The Passionate Year (2 page)

“That’ll fetch Potter,” he said. “Potter’s the Head’s man, but the Head is
good enough to lend him to us for meals. I daresay we’ll be alone. The rest
won’t come before they have to.”

“Why do you, then?” enquired Speed, laughing a little.

“Me?—Oh, I’m the victim of the railway time-table. If I’d caught a
later train I shouldn’t have arrived here till to-morrow. I come from the
Isle of Man. Where do you come from?”

“Little place in Essex.”

“You’re all right, then. Perhaps you’ll be able to manage a week-end home
during the term. What’s the Head put you on to?”

“Oh, drawing and music. And he mentioned commercial geography, but I’m not
qualified for that.”

“Bless you, you don’t need to be. It’s only exports and imports…Potter,
tea for two, please…And some toast…Public-school man yourself, I
suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“Where, then, if you don’t object to my questions?”

“Harrow.”

Pritchard whistled.

After Potter had reappeared with the tea, he went on: “You know, Speed,
we’ve had a bit of gossip here about you. Before the vac. started. Something
that the Head’s wife let out one night when Ransome—he’s the classics
Master—went there to dinner. She rather gave Ransome the impression
that you were a bit of a millionaire.”

Speed coloured and said hastily: “Oh, not at all. She’s quite mistaken, I
assure you.”

Pritchard paused, teacup in hand. “But your father is Sir Charles Speed,
isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

The assent was grudging and a trifle irritated. Speed helped himself to
toast with an energy that gave emphasis to the monosyllable. After munching
in silence for some minutes he said: “Don’t forget I’m far more curious about
Millstead than you have any right to be about me. Tell me about the
place.”

“My dear fellow, I”—his voice sank to a melodramatic
whisper—“I positively daren’t tell you anything while
that
fellow’s about.” (He jerked his head in the direction of the pantry cupboard
inside which Potter could be heard sibilantly cleaning the knives.) “He’s got
ears that would pierce a ten-inch wall. But if you want to make a friend of
me come up to my room to-night—I’m over the way in Milner’s—and
we’ll have a pipe and a chat before bedtime.”

Speed said: “Sorry. But I’m afraid I can’t to-night. Thanks all the same,
though. I’m dining at the Head’s.”

Pritchard’s eyes rounded, and once again he emitted a soft whistle. “Oh,
you are, are you?” he said, curiously, and he seemed ever so slightly
displeased. He was silent for a short time; then, toying facetiously with a
slab of cake, he added: “Well, be sure and give Miss Ervine my love when you
get there.”

“Miss Ervine?”

“Herself.”

Speed said after a pause: “What’s she like?”

Again Pritchard jerked his head significantly towards the pantry cupboard.
“Mustn’t talk shop here, old man. Besides, you’ll find out quite soon enough
what she’s like.”

He took up the
Farmer and Stockbreeder
and said, in rather a loud
tone, as if for Potter’s benefit to set a label of innocuousness upon the
whole of their conversation: “Don’t know if you’re at all interested in
farming, Speed?—I am. My brother’s got a little farm down in
Herefordshire…”

They chatted about farming for some time, while Potter wandered about
preparing the long tables for dinner. Speed was not especially interested,
and after a while excused himself by mentioning some letters that he must
write. He came to the conclusion that he did not want to make a friend of
Pritchard.

At a quarter to seven he sank into the wicker armchair in
his room and gazed pensively at the red tissue-paper in the fire-grate. He
had just a few minutes with nothing particular to do in them before going
downstairs to dinner at the Head’s. He was ready dressed and groomed for the
occasion, polished up to that pitch of healthy cleanliness and sartorial
efficiency which the undergraduate of not many weeks before had been wont to
present at University functions of the more fashionable sort. He looked
extraordinarily young, almost boyish, in his smartly cut lounge suit and
patent shoes; he thought so himself as he looked in the mirror—he
speculated a little humorously whether the head-prefect would look older or
younger than he did. He remembered Pritchard’s half-jocular reference to Miss
Ervine; he supposed from the way Pritchard had mentioned her that she was
some awful spectacled blue-stocking of a girl—schoolmasters’ daughters
were quite often like that. On the whole he was looking forward to seven
o’clock, partly because he was eager to pick up more: of the threads of
Millstead life, and partly because he enjoyed dining out.

Out in the corridor and in the dormitories and down the stone steps
various sounds told him, even though he did not know Millstead, that the term
had at last begun. He could hear the confused murmur of boyish voices
ascending in sudden gusts from the rooms below; every now and then footsteps
raced past his room and were muffled by the webbing on the dormitory floor;
he heard shouts and cries of all kinds, from shrillest treble to deepest
bass, rising and falling ceaselessly amid the vague jangle of miscellaneous
sound. Sometimes a particular voice or group of voices would become separate
from the rest, and then he could pick up scraps of conversation, eager
salutations, boisterous chaff, exchanged remarks about vacation experiences,
all intermittent and punctuated by the noisy unpacking of suit-cases and the
clatter of water jugs in their basins. He was so young that he could hardly
believe that he was a Master now and not a schoolboy.

The school clock commenced to chime the hour. He rose, took a last view of
himself in the bedroom mirror, and went out into the corridor. A small boy
carrying a large bag collided with him outside the door and apologised
profusely. He said, with a laugh: “Oh, don’t mention it.”

He knew that the boy would recount the incident to everybody in the
dormitory. In fact, as he turned the corner to descend the steps he caught a
momentary glimpse of the boy standing stock-still in the corridor gazing
after him. He smiled as he went down.

He went round to the front entrance of the Headmaster’s
house and rang the bell. It was a curious house, the result of repeated
architectural patchings and additions; its ultimate incongruity had been
softened and mellowed by ivy and creeper of various sorts, so that it bore
the sad air of a muffled-up invalid. Potter opened the door and admitted him
with stealthy precision. While he was standing in the hall and being relieved
of his hat and gloves he had time to notice the Asiatic and African
bric-a-brac which, scattered about the walls and tables, bore testimony to
Doctor Ervine’s years as a missionary in foreign fields. Then, with the same
feline grace, Potter showed him into the drawing-room.

It was a moderate-sized apartment lit by heavy old-fashioned gas
chandeliers, whose peculiar and continuous hissing sound emphasised the
awkwardness of any gap in the conversation. A baby-grand piano, with its
sound-board closed and littered with music and ornaments, and various
cabinets of china and curios, were the only large articles of furniture;
chairs and settees were sprinkled haphazard over the central area round the
screened fireplace. As Speed entered, with Potter opening the door for him
and intoning sepulchrally: “Mr. Speed,” an answering creak of several of the
chairs betrayed the fact that the room was occupied.

Then the Head rose out of his armchair, book of some sort in hand, and
came forward with a large easy smile.

“Um, yes—Mr. Speed—so glad—um, yes—may I introduce
you to my wife?—Lydia, this is Mr. Speed!”

At first glance Speed was struck with the magnificent appropriateness of
the name Lydia. She was a pert little woman, obviously competent; the sort of
woman who is always suspected of twisting her husband round her little
finger. She was fifty if she was a day, yet she dressed with a dash of the
young university blue-stocking; an imitation so insolent that one assumed
either that she was younger than she looked or that some enormous brain
development justified the eccentricity. She had rather sharp blue eyes that
were shrewd rather than far-seeing, and her hair, energetically dyed, left
one in doubt as to what colour nature had ever accorded it. At present it was
a dull brown that had streaks of black and grey.

She said, in voice that though sharp was not unpretty: “I’m delighted to
meet you, Mr. Speed. You must make yourself at home here, you know.”

The Head murmured: “Um, yes, most certainly. At home—um, yes…Now
let me introduce you to my daughter…Helen, this is—um—Mr.
Speed.” A girl was staring at him, and he did not then notice much more than
the extreme size and brightness of her blue eyes; that, and some
astonishingly vague quality that cannot be more simply described than as a
sense of continually restrained movement, so that, looking with his mind’s
eye at everybody else in the world, he saw them suddenly grown old and
decrepit. Her bright golden hair hung down her back in a rebellious cascade;
that, however, gave no clue to her age. The curious serene look in her eyes
was a woman’s (her mother’s, no doubt), while the pretty half-mocking curve
of her lips was still that of a young and fantastically mischievous child. In
reality she was twenty, though she looked both older and younger.

She said, in a voice so deep and sombre that Speed recoiled suddenly as
though faced with something uncanny: “How are you, Mr. Speed?”

He bowed to her and said, gallantly: “Delighted to be in Millstead, Miss
Ervine.”

The Head murmured semi-consciously: “Um, yes, delightful
place—especially in summer weather—trees, you
know—beautiful to sit out on the cricket ground—um, yes, very,
very beautiful indeed…”

Potter opened the door to announce that dinner was served.

As Mrs. Ervine and the girl preceded them out of the room
Speed heard the latter say: “Clare’s not come yet, mother.” Mrs. Ervine
replied, a trifle acidly: “Well, my dear, we can’t wait for her. I suppose
she knew it was at seven…”

The Head, taking Speed by the arm with an air of ponderous intimacy, was
saying: “Don’t know whether you’ve a good reading voice, Speed. If so, we
must have you for the lessons in morning chapel.”

Speed was mumbling something appropriate and the Head was piloting him
into the dining-room when Potter appeared again, accompanied by a dark-haired
girl, short in stature and rather pale-complexioned. She seemed quite
unconcerned as she caught up the tail end of the procession into the
dining-room and remarked casually: “How are you, Doctor Ervine?—So
sorry I’m a trifle late. Friday, you know—rather a busy day for the
shop.”

The Head looked momentarily nonplussed, then smiled and said: “Oh, not at
all…not at all…I must introduce you to our new recruit—Mr.
Speed…This is Miss Harrington, a friend of my daughter’s. She—um,
yes, she manages—most successfully, I may
say—the—er—the bookshop down in the town. Bookshop, you
know.”

He said that with the air of implying: Bookshops are not ordinary
shops.

Speed bowed; the Head went on boomingly: “And she is, I think I may
venture to say, my daughter’s greatest friend. Eh?”

He addressed the monosyllable to the girl with a touch of shrewdness: she
replied quietly: “I don’t know.” The three words were spoken in that rare
tone in which they simply mean nothing but literally what they say.

In the dining-room they sat in the following formation: Dr. and Mrs.
Ervine at the head and foot respectively; Helen and Clare together at one
side and Speed opposite them at the other. The dining-room was a cold
forlorn-looking apartment in which the dim incandescent light seemed to
accomplish little more than to cast a dull glitter of obscurity on the
oil-paintings that hung, ever so slightly askew, on the walls. A peculiar
incongruity in it struck Speed at once, though the same might never have
occurred to anybody else: the minute salt and pepper-boxes on the table
possessed a pretty feminine daintiness which harmonised ill with the huge
mahogany sideboard. The latter reminded Speed of the boardroom of a City
banking-house. It was as if, he thought, the Doctor and his wife had
impressed their personalities crudely and without compromise; and as if those
personalities were so diametrically different that no fusing of the two into
one was ever possible. Throughout the meal he kept looking first to his left,
at Mrs. Ervine, and then to his right at the Doctor, and wondering at what he
felt instinctively to be a fundamental strangeness in their life
together.

Potter, assisted by a speckle-faced maid, hovered assiduously around, and
the Doctor assisted occasionally by his wife, hovered no less assiduously
around the conversation, preventing it from lapsing into such awkward
silences as would throw into prominence the continual hissing of the gas and
his own sibilant ingurgitation of soup. The Doctor talked rather loudly and
ponderously, and with such careful and scrupulous qualifications of
everything he said that one had the impressive sensation that incalculable
and mysterious issues hung upon his words; Mrs. Ervine’s remarks were short
and pithy, sometimes a little cynical.

The Doctor seemed to fear that he had given Speed a wrong impression of
Miss Harrington. “I’m sure Mr. Speed will be surprised when I tell him that
he can have the honour of purchasing his
Times
from you each morning,
Clare,” he said, lapping up the final spoonful of soup and bestowing a
satisfied wipe with his napkin on his broad wet lips.

Clare said: “I should think Mr. Speed would prefer to have it
delivered.”

Mrs. Ervine said: “Perhaps Mr. Speed doesn’t take the
Times
,
either.”