The Passionate Year (34 page)

In the morning they brought his breakfast up to him in bed, and with it a
letter and a telegram. The chambermaid asked him dubiously if he were feeling
better and he replied: “Oh yes, much better, thanks.” Only vaguely could he
remember what had taken place during the night.

When the girl had gone and he had glanced at the handwriting on the
envelope, he had a sudden paralysing shock, for it was Helen’s!

The postmark was: “Seacliffe, 10.10 p.m.”

He tore open the envelope with slow and awful dread, and took out a single
sheet of Beach Hotel notepaper. Scribbled on it in pencil was just:

“DEAR KENNETH (“Dear” underlined),—Good-bye, darling.
I can’t bear you not to be happy. Forget me and don’t worry. They will think
it has been an accident, and you mustn’t tell them anything else. Leave
Millstead and take Clare away. Be happy with her.—Yours, HELEN.”
“P.S.—There’s one thing I’m sorry for. On the last night before we left
Millstead I said something about Clare and Pritchard. Darling, it was a
lie—I made it up because I couldn’t bear you to love Clare so much. I
don’t mind now. Forgive me.”

A moment later he was opening the telegram and reading:

“Shall arrive Seacliffe Station one fifteen meet me
Clare.”

It had been despatched from Millstead at nine-five that morning, evidently
as soon as the post office opened.

He ate no breakfast. It was a quarter past eleven and the sun was
streaming in through the window—the first spring day of the year. He
re-read the letter.

Strange that until then the thought that the catastrophe could have been
anything at all but accidental had never even remotely occurred to him Now it
came as a terrible revelation, hardly to be believed, even with proof; a
revelation of that utmost misery that had driven her to the sea. He had known
that she was not happy, but he had never guessed that she might be miserable
to death.

And what escape was there now from his own overwhelming guilt? She had
killed herself because he had not made her happy. Or else because she had not
been able to make him happy. Whichever it was, he was fearfully to blame. She
had killed herself to make room for that other woman who had taken all the
joy out of her life.

And at one-fifteen that other woman would arrive in Seacliffe.

In the darkest depths of his remorse he vowed that he would not meet her,
see her, or hold any communication with her ever again, so long as his life
lasted. He would hate her eternally, for Helen’s sake. He would dedicate his
life to the annihilation of her in his mind. Why was she coming? Did she
know? How
could
she know? He raved at her mentally, trying to involve
her in some share of his own deep treachery, for even the companionship of
guilt was at least companionship. The two of them—Clare and
himself—had murdered Helen. The two of them—together.
Together
. There was black magic in the intimacy that that word
implied—magic in the guilty secret that was between them, in the
passionate iniquity that was alluring even in its baseness!

He dressed hurriedly, and with his mind in a ferment, forgot his breakfast
till it was cold and then found it too unpalatable to eat. As he descended
the stairs and came into the hotel lobby he remarked to the proprietress:
“Oh, by the way, I must apologise for making a row last night. Fact is, my
nerves, you know…Rather upset…”

“Quite all right, Mr. Speed. I’m sure we all understand and sympathise
with you. If there’s any way we can help you, you know…Shall you be in to
lunch?”

“Lunch? Oh yes—er—I mean, no. No, I don’t think I
shall—not to-day. You see there are—er—arrangements to
make—er—arrangements, you know…”

He smiled, and with carefully simulated nonchalance, commenced to light a
cigarette! When he got outside the hotel he decided that it was absolutely
the wrong thing to have done. He flung the cigarette into the gutter. What
was the matter with him? Something,—something that made him, out of
very fear, do ridiculous and inappropriate things The same instinct, no
doubt, that always made him talk loudly when he was nervous. And then he
remembered that April morning of the year before, when he had first of all
entered the Headmaster’s study at Millstead; for then, through nervousness,
he had spoken loudly, almost aggressively, to disguise his embarrassment.
What a curious creature he was, and how curious people must think him.

He strolled round the town, bought a morning paper at the newsagent’s, and
pretended to be interested in the contents. Over him like a sultry shadow lay
the disagreeable paraphernalia of the immediate future: doctors, coroner,
inquest, lawyers, interviews with Doctor and Mrs. Ervine, and so on. It had
all to be gone through, but for the present he would try to forget it. The
turmoil of his own mind, that battle which was being waged within his inmost
self, that strife which no coroner would guess, those secrets which no
inquest would or could elicit; these were the things of greater import. In
the High Street, leading up from the Pierhead, he saw half a dozen stalwart
navvies swinging sledge-hammers into the concrete road-bed. He stopped,
ostensibly to wait for a tram, but really to watch them. He envied them,
passionately; envied their strength and animal simplicity; envied above all
their lack of education and ignorance of themselves, their happy blindness
along the path of life. He wished he could forget such things as Art and
Culture and Education, and could become as they, or as he imagined them to
be. Their lives were brimful of
real
things, things to be held and
touched—hammers and levers and slabs of concrete. With all their crude
joy and all their pain, simple and physical, their souls grew strong and
stark. He envied them with a passion that made him desist at last from the
sight of them, because it hurt.

The town-hall clock began the hour of noon, and that reminded him of
Clare, and of the overwhelming fact that she was at that moment in the train
hastening to Seacliffe. Was he thinking of her again? He went into a café and
ordered in desperation a pot of China tea and some bread and butter, as if
the mere routine of a meal would rid his mind of her. For desire was with him
still, nor could he stave it off. Nothing that he could ever discover,
however ugly or terrible, could stop the craving of him for Clare. The things
that they had begun together, he and she, had no ending in this world. And
suddenly all sense of free-will left him, and he felt himself propelled at a
mighty rate towards her, wherever she might be; fate, surely, guiding him to
her, but this time, a fate that was urging him from within, not pressing him
from without. And he knew, secretly, whatever indignant protests he might
make to himself about it, that when the 1:15 train entered Seacliffe station
he would be waiting there on the platform for her. The thing was inevitable,
like death.

But inevitability did not spare him torment. And at last his remorse
insisted upon a compromise. He would meet Clare, he decided, but when he had
met her, he would proceed to torture her, subtly, shrewdly—seeking
vengeance for the tragedy that she had brought to his life, and the spell
that she had cast upon his soul. He would be the Grand Inquisitor.

He was very white and haggard when the time came. He had reached the
station as early as one o’clock, and for a quarter of an hour had lounged
about the deserted platforms. Meanwhile the sun shone gloriously, and the
train as it ran into the station caught the sunlight on its windows. The
sight of the long line of coaches, curving into the station like a flaming
sword into its scabbard, gave him a mighty heartrending thrill. Yes,
yes—he would torture her…His eyes glinted with diabolical
exhilaration, and a touch of hectic colour crept into his wan cheeks. He
watched her alight from a third-class compartment near the rear of the train.
Then he lost her momentarily amidst the emptying crowd. He walked briskly
against the stream of the throng, with a heart that beat fast with
unutterable expectations.

But how he loved her as he saw her coming towards him!—though he
tried with all his might to kindle hate in his heart. She smiled and held out
her tiny hand. He took it with a limpness that was to begin his torture of
her. She was to notice that limpness.

“How is Helen?” was her first remark.

Amidst the bustle of the luggage round the guard’s van he replied quietly:
“Helen? Oh, she’s all right. I didn’t tell her you were coming.”

“You were wise,” she answered.

A faint thrill of anticipation crept over him; this diabolical game was
interesting, fascinating, in its way; and would lead her very securely into a
number of traps. And why, he thought, did she think it was wise of him not to
have told Helen?

In the station-yard she suddenly stopped to consult a time-table
hoarding.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m looking for the next train back to Millstead.”

“Not the
next
, surely?”

“Why not? What do you think I’ve come for?”

“I don’t know in the least. What
have
you come for?”

She looked at him appealingly. He saw, with keen and instant relish, that
she had already noticed something of hostility in his attitude towards her.
The torture had begun. For the first time, she was subject to his power and
not he to hers.

“I’ve come for a few minutes’ conversation,” she answered, quietly. “And
the next train back is at 3:18.”

“You mean to travel by that?”

“Yes.”

“Then we needn’t stay in the station till then, need we? Let’s walk
somewhere. We’ve two whole hours—time enough to get right out of the
town and back again. I hate conversations in railway-stations.”

But his chief reason was a desire to secure the right scenic background
for his torture of her.

“All right,” she answered, and looked at him again appealingly. The tears
almost welled into his own eyes because of the deep sadness that was in hers.
How quick she was to feel his harshness!—he thought. How marvellously
sensitive was that little soul of hers to the subtlest gradations of his own
mood! What fiendish torture he could put her to, by no more, might be, than
the merest upraising of an eyebrow, the faintest change of the voice, the
slightest tightening of the lips! She was of mercury, like himself;
responsive to every touch of the emotional atmosphere. And was not that the
reason why she understood him with such wonderful instinctive
intimacy—was not that the reason why the two of them, out of the whole
world, would have sought each other like twin magnets?

He led her, in silence, through the litter of mean streets near the
station, and thence, beyond the edge of the town, towards the meadows that
sloped to the sea. So far it had been a perfect day, but now the sun was
half-quenching itself in a fringe of mist that lay along the horizon; and
with the change there came a sudden pink light that lit both their faces and
shone behind them on the tawdry newness of the town, giving it for once a
touch of pitiful loveliness. He took her into a rolling meadow that tapered
down into a coppice, and as they reached the trees the last shaft of sunlight
died from the sky. Then they plunged into the grey depths, with all the
freshly-budded leaves brushing against their faces, and the very earth, so it
seemed, murmuring at their approach. Already there was the hint of rain in
the air.

“It’s a long way to come for a few minutes’ conversation,” he began.

She answered, ignoring his remark: “I had a letter from Helen this
morning.”

“
What
!” he exclaimed in sharp fear. He went suddenly white.

“A letter,” she went on, broodingly. “Would you like to see it?”

He stared at her and replied: “I would rather hear from you what it was
about.”

He saw her brown eyes looking up curiously into his, and he had the
instant feeling that she would cry if he persisted in his torture of her. The
silence of that walk from the station had unnerved her, had made her
frightened of him. That was what he had intended. And she did not know
yet—did not know what he knew. Poor girl-what a blow was in waiting for
her! But he must not let it fall for a little while.

She bit her lip and said: “Very well. It was about you. She was unhappy
about you. Dreadfully unhappy. She said she was going to leave you. She also
said—that she was going to leave you—to—to me.”

Her voice trembled on that final word.

“Well?”

She recovered herself to continue with more energy: “And I’ve come here to
tell you this—that if she does ‘leave you, I shan’t have you. That’s
all.”

“You are making large assumptions.”

“I know. And I don’t mind your sarcasm, though don’t think any more of you
for using it…I repeat what I said—if Helen leaves you or if you leave
Helen, I shall have nothing more to do with you.”

“It is certainly kind of you to warn me in time.”

“You’ve never given Helen a fair trial. I know you and she are
ill-matched. I know you oughtn’t to have married her at all, but that doesn’t
matter—you’ve done it, and you’ve got to be fair to her. And if you
think that because I’ve confessed that I love you I’m in your power for you
to be cruel to, you’re mistaken!” Her voice rose passionately.

He stared at her, admiring the warm flush that came into her cheeks, and
all the time pitying her, loving her, agonisingly!

“Understand,” she went on, “You’ve got to look after Helen—you’ve
got to take care of her—watch her—do you know what I mean?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“I mean you must try to make her happy. She’s sick and miserable, and,
somehow, you must cure her. I came here to see you because I thought I could
persuade you to be kind to her. I thought if you loved me at all, you might
do it for my sake. Remember I love Helen as well as you. Do you still think
I’m hard-hearted and cold? If you knew what goes on inside me, the racking,
raging longing—the—No, no—what’s the good of talking of
that to you? You either understand or else you don’t, and if you don’t, no
words of mine will make you…But I warn you again, you must cure Helen of
her unhappiness. Otherwise, she might try to cure herself—in any way,
drastic or not, that occurred to her. Do you know now what I mean?”