The Passionate Year (11 page)

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.

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 anticipation. 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.

He was ecstatically happy. His first term had been a triumph. And,
fittingly enough, it had ended with the greatest triumph of all. Ever since
Helen had told him of her confession to her father, Speed had been making up
his mind to visit the Head and formally put the matter before him. That
night, the last night of the summer term, after the service in chapel, when
the term, so far as the Head was concerned with it, was finished, Speed had
tapped at the door of the Head’s study.

Once again the sight of that study, yellowly luminous in the incandescent
glow, set up in him a sensation of sinister attraction, as if the room were
full of melancholy ghosts. The Head was still in his surplice, swirling his
arms about the writing-table in an endeavour to find some mislaid paper. The
rows upon rows of shining leather-bound volumes, somebody on the Synoptic
Gospels, somebody else’s New Testament Commentary, seemed to surround him and
enfold him like a protective rampart. The cool air of the summer night
floated in through the slit of open window and blew the gas-light fitfully
high and low. Speed thought, as he entered the room and saw the Head’s
shining bald head bowed over the writing-table: Here you have been for
goodness knows how many years and terms, and now has come the end of another
one. Don’t you feel any emotion in it at all?—You are getting to be an
old man: can you bear to think of the day you first entered this old room and
placed those books on the shelves instead of those that belonged to your
predecessor?—Can you bear to think of all the generations that have
passed by, all the boys, now men, who have stared at you inside this very
room, while time, which bore them away in a happy tide, has left you for ever
stranded?—Why I, even I, can feel, after the first term, something of
that poignant melancholy which, if I were in your place, would overwhelm me.
Don’t you—can’t you—feel anything at all?—

The Head looked up, observed Speed, and said: “Um, yes—pleased to
see you, Mr. Speed-have you come to say good-bye—catching an early
train to-morrow, perhaps—um, yes-eh?”

“No, sir. I wanted to speak to you on a private matter. Can you spare me a
few moments?”

“Oh yes, most certainly. Not perhaps the—um—usual time for
seeing me, but still—that is no matter. I shall be—um—happy
to talk with you, Mr. Speed.”

Speed cleared his throat, shifted from one foot to another, and began,
rather loudly, as always when he was nervous: “Miss Ervine, sir, I believe,
spoke to you some while ago about—about herself and me, sir.”

The Head placed the tips of his fingers together and leaned back in his
chair.

“That is so, Mr. Speed.”

“I—I have been meaning to come and see you about it for some time. I
hope—I hope you didn’t think there was anything underhand in my not
seeing you?”

The Head temporised suavely: “Well-um, yes—perhaps my curiosity did
not go so—um—so far as that. When you return to your room, Mr.
Speed, you will find there an—um—a note from me, requesting you
to see me to-morrow morning. I take it you have not seen that note?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Ah, I see. I supposed when you entered that you were catching an early
train in the morning and were—um—purposing to see me to-night
instead…No matter. You will understand why I wished to see you, no
doubt.”

“Possibly the same reason that I wished to see you.”

“Ah, yes—possibly. Possibly. You have
been-um—quite—um—speedy—in—um—pressing
forward your suit with my daughter. Um, yes—
very
speedy, I
think…Speedy—Ha—Ha—um, yes—the play upon words was
quite accidental, I assure you.”

Speed, with a wan smile, declared: “I daresay I am to blame for not having
mentioned it to you before now. I decided—I scarcely know why—to
wait until term was over…I—I love your daughter, and I believe she
loves me. That’s all there is to say, I think.”

“Indeed, Mr. Speed?—It must be a very—um—simple matter
then.”

Speed laughed, recovering his assurance now that he had made his principal
statement. “I am aware that there are complexities, sir.”

The Head played an imaginary tune on his desk with his outstretched
fingers. “You must—um—listen to me for a little while, Mr. Speed.
We like you very much—I will begin, perhaps unwisely, by telling you
that. You have been all that we could have desired during this last
term-given-um—every satisfaction, indeed. Naturally, I think too of my
daughter’s feelings. She is, as you say, extremely-um-fond of you, and on you
depends to a quite considerable extent her—um—happiness. We could
not therefore, my wife and I, refuse to give the matter our very careful
consideration. Now I must—um—cross-examine you a little. You wish
to marry my daughter, is that not so?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

The Head flung out the question with disconcerting suddenness.

Speed, momentarily unbalanced, paused, recovered himself, and said wisely:
“When I can afford to, sir. As soon as I can afford to. You know my salary
and prospects, sir, and are the best judge of how soon I shall be able to
give your daughter the comforts to which she has been accustomed.”

“A clever reply, Mr. Speed. Um, yes—extremely clever. I gather that
you are quite convinced that you will be happy with my daughter?”

“I am quite convinced, sir.”

“Then money is the only difficulty. What a troublesome thing money is, Mr.
Speed!-May I ask you whether you have yet consulted your own parents on the
matter?”

“I have not done so yet. I wanted your reply first.”

“I see. And what—um—do you anticipate will be
their
reply?”

Speed was silent for a moment and then said: “I cannot pretend that I
think they will be enthusiastic. They have never agreed with my actions. But
they have the sense to realise that I am old enough to do as I choose,
especially in such a matter as marriage. They certainly wouldn’t quarrel With
me over it.”

The Head stared fixedly at Speed for some while; then, with a soft,
crooning tone, began to speak. “Well, you know, Mr. Speed, you are very
young-only twenty-two, I believe.”—(Speed interjected: “Twenty-three
next month, sir.”)—The Head proceeded: “Twenty-three, then.
It’s—um—it’s rather young for marriage. However, I am—um,
yes—inclined to agree with Professor Potts that one of
the—um—curses of our modern civilisation is that it pushes
the—um—marriageable age too late for the educated man.” (And who
the devil, thought Speed, is Professor Potts?)…“Now it so happens, Mr.
Speed, that this little problem of ours can be settled in a way which is
satisfactory to myself and to the school, and which I think will be equally
satisfactory to yourself and my daughter. I don’t know whether you know that
Lavery leaves this term?”