The Passionate Year (14 page)

Speed answered, casually: “She doesn’t, as a rule. But she knows I’m
interested in architecture—I expect that’s why she sent me all these
snaps. There’s one here of…” he picked them up and glanced through
them…“of Chartres Cathedral…the belfry at Bruges…some street in
Rouen…They’re rather good—have a look at them!”

She examined them at first suspiciously, then with critical intensity. And
finally she handed them back to him without remark.

One dark dusk in November that was full of wind and fine
rain Speed stood up at his drawing-room window to pull down the blind. But
before doing so he gazed out at the dreary twilight and saw the bare trees
black and terrible beyond the quadrangle and the winking lights of Milner’s
across the way. He had seen all of it so many times before, had lived amongst
it, so it now seemed to him, for ages; yet to-night there was something in it
that he had never seen before: a sort of sadness that was abroad in the
world. He heard the wind screaming through the sodden trees and the branches
creaking, the raindrops splashing on the ivy underneath the window: it seemed
to him that Millstead was full that night of beautiful sorrow, and that it
came over the dark quadrangle to him with open arms, drenching all Lavery’s
in wild and forlorn pathos.

He let the blind fall gently in front of his rapt eyes while the yellow
lamplight took on a richer, serener tinge. Those few weeks of occupation had
made the room quite different; its walls were now crowded with prints and
etchings; there was a sideboard, dull-glowing and huge for the size of the
room, on which silver and pewter and cut glass glinted in tranquillity.
Across one corner, a baby-grand piano sprawled its sleek body like a drowsily
basking sea-lion, and opposite, in the wall at right angles to the window, a
large fire lulled itself into red contentment with flames that had hardly
breath for an instant’s flicker. But Speed left the window and stirred the
coals into yellow riot that lit his face with tingling, delicious half-tones.
In the firelight he seemed very tall and young-looking, with dark-brown,
straggling hair, brown, eager eyes that were almost black, and a queer,
sad-lipped mouth that looked for the present as if it would laugh and cry in
the same way. A leather-seated stool stood by the fireside, and he dragged it
in front of the open flames and sat with his chin resting solemnly on his
slim, long-fingered hands.

It was a Wednesday and Helen had gone with her mother to visit some
friends in the town and would not be back until, perhaps, dinner-time. It was
almost four o’clock, and that hour, or at any rate, a few seconds or minutes
afterwards, three youngsters would be coming to tea. Their names were
Felling, Fyfield, and Graham. All were Juniors, as it happened, and they
would be frightfully nervous, and assuredly would not know when to
depart.

Speed, liking them well enough, but feeling morbid for some reason or
other, pictured them plastering their hair down and scrambling into their
Sunday jackets in readiness for the ordeal. Poor little kids! he thought, and
he almost longed to rush into the cold dormitories where they were preparing
themselves and say: “Look here, Felling, Fyfield and Graham—you needn’t
come to tea with me this afternoon—you’re excused!”

The hour of four boomed into the wind and rain outside. Speed looked round
to see if Burton had set the correct number of cups, saucers and plates, and
had obtained a sufficient quantity of cake and fancy pastry from the
tuck-shop. After all, he ought to offer them some compensation for having to
come to tea with him.

Tap at the door. “Come in…Ah, that you, Felling…and you, Graham…I
expect Fyfield will be here in a minute…Sit down, will you?…Take that
easy-chair, Felling…Isn’t it depressing weather?…I suppose you saw the
game against Oversham? That last try of Marshall’s was a particularly fine
one, I thought…Come in…Ah, here you are, Fyfield: now we can get busy
with the tea, can’t we?…How’s the Junior Debating Society going, Fyfield?”
(Fyfield was secretary of it.) “I must come round to one of your meetings, if
you’ll promise to do exactly as you would if I weren’t there…Come in…You
might bring me some more hot water, Burton…By the way, Graham,
congratulations on last Saturday’s match: I didn’t see it, but I’m told you
did rather well.”

And so on. They were nice boys, all three of them, but they were nervous.
They answered in monosyllables or else embarked upon tortuous sentences which
became finally embedded in meringues and chocolate
éclairs
. Felling,
in particular, was overawed, for he was a new boy that term and had only just
emerged from six weeks in the sanatorium with whooping-cough. Virtually, this
was his first week at school.

In the midst of the ponderously jocular, artificially sustained
conversation a knock came on the door. Speed shouted out “Come in,” as usual.
The door opened and somebody came in. Speed could not see who it was. He
thought it must be a boy and turned back the red lampshade so that the rays,
nakedly yellow, glanced upwards. Then he saw Clare.

She was dressed in a long flowing mackintosh which had
something in it reminiscent still of the swirl of wind and rain. She came
forward very simply, held out her hand to Speed, and said: “How are you, Mr.
Speed? I thought perhaps I should find Helen in.”

He said, overmastering his astonishment: “Helen’s out somewhere with Mrs.
Ervine…I’m quite well. How—how are you?”

“Quite as well as you are,” she said, laughing. “Tell Helen I’ll call
round some other time, then, will you?—I mustn’t interrupt your
tea-party.”

That made him say: “Indeed you’re not doing that at all. Won’t you stay
and have a cup of tea? Surely you won’t go back into the rain so soon! Let me
introduce you—this is Felling…Miss Harrington…and this is
Fyfield…and Graham…”

What on earth had made him do that? He wondered, as he saw the boys
shaking hands with her so stiffly and nervously; what was possessing him?
Yet, accepting his invitation calmly and decisively, she sat down in the
midst of them as soon as she had taken off her wet mackintosh, and appeared
perfectly comfortable and at home. Speed busied himself in obtaining a cup of
tea for her, and by the time he had at last succeeded he heard her talking in
the most amazing way to Graham, and, which was more, Graham was answering her
as if they had known each other for weeks. She had somehow found out that
Graham’s home was in Perth, and they were indulging in an eager, if rather
vacuous, exchange of “Do-you-know’s.” Then quite suddenly she was managing to
include Fyfield in the conversation, and in a little while after that Felling
demonstrated both his present cordiality and his former absent-mindedness by
calling her “Mrs. Speed.” She said, with perfect calmness and without so much
as the faintest suggestion in her voice of any but the mere literal meaning
of her words: “I’m not Mrs. Speed; I’m Miss Harrington.”

Speed had hardly anything to do with the talk at all. He kept supplying
the participators with fuel in the way of cakes and
éclairs
, but he
was content to leave the rest of the management in Clare’s hands. She paid
little attention to him, reserving most of her conversation for the three
boys. The chatter developed into a gossip that was easy, yet perfectly
respectful; Speed, putting in his word or two occasionally, was astonished at
the miracle that was being performed under his eyes. Who could have believed
that Felling, Fyfield and Graham could ever be induced to talk like that in
their house-master’s drawing-room? Of course, a man couldn’t do it at all, he
thought, in self-defence: it was a woman’s miracle entirely.

The school-clock began the chime of five, and five was the hour when it
was generally considered that housemasterly teas were due to finish. Speed
waited till ten minutes past and then interjected during a pause in the
conversation: “Well, I’m sorry you can’t stay any longer…”

The three boys rose, thankful for the hint although the affair had turned
out to be not quite such an ordeal as they had expected. After hand-shaking
with Clare they backed awkwardly out of the room followed by Speed’s brisk
“Good night.”

When they had gone Clare cried, laughing: “Oh, fancy getting rid of them
like that, Mr. Speed!—I should be insulted if you tried it on with
me.”

Speed said: “It’s the best way with boys, Miss Harrington. They don’t like
to say they must go themselves, and they’d feel hurt if you told them to go
outright. Really they’re immensely grateful for a plain hint.”

Now that he was alone in the room with her he began to feel nervous in a
very peculiar and exciting way; as if something unimaginably strange were
surely going to happen. Outside, the wind and rain seemed suddenly to grow
loud, louder, terrifically loud; a strong whiff of air came down the chimney
and blew smoke into the room. All around, everywhere, there were noises,
clumping of feet on the floor above, chatter and shouting in the corridors,
the distant jangle of pianos in the practice-rooms; and yet, in a deep
significant sense, it was as if he and Clare were quite alone amidst the wind
and rain. He poked the fire with a gesture that was almost irritable; the
flames prodded into the red-tinted gloom and revealed Clare perfectly serene
and imperturbable. Evidently nothing was going to happen at all. He looked at
her with keen quickness, thinking amazedly: And, by the way, what
could
have happened?

“How is Helen?” she asked.

He answered: “Oh, she’s quite well. Very well, in fact.”

“And I suppose you are, also.”

“I look it, don’t I?”

She said, after a pause: “And quite happy, of course.”

He started, kicked the fender with a clatter that, for the moment,
frightened him, and exclaimed: “Happy! Did you mean am
I
happy?”

“Yes.”

He did not answer immediately. He gave the question careful and scrupulous
weighing-up. He thought deliberately and calculatingly of Helen, pictured her
in his mind, saw her sitting opposite to him in the chair where Felling had
sat, saw her and her hair lit with the glow of the fire, her blue eyes
sparkling; then, for a while, he listened to her, heard her rich, sombre
whisper piercing the gloom; lastly, as if sight and hearing were not evidence
enough, he brought her close to him, so that his hands could touch her. He
said then, with deep certainty: “Yes, I’m happy.”

“That’s fine,” she replied. “Now tell me how you’re getting on with
Lavery’s?”

He chatted to her for a while about the House, communicating to her
something of his enthusiasm but not touching upon any of his difficulties.
Then he asked her what she had been doing in France. She replied: “Combining
business with pleasure.”

“How?”

“Well, you see, first of all I bought back from my father’s publishers all
transcription rights. (They’d never used them themselves.) Then, with the
help of a French friend, I translated one or two of the Helping-Hand-Books
into French and placed them with a Paris agent. Business, you see. He
disposed of them fairly advantageously, and on part of the proceeds I treated
myself to a holiday. I had an excellent time. Now I’ve come back to Millstead
to translate a few more of my father’s books.”

“But you’re continuing to run the shop, I suppose?”

“I’ve brought over my French friend to do that for me. She’s a clever girl
with plenty of brains and no money. She speaks English perfectly. In the
daytime she’ll do most of the shop-work for me and she’ll always be handy to
help me with translations. You must meet her—you’ll find her most
outrageously un-English.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that she’s not sentimental.”

By the time that he had digested that a tap came at the door.

“That’s Helen!” said Speed, joyously, recognising the quiet double rap. He
felt delightfully eager to see the meeting of the two friends. Helen entered.
Clare rose. Speed cried, like an excited youngster: “Helen, we’ve got a
visitor. Who do you think it is?”

Helen replied, puzzled: “I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Clare!” he cried, with boisterous enthusiasm. “It’s Clare!”

Then he remembered that he had never called her Clare before; always it
had been Miss Harrington. And yet the name had come so easily and
effortlessly to his tongue!

Helen gasped: “Clare! Is it you, Clare?”

And Clare advanced through the shadows and kissed Helen very simply and
quietly. Again Speed felt that strange, presaging emotion of something about
to happen, of some train being laid for the future. The rain was now a
torrent, and the wind a great gale shrieking across the fenlands.

Helen said: “I’m drenched with rain—let me take my coat off.” After
a short pause she added: “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming, Clare?
If you had I could have stayed in for you.”

Speed was always inclined to drop out of conversations that
were proceeding well enough without him. In a few moments Helen and Clare
were chatting together exactly as if he had not been present. He did not
mind; he was rather glad, in fact, because it relieved him from the task of
mastering his nervousness. He felt too, what he always felt when Helen was
talking to another woman; a feeling that women as a sex were hostile to men,
and that when they were together there was a sort of secret freemasonry
between them which enforced a rigid and almost contemptuous attitude towards
the other sex. Nothing in Clare’s manner encouraged this belief, but Helen’s
side of the conversation was a distinct suggestion of it. Not that anything
said or discussed was inimical to him; merely that whenever the conversation
came near to a point at which he might naturally have begun to take part in
it, Helen seemed somehow to get hold of it by the neck and pull it out of his
reach. And Clare was quite impassive, allowing Helen to do just what she
liked. These were Speed’s perhaps exaggerated impressions as he sat very
uncomfortably in the armchair, almost frightened to move lest movement on his
part might be wrongly interpreted as irritation, fear, or boredom. When he
felt uncomfortable his discomfort was always added to by a usually groundless
fear that other people were noticing it and speculating as to its reason.