“Do you believe all this?” exclaimed Clanwell, laughing, to the Common-Room in general.
“Whether you believe it or not,” replied Ransome, severely, “it’s sufficiently droll for it to be worth hearing. And a large part of it is true, at any rate.”
“Go on then,” said Clanwell.
Ransome (spreading himself out luxuriously), went on: “It seemed to Harrington that having, to put it vulgarly, scored a fine though anonymous bull’s-eye with Self-Control,’ he might, with profit, attempt to do similar business on his own account. Accordingly, he wrote a collection of some half-dozen didactic essays on such subjects as ‘Immortality,” Health and Wealth,’ The Art of Happiness,’ and so on, and sent them to a well-known publisher of works on religion and ethics. This fellow, after a most unethical delay of several months, returned them with his curt regrets and the information that such stuff was a drug on the publishing market. Then Harrington, nothing in the least daunted, sent them straightway off again to a publisher of sensational novels. This last gentleman, he was a gentleman, for he replied almost immediately, agreeing to publish if Mr. Harrington would—I’m quoting hazily from the letter which Harrington showed me—if he would ‘under-take to supply a further eighteen essays to make up a book of the customary eighty-thousand-word length.’—‘You have a distinct vein of humour,’ wrote Mr. Potts, of Larraby and Potts, Limited—that was the firm—‘and we think your work would be very saleable if you would throw off what appears to be a feeling of restraint.’—So I guess Harrington just threw off this feeling of restraint, whatever exactly it was, and began on those eighteen essays…I hope this tale isn’t boring you.”
“Not at all!”—“Go on!”—came the chorus. Ransome smiled.
“There isn’t much to go on to. The book of essays was called Sky-Signs,’ and it was reviewed rather pleasantly in some of the papers. Then followed ‘About It and About,’ a further bundle of didactic essays which ran into five editions in six months. And then ‘Through my Lattice Window,’ which was the sort of book you were not ashamed to take into the pew with you and read during the offertory, provided, of course, that it was handsomely bound in black morocco. And lastly came the Helping-Hand-Books, which Mr. Speed must read if he is to consider his education complete. That’s all. The story’s over.”
After the first buzz of comment Speed said: “I suppose he made plenty of money out of that sort of thing?”
Ransome replied: “Yes, he made it and then he lost it. He dabbled in finance and had a geometrical theory about the rise and fall of rubber shares. Then he got plentifully in debt and when his health began to give way he took the bookshop because he thought it would be an easy way to earn money. He’d have lost on that if his daughter hadn’t been a born business-woman.”
“But surely,” said Clanwell, “the money kept on trickling in from his books?”
Ransome shook his head. “No, because he’d sold the copyrights for cash down. He was a child in finance. But all the same he knew how to make money. For that you should refer to his book ‘How to be Successful,’ passim. It’s full of excellent fatherly advice.”
Ransome added, with a hardly perceptible smile: “There’s also a chapter about Courtship and Marriage. You might find it interesting, Mr. Speed.”
Speed blushed furiously.
Afterwards, strolling over to the House with Clanwell, Speed said: “I say, was that long yarn Ransome told about Harrington true, do you think?”
Clanwell replied: “Well, it may have been. You can never be quite certain with Ransome, though. But he does know how to tell a story, doesn’t he?”
Speed agreed.
Late that night the news percolated, somehow or other, that old Harrington was dead.
IV
Curious, perhaps, that Speed, who had never even seen the man, and whose knowledge of him was derived almost solely from Ransome’s “droll” story, should experience a sensation of personal loss! Yet it was so, mysteriously and unaccountably: the old man’s death took his mind further away from Millstead than anything had been able to do for some time. The following morning he met Helen in the lane outside the school and his first remark to her was: “I say, have you heard about old Harrington?”
Helen said: “Yes, isn’t it terrible?—I’m so sorry for Clare—I went down to see her last night. Poor Clare!”
He saw tears in her eyes, and at this revelation of her abounding pity and warm-heartedness, his love for her welled up afresh, so that in a few seconds his soul was wholly in Millstead again. “You look tired, Helen,” he said, taking her by the arm and looking down into her eyes.
Then she burst into tears.
“I’m all right,” she said, between gulps of sobbing. “It’s so sad, though, isn’t it?—Death always frightens me. Oh, I’m so sorry for Clare. Poor darling Clare!…Oh, Kenneth—I was miserable last night when I came home. I didn’t know what to do, I was so miserable. I—I did want to see you, and I—I walked along the garden underneath Clanwell’s room and I heard your voice in there.”
He said, clasping her arm tightly: “Yes, I went to Clanwell for coffee after prep.”
She went on pathetically: “You sounded so happy—I heard you laughing. Oh, it was terrible to hear you laughing when I was miserable!”
“Poor little child!”—He bent down suddenly and kissed her eyes. “What a sad and forlorn little girl you are this morning!—Don’t yon guess why I’m so happy nowadays?”
“Why are you?”
He said, very slowly and beautifully: “Because of you. Because you have made my life utterly and wonderfully different. Because all the beauty in the world reminds me of you. When I wake up in the morning with the sun on my face I want to roar with laughter—I don’t know why, except that I’m so happy.”
She smiled gratefully and looked up into his face with large, tender eyes. “Sometimes,” she said, “beauty makes me want to cry, not to laugh. Last night, in the garden, everything was so lovely, and yet so sad. Don’t you think beautiful things are sad sometimes?”—She paused and went on, with less excitement: “When I went in, about ten o’clock, I was so miserable I went in the dining-room to be alone. I was crying and father came in.”
“Well?” he whispered, eagerly.
“He wanted to know what was the matter.”
“And you told him about Clare’s father, I suppose?”
“No,” she answered. “Don’t be angry,” she pleaded, laying a hand on his arm. “I don’t know what made me do it—I suppose it was instinct. Anyway, yon were going to, soon, even if I hadn’t. II told father about—us!”
“You did?”
“Yes. Don’t be angry with me.”
“My darling, I’m not angry with you. What did he say?”
She came so close to him that he could feel her body trembling with emotion. “He didn’t mind,” she whispered. “He didn’t mind at all. Kenneth, aren’t you glad?—Isn’t it fine of him?”
“Glorious!” he answered, taking a deep breath. Again the tide of joy seemed to engulf him, joy immense and stupefying. He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her had he not seen people coming along the lane. “It’s wonderful, Helen!” he whispered. Then some secondary thought seemed to strike him suddenly: he said: “But why were you miserable a little while ago? Didn’t the good news make you feel happy?”
She answered, still with a touch of sadness: “I didn’t know whether you would think it was good news.”—“Helen!” he exclaimed remonstratively, clasping her tightly to him: she went on, smiling at him: “Yes, it’s silly of me, isn’t it?—But Kenneth, Kenneth, I don’t know how it is, I’m never quite certain of you—there’s always a funny sort of fear in my mind! I know it’s silly. I can’t help it, though. Perhaps it will all be different some day.”
“Some day!” he echoed, gazing into her uplifted eyes.
A vision, secret and excruciatingly lovely, filled their eyes for a moment. He knew then that to marry her had become
his blinding and passionate ambition.
V
The Millstead and District Advertiser had a long and sympathetic appreciation of the late Mr. Samuel Harrington in its first July issue. The Helping-Hand-Books were described as “pleasant little homilies written with much charm and humour.” Speed took one or two of them out of the School Library and read them.
About a week after the funeral he called at the shop, ostensibly to buy a book, but really to offer his condolences. He had been meaning to go, for several days in succession, but a curious dread of an interview with Clare had operated each time for postponement. Nor could he understand this dread. He tried to analyse it, to discover behind it any conceivable reason or motive; but the search was in vain. He was forced to suppose, vaguely, that the cause of it was that slight but noticeable temperamental hostility between himself and Clare which always resulted in a clouding over of his dreams.
It was a chilly day for July; there was no sun, and the gas was actually lit in the shop when he called. The boy, a smart under-sized youngster, was there to serve him, but he asked for Miss Harrington. She must have heard his voice, for she appeared almost straightway, dressed neatly and soberly in black, and greeted him with a quite brisk: “Good afternoon, Mr. Speed!”
He shook hands with her gravely and began to stammer: “I should have called before, Miss Harrington, to offer you my sincerest sympathies, but—”
She held up her hand in an odd little gesture of reproof and said, interrupting him: “Please don’t. If you want a chat come into the back room. Thomas can attend to the shop.”
He accepted her invitation almost mechanically. It was a small room, full of businesslike litter such as is usual in the back rooms of shops, but a piano and bookcase gave it a touch of individuality. As she pointed him to a seat she said: “Don’t think me rude, but this is the place for conversation. The shop is for buying things. You’ll know in future, won’t you?”
He nodded somewhat vaguely. He could not determine what exactly was astounding in her, and yet he realised that the whole effect of her was somehow astounding. More than ever was he conscious of the subtle hostility, by no means amounting to unfriendliness, but perhaps importing into her regard for him a tinge of contempt.
“Do you know,” he said, approaching the subject very deliberately, “that until a very short time ago I knew nothing at all about Mr. Harrington? You never told me.”
“Why should I?” She was on her guard in an instant. He went on: “You may think me sincere or not as you choose, but I should like to have met him.”
“He had a dislike of being met.”
She said that with a touch of almost vicious asperity.
He went on, far less daunted by her rudeness than he would have been if she had given way to emotion of any kind: “Anyway I have got to know him as well as I can by reading his books.”
“What a way to get to know him!” she exclaimed, contemptuously. She looked him sternly in the face and said: “Be frank, Mr. Speed, and admit that you found my father’s books the most infantile trash you ever read in your life!”
“Miss Harrington!” he exclaimed, protesting. She rose, stood over him menacingly, and cried: “You have your chance to be frank, mind!”
He looked at her, tried to frame some polite reply, and found himself saying astonishingly: “Well, to be perfectly candid, that was rather my opinion.”
“And mine,” she added quietly.
She was calm in an instant. She looked at him almost sympathetically for a moment, and with a sudden gesture of satisfaction sat down in a chair opposite to his. “I’m glad you were frank with me, Mr. Speed,” she said. “I can talk to anybody who’s frank with me. It’s your nature to confide in anybody who gives yon the least encouragement, but it’s not mine I’m rather reticent. I remember once you talked to me a lot about your own people. Perhaps you thought it strange of me not to reciprocate.”
“No, I never thought of it then.”
“You didn’t?—Well, I thought perhaps you might have done. Now that you’ve shown yourself candid I can tell you very briefly the sort of man my father was. He was a very dear old hypocrite, and I was very fond of him. He didn’t feel half the things he said in his books, though I think he was honest enough to try to. He found a good thing and he stuck to it. After all, writing books was only his trade, and a man oughtn’t to be judged entirely by what he’s forced to do in order to make a living.”
He stared at her half-incredulously. She was astounding him more than ever. She went on, with a curious smile: “He was fifty-seven years old. When he died he was half-way through his eleventh book. It was to have been called ‘How to Live to Three-Score-Years-and-Ten.’ All about eating nuts and keeping the bedroom windows open at nights, you know.”
He wondered if he were expected to laugh.
He stammered, after a bewildered pause: “How is all this going to affect you?—Will you leave Millstead?”
She replied, with a touch in her voice of what he thought might have been mockery: “My father foresaw the plight I might be in some day and thoughtfully left me his counsel on the subject. Perhaps you’d like me to read it?”
She went over to the bookcase and took down an edition-de-luxe copy of one of the Helping-Hand-Books.
“Here it is—’ How to Meet Difficulties’—Page 38—I’ll read the passage—it’s only a short one. ‘How is it that the greatest and noblest of men and women are those against whom Fate has set her most tremendous obstacles?—Simply that it is good for a man or a woman to fight, good to find paths fraught with dire perils and difficulties galore, good to accept the ringing challenge of the gods! Nay, I would almost go so far as to say: lucky is that boy or girl who is cast, forlorn and parentless upon the world at a tender age, for if there be greatness in him or her at all, it will be forced to show itself as surely as the warm suns of May compel each flower to put forth her bravest splendour!’…So now you know, Mr. Speed!”
She had read the passage as if declaiming to an audience. It was quite a typical extract from the works of the late Mr. Harrington: such phrases as ‘dire perils,’ ‘difficulties galore,’ and ringing challenge of the gods’ contained all that was most truly characteristic of the prose style of the Helping-Hand-Books.
Speed said, rather coldly: “Do you know what one would wonder, hearing you talk like this?”
“What?”
“One would wonder if you had any heart at all.”
Again the curious look came into her eyes and the note of asperity into her voice. “If I had, do you think I would let you see it, Mr. Speed?” she said.
They stared at each other almost defiantly for a moment; then, as if by mutual consent, allowed the conversation to wander into unimportant gossip about Millstead. Nor from those placid channels did it afterwards stray away. Hostility of a kind persisted between them more patently than ever; yet, in a curiously instinctive way, they shook hands when they separated as if they were staunch friends.
As he stepped out into High Street the thought of Helen came to him as a shaft of sunlight round the edges of a dark cloud.
VI
Term finished in a scurry of House-matches and examinations. School House won the cricket trophy and there was a celebratory dinner at which Speed accompanied songs and made a nervously witty speech and was vociferously applauded. “We all know we’re the best House,” said Clanwell, emphatically, “and what we’ve got to do is just to prove to other people that we are.” Speed said: “I’ve only been in School House a term, but it’s been long enough time for me to be glad I’m where I am and not in any other House.” (Cheers.) Amidst such jingoist insincerities a very pleasant evening romped its way to a close. The following day, the last day of term, was nearly as full of new experiences as had been the first day. School House yard was full of boxes and trunks waiting to be collected by the railway carriers, and in amongst it all, small boys wandered forlornly, secretly happy yet weak with the cumulative passion of ant
icipation. In the evening there was the farewell dinner in the dining-hall, the distribution of the terminal magazine, and the end-of-term concert, this last concluding with the Millstead School-Song, the work of an uninspired composer in one of his most uninspired moments. Then, towards ten o’clock in the evening, a short service in chapel, followed by a “rag” on the school quadrangle, brought the long last day to a close. Cheers were shouted for the Masters, for Doctor and Mrs. Ervine, for those leaving, and (facetiously) for the school porter. That night there was singing and rowdyism in the dormitories, but Speed did not interfere.