The passionate year

Chapter 2

"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.

IVAt 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.

VHe 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.

"Urn, 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 a 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 beautiful indeed..."

Potter opened the door to announce that dinner was served.

VIAs 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 manage—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 board-room 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.