He went out into the storm of wind for a few moments before going to bed. Never, till then, had Lavery’s seemed so 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—poor Helen! He wished he had never met her.
* * *
CHAPTER IV
I
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 riveted 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—urn—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.
II
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 role 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, Lister Secundus. 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, Caw-stone, Primus, Felling, Fyfield…”
But at last there came the end of the dreary afternoon, when grey dusk began to fall sombrely 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 down-falling 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 ran 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,
they don’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.
III
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-comer 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! It was Slingsby, 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.
IV
“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 a
nd 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, I don’t find 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 it all black?…What—what can 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. “You do tell me off, don’t you?” he said.