The Passionate Year (15 page)

At six the bell rang for school tea in the dining-hall, and this was his
week to superintend that function. Most mercifully then he was permitted to
leave the red-glowing drawing-room and scamper across the rain-swept
quadrangle. “Sorry I must leave you,” he said, hastily, rising from his
chair. Helen said, as if her confirmation were essential before his words
could be believed: “It’s his week for reading grace, you know.”

“And after that I’ve got some youngsters with piano-lessons,” he said,
snatching up his gown and, in his nervousness, putting it on wrong side out.
“So I’ll say good-bye, Miss Harrington.”

He shook hands with her and escaped into the cold rain. It was over a
hundred yards to the dining-hall, and with the rain slanting down in
torrential gusts he was almost drenched during the few seconds’ run. Somehow,
the bare, bleak dining-hall, draughty and fireless and lit with flaring
gas-jets, seemed to him exhilaratingly cheerful as he gazed down upon it from
the Master’s rostrum at the end. He leaned his arms over the edge of the
lectern, watching the boys as they streamed in noisily, with muddy boots and
turned-up collars and wet ruddy cheeks. The long tables, loaded with smeared
jam-pots and towers of bread-slices and tins of fruit jaggedly opened,
seemed, in their teeming, careless ugliness, immensely real and joyous: there
was a simplicity too, an almost mathematical simplicity, in the photographs
of all the rugger fifteens and cricket and hockey elevens that adorned the
green-distempered walls. The photographs were complete for the last
thirty-eight years; therefore there would be four hundred and eighteen plus
four hundred and eighteen plus five hundred and seventy separate faces upon
the walls. Total: one thousand four hundred and six…Speed never thought of
it except when he stood on the rostrum waiting to read grace, and as he was
not good at mental arithmetic he always had a misgiving that he had
calculated wrongly, and so would go over it again multiplying with his brain
while his eyes were on the clock. And this evening his mind, once enslaved by
the numerical fascination of the photographs, obtained no release until a
stamping of feet at the far end of the hall awakened him to the realisation
that it was time he said grace. He had been dreaming. Silly of him to stand
there on the rostrum openly and obviously dreaming before the eyes of all
Millstead! He blushed slightly, smiled more slightly still, and gave the knob
of the hand-bell a vigorous punch. Clatter of forms and shuffling of feet as
all Millstead rose…“For these and all His Mercies the Lord’s name we
praise…” About the utterance of the word “mercies,” conversation,
prohibited before grace, began to murmur from one end of the room to the
other; the final “praise,” hardly audible even to Speed himself, was engulfed
in a mighty swelling of hundreds of unleashed voices, clumping of feet,
clattering of forms, banging of plates, shrill appeals for one thing and
another, and general pandemonium amidst which, Speed, picking his way amongst
the groups of servants, made his escape.

How strange was Millstead to-night, he thought, as he made his way along
the covered cloisters to the music-rooms. The rain had slackened somewhat,
but the wind was still high and shrieking; the floor of the cloisters, wet
from hundreds of muddy boots, shone greasily in the rays of the wind-blown
lamps. Over the darkness of the quadrangle he could see Lavery’s rising like
a tall cliff at the other side of an ocean; and the dull red square that was
the window of his own drawing-room. Had Clare gone?—Clare! It was
unfortunate, perhaps, that he had called her Clare in his excitement;
unfortunate because she might think he had done it deliberately with a view
to deepening the nature of their friendship. That was his only reason for
thinking it unfortunate.

Down in the dark vaults beneath the Big Hall, wherein the piano-rooms were
situated, he found Porritt Secundus waiting for him. Porritt was in Lavery’s,
and therefore Speed was more than ordinarily interested in him.

“Do you have to miss your tea in order to have a lesson at this hour?”
Speed asked, putting his hand in a friendly way on Porritt’s shoulder, as he
guided him through the gloomy corridor into the single room where a small
light was showing.

Porritt replied: “I didn’t to-day, sir. Smallwood asked me to tea with
him.”

Speed’s hand dropped from Porritt’s shoulder as if it had been shot away.
His imagination, fanned into sudden perceptivity, detected in the boy’s voice
a touch of—of what? Impertinence? Hardly, and yet surely a boy could be
impertinent without saying anything that was in itself impertinent…Porritt
had been to tea with Smallwood. And Smallwood was Speed’s inveterate enemy,
as the latter well knew. Was it possible that Smallwood was adopting a
methodical policy of setting the Juniors against him? Possibilities invaded
Speed’s mind in a scorching torrent. Moments afterwards, when he had regained
composure, it occurred to him that it was the habit of prefects to invite
their Juniors to tea occasionally, and that it was perfectly natural that
Porritt, so recently the guest of the Olympian Smallwood, should be eager to
tell people about it.

That night, sitting by the fire before bedtime, Helen said:
“Was Clare here a long time before I came in?”

Speed answered: “Not very long. She came while I was having three Juniors
to tea, and they stayed until after five…After they’d gone she told me
about her holiday in France.”

“She’s been bargaining over her father’s books in Paris, so she says.”

“Well, not exactly that. You see, Mr. Harrington’s publishers never
arranged for his books to be translated, so she bought the rights off them so
as to be able to arrange it herself.”

“I think it’s rather mean to go haggling about that sort of thing after
the man’s dead, don’t you? After all, if he’d wanted them to be translated,
surely he’d have done it himself while he was alive—don’t you think so?
Clare seems to be out to make as much money as she can without any thought
about what would have been her father’s wishes.”

“I confess,” replied Speed, slowly, “that it never struck me in that
light. Harrington had about as much business in him as a two-year-old, and if
he let himself be swindled right and left, surely that’s no reason why his
daughter should continue in the same way. Besides, she hasn’t much money and
it couldn’t have been her father’s wish that she should neglect chances of
getting some.”

“She has the shop.”

“It can’t be very profitable.”

“I daresay it won’t allow her to take holidays abroad, but that’s not to
say it won’t give her a decent living.”

“Of course,” said Speed, mildly, “I really don’t know anything about her
private affairs. You may be right in everything you say…It’s nearly eleven.
Shall we go to bed?”

“Soon,” she said, broodingly, gazing into the fire. She was silent for a
moment, and then said, slowly and deliberately: “Kenneth.”

“Yes, Helen?”

“Do you know—I—I—I don’t think I—I quite like
Clare—as much as I used to.”

“You don’t, Helen? Why not?”

“I don’t know why not. But it’s true…She—she makes me feel
frightened—somehow. I hope she doesn’t come here often. I—I don’t
think I shall ask her to. Do you—do you mind?”

“Mind, Helen? Why should I mind? If she frightens you she certainly shan’t
come again.” He added, with a fierceness which, somehow, did not strike him
as absurd: “I won’t let her. Helen—dear Helen, you’re unhappy about
something—tell me all about it?”

She cried vehemently: “Nothing—nothing—nothing!—Kenneth,
I want to learn things—will you teach me?—I’m a ridiculously
ignorant person, Kenneth, and some day I shall make you feel ashamed of me if
I don’t learn a few things more.
Will
you teach me?”

“My darling, I’ll teach you everything in the world. What shall we begin
with?”

“Geography. I was looking through some of the exercise-books you had to
mark. Do you know, I don’t know anything about exports and imports?”

“Neither did I until I had them to teach.”

“And you’ll teach me?”

“Yes. I’ll teach you anything you want to learn. But I don’t think we’ll
have our first lesson until to-morrow. Bedtime now, Helen.”

She flung her arms round his neck passionately, offered her lips to his
almost with abandonment, and cried, in the low, thrilling voice that seemed
so full of unspoken dreads and secrecies: “Oh,
Kenneth—Kenneth—you
do
love me, don’t you? You aren’t
tired of me? You aren’t even a little bit dlssatisfied, are you?”

He took her in his arms and kissed her more passionately than he had ever
done before. It seemed to him then that he did love her, more deeply than
anybody had loved anybody else since the world began, and that, so far from
his being the least bit dissatisfied with her, she was still guiding him into
fresh avenues of unexplored delight. She was the loveliest and most delicate
thing in the world.

The great event of the winter term was the concert in aid of
the local hospitals. It had taken place so many years in succession that it
had become institutional and thoroughly enmeshed in Millstead tradition. It
was held during the last week of the term in the Big Hall; the boys paid
half-a-crown each for admission (the sum was included in their terminal
bills), and outsiders, for whom there was a limited amount of accommodation,
five shillings. The sum was artfully designed to exclude shop assistants and
such-like from a function which was intended to be, in the strictest sense,
exclusive. Millstead, on this solemn annual occasion, arrayed itself for its
own pleasure and satisfaction; took a look at itself, so to say, in order to
reassure itself that another year of social perturbation had mercifully left
it entire. And by Millstead is meant, in the first instance, the School. The
Masters, for once, discarded their gowns and mortarboards and appeared in
resplendent evening-suits which, in some cases, were not used at all during
the rest of the year. Masters, retired and of immense age, rumbled up to the
main gateway in funereal four-wheelers and tottered to their seats beneath
the curious eyes of an age that knew them not. The wives of non-resident
Masters, like deep-sea fishes that rarely come to the surface, blinked their
pleased astonishment at finding everything, apparently, different from what
they had been led to expect. And certain half-mythical inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, doctors and colonels and captains and landed gentry, parked
themselves in the few front rows like curious social specimens on exhibition.
In every way the winter term concert at Millstead was a great affair,
rivalling in splendour even, the concentrated festivities of Speech Day.

Speed, in virtue of his position as music-master, found himself involved
in the scurry and turmoil of preparation. This concert, he decided, with his
customary enthusiasm, should be the best one that Millstead had had for many
a year. He would have introduced into it all sorts of innovations had he not
found, very soon after he began to try, that mysteriously rigid traditions
stood in the way. He was compelled, for instance, to open with the Millstead
School Song. Now the Millstead School Song had been likened by a witty though
irreverent Master to the funeral-march of a smoked haddock. It began with a
ferocious yell of “
Haec olim revocare
” and continued through yards of
uneuphonious Latin into a remorseless
clump-clump
of a chorus. Speed
believed that, even supposing the words were sacrosanct, that ought to be no
reason for the tune to be so, and suggested to the Head that some reputable
modern composer should be commissioned to write one. The Head, of course,
would not agree. “The tune, Mr. Speed, has-um, yes—associations. As a
newcomer you cannot be expected to feel them, but believe me, they
do—um, yes—they do most certainly exist. An old foundation, Mr.
Speed, and if you take away from us our—um—traditions, then
you—um—take away that which not enriches you and makes us, um,
yes—poor indeed.” And, with a glint of satisfaction at having made use
of a quotation rather aptly, the Head indicated that Speed must not depart
from the recognised routine.

Even without innovations, however, the concert demanded a great deal of
practising and rehearsal, and in this Speed had the rather hazy co-operation
of Raggs, the visiting organist. He it was who told Speed exactly what items
must, on no account, be omitted; and, who further informed him of items which
must on no account be included; these latter consisted chiefly of things
which Speed suggested himself. It was finally arranged, however, and the
programme submitted to and passed by the Head: there was to be a pianoforte
solo, a trio for piano, violin and ‘cello, a good, resounding song by the
choir, a quartet singing Christmas carols, and one or two “suitable” songs
from operas. The performers, where possible, were to be boys of the school,
but there were precedents for drawing on the services of outsiders when
necessary. Thus when it was found that the school orchestra lacked first
violins, Raggs gave Speed the names of several ladies and gentlemen in the
town who had on former occasions lent their services in this capacity. And
among these names was that of Miss Clare Harrington.

Speed, making his preparations about the middle of November, was in a
dilemma with this list of names. He knew that, for some reason or other,
Helen did not care for Clare’s company, and that if Clare were to take part,
not only in the concert itself, but in all the preceding rehearsals, she
would be brought almost inevitably into frequent contact with Helen. He
thought also that if he canvassed all the other people first, Clare might, if
she came to hear of it, think that he had treated her spitefully. In the end
he solved the difficulty by throwing the burden of selection on to Raggs and
undertaking in exchange some vastly more onerous task that Raggs was anxious
to get rid of. A few days later Raggs accosted Speed in the cloisters and
said: “I’ve got you a few first violins. Here’s their names and addresses on
this card. They’ll turn up to the next rehearsal if you’ll send them
word.”