The Passionate Year (24 page)

He did not know how to begin; he wanted her to know how contrite he was,
yet he dared not tell her his suspicion. Oh, if she had only the tact to
treat him as if it had never happened, so that he in return could treat her
as if it had never happened, and the unhappy memory of it all be speedily
swept away! But he knew from the look on her that she could never do
that.

He walked up to the back of her chair, put his hand on her shoulder, and
said: “Helen!”

She shrugged her shoulders with a sudden gesture that made him take his
hand away. She made no answer.

He blundered after a pause: “Helen, I’m so sorry I’ve been rather hard on
you lately—it’s all been a mistake, and I promise—”

“You’ve been down to see Clare!” she interrupted him, with deadly
quietness, still watching the fire.

He started. Then he knew that he must lie, because he could never explain
to her the circumstances in a way that she would not think
unsatisfactory.

“Helen, I haven’t!” he ‘exclaimed, and his indignation sounded sincere,
perhaps because his motive in lying was a pure one.

She made no answer to that.

He went on, more fervently: “I didn’t see Clare, Helen! Whatever made you
think that?—I just went for a walk along the Deepersdale road—I
wanted some exercise, that was all!”

She laughed—an awful little coughing laugh.

“You went to see Clare,” she persisted, turning round and, for the first
time, looking him in the eyes. “I followed you, and I saw you go in Clare’s
house.”

“You did?” he exclaimed, turning suddenly pale.

“Yes. Now what have you got to say?”

He was, rather to his own surprise, quite furious with her for having
followed him. “I’ve simply got this to say,” he answered, hotly. “You’ve done
no good by following me. You’ve made me feel I can’t trust you, and you’ve
made yourself feel that you can’t trust me. You’ll never believe the true
explanation of why I went to Clare—you’ll go on suspecting all sorts of
impossible things-you’ll worry yourself to death over nothing—and as
for me—well, whenever I go out alone I shall wonder if you’re following
a few hundred yards behind!”

Then she said, still with the same tragic brooding quietness: “You needn’t
fear, Kenneth. I’ll never follow you. I didn’t follow you to-night. ‘I only
said I did. I found out what I wanted to find out just as well by that,
didn’t I?”

He was dazed. He had never guessed that she could be so diabolically
clever. He sank into a chair and shut his eyes, unable to speak. She went on,
without the slightest inflexion in the maddening level of her voice: “I’m
going to leave you, Kenneth. You want Clare, and I’m going to leave you to
her. I won’t have you when you want another woman.”

He buried his head in his hands and muttered, in a voice husky with
sobbing: “That’s not true, Helen. I don’t want Clare. I don’t want any other
woman. I only want you, Helen. Helen, you won’t leave me, will you? Promise
me you won’t leave me, Helen, Helen, don’t you—can’t you believe me
when I tell you I don’t want Clare?”

Still she reiterated, like some curious, solemn litany: “I’m going to
leave you, Kenneth. You don’t really want me. It’s Clare you want, not me.
You’ll be far happier with Clare. And I shall be far happier without you than
with you when you’re wanting Clare. I—I can’t bear you to want Clare,
Kenneth. I’d rather you—have her—than want her. So I’ve decided.
I’m not angry with you. I’m just determined, that’s all. I shall leave you
and then you’ll be free to do what you like.”

Somehow, a feeling of overwhelming tiredness overspread him, so that for a
short moment he felt almost inclined to acquiesce from mere lack of energy to
do anything else. He felt sick as he stared at her. Then a curiously detached
aloofness came into his attitude; he looked down on the situation a trifle
cynically and thought: How dramatic! Something in him wanted to laugh, and
something else in him wanted to cry; most of him wanted to kiss her and be
comfortable and go to sleep; and nothing at all of him wanted-to argue. He
wondered just then if such a moment ever came to her as it came to him; a
moment when he could have borne philosophically almost any blow, when all
human issues seemed engulfed in the passionate desire to be let alone.

Yet some part of him that was automatic continued the argument. He pleaded
with her, assured her of his deep and true love, poured infinite scorn on
Clare and his relations with her, held up to view a rosy future at Lavery’s
in which he would live with Helen as in one long, idyllic dream. And as he
sketched out this beautiful picture, his mind was ironically invaded by
another one, which he did not show her, but which he felt to be more true:
Lavery’s in deep winter-time, with the wind and rain howling round the walls
of it, and the bleak shivering corridors, and the desolation of the
afternoons, and the cramped hostility of the Masters’ Common-Room, and the
red-tinted drawing-room at night, all full of shadows and silence and tragic
monotony. And all the time he was picturing that in his mind he was telling
her of Lavery’s with the sun on it, and the jessamine, and the classrooms all
full of the sunlit air, and love, like a queen, reigning over it all. The
vision forced itself out; Helen saw it, but Speed could not. As he went on
pleading with her he became enthusiastic, but it was an artistic enthusiasm;
he was captivated by his own skill in persuasion. And whenever, for a moment,
this interest in his own artistry waned, there came on him afresh the feeling
of deep weariness, and a desire only to rest and sleep and be friends with
everybody.

At last he persuaded her. It had taken from nine o’clock until midnight.
He was utterly tired out when he had finished. Yet there seemed to be no
tiredness in her, only a happiness that she could now take and caress him as
her own. She could not understand how, now that they had made their
reconciliation, he should not be eager to cement it by endearments. Instead
of which he lit a cigarette and said that he was hungry.

While she busied herself preparing a small meal he found himself watching
her continually as she moved about the room, and wondering, in the calmest
and most aloof manner, whether he was really glad that he had won. Eventually
he decided that he was. She was his wife and he loved her. If they were
careful to avoid misunderstandings no doubt they would get along tolerably
well in the future. The future! The vision came to him again of the term that
was in front of him; a vision that was somehow frightening.

Yet, above all else, he was tired—dead tired.

The last thing she said to him that night was a soft, half-whimpered:
“Kenneth, I believe you
do
want Clare.”

He said sleepily, and without any fervour: “My dear, I assure you I
don’t.”

And he fell asleep wondering very vaguely what it would be like to want
Clare, and whether it would ever be possible for him to do so.

Term began on the Wednesday in the third week in
January.

Once again, the first few days were something of an ordeal. Constant
anticipations had filled Speed’s mind with apprehensions; he was full of
carefully excogitated glooms. Would the hostility of the Masters be more
venomous? Would the prefects of his own house attempt to undermine his
discipline? Would the rank and file try to “rag” him when he took preparation
in the Big Hall? Somehow, all his dreams of Millstead and of Lavery’s had
turned now to fears; he had slipped into the position when it would satisfy
him merely to avoid danger and crush hostility. No dreams now about Lavery’s
being the finest House in Millstead, and he the glorious and resplendent
captain of it; no vision now of scouring away the litter of mild corruptions
and abuses that hedged in Lavery’s on all sides; no hopes of a new world,
made clean and wholesome by his own influence upon it. All his desire was
that he should escape the pitfalls that were surrounding him, that he should,
somehow, live through the future without disaster to himself. Enthusiasm was
all gone. Those old days when he had plunged zestfully into all manner of new
things, up to his neck in happiness as well as in mistakes—those days
were over. His one aim now was not to make mistakes, and though he did not
know it, he cared for little else in the world.

That first night of term he played the beginning-of-term hymn in the
chapel.

“Lord, behold us with Thy blessing,
Once again assembled here…”

The words fell on his mind with a sense of heavy, unsurmountable gloom. He
looked into the mirror above his head and saw the choir-stalls and the front
rows of the pews; the curious gathering of Millsteadians in their
not-yet-discarded vacation finery; Millsteadians unwontedly sober; some,
perhaps, a little heart-sick. He saw Ervine’s back, as he read the lesson
from the lectern, and as he afterwards stood to pronounce the Benediction.
“The grace of God, which passeth—um—understanding, and
the—um—fellowship of the—um—the Holy Spirit…”

He hated that man.

He thought of the dark study and Potter and the drawing-room where he and
Helen had spent so many foolish hours during the summer term of the year
before.

Foolish
hours? Had he come to the point when he looked back with
scorn upon his courtship days? No, no; he withdrew the word “foolish.”

“…rest upon—um—all our hearts—now
and—um—for ever—um—Ah-men…I would—um,
yes—be glad—if the—um—the—the new boys this
term—would stay behind to see me—um, yes—to see me for a
moment…”

Yes, he hated that man.

He gathered his gown round him and descended the ladder into the vestry. A
little boy said “Good-evening, Mr. Speed,” and shook hands with him.
“Good-evening, Robinson,” he said, rather quietly. The boy went on: “I hope
you had a nice Christmas, sir.” Speed started, checked himself, and replied:
“Oh yes, very nice, thanks. And you too, I hope.”

“Oh yes, sir,” answered the boy. When he had gone Speed wondered if the
whole incident had been a subtle and ironical form of “ragging.” Cogitation
convinced him that it couldn’t have been; yet fear, always watching and ready
to pounce, would have made him think so. He felt really alarmed as he walked
back across the quadrangle to Lavery’s, alarmed, not about the Robinson
incident, which he could see was perfectly innocent, but because he was so
prone to these awful and ridiculous fears. If he went on suspecting where
there was no cause, and imagining where there was no reality, some day
Millstead would drive him mad.
Mad—yes, mad
. Two boys ran past
him quickly and he could see that they stopped afterwards to stare at him and
to hold some sort of a colloquy. What was that for? Was there anything
peculiar about him? He felt to see if his gown was on wrong side out: no,
that was all right. Then what did they stop for? Then he realised that he Was
actually speaking that sentence out aloud; he had said, as to some corporeal
companion:
What did they stop for
? Had he been gibbering like that all
the way across the quadrangle? Had the two boys heard him talking about going
mad? Good God, he hoped not! That would be terrible, terrible. He went in to
Lavery’s with the sweat standing out in globes on his forehead. And yet,
underfoot, the ground was beginning to be hard with frost.

Well, anyway, one thing was comforting; he was getting along much better
with Helen. They had not had any of those dreadful, pathetic scenes for over
a fortnight. His dreams of happiness were gone; it was enough if he succeeded
in staving off the misery. As he entered the drawing-room Helen ran forward
to meet him and kissed him fervently. “The first night of our new term,” she
said, but the mention only gave a leap to his anxieties. But he returned her
embrace, willing to extract what satisfaction he could from mere physical
passion.

An hour later he was dining in the Master’s Common-Room. He
would have avoided the ordeal but for the unwritten law which ordained that
even the housemasters should be present on the first night of term. Not that
there was anything ceremonial about the proceedings. Nothing happened that
did not always happen, except the handshaking and the disposition to talk
more volubly than usual. Potter arched his long mottled neck in between each
pair of diners in exactly the same manner as heretofore; there was the same
unchanged menu of vegetable soup, undercooked meat, and a very small tart on
a very large plate.

But to Speed it seemed indeed as if everything was changed. The room
seemed different; seemed darker, gloomier, more chronically insufferable;
Potter’s sibilant, cat-like stealthiness took on a degree of sinisterness
that made Speed long to fight him and knock him down, soup-plates and all;
the food tasted reminiscently of all the vaguely uncomfortable things he had
ever known. But it was in the faces of the men around him that he detected
the greatest change of all. He thought they were all hating him He caught
their eyes glancing upon him malevolently; he thought that when they spoke to
him it was with some subtle desire to insult him; he thought also, that when
they were silent it was because they were ignoring him deliberately. The mild
distaste he had had for some of them, right from the time of first meeting,
now flamed up into the most virulent and venomous of hatreds. And even
Clanwell, whom he had always liked exceedingly, he suspected ever so slightly
at first, though in a little while he liked him as much as ever, and more
perhaps, because he liked the others so little.

Pritchard he detested. Pritchard enquired about his holiday, how and where
he had spent it, and whether he had had a good time; also if Mrs. Speed were
quite well, and how had she liked the visit to Beachings Over. Somehow, the
news had spread that he had taken Helen to spend Christmas at his parents’
house. He wondered in what way, but felt too angry to enquire. Pritchard’s
questions stung him to silent, bottled-up fury; he answered in
monosyllables.