, “Helen, I’d no idea! Jealous! You jealous of Clare! What on earth for? Clare’s only an acquaintance! Why, you’re a thousand times more to me than Clare ever is or could be!”
“Kenneth!” She drew her arm away from the touch of his hand with a gesture that was determined but not contemptuous. “Kenneth, I don’t believe it. Perhaps you’re not trying to deceive me; probably you’re trying to deceive yourself and succeeding. Tell me, Kenneth, truthfully, don’t you sometimes wish I were Clare when you’re talking to me? When we’re both alone together, when we’re neither doing nor saying anything particular, don’t you wish you could make me vanish suddenly and have Clare in my place, and—and”—bitterness crept into her voice here—“and call Me back when you wanted the only gift of mine which you find satisfactory? You came back to-night, miserable, because, you’d said goodbye to Clare, and because you couldn’t see in the future any chances of meeting her as often as you’ve been able to do lately. You wanted—you’re wanting it now—Clare’s company and Clare’s conversation and Clare’s friendship. And because you can’t have it you’re willing to soothe yourself with my pretty little babyish ways, and when you find you can’t have them either you think it’s scandalous! Kenneth, my dear, dear Kenneth, I’m not a baby any longer, even if I ever was one—I’m a woman now, and you don’t like me as much. I can’t help it. I can’t help being tortured with jealousy all the time you’re with Clare. I can’t help wanting what Clare has of you more than I want what I have of you myself. I can’t help—sometimes—hating her—loathing her!”
He was speechless now, made so by a curious dignity with which she spoke and the kindness to him that sounded in everything that she said. He was so tired and sorry. He leaned his head in his arms and sobbed. Some tragedy that had seemed to linger in the lamp-lit room ever since he had come into it out of the fog, was now about his head blinding and crushing him; all the world of Millstead, spread out in the panorama of days to come, appeared in a haze of forlorn melancholy. The love that he had for Helen ached in him with a sadness that was deeper now than it had ever been.
And then, suddenly, she was all about him, kneeling beside him, stroking his hair, taking his hand and pressing it to her breast, crying softly and without words.
He whispered, indistinctly: “Helen, Helen, it’s all right. Don’t you worry, little Helen. I’m not quite well to-night, I think. It must be the strain of all that concert work…But I’ll be all right when I’ve had a rest for a little while…Helen, darling, you mustn’t cry about me like that!”
Then she said, proudly, though her voice still quivered: “I’m not worrying, dear. And you’ll see Clare again soon, because I shall ask her to come here. You’ve got to choose between us, and Clare shall have a fair chance, anyway…And now come to bed and sleep.”
He gave her a smile that was more babyish than anything that she had ever been or done. And with her calm answering smile the sadness seemed somehow a little lifted.
* * *
CHAPTER IV
I
He was in bed for three days with a temperature (but nothing more serious); Howard, the School doctor, chaffed him unmercifully. “You’re a lucky man, Speed, to be ill in bed with Mrs. Speed to nurse you! Better than being up in the Sick-room, isn’t it?” Once the idea occurred to Speed that he might be sickening for some infectious complaint, in which case he would be taken away and isolated in the Sanatorium. When he half-hinted the possibility of this to Howard, the latter said, laughing loudly: “You needn’t worry, Speed. I know you don’t want to lose your pretty little nurse, do you? I understand you, young man-I was your age once, you know.”
But the strange thing was that what Howard supposed Speed didn’t want was just what he did want. He wanted to lose Helen for a little while. Not because he didn’t love her. Not because of any reason which he could dare to offer himself. Merely, he would admit, a whimsical desire to be without her for a short time; it would, he thought, clutching hold of the excuse, save her the work of attending to him. He could hardly. understand himself. But the fact was, Helen saddened him. It was difficult to explain in detail; but there was a kind of aura of melancholy which seemed to follow her about wherever she went. In the short winter afternoons he lay awake watching her, listening to the distant cheering on the footer pitches, sniffing the aroma of tea that she was preparing for him; it was all so delicious and cosy, and yet, in a curious, blinding way, it was all so sad. He felt he should slide into madness if he were condemned to live all his days like these, with warm fires and twilit meals and Helen always about him in attendance. He could not understand why it was that though he loved her so dearly yet he should not be perfectly happy with her.
How strange it was to lie there all day listening to all the sounds of Millstead! He heard the School-bell ringing the end of every period, the shouts of the boys at call-over, the hymns in the chapel—(his Senior organ-pupil was deputising for him)-Burton locking up at night, the murmur of gramophones in the prefects’ studies; and everything, it seemed to him, was full of this same rich sadness. Then he reasoned with himself; the sadness must be a part of him, since he saw and felt it in so many things and places. It was unfair to blame Helen. Poor Helen, how kind she was to him, and how unkindly he treated her in return! Sometimes he imagined himself a blackguard and a cad, wrecking the happiness of the woman who would sacrifice everything for his sake. Once (it was nearly dark, but the lamp had not yet been lit) he called her to him and said, brokenly: “Helen, darling—Helen, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Kenneth?” she enquired naturally. And he thought and pondered and could only add: “I don’t know—nothing in particular. I’m just sorry, that’s all.” And
once also he lashed himself into a fervour of promises. “I will be kind to you, Helen, dearest. We will be friends, we two. There’s nothing that anybody shall have of me that you shan’t have also. I do want you to be happy, Helen.” And she was happy, then, happy and miserable at the same time; crying for joy at the beautiful sadness of it all.
Those long days and nights! The wind howled up from the fenlands and whiffed through the ivy on the walls; the skies were grey and desolate, the quadrangle a waste of dingy green. It was the time of the terminal House-Matches, and when Milner’s beat School House in the Semi-Final the cheering throng passed right under Speed’s window, yelling at the tops of their voices and swinging deafening rattles. In a few days Milner’s would play Lavery’s in the Final, and he hoped to be up by then and able to watch it.
Of course, he had visitors. Clanwell came and gave him endless chatter about the House-Matches; a few of the less influential prefects paid him a perfunctory visit of condolence and hoped he would soon be all right again. And then Doctor and Mrs. Ervine. “Howard tells me it is nothing—um—to be—um, er, perturbed about. Just, to use an—um—colloquialism, run down, eh, Speed? The strain of the—um—concert must have been quite—um—considerable. By the way, Speed, I ought to congratulate you—the whole evening passed in the most—um, yes-the most satisfactory manner.” And Mrs. Ervine said, in her rather tart way: “It’s quite a mercy they only come once a year, or we should all be dead very soon, I think.”
And Clare.
Helen had kept her promise. She had written to Clare asking her to tea on a certain afternoon, and she had also contrived that when Clare came she should be transacting important and rather lengthy business with the Matron. The result was that Speed, now in his sitting-room though still not allowed out of doors, was there alone to welcome her.