The Passionate Year (17 page)

“Well?” Her voice, irritatingly soft, just as his own was irritatingly
loud, contained a mixture of surprise and mockery. “And what if I have?”

He gripped the arms of the wicker-chair with his fists, causing a creaking
sound that seemed additionally to discompose him. “Helen, you can’t do it,
that’s all. You mustn’t. It won’t do…It…”

Suddenly she was talking at him, slowly and softly at first, then in a
rising, gathering, tempestuous torrent; her eyes, lit by the firelight,
blazed through the tears in them. “Can’t I? Mustn’t I? You say it won’t do?
You can go out whenever and wherever you like, you can go out to Clanwell’s
in the evening, you can walk down to the town with Clare, you can have
anybody you like in to tea, you choose your own friends, you live your own
life—and then you actually dare to tell me I can’t!—What is it to
you if I make a friend of Smallwood?—Haven’t I the right to make
friends without your permission?—Haven’t I the right to entertain
my
friends in here as much as you have the right to entertain
your
friends?—Kenneth, you think I’m a child, you call me a
child, you treat me as a child.
That’s
what won’t do. I’m a woman and
I won’t be domineered over. So now you know it.”

Her passion made him suddenly icily cool; he was no longer the least bit
nervous. He perceived, with calm intuition, that this was going to be their
first quarrel.

“In the first place,” he began quietly, “you must be fair to me. Surely,
it is not extraordinary that I should go up to see Clanwell once or twice
during the week. He’s a colleague and a friend. Secondly, walking down into
the town to see Clare home after rehearsals is a matter of common politeness,
which you, I think, asked me particularly to do. And as for asking people in
to tea, you have, as you say, as free a choice in that as I have, except when
you do something absolutely unwise. Helen, I’m serious. Don’t insist on this
argument becoming a quarrel. If it does, it will be our first quarrel,
remember?”

“You think you can move me by talking like that!”

“My dear, I think nothing of the sort. I simply do not want to quarrel. I
want you to see my point of view, and I’m equally anxious to see yours. With
regard to this Smallwood business, you must, if you think a little, realise
that in a place like Millstead you can’t behave absolutely without regard for
conventions. Smallwood, remember, is nearly your own age. You see what I
mean?”

“You mean that I’m not to be trusted with any man nearly my own age?”

“No, I don’t mean that. The thought that there could be anything in the
least discreditable in the friendship between Smallwood and you never once
crossed my mind. I know, of course, that it is perfectly honest and
aboveboard. Don’t please, put my attitude down to mere jealousy. I’m not in
the least jealous.”

What surprised him more than anything else in this amazing chain of
circumstances, was that he was sitting there talking to her so calmly and
deliberately, almost as if he were arguing an abstruse point in a court of
law! Of this new cold self that was suddenly to the front he had had no
former experience. And certainly it was true to say that at that moment there
was not in him an atom of jealousy.

She seemed to shrivel up beneath the coldness of his argument. She said,
doggedly: “I’m not going to give way, Kenneth.”

They both looked at each other then, quite calmly and subconsciously a
little awed, as if they could see suddenly the brink on which they were
standing.

“Helen, I don’t want to domineer over you at all. I want you to be as free
to do what you like as I am. But there are some things, which, for my sake
and for the sake of the position I hold here, you ought not to do. And having
Smallwood here alone when I am away is one of those things.”

“I don’t agree. I have as much right to make a friend of Smallwood as you
have to make a friend of—say Clare!”

The mention of Clare shifted him swiftly out of his cool, calculating mood
and back into the mood which had possessed him when he first came into the
room. “Not at all,” he replied sharply. “The cases are totally different.
Smallwood is a boy—a boy in my House. That makes all the
difference.”

“I don’t see that it makes any difference.”

“Good heavens, Helen!—You don’t see? Don’t you realise the sort of
talk that is getting about? Doesn’t it occur to you that Smallwood will
chatter about this all over the school and make out that he’s conducting a.
clandestine flirtation with you? Don’t you see how it will undermine all the
discipline of the House—will make people laugh at me when my back’s
turned—will—”

“And I’m to give up my freedom just to stop people from laughing at you,
am I?”

“Helen,
why
can’t you see my point of view? Would you like to see
me a failure at Lavery’s? Wouldn’t you feel hurt to hear everybody sniggering
about me?”

“I should feel hurt to think that you could only succeed at Lavery’s by
taking away my freedom.”

“Helen, marriage isn’t freedom, it’s partnership. I can’t do what I like.
Neither can you.”

“I can try, though.”

“Yes, and you can succeed in making my life at Millstead unendurable.”

She cried fiercely: “I won’t talk about it any longer, Kenneth. We don’t
agree and apparently we shan’t, however long we argue. I still think I’ve a
right to ask Smallwood in to tea if I want to.”

“And I still think you haven’t.”

“Very well, then”—with a laugh—“that’s a deadlock, isn’t
it?”

He stared at the fire silently for some moments, then rose, and came to
the back of her chair. Something in her attitude seemed to him blindingly,
achingly pathetic; the tears rushed to his eyes; he felt he had been cruel to
her. One part of him urged him to have pity on her, not to let her suffer, to
give way, at all costs, rather than bring shadows over her life; to appeal,
passionately and perhaps sentimentally, that she would, for his sake, if she
loved him, make his task at Lavery’s no harder than it need be. The other
part of him said: No, you have said what is perfectly fair and true; you have
nothing at all to apologise for. If you apologise you will only weaken your
position for ever afterwards.

In the end the two conflicting parts of him effected a compromise. He
said, good-humouredly, almost gaily, to her: “Yes, Helen, I’m afraid it is a
deadlock. But that’s no reason why it should be a quarrel. After all, we
ought to be able to disagree without quarrelling. Now, let’s allow the matter
to drop, eh? Eh, Helen? Smile at me, Helen!”

But instead of smiling, she burst into sudden passionate sobbing. Her head
dropped heavily into her hands and all her hair, loosened by the fall,
dispersed itself over her hands and cheeks in an attitude of terrific
despair. On Speed the effect of it was as that of a knife cutting him in two.
He could not bear to see her misery, evoked by something said or done,
however justifiably, by him; pity swelled over him in a warm, aching tide; he
stooped to her and put a hand hesitatingly on her shoulder. He was almost
afraid to touch her, and when, at the first sensation of his hand, she drew
away hurriedly, he crept back also as if he were terrified by her. Then
gradually he came near her again and told her, with his emotion making his
voice gruff, that he was sorry. He had treated her unkindly and oh—he
was
so
sorry. He could not bear to see her cry. It hurt him…Dear,
darling Helen, would she forgive him? If she would only forgive him she could
have Smallwood in to tea every day if she wished, and damn what anybody said
about it! Helen, Helen…

Yet the other part of him, submerged, perhaps, but by no means silent,
still urged: You haven’t treated her unkindly, and you know you haven’t. You
have nothing to apologise for at all. And if she does keep on inviting
Smallwood in you’ll have the same row with her again, sooner or later.

“Helen,
dear
Helen—do answer me!-Don’t cry like that—I
can’t bear it!—Answer me, Helen, answer me!”

Then she raised her head and put her arms out to him and kissed him with
fierce passion, so that she almost hurt his neck. Even then she did not, for
a moment, answer, but he did not mind, because he knew now that she had
forgiven him. And strangely enough, in that moment of passionate embrace,
there returned to him a feeling of crude, rudimentary jealousy; he felt that
for the future he would, as Clanwell had advised him, have to keep an eye on
her to make sure that none of this high, mountainous love escaped from within
the four walls of his own house. He felt suddenly greedy, physically greedy;
the thought, even instantly contradicted, of half-amorous episodes between
her and Smallwood affected him with an insurgent bitterness which made the
future heavy with foreboding.

She whispered to him that she had been very silly and that she wouldn’t
have Smallwood in again if he wished her not to.

Even amidst his joy at her submission, the word “silly” struck him as an
absurdly inadequate word to apply to her attitude.

He said, deliberately against his will: “Helen, darling, it was I who was
silly. Have Smallwood in as much as you like. I don’t want to interfere with
your happiness.”

He expected her then to protest that she had no real desire to have
Smallwood in, and when she failed to protest, he was disappointed. The fear
came to him that perhaps Smallwood did attract her, being so good-looking,
and that his granting her full permission to see him would give that
attraction a chance to develop. Jealousy once again stormed at him.

But how sweet the reconciliation, after all! For concentrated loveliness
nothing in his life could equal the magic of that first hour with her after
she had ceased crying. It was moonlight outside and about midnight they
leaned for a moment out of the window with the icy wind stinging their
cheeks. Millstead asleep in the pallor, took on the semblance of his own mood
and seemed tremulous with delight. Somewhere, too, amidst the dreaming
loveliness of the moon-washed roofs and turrets, there was a touch of
something that was just a little exquisitely sad, and that too, faint, yet
quite perceptible, was in his own mood.

There came the concert in the first week of December. No
one, not even those of the Common-Room who were least cordially disposed to
him, could deny that Speed had worked indefatigably and that his efforts
deserved success. Yet the success, merited though it was, was hardly likely
to increase his popularity among those inclined to be jealous of him.

Briskly energetic and full of high spirits throughout all the rehearsals;
and most energetic of all on the actual evening of the performance, he yet
felt, when all was over, and he knew that the affair had been a success, the
onrush of a wave of acute depression. He had, no doubt, been working too
hard, and this was the natural reaction of nerves. It was a cold night with
hardly any wind, and during the evening a thick fog had drifted up from the
fenlands, so that there was much excited talk among the visitors about the
difficulties of getting to their homes. Nothing was to be seen more than five
or six yards ahead, and there was the prospect that as the night advanced the
fog would become worse. The Millstead boys, enjoying the novelty, were
scampering across the forbidden quadrangle, revelling in the delightful risk
of being caught and in the still more delightful possibility of knocking
over, by accident, some one or other of the Masters. Speed, standing on the
top step of the flight leading down from the Big Hall, gazed into the dense
inky-black cloisters where two faint pin-pricks of light indicated lamps no
more than a few yards away. He felt acutely miserable, and he could not think
why. In a way, he was sorry that the bustle of rehearsals, to which he had
become quite accustomed, was all finished with; but surely that was hardly a
sufficient reason for feeling miserable? Hearing the boyish cries from across
the quadrangle he suddenly felt that he was old, and that he wished he were
young again, as young as the youngest of the boys at Millstead.

Since the quarrel about Smallwood he and Helen had got on tolerably well
together. She had not asked Smallwood in to tea again, and he judged that she
did not intend to, though to save her dignity she would still persist in her
right to do so whenever she wished. The arrangement was quite satisfactory to
him. But, despite the settlement of that affair, their relationship had
suddenly become a thing of fierce, alternating contrasts. They were either
terrifically happy or else desperately miserable. The atmosphere, when he
came into Lavery’s after an absence of even a quarter of an hour, might
either be dull and glowering or else radiant with joy. He could never guess
which it would be, and he could never discover reasons for whichever
atmosphere he encountered. But invariably he was forced into responding; if
Helen were moody and silent he also remained quiet, even if his inclinations
were to go to the piano and sing comic songs. And if Helen were bright and
joyful he forced himself to boisterousness, no matter what press of gravity
was upon him. He sometimes found himself stopping short on his own threshold,
frightened to enter lest Helen’s mood, vastly different from his own, might
drag him up or down too disconcertingly. Even their times of happiness, more
wonderful now than ever, were drug-like in possessing after-effects which
projected themselves backward in a tide of sweet melancholy that suffused
everything. He knew that he loved her more passionately than ever, and he
knew also that the beauty of it was mysteriously impregnated with
sadness.

She stole up to him now in the fog, dainty and pretty in her heavy fur
cloak. She put a hand on his sleeve; evidently this was one of her happy
moods.

“Oh, Kenneth—
what
a fog! Aren’t you glad everything’s all
over? It went off wonderfully, didn’t it? Do you think the Rayners will be
able to get home all right—they live out at Deepersdale, you know?”