Then dinner, conversational and sometimes boisterous, in the Masters’ Common-Room, and afterwards, unless it were his evening for taking preparation, an hour at least of silence before the corridors and dormitories became noisy. During this hour he would often sit by the open window in his room and hear the rooks cawing in the high trees and the clankety-clank of the roller on the cricket-pitch and all the mingled sounds and commotions that seemed to him to make the silence of the summer evenings more magical than ever. Often, too, he would hear the sound of the Head’s piano, a faint half-pathetic tinkle from below.
Half-past eight let loose the glorious pandemonium; he could hear from his room the chiming of the school-bell, and then, softly at first, but soon rising to a tempestuous flood, the tide of invasion sweeping down the steps of the Big Hall and pouring into the houses. Always it thrilled him by its mere strength and volume of sound; thrilled him with pride and passion to think that he belonged to this heart that throbbed with such onrushing zest and vitality. Soon the first adventurous lappings of the tide reached the corridor outside his room; he loved the noise and commotion of it; he loved the shouting and singing and yelling and the boisterous laughter; he loved the faint murmur of conflicting gramophones and the smells of coffee and cocoa that rose up from the downstairs studies; he loved the sound of old Hartopp’s voice as he stood at the foot of the stairs at ten o’clock and shouted, in a key that sent up a melodious echoing through all the passages and landings: “Time, gentlemen, time!”—And when the lights in the dormitories had all been put out, and Millstead at last was silent under the stars, he loved above all things the strange magic of his own senses, that revealed him a Millstead that nobody else had ever seen, a Millstead rapt and ethereal, one with the haze of night and the summer starshine.
He told himself, in the moments when he reacted from the abandonment of his soul to dreaming, that he was sentimental, that he loved too readily, that beauty stirred him more than it ought, that life was too vividly emotional, too mighty a conqueror of his senses. But then, in the calm midst of reasoning, that same wild, tremulous consciousness of wonder and romance would envelop him afresh like a strong flood; it was a fierce, passionate ache in his bones, only to be forgotten for unreal, unliving instants. And one moment, when he sat by the window hearing the far-off murmur of Chopin on the Head’s piano, he knew most simply and perfectly why it was that all this was so. It was because he was very deeply and passionately in love. In his dreams, his wild and bewitching dreams, she was a fairy-child, ethereal and half unreal, the rapt half-embodied spirit of Millstead itself, luring him by her sweet and fragrant vitality. He saw in the sunlight always the golden glint of her hair; in music no more than subtle and exquisite reminders of her; in all the world of sights and sounds and feelings a deep transfiguring passion that was his own for her.
And in the flesh he met her often in the school grounds, where she might say: “Oh, Mr. Speed, I’m so glad I’ve met you! I want you to come in and hear me play something.” They would stroll together over the lawns into the Head’s house and settle themselves in the stuffy-smelling drawing-room. Doctor and Mrs. Ervine were frequently out in the afternoons, and Potter, it was believed, dozed in the butler’s pantry. Speed would play the piano to the girl and then she to him, and when they were both tired of playing they talked awhile. Everything of her seemed to him most perfect and delicious. Once he asked her tactfully about reading novelettes, and she said: “I read them sometimes because there’s nothing in father’s library that I care for. It’s nearly all sermons and Latin grammars.” Immediately it appeared to him that all was satisfactory and entrancingly explained; a vague unrestfulness in him was made suddenly tranquil; her habit of reading novelettes made her more dear and lovable than ever. He said: “I wonder if you’d like me to lend you some books?—Interesting books, I promise you.”—She answered, with her child-like enthusiasm: “Oh, I’d love that, Mr. Speed!”
He lent her Hans Andersen’s fairy tales.
Once in chapel, as he declaimed the final verse of the eighty-eighth Psalm, he looked for a fraction of a second at the Head’s pew and saw that she was watching him. “Lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.”—He saw a blush kindle her cheeks like flame.
One week-day morning he met the Head in the middle of the quadrangle. The Head beamed on him cordially and said: “I understand, Mr. Speed, that you—um—give my daughter—occasional—um, yes—assistance with her music. Very kind of you, I’m sure—um, yes—extremely kind of you, Mr. Speed.”
He added, dreamily: “My daughter—still—um, yes—still a child in many ways—makes few friends—um, yes—very few. Seems to have taken quite an—um, yes—quite a fancy to you, Mr. Speed.”
And Speed answered, with an embarrassment that was ridiculously schoolboyish: “Indeed, sir?—Indeed?”
IV
Speech Day at Millstead.
Speed sat shyly on his chair on the platform, wrapping his gown round him nervously, and gazing, every now and then, at the fashionably-dressed throng that crowded the Big Hall to its utmost capacity. It was a day of ordeals, but his own chief ordeal was safely past; the school-choir had grappled quite creditably with Stanford’s Te Deum at the chapel service that morning. He was feeling very happy, even amidst his nervousness. His eyes wandered to the end of the front row of the auditorium, where Helen Ervine and Clare Harrington sat together. They were gossiping and laughing.
The Chairman, Sir Henry Briggs, rose to introduce the principal guest, Lord Portway. Lord Portway, so said Sir Henry Briggs, needed no introduction. Lord Portway…
Speed listened dreamfully.
Then Lord Portway. Lord Portway confessed himself to be a poor speaker, but hoped that it would not always be those with a glib tongue that got on in the world. (Laughter and cheers.) When he (Lord Portway) was at school he was ashamed to say that he never received a single prize. (More laughter.) He hoped that all the boys of Millstead, whether they had prizes or not, would remember that it wasn’t always the prize-winners at school who did best in the battle of life. (Hear, hear.) He would just like to give them all a word or two of advice. Be thorough. (Cheers.) Brilliance wasn’t everything. If he were engaging an employee and he had the choice of two men, one brilliant and the other thorough, he should choose the thorough one. He was certain that some, at least, of those Millstead boys who had won no prizes would do great things and become famous in after-life…
Speed watched Doctor Ervine’s face; saw the firm mouth expand, from time to time, into a mirthless automatic smile whenever the audience was stirred to laughter. And Mrs. Ervine fidgeted with her dress and glanced about her with nervously sparkling eyes.
Finally, said Lord Portway, he would like to ask the Headmaster to grant the boys of Millstead a whole holiday…(Cheers, deafening and continuous.)
It was, of course, the universal custom that Speech Day should be followed by a week-end’s holiday in which those boys who lived within easy reach might go home. Many boys had already made their arrangements and chosen their trains, but, respecting the theory that the holiday depended on Lord Portway’s asking for it, they cheered as if he had conferred an inestimable boon upon them.
The Head, raising his hand when the clamour had lasted a sufficient time, announced: “My Lord, I have—um—great pleasure in granting your request.”
More deafening cheers. The Masters round about Speed, witnesses of this little farce for a number of successive years varying from one to thirty, smiled and whispered together condescendingly.
Sir Henry Briggs, thick-voiced and ponderous. “I—I call upon the Headmaster…”
Doctor Ervine rose, cleared his throat, and began: “My Lord—um—and Ladies and Gentlemen.” A certain sage—he would leave it to his sixth-form boys to give the gentleman’s name—(Laughter)—had declared that that nation was happy which had no history. It had often occurred to him that the remark could be neatly and appositely adapted to a p
ublic-school—happy was that public-school year about which, on Speech Day, the Headmaster could find very little to say. (Laughter.) Certainly it was true of this particular year. It had been a very happy one, a very successful one, and really, there was not much else to say. One or two things, however, he would like to mention especially. First, in the world of Sport. He put Sport first merely because alphabetically it came before Work. (Laughter.) Millstead had had a very successful football and hockey season, and only that week at cricket they had defeated Selhurst. (Cheers)…In the world of scholarship the year had also been successful, no fewer than thirty-eight Millsteadians having passed the Lower Certificate Examination of the Oxford and Cambridge Board. (Cheers.) One of the sixth-form boys, A. V. Cobham, had obtained an exhibition at Magdalen College, Cambridge. (Cheers.) H. O. Catterwall, who left some years back, had been appointed Deputy Revenue Commissioner for the district of—um—Bhungi-Bhoolu. (Cheers.) Two boys, R. Heming and B. Shales, had obtained distinctions at London University. (Cheers)…Of the Masters, all he could say was that he could not believe that any Headmaster in the country was supported by a staff more loyal and efficient. (Cheers.) They had to welcome one addition—he might say, although he (the addition) had only been at Millstead a few weeks—a very valued addition—to the school staff. That was Mr. Speed. (Loud cheers.) Mr. Speed was very young, and youth, as they all knew, was very enthusiastic. (Cheers and laughter.) In fact, although Mr. Speed had been at Millstead such a short time, he had already earned and deserved the name of the School Enthusiast. (Laughter.) He had had a very kind letter from Mr. Speed’s father, Sir Charles Speed—(pause)—regretting his inability, owing to a previously contracted engagement, to be present at the Speech Day celebrations, and he (the Head) was particularly sorry he could not come because it would have done him good, he felt sure, to see how universally popular at Millstead was his enthusiastic son. (Cheers and laughter.) He hoped Millstead would have the benefit of Mr. Speed’s gifts and personality for many, many years to come. (Loud cheers)…He must not conclude without some reference to the sad blow that had struck the school only a week or so before. He alluded to the lamented passing-away of Sir Huntly Polk, for many years Chairman on the Governing Board…
Speed heard no more. He felt himself beginning to burn all over; he put one hand to his cheek in a vague and instinctive gesture of self-protection. Of course, behind his embarrassment he was pleased, rapturously pleased; but at first his predominant emotion was surprise. It had never occurred to him that the Head would mention him in speech, or that he would invite his father to the Speech Day ceremonies. Then, as he heard the cheering of the boys at the mention of his name, emotion swallowed his surprise and everything became a blur.
After the ceremony he met the two girls outside the Big Hall. Clare said: “Poor man—you looked so uncomfortable while everybody was cheering you! But really, you know, it is nice to be praised, isn’t it?”
And Helen, speaking softly so that no one else should hear, whispered: “I daresay I can get free about nine o’clock to-night. We can go for a walk eh, Kenneth?—Nine o’clock by the pavilion steps, then.”
Her voice, muffled and yet eager, trembled like the note of a bell on a windy day.
Speed whispered, joyously: “Righto, Helen, I’ll be there.”
To such a pitch had their relationship developed as a result of music-lessons and book-lendings and casual encounters. And now they were living the most exquisite of all moments, when each could guess but could not be quite certain of the other’s love. Day had followed day, each one more tremulously beautiful than the one before, each one more exquisitely near to something whose beauty was too keen and blinding to be studied; each day the light in their eyes had grown brighter, fiercer, more bursting from within. But now, as they met and separated in the laughing crowd that squirmed its way down the steps of the Big Hall, some subtle telepathy between their minds told them that never again would they shrink from the vivid joy of confession. To-night…thought Speed, as he went up to his room and slipped off his cap and gown. And the same wild ecstasy of anticipation was in Helen’s mind as she walked with Clare across the lawns to the Head’s house.
V
That night the moon was full and high; the leaden roofs and cupola of the pavilion gleamed like silver plaques; and all the cricket-pitch was covered with a thin, white, motionless tide into which the oblong shadows pushed out like the black piers of a jetty. Millstead was silent and serene. A third of its inhabitants had departed by the evening trains; perhaps another third was with its parents in the lounges of the town hotels; the remainder, reacting from the day’s excitement and sobered by the unaccustomed sparseness of the population, was more silent than usual. Lights gleamed in the dormitories and basement bathrooms, but there was an absence of stir, rather than of sound, which gave to the whole place a curious aspect of forlornness; no sudden boisterous shout sent its message spinning along the corridor and out of some wide-open window into the night. It was a world of dreams and spells, and to Speed, standing in the jet-black shadow of the pavilion steps, it seemed that sight and sound were almost one; that he could hear moonlight humming everywhere around him, and see the tremor in the sky as the nine o’clock chiming fell from the chapel belfry.
She came to him like a shy wraith, resolving out of the haze of moonbeams. The bright gold of her hair, drenched now in silver, had turned to a glossy blackness that had in it some subtle and unearthly colour that could be touched rather than seen; Speed felt his fingers tingle as at a new sensation. Something richly and manifestly different was abroad in the world, something different from what had ever been there before; the grey shining pools of her eyes were like pictures in a trance. He knew, strangely and intimately, that he loved her and that she loved him, that there was exquisite sweetness in everything that could happen to them, that all the world was wonderfully in time and tune with their own blindfold yet miraculously self-guiding inclinations. Tears, lovely in moonlight, shone in her clear eyes, eyes that were deep and dark under the night sky; he put his arm around her and touched his cheek with hers. It was as if his body began to dissolve at that first ineffable thrill; he trembled vitally; then, after a pause of magic, kissed her dark, wet, offering lips, not with passion, but with all the wistful gentleness of the night itself, as if he were afraid that she might fly away, moth-like, from a rough touch. The moonlight, sight and sound fused into one, throbbed in his eyes-and ears; his heart, beating quickly, hammered, it seemed, against the stars. It was the most exquisite and tremulous revelation of heaven, heaven that knew neither bound nor end.
“Wonderful child!” he whispered.
She replied, in a voice deep as the diapason note of an organ: “Am I wonderful?”
“You are,” she said, after a pause.
He nodded.
“I?” He smiled, caressing her hair. “I feel—I feel, Helen, as if nothing in the world had ever happened to me until this night! Nothing at all!”
“I do,” she whispered.
“As if—as if nothing in the world had ever happened to anybody until now.”
“You love me?”
“Yes, Kenneth.”
“I love you.”
“I’m—I’m—I’m glad.”
They stood together for a long while with the moonlight on their faces, watching and thinking and dreaming and wondering. The ten o’clock chimes littered the air with their mingled pathos and cheer; the hour had been like the dissolving moment of a dream.
As they entered the shadows of the high trees and came in sight of Milner’s, a tall cliff of winking yellow windows, they stopped and kissed again, a shade more passionately than before.
“But oh,” she exclaimed as they separated in the shadow of the Head’s gateway, “I wish I was clever! I wish I was as clever as you! I’m not, Kenneth, and you mustn’t think I am. I’m—I’m stupid, compared with you. And yet”—her voice kindled with a strange thrill—“and yet you say I’m wonderful! Wonderful!—
Am I?—Really wonderful?”
“Wonderful,” he whispered, fervently.
She cried, softly but with passion: “Oh, I’m glad—glad—I’m glad. It’s—it’s glorious to—to think that you think that. But oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, don’t find out that I’m not.” She added, very softly and almost as if reassuring herself of something: “I—I love you very—very much.”
They could not tear themselves away from each other. The lights in the dormitories winked out one by one; the quarter-chimes sprinkled their music on the moon-white lawns; yet still, fearful to separate, they whispered amidst the shadows. Millstead, towering on all sides of them vast and radiant, bathed them in her own deep passionless tranquillity; Millstead, a little forlorn that night, yet ever a mighty parent, serenely watchful over her children.
VI
He decided that night that he would write a story about Millstead; that he would do for Millstead what other people had already done for Eton and Harrow and Rugby. He would put down all the magic that he had seen and felt; he would transfer to paper the subtle enchantment of the golden summer days, the moonlit nights, the steamy warmth of the bathrooms, the shouting in the dormitories, the buzz of movement and conversation in the dining-hall, the cool gloom of the chapel—everything that came effortlessly into his mind whenever he thought of Millstead. All the beauty and emotion and rapture that he had seen and felt must not, he determined, be locked inside him: it clamoured to be set free, to flow strongly yet purposefully in the channel of some mighty undertaking.