The Passionate Year (12 page)

“I didn’t know, sir.”

“He has reached the—um—the retiring age. As perhaps you know,
Mr. Speed, Lavery belonged to the—um—old school. In many ways, I
think, the old methods were best, but, of course, one has to keep up with the
times. I am quite certain that the Governors will look favourably on a very
much younger man to be—um—Lavery’s successor. It would also be an
advantage if he were married.”

“Married!” echoed Speed.

“Yes. Married house masters are always preferred…Then, again, Mr. Speed,
we should want a public-school man…Of course, Lavery’s is a large House and
the position is not one to be—um—lightly undertaken. And, of
course, it is for the Governors to decide, in the last resort. But if you
think about it, Mr. Speed, and if you favour the idea, it will probably occur
to you that you stand a rather good chance. Of course it requires thinking
over a great deal. Urn, yes—decide nothing in a hurry…”

Speed’s mind, hazily receiving the gist of what the Head was saying, began
to execute a wild pirouette. He heard the Head’s voice droning on, but he did
not properly hear anything more that was said. He heard in snatches: “Of
course you would have to take up your new duties in—um,
yes—September…And for that purpose, you would get married during the
vacation…A great chance for your Mr. Speed…the Governors…very greatly
impressed with you at Speech Day…You would like Lavery’s…an excellent
House…Plenty of time to think it over, you know…Um, yes—plenty of
time…When did you say you were going home?”

Speed recovered himself so far as to answer: “Tuesday, sir.”

“Um, yes—delightful, that is—you will be able to dine with us
to-morrow night then, no doubt?—Curious place, Millstead, when
everybody has gone away…Um, yes—extremely delightful…Think it over
very carefully, Mr. Speed…we dine at seven-thirty during the vacations,
remember…Good night, then, Mr. Speed…Um, yes—Good night!”

Speed staggered out as if intoxicated.

That was why, hearing the singing and shouting in the
dormitories that night, Speed did not interfere. With happiness surging all
around him how could he have the heart to curtail the happiness of
others?-About half-past ten he went round distributing journey-money, and to
each dormitory in turn he said farewell and wished a pleasant vacation. The
juniors were scampering over one another’s beds and pelting one another with
pillows. Speed said merely: “If I were you fellows I should get to sleep
pretty soon: Hartopp will ring the bells at six, you know.”

Then he went back into his own room, his room that would not be his any
more, for next term he would be in Lavery’s. Noisy and insincere as had been
his protestations at the House Dinner about the superiority of School House
over any other, there was yet a sense in which he felt deeply sorry to leave
the place where he had been so happy and successful. He looked back in memory
to that first evening of term, and remembered his first impression of the
room assigned to him; then it had seemed to him lonely, forlorn, even a
little dingy. Hardly a trace of that earliest aspect remained with it now. At
eleven o’clock on the last night of term it glowed with the warmth of a
friendly heart; it held out loving arms that made Speed, even amidst his joy,
piteously sorry to leave it. The empty firegrate, in which he had never seen
a fire, lured him with the vision of all the cosy winter nights that he had
missed.

Outside it was moonlight again, as when, a month before, he had waited by
the pavilion steps on the evening of the Speech Day. From his open
lattice-window he could see the silver tide lapping against the walls and
trees, the pale sea of the pitch on which there would be no more cricket, the
roof and turret of the pavilion gleaming with liquid radiance. I All was soft
and silent, glossy beneath the high moon. It was as if everything had endured
agelessly, as if the passing of a term were no more than the half-heard tick
of a clock in the life of Millstead.

Leaning out of the window he heard a voice, boyish and sudden, in the
junior dormitory below.

“I say, Bennett, are you going by the eight-twenty-two?”

An answer came indistinguishably, and then the curt command of the prefect
imposing silence, silence which, reigned over by the moon and the sky of
stars, lasted through the short summer night until dawn.

He breakfasted with Helen upon the first morning of the
winter term, inaptly named because winter does not begin until the term is
over. They had returned the evening before from a month’s holiday in Cornwall
and now they were making themselves a little self-consciously at home in the
first-floor rooms that had been assigned to them in Lavery’s. The room in
which they breakfasted overlooked the main quadrangle; the silver coffeepot
on the table shimmered in the rays of the late summer sun.

Midway through the meal Burton, the porter at Lavery’s, tapped at the door
and brought in the letters and the
Daily Telegraph
.

Speed said: “Hullo, that’s luck!-I was thinking I should have to run down
the town to get my paper this morning.”

Burton replied, with a hint of reproach in his voice: “No, sir. It was
sent up from Harrington’s as usual, sir. They always begin on the first day
of term, sir.”

Speed nodded, curiously conscious of a thrill at the mention of the name
Harrington. Something made him suddenly nervous, so that he said,
boisterously, as if determined to show Burton at all costs that he was not
afraid of him: “Oh, by the way, Burton, you might shut that window a little,
will you?-there’s a draught.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Burton, again with a hint of subdued reproachfulness
in his tone. While he was shutting the window, moving about very softly and
stealthily himself yet making a tremendous noise with everything that had to
be done with his large clumsy hands, it was necessary for Speed and Helen to
converse on casual and ordinary subjects.

Speed said: “I should think the ground’s far too hard for rugger,
Helen.”

She answered, sombrely: “Yes, I daresay it is. It’s really summer still,
isn’t it?—And I’m so glad. I hate the winters.”

“You hate the winters, eh?—Why’s that?”

“It’s so cold, and the pitches are all muddy, and there are horrid
locks-up after dark. Oh, I hate Millstead in winter-time.”

He said, musingly: “We must have big fires when the cold weather comes,
anyway.”

Then Burton departed, closing the door very delicately after him, and the
conversation languished. Speed glanced vaguely through his correspondence. He
was ever so slightly nervous. That month’s honeymoon in Cornwall had passed
like a rapt and cloudless vision, but ever beyond the horizon of it had been
the thought of this return to Millstead for the winter term. How the return
to a place where he had been so happy and of which he had such wonderful
memories could have taken in his mind the semblance of an ordeal, was a
question that baffled him entirely. He felt strangely and unaccountably shy
of entering the Masters’ Common-Room again, of meeting Clanwell and Ransome
and Pritchard and the rest, of seeing once again all the well-‘known faces of
the boys whose summer vacations had been spent so much less eventfully than
his. And yet, as he sat at the breakfast-table and saw Helen opposite him, a
strange warming happiness surged up within him and made him long for the
initial ordeal to be over so that he could pass on to the pure and wonderful
life ahead, that life in which Helen and Millstead would reign jointly and
magnificently. Surely he could call himself blessed with the most amazing
good fortune, to be happily married at the age of twenty-three and installed
in just the position which, more than any other in the world, he had always
coveted!—Consciousness of his supreme happiness made him quicken with
the richest and most rapturous enthusiasm; he would, he decided in a sudden
blinding moment, make Lavery’s the finest of all the houses at Millstead; he
would develop alike the work and the games and the moral tone until the fame
of Lavery’s spread far beyond its local boundaries and actually enhanced the
reputation of Millstead itself. Such achievements were not, he knew, beyond
the possibilities of an energetic housemaster, and he, young and full of
enthusiasms, would be a living fount of energy. All the proud glory of life
was before him, and in the fullness of that life there was nothing that he
might not do if he chose.

All that day he was at the mercy alternately of his tumultuous dreams of
the future and of a presaging nervousness of the imminent ordeals. In the
morning he was occupied chiefly with clerical work, but in the afternoon,
pleading a few errands in town, he took his bicycle out of the shed and
promised Helen that he would not be gone longer than an hour or so. He felt a
little sad to leave her, because he knew that with the very least
encouragement she would have offered to come with him. Somehow, he would not
have been pleased for her to do that; he felt acutely self-conscious, vaguely
yet miserably apprehensive of trials, that were in wait for him. In a few
days, of course, everything would be all right.

He did not cycle into the town, but along the winding Millstead lane that
led, away from the houses and into the uplands around Parminters. The sun,
was glorious and warm, and the trees of that deep and heavy green that had
not, so far, more than the faintest of autumnal tints in it. Along the lane
twisting into the cleft of Par-minters, memories assailed him at every yard.
He had been so happy here—and here—and here; here he had laughed
loudly at something she had said; here she had made one of her childish yet
incomparably wise remarks. Those old serene days, those splendid flaming
afternoons of the summer term, had been so sweet and exquisite and I
fragrantly memorable to him that he could not forbear to wonder if anything
could ever be so lovely again.

Deep down beneath all the self-consciousness and apprehension and morbid
researching of the past, he knew that he was richly and abundantly happy. He
knew that she was still a child in his own mind; that life with her was
dream-like as had been the rapt anticipation of it; that the dream, so far
from marriage dispelling it, was enhanced by all the kindling intimacies that
swung them both, as it were, into the same ethereal orbit.

When he thought about it he came to the conclusion that their marriage
must be the most wonderful marriage in the world. She was a child, a strange,
winsome fairy-child, streaked with the most fitful and sombre passion that he
had ever known. Nobody, perhaps, would guess that he and she were man and
wife. The thought gratified his sense of the singularity of what had
happened. At the Cornish hotel where they had stayed he had fancied that
their identity as a honeymoon couple had not been guessed at all; he had
thought, with many an inward chuckle, that people were supposing them to be
mysteriously and romantically unwedded.

Time passed so slowly on that first day of the winter term. He rode back
at the end of the afternoon with the wind behind him, swinging him in through
the main gateway where he could see the windows of Lavery’s pink in the rays
of the setting sun. Lavery’s!—Lavery’s!—Throughout the day he had
found himself repeating the name constantly, until the syllables lost all
shred of meaning. Lavery’s!—Lav-er-izz…The sounds boomed in his ears
as he entered the tiny drawing-room in which Helen was waiting for him with
the tea almost ready. Tea time!—In a few hours the great machine of
Millstead would have begun to pound its inexorable way. He felt, listening to
the chiming of the quarters, as if he were standing in the engine-room of an
ocean liner, watching the mighty shafts, now silent and motionless, that
would so soon begin their solemn crashing movement.

But that evening, about eleven o’clock, all his fears and shynesses were
over, and he felt the most deeply contented man in the world. A fire was
flickering a cheerful glow over the tiny drawing-room; Helen had complained
of chilliness so he had told Burton to light it. He was glad now that this
had been done, for it enabled him to grapple with his dreams more
comfortably. Helen sat in an armchair opposite to him on the other side of
the fire; she was leaning forward with her head on her hands, so that the
firelight shone wonderfully on her hair. He looked at her from time to time,
magnificently in love with her, and always amazed that she belonged to
him.

The long day of ordeals had passed by. He had dined that evening in the
Masters’ Common-Room, and everybody there had pressed round him in a chorus
of eager congratulation. Afterwards he had toured his House, introducing
himself to those of the prefects whom he had not already met, and strolling
round the dormitories to shake hands informally with the rank and file. Then
he had interviewed new boys (there were nineteen of them), and had
distributed a few words of pastoral advice, concluding with the strict
injunction that if they made tea in the basements they were on no account to
throw the slops down the waste-pipes of the baths. Lastly of all, he had put
his head inside each of the dormitories, at about half-past ten, to bestow a
brisk but genial good night.

So now, at eleven o’clock, rooted at last in everything that he most loved
in the world, he could pause to gloat over his happiness. Here, in the snug
firelit room, secret and rich with warm shadows; and there, down the short
corridor into the bleak emptiness of the classrooms, was everything that his
heart desired: Helen and Millstead: the two deities that held passionate sway
over him.—Eleven began to chime on the school clock. The dormitories
above were almost silent. She did not I speak, did not look up once from the
redness of the fire; she was often like that, silent with thoughts whose
nature he could guess from the dark, tossing passion that shook her sometimes
when, in the midst of such silences, she suddenly clung to him. She loved him
more than ever he could have imagined: that, more perhaps than anything else,
had been the surprise of that month in Cornwall.