After the rest of the party had gone away he went into the library for a cigarette. Helen had gone up to bed; it was past two o’clock, but he felt very wakeful and disturbed. The morning-room adjoined the library, and as he sat smoking by the remains of the fire, he heard conversation. He heard his father’s gruff voice saying: “God knows, Fanny, I don’t.”
A remark apposite to a great many subjects, he reflected, with a half-smile. He had no intention to eavesdrop, but he did not see why he should move away merely because they were talking so loudly about some probably unimportant topic that their voices carried into the next room.
Then he heard his mother say: “I think she means well, Charles. Probably she’s not used to the kind of life here.”
His father replied: “Oh, I could tell if it was just that. What I think is that she’s a silly little empty-headed piece of goods, an’ I’d like to know what the devil that fool of a boy sees in her!”
The blood rushed to his cheeks and temples; he gripped the arms of his chair, listening intently now to every word, with no thought of the right or wrong of it.
The conversation went on.
“She’s more intelligent when you get her alone, Charles. And I’m rather afraid you frighten her too.”
“Frighten her be damned. If she’d any guts in her she’d like me. The right sort of women always do like me.”
“Perhaps she does like you. That wouldn’t stop her from being frightened of you, would it? I’m frightened of you myself, sometimes.”
“Don’t say damsilly things to me, Fanny. All I say is, I’m not a snob, an’ I’ve always felt I’d let all my lads choose for themselves absolutely in a matter like marriage. But I’ve always hoped and trusted that they’d marry somebody worth marryin’. I told the boy the other night—if he’d married a dustman’s daughter I’d have welcomed her if she’d been pretty or clever or smart or something or other about her.”
“But Charles, she is pretty.”
“Think so? Not my style, anyway. An’ what’s prettiness when there’s nothing else? I like a girl with her wits about her, smart business-like sort o’ girl, pretty if you like-all the better if she is—but a girl that needn’t depend on her looks. Why, I’d rather the lad have married my typist than that silly little thing! Fact, I’ve a few factory girls I’d rather have had for a daughter-in-law than the one I’ve got!”
“Well, it’s no good troubling about it, Charles. He’s done it now, and if he can put up with her I think we ought to. She’s fond enough of him, I should think.”
“Good God, she ought to be! Probably she’s got enough sense to know what’s a bargain, anyway.”
“I think you’re a bit too severe, Charles. After all, we’ve only seen her for a week.”
“Well, Fanny, answer me a straight question—are you really pleased with her?”
“No, I can’t say I am, but I realise we’ve got to make the best of her. After all, men do make silly mistakes, don’t they?”
“Over women they do, that’s a fact…You know, it’s just struck me—that old chap Ervine’s played a dam’ smart game.”
“What do you mean?”
“I bet he put her on to it. I thought I was getting somethin’ out of him when I had that talk over the ‘phone, but I’ll acknowledge he’s gone one better on me. Smart man, Ervine. I like a smart man, even if it’s me he puts it across. I like him better than his daughter.”
“I should hate him. I think the whole business is dreadful. Perfectly dreadful…Did you tell Rogers he could go to bed?…I said breakfast at nine-thirty…yes, ten if you like…”
The voices trailed off into the distance.
V
He crept up the stairs carefully, trying not to let them creak. At the landing outside his room he paused, looking out of the window. It was a night full of beautiful moonlight, and on the new clock-tower over the garage the weather-vane glinted like a silver arrow. Snow lay in patches against the walls, and the pools amidst the cobble-stones in the courtyard were filmed over with thin ice. As he looked out upon the scene the clock chimed the quarter.
He took a few paces back and turned the handle of the door. He felt frightened to enter. What should he say to her? Would she be in bed and asleep? Would she be pretending to be asleep? Should he say nothing at all, but wait till morning, when he had thought it all over?
He switched on the light and saw that she was in bed. He saw her golden hair straggling forlornly over the pillow. Something in that touched him, and suspicion, always on guard against the softness of his heart, struck at him with a sudden stab. She had plotted. She was a schemer. The forlorn spread of her hair over the pillow was part of the duplicity of her.
He hardened. He said, very quietly and calmly: “Are you awake, Helen?”
The hair moved and shook itself. “Kenneth!”
“I want to speak to you.”
“What is it, Kenneth?”
“Did you—?—Look here—” He paused. How could he put it to her? If he said straight out: “Did you plot with your father to marry me?” she would, of course, say no. He must be careful. He must try to trap her without her being aware.
“Look here—did you know that it was due to my father’s influence that I got Lavery’s?”
“No, was it? It was good of your father to help you, wasn’t it?”
Stupid little fool! he thought. (Good God, that was nearly what his father had said she was!)
He said: “He meant it kindly, no doubt. But you didn’t know?”
“How should I know?”
“I thought perhaps your father might have told you.”
“I was never interested in his business.”
Pause. A sudden sharp wave of irritation made him continue:
“I say, Helen, you might remember whom you’re talking to when you’re at dinner. The Lord Randolph you were saying the uncomplimentary things about happens to be the cousin of the lady sitting on your left.”
“Really? Oh, I’m so sorry, Kenneth. I didn’t know. D’you think she’d be offended?”
“I shouldn’t think she’d trouble very much about your opinion, but the publicity which you gave to it would probably annoy her a little.”
She suddenly hid her head in her arms and burst into tears.
“Oh, Kenneth—let’s go away to-morrow! Let’s go back to Millstead! Oh, I can’t bear this any more—I’ve been miserable ever since I came. I told you it would all go wrong, Kenneth!-Kenneth, I have tried, but it’s no good—I can’t be happy!—Take me away tomorrow, Kenneth. Kenneth, if you don’t I shall run away myself—I simply can’t bear any more of it. You’ve hated me ever since you came here, because I don’t make you feel proud of me. Oh, I wish I did—I do wish I could! But I’ve tried so many times-I’ve made myself sick with trying—and now that I know it’s no good, let me go back to Millstead where I can give up trying for a while. Kenneth, be kind to me-I can’t help it—I can’t help not being all that you want me to be!”
She held out her arms for him to have taken hold of, but he stood aside.
“I think perhaps a return to Millstead would be the best thing we could do,” he said, calmly. “We certainly don’t seem to be having a very exhilarating time here…Breakfast is at ten, I think. That means that the car can take us down to catch the 11.50…I’d better ‘phone Burton in the morning, then he can air the place for us. Would you like to dine at School to-morrow? I was, thinking that probably your father would invite us if he knew we were coming back so soon?”
It was in his mind that perhaps he could scheme some trap at the Head’s dinner-table that would enmesh them both.
She said drearily: “Oh, I don’t mind, Kenneth. Just whatever you want.”
“Very well,” he replied, and said no more.
He lay awake until he fancied it must be almost dawn, and all the time he was acutely miserable. He was so achingly sorry for her, and yet the suspicion in his mind fortified him against all kindly impulses.
He felt that he would never again weakly give way to her, because the thought of her duplicity would give him strength, strength even against her tears and misery. And yet there was one thing the thought of her duplicity did not give him; it did not give him peace. It made him bitter, unrestful, angry with the world.
And he decided, just before he went to sleep, that these new circumstances that had arisen justified him in taking what attitude he liked towards Clare. If he wanted to see her he would see her. He would no longer make sacrifices of his friends for Helen’s sake.
* * *
BOOK III. THE LENT TERM
CHAPTER I
I
“The worst term uv the three, sir, that’s my opinion,” said Burton, pulling the curtains across the window at dusk.
“What makes you think that?” asked Speed, forcing himself to be affable.
“Well, you see, sir, the winter term—or, prop’ly speakin’, sir, I should say the Michaelmas term—isn’t so bad because there’s the Christmas ‘olidays to look forward to. But the Lent Term always seems to me to be ten times worse, because there’s nothin’ at the end of it to look forward to. Is there now, sir?”
“There’s the Easter holidays and the spring weather.”
Burton grinned. “That’s if you’re an optimist, sir.”
He was an old man, deeply attached to the school and very reliable, but prone to take odd liberties on the strength of age and service. Speed always felt that in Burton’s eyes he was a youngster, hardly less a youngster than one of the prefects, and that Burton considered himself as the central planet of Lavery’s round which Speed revolved as merely a satellite. The situation had amused him until now; but on this afternoon of the return from Beachings Over a whole crowd of sinister suspicions assailed him. In Burton’s attitude he seemed to detect a certain carefully-veiled mockery; was it possible that Burton knew or guessed the secret of his appointment to Lavery’s? Was it also possible that Burton had pierced through his marriage with Helen and had seen the sinister scheme behind it?
He stared hard at Burton. The man was old in a rather theatrical way; he clumped about exactly like the faithful retainer in the old-fashioned melodrama; if you addressed him he would turn round, put one hand to his ear, to leer at you, and say grotesquely: “Sir?” He was the terror of all the housemaids, the pet of all the Junior boys, and a sort of communal butler and valet to the prefects. And, beyond all doubt, he was one of the sights of Lavery’s. For the moment Speed detested him.
“I say, Burton.”
The turn, the hand to ear, the leer, and the grotesque interrogative: “Sir?”
“How long have you been at Millstead?”
“Fifty-one year, sir, come next July. I started when I was fourteen year old, sir, peelin’ potaties in the old kitchins that used to be underneath Milner’s. I come to Lavery’s when I was twenty-four as under-porter. I remember old Mr. Hardacre that wuz ‘ousemaster before Mr. Lavery, Sir. Mr. Lavery was ‘ousemaster for thirty-eight year, sir, an’ a very great friend of mine. He came to see me only larst Toosday, sir, a-knockin’ at the pantry door just like an old pal o’ mine might. He wuz wantin’ to know ‘ow the old place was gettin’ on.”
Speed’s glance hardened. He could imagine Lavery and Burton having a malicious conversation about himself.
Burton went on, grinning: “He was arskin’ after you, Mr. Speed. I told ‘im you wuz away spendin’ the Christmas with Sir Charles and Lady Speed. An’ I told him you wuz doin’ very well an’ bein’ very popular, if you’ll pard’n the liberty I took.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Speed, rather coldly.
When Burton had gone out he poked up the fire and pondered. Now that he was back at Millstead he wished he had stayed longer in Beachings Over. Millstead was absolutely a dead place in vacation time, and in the Christmas vacation nothing more dreary and uniformly depressing had ever come within his experience. Dr. and Mrs. Ervine, so Potter informed him, had gone to town for a few days and would not be back until after the New Year. None of the other housemasters was in residence. The huge empty footer pitches, hardly convalescent after the frays of the past term, were being marked off for hockey by the groundsman; the chapel was undergoing a slothful scrubbing by a platoon of chattering charwomen; the music-rooms were closed; the school organ was in the hands of the repairers; the clock in the chapel belfry had stopped, apparently because it was nobody’s business to wind it up during vacation-time.
Perhaps it would freeze enough for skating on Dinglay Fen, was his most rapturous hope. Helen was shopping in the village, and he expected her back very soon. It was nearly dark now, but the groundsman was still busy. There was something exquisitely forlorn in that patient transference from cricket to footer, from footer to hockey, and then from hockey to cricket again, which marked the passage of the years at Millstead. He wondered how long it would all last. He wondered what sort of an upheaval would be required to change it. Would famine or pestilence or war or revolution be enough?
Helen came in. It was curious that his suspicion of her, at first admitted to be without confirmation, had now become almost a certainty; so that he no longer felt inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, or even that there was any doubt whose benefit he could give her.
While they were having tea he suddenly decided that he would go out that evening alone and walk himself into a better humour. A half-whimsical consciousness of his own condition made him rather more kind to her; he felt sorry for anybody who had to put up with him in his present mood. He said: “I think I’ll have a walk after tea, Helen. I’ll be back about eight. It’ll do me good to take some exercise.”
She gave him a sudden, swift, challenging look, and he could see exactly what was in her eyes. She thought he was going to see Clare.
The thought had not been in his mind before. But now he was at the mercy of it; it invaded him; after all, why shouldn’t he visit Clare? Furthermore, what right had Helen to stop him? He put on his hat and coat in secret tingling excitement; he would go down into the village and visit Clare. Curious that he hadn’t thought of it before! Helen had simply no right to object. And as he turned his mind to all the suspicions that had so lately crowded into it, he felt that he was abundantly justified in visiting a friend of his, even if his wife were foolishly jealous of her.
“Back about eight,” he repeated, as he opened the door to go out. Somehow, he wanted to kiss her. He had always kissed her before going out from Lavery’s. But now, since she made no reply to his remark, presumably she did not expect it.
II
The Millstead road was black as jet, for the moon was hidden behind the thickest of clouds. It was just beginning to freeze, and as he strode along the path by the school railings he thought of those evenings in the winter term when he had seen Clare home after the concert rehearsals. Somehow, all that seemed ages ago. The interlude at Beachings Over had given all the previous term the perspective of immense distance; he felt as if he had been housemaster at Lavery’s for years, as if he had been married to Helen for years, and as if Clare were a friend whom he had known long years ago and had lost sight of since.
As he reached the High Street he began to feel nervous. After all, Clare might not want to see him. He remembered vaguely their last interview and the snub she had given him. He looked further back and remembered the first time he had ever seen her; that dinner at the Head’s house on the first evening of the summer term…
But he could not help being nervous. He tried to think that what he was doing was something perfectly natural and ordinary; that he was just paying a call on a friend as anybody might have done on a return from a holiday. He was angry with himself for getting so excited about the business. And when he rang the bell of the side-door next to the shop he had the distinct hope that she would not be in.
But she was in.
She came to the door herself, and it was so dark outside that she could not see him. “Who is it?” she asked, and he replied, rather fatuous
ly expecting her to recognise his voice immediately: “Me. I, hope I’m not disturbing you.”
She answered, in that characteristically unafraid way of hers: “I’m sure I don’t know in the least who you are. Will you tell me your name?”
Then he said, rather embarrassedly: “Speed, my name is.”
“Oh?”
Such a strange surprised little “Oh?” He could not see her any more than she could see him, but he knew that she was startled.
“Am I disturbing you?” he went on.
“Oh, no. You’d better come inside. There’s nobody in except myself, so I warn you.”
“Warn me of what?”
“Of the conventions you are breaking by coming in.”
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
“Oh, don’t trouble about me. It’s yourself you must think about.”
“Very well then, I’ll come in.”
“Right. There are five steps, then two paces along the level, and then two more steps. It’s an old house, you see.”
In the dark and narrow lobby, with the front door closed behind him, and Clare somewhere near him in the darkness, he suddenly felt no longer nervous but immensely exhilarated, as if he had taken some decisive and long contemplated step—some step that, wise or unwise, would at least bring him into a new set of circumstances.
Something in her matter-of-fact directions was immensely reassuring; a feeling of buoyancy came over him as he felt his way along the corridor with Clare somewhat ahead of him. She opened a door and a shaft of yellow lamplight came out and prodded the shadows.
“My little sitting-room,” she said.
It was a long low-roofed apartment with curtained windows at either end. Persian rugs and tall tiers of bookshelves and some rather good pieces of old furniture gave it a deliciously warm appearance; a heavily shaded lamp was the sole illumination. Speed, quick to appreciate anything artistic, was immediately impressed; he exclaimed, on the threshold: “I say, what a gloriously old-fashioned room!”