He did not sentimentalise over it. He was not old enough to think regretfully of his own school-days. It was the present, the present leaning longingly in the arms of the future, that wove its subtle and gracious spell. He did not kindle to the trite rhapsodies of middle-aged “old boys.” The “Thoughts of an Old Millsteadian on Revisiting the School Chapel,” published in the school magazine, stirred him not at all. But to wander about on a dark night and to find his feet beautifully at ease upon curious steps and corridors gave him pangs of exquisite lover-like intimacy; he was a “new boy,” eager for the future, not an “old boy” sighing for the past.
And all this was accomplished so swiftly and effortlessly, within a few weeks of his beginning at the school it was as if Millstead had filled a void in his soul that had been gaping for it.
Only one spot in the whole place gave him a feeling of discomfort, and that was the Headmaster’s study. The feeling of apprehension, of sinister attraction, that had come upon him when first he had entered it, lessened as time and custom wore it away; yet still, secretly and in shadow, it was there. All the sadness and pathos of a world seemed to be congregated in the dark study, and to come out of it into the sunlit corridors of the school was like the swift passing from the minor into the major key.
IV
On Fridays he had an early morning form before breakfast and then was completely free until four o’clock in the afternoon, so that if the weather were sufficiently enticing he could fill the basket on his bicycle ‘with books and go cycling along the sweet-smelling sunlit lanes. Millstead was just on the edge of the fen district; in one direction the flat lands stretched illimitably to a horizon unbroken as the sea’s edge; a stern and lonely country, with nothing to catch the eye save here and there the glint of dyke-water amongst tall reeds and afar off some desert church-tower stiff and stark as the mast of a ship on an empty sea. Speed did not agree with the general Common-Room consensus of opinion that the scenery round Millstead was tame and unattractive; secretly to him the whole district was rich with wild and passionate beauty, and sometimes on these delectable Fridays he would cycle for miles along the flat fen roads with the wind behind him, and return in the afternoon by crawling romantic-looking branch-line trains which always managed to remind him of wild animals, so completely had the civilised thing been submerged in the atmosphere of what it had sought to civilise.
But that was only on one side of Millstead. On the other side, and beyond the rook-infested trees that were as ramparts to the south-west wind, the lanes curved into the folds of tiny hills and lifted themselves for a space on to the ridge of glossy heaths and took sudden twists into the secrecies of red-roofed tree-hidden hamlets. And amidst this country, winding its delicate way beneath arches of overhanging greenery, ran the river Wade.
One Friday morning Speed cycled out to Parminters, a village about three miles out of Millstead. Here there was a low hill (not more than a couple of hundred feet), carpeted with springy turf and overlooking innumerable coils of the glistening stream. At midday on a May morning there was something indescribably restful, drowsy almost, in the scene; the hill dropped by a sudden series of grassy terraces into the meadows, and there was quite a quarter of a mile of lush grass land between the foot of the slope and the river bank. It was an entrancing spectacle, one to watch rather than to see; the silken droop of the meadows, the waves of alternate shadow and sunlight passing over the long grasses, the dark patches on the landscape which drifted eastwards with the clouds. The sun, when it pierced their white edges and came sailing into the blue, was full of warmth and beauty, warmth that awakened myriads of insects to a drowsy buzzing contentment and beauty that lay like a soft veil spread across the world. Speed, with a bundle of four alpha geography essays in his pocket (he had, after all, decided that he was competent to teach commercial geography to the lower forms), lay down amongst the deep grass and lit a pipe.
He marked a few of the essays and then, smoking comfortably, settled to a contented gaze across the valley. It was then, not until he had been there some while, though, that he saw amidst the tall grasses of the meadows a splash of blue in the midst of the deep green. It is strange that at first he did not recognise her. He saw only a girl in a pale-blue dress stooping to pick grasses. She was hatless and golden-haired, and in one hand she bore a bunch of something purple, some kind of long grass whose name he did not know. He watched her at first exactly as he might have watched some perfect theatrical spectacle, with just that kind of detached admiration and rich impersonal enchantment. The pose of her as she stooped, the flaunt of the grasses in her hand, the movement of her head as she tossed back her laughing hair, the winding yellow path she trampled across the meadows: all these things he watched and strangely admired.
He lay watching for a long while, still without guessing who she was, till the sun went in behind a cloud and he felt drowsy. He closed his eyes and leaned back cushioned amongst the turf.
V
He woke with a sensation of intense chilliness; the sun had gone in and even its approximate position in the sky could not be determined because of the heaviness of the clouds. He looked at his watch; it was ten minutes past one; he must have slept for over an hour.
The sky was almost the most sinister thing he ever saw. In the east a faint deathly pallor hung over the horizon, but the piling clouds from the west were pushing it over the edge of the world. That faint pallor dissolved across the sky into the greyness deepening into a western horizon of pitch black. Here and there this was shot through with streaks of dull and sombre flame as if each of the hills in that dark land was a sulky volcano. It was cold, and yet the wind that blew in from the gloom was strangely oppressive; the grasses bent low as if weighed down by its passing. Deep in the cleft by Parminters the river gleamed like a writhing venomous snake, the sky giving it the dull shimmer of pewter. To descend across those dark meadows to the coils of the stream seemed somehow an adventure of curious and inscrutable horror. Speed stood up and looked far into the valley. The whole scene seemed to him unnatural; the darkness was weird and baffling; the clouds were the grim harbingers of a thunderstorm. And to him there seemed momentarily a strangeness in the aspect of everything; something deep and fearsome, imminent, perhaps, with tragedy. He felt within him a sombre presaging excitement.
It began to rain, quietly at first, then faster, faster, and at last overwhelmingly. He had brought no mackintosh. He stuffed the essays into his coat pocket, swung his bicycle off the turf where he had laid it, and began to run down the hill with it. His aim was to get to the village and shelter somewhere till the storm was over. Halfway down he paused to put up his coat-collar, and there, looking across the meadows, he saw again that girl in the pale-blue dress. He was nearer to her now and recognised her immediately. She was dressed in a loose-fitting and rather dilapidated frock which the downpour of rain had already made to cling to the soft curves of her body; round her throat, tightly twined, was a. striped scarf which Speed, quick to like or to dislike what he saw, decided was absolutely and garishly ugly. And yet immediately he felt a swift tightening of his affection for her, for Millstead was like that, full of stark uglinesses that were beautiful by their intimacy…She saw him and stopped. Details of her at that moment encumbered his memory ever afterwards. She was about twenty yards from him and he could see a most tremendous wrist-watch that she wore—an ordinary pocket watch clamped on to a strap. And from the outside pocket of her dress there protruded the chromatic cover of a threepenny novelette. (Had she read it? Was she going to read it? Did she like it? he wondered swiftly.) She still carried that bunch of grasses, now rather soiled and bedraggled, tightly in her hand. He imagined, in the curiously vivid way that was so easy to him, the damp feel of her palm; the heat and perspiration of it: somehow this again, a symbol of secret and bodily intimacy, renewed in him that sudden kindling affection for her.
He called out to her: “Miss Ervine!”
She answered, a little shyly: “Oh, how are you,
Mr. Speed?”
“Rather wet just at present,” he replied, striding over the tufts of thick grass towards her. “And you appear to be even wetter than I am. I’m afraid we’re in for a severe thunderstorm.”
“Oh well, I don’t mind thunderstorms.”
“You ought to mind getting wet.” He paused, uncertain what to say next. Then instinct made him suddenly begin to talk to her as he might have done to a small child. “My dear young lady, you don’t suppose I’m going to leave you here to get drenched to the skin, do you?”
She shrugged her shoulders and said: “I don’t know what you’re going to do.”
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Well, I suggest that we get into the village as quick as we can and stay there till the rain stops. I was also going to suggest that we spent the time in having lunch, but as you don’t want anything, we needn’t.”
“But I don’t want to wait in the village, Mr. Speed. I was just going to start for home when it came on to rain.”
Speed said: “Very well, if you want to get home you must let me take you. You’re not going to walk home through a thunderstorm. We’ll have a cab or something.”
“And do you really think you’ll get a cab in Par-minters?”
He answered: “I always have a good try to get anything I want to.”
For all her protests she came with him down the meadow and out into the sodden lane. As they passed the gate the first flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed five seconds after by a crash of thunder.
“There!” he exclaimed triumphantly, as if the thunder and lightning somehow strengthened his position with her: “You wouldn’t like to walk to Millstead through that, would you?”
She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him as if she hated his interference yet found it irresistible.
VI
It was altogether by good luck that he did get a cab in the village; a Millstead cab had brought some people into Parminters and was just setting back empty on the return journey when Speed met it in the narrow lane. Once again, this time as he opened the cab-door and handed her inside, he gave her that look of triumph, though he was well aware of the luck that he had had. Inside on the black leather cushions he placed in a conspicuously ‘central position his hat and his bundle of essays, and, himself occupying one corner, invited her to take the other. All the time the driver was bustling round lifting the bicycle on to the roof and tying it securely down, Speed sat in his corner, damp to the skin, watching her and remembering that Miss Harrington had told him that she hated men. All the way during that three-mile ride back to Millstead, with the swishing of the rain and the occasional thunder and the steady jog-trot of the horse’s hoofs mingling together in a memorable medley of sound, Speed sat snugly in his corner, watching and wondering.
Not much conversation passed between them. When they were nearing Millstead, Speed said: “The other day as I passed near your drawing-room window I heard somebody playing the Chopin waltzes. Was it you?”
“It might have been.”
He continued after a pause: “I see there’s a Chopin recital advertised in the town for next Monday week. Zobieski, the Polish pianist, is coming up. Would you care to come with me to it?”
It was very daring of him to say that, and he knew it. She coloured to the roots of her wet-gold hair, and replied, after a silence: “Monday, though, isn’t it?—I’m afraid I couldn’t manage it. I always see Clare on Mondays.”
He answered instantly: “Bring Clare as well then.”
“I—I don’t think Clare would be interested,” she replied, a little confused. She added, as if trying to make up for having rejected his offer rather rudely: “Clare and I don’t get many chances of seeing each other. Only Mondays and Wednesday afternoons.”
“But I see you with her almost every day.”
“Yes, but only for a few minutes. Mondays are the only evenings that we have wholly to ourselves.”
He thought, but did not dare to say: And is it absolutely necessary that you must have those evenings wholly to yourselves?
He said thoughtfully: “I see.”
He said nothing further until the cab drew up outside the main gate of Millstead School. He was going to tell the driver to proceed inside as far as the porch of the Head’s house, but she said she would prefer to get out there and walk across the lawns. He smiled and helped her out. As he looked inside the cab again to see if he had left any papers behind he saw that the gaudily-coloured novelette had fallen out of her pocket and on to the floor. He picked it up and handed it to her. “You dropped this,” he said merely. She stared at him for several seconds and then took it almost sulkily.
“I suppose I can read what I like, anyway,” she exclaimed, in a sudden hot torrent of indignation.
He smiled, completely astonished, yet managed to say, blandly: “I’m sure I never dreamt of suggesting otherwise.”
He could see then from her eyes, half-filling with tears of humiliation, that she realised that she had needlessly made a fool of herself.
“Please—please—don’t come with me any further,” she said, awkwardly. “And thanks—thanks—very much—for—for bringing me back.”
He smiled again and raised his hat as she darted away across the wet lawns. Then; after paying the driver, he walked straightway into the school and down into the prefects’ bathroom, where he turned on the scalding hot water with jubilant anticipation.
VII
The immediate result of the incident was an invitation to dine at the Head’s a few days later. “It was very—um, yes—thoughtful and considerate of you, Mr. Speed,” said the Head, mumblingly. “My daughter—a heedless child—just like her to omit the—um—precaution of taking some—um, yes—protection against any possible change in the weather.”
“I was rather in the same boat myself, sir,” said Speed, laughing. “The thunderstorm was quite unexpected.”
“Um yes, quite so. Quite so.” The Head paused and added, with apparent inconsequence: “My daughter is quite a child, Mr. Speed—loves to gather flowers—um—botany, you know, and—um—so forth.”
Speed said: “Yes, I have noticed it.”
Dinner at the Head’s house was less formal than on the previous occasion. It was a Monday evening and Clare Harrington was there. Afterwards in the drawing-room Speed played a few Chopin studies and Mazurkas. He did not attempt to get into separate conversation with Miss Ervine; he chatted amiably with the Head while the two girls gossiped by themselves. And at ten o’clock, pleading work to do before bed, he arose to go, leaving the girls to make their own arrangements. Miss Ervine said good-bye to him with a shyness in which he thought he detected a touch of wistfulness.
When he got up to his own room he thought about her for a long while. He tried to settle down to an hour or so of marking books, but found it impossible. In the end he went downstairs and let himself outside into the school grounds by his own private key. It was a glorious night of starshine, and all the roofs were pale with the brightness of it. Wafts of perfume from the flowers and shrubbery of the Head’s garden accosted him gently as he turned the corner by the chapel and into the winding tree-hidden path that circumvented the entire grounds of Millstead. It was on such a night that his heart’s core was always touched; for it seemed to him that then the strange spirit of the place was most alive, and that it came everywhere to meet him with open arms, drenching all his life in wild and unspeakable loveliness. Oh, how happy he was, and how hard it was to make others realise his happiness! In the Common-Room his happiness had become proverbial, and even amongst the boys, always quicker to notice unhappy than happy looks, his beaming smile and firm, kindling enthusiasm had earned him the nickname of “Smiler.”
He sat down for a moment on the lowest tier of the pavilion seats, those seats where generations of Millsteadians had hurriedly prepared themselves for the fray of school and house matches. Now the spot was splendidly si
lent, with the cricket-pitch looming away mistily in front, and far behind, over the tips of the high trees, the winking lights of the still noisy dormitories. He watched a bat flitting haphazardly about the pillars of the pavilion stand. He could see, very faintly in the paleness, the score of that afternoon’s match displayed on the indicator. Old Millstead parish bells, far away in the town, commenced the chiming of eleven.
He felt then, as he had never felt before he came to Millstead, that the world was full, brimming full, of wonderful majestic beauty, and that now, as the scented air swirled round him in slow magnificent eddies, it was searching for something, searching with passionate and infinite desire for something that eluded it always. He could not understand or analyse all that he felt, but sometimes lately a deep shaft of ultimate feeling would seem to grip him round the body and send the tears swimming into his eyes, as if for one glorious moment he had seen and heard something of another world. It came suddenly to him now, as he sat on the pavilion seats with the silver starshine above him and the air full of the smells of earth and flowers; it seemed to him that something mighty must be abroad in the world, that all this tremulous loveliness could not live without a meaning, that he was on the verge of some strange and magic revelation.