The Passionate Year (21 page)

As the hour for dinner approached it seemed as if a certain mysteriously
incalculable imminence were in the air, as if the whole world of Beachings
Over were steeling itself in readiness for some searching and stupendous test
of its worth. It was, indeed, ten minutes past eight when the sound of a
motor-horn was heard in, the far distance. “That’s Edwards,” cried Lady
Speed, apprehensively. “He always sounds his horn to let us know…Now, Dick
dear, don’t let him know we’ve been waiting for him-you know how he hates to
think he’s late…”

And in another moment a gruff voice in the hall could be heard dismissing
the chauffeur with instructions for the morrow. “Ten-thirty sharp, Edwards.
The Daimler if it’s wet. Gotter go over and see Woffenheimer.”

And in yet another moment Lady Speed was rushing forward with an eager,
wifely kiss. “You aren’t late, Charles. All the clocks are a little
fast…Kenneth has come…and this…” she spoke a trifle nervously…“this
is Helen…”

Sir Charles distributed a gruff nod to the assembly, afterwards holding
out his hand to be shaken. “Ahdedoo, Kenneth, my lad…How are you? Still
kicking eh?…Ahdedoo, Helen…don’t mind me calling you Helen, do you? Well,
Richard, my lad…”

A bald-headed, moustached, white-spatted, morning-coated man, Sir Charles
Speed.

Dinner opened in an atmosphere of gloomy silence. Lady Speed kept
inaugurating conversations that petered out into a stillness that was broken
only by Sir Charles’ morose ingurgitation of soup. Something was obviously
amiss with him. Over the
entrée
it came out.

“Had to sack one of the foremen to-day.”

Lady Speed looked up with an appropriate gesture of horror and
indignation. “And I had to dismiss one of
my
maids too! What a curious
coincidence! How ungrateful people are!”

“Sneaking timber out of the woodyard,” continued Sir Charles, apparently
without the least interest in his wife’s adventure with the maid.

But with the trouble of the sacked foreman off his chest Sir Charles
seemed considerably relieved, though his gloom returned when Richard had the
misfortune to refer to one of the “fellows” at his school as “no class at
all—an absolute outsider.”

“See here, my lad,” exclaimed Sir Charles, holding up his fork with a
peach on the end of it, “don’t you ever let me hear you talking
that
sort of nonsense! Don’t you forget that
I
started life as an
office-boy cleaning out inkwells!” Richard flushed deeply and Lady Speed
looked rather uncomfortable. “Don’t you forget it,” added Sir Charles,
mouthing characteristically, and it was clear that he was speaking
principally for the benefit of Helen. “I don’t want people to think I am what
I’m not. If I hadn’t been lucky—and—and” he seemed to experience
a difficulty in choosing the right adjective—“and
smart—smart
, mind—I might have been still cleaning out
ink-wells. See?” He filled up his glass with port and for a moment there was
sultry silence again. Eventually, he licked his lips and broke it. “You
know,” turning to address Kenneth, “it’s all this education that’s at the
root of the trouble. Makes the workers too big for their shoes, as often as
not…Mind you, I’m a democrat, I am. Can’t abide snobbery at any price. But
I don’t believe in all this education business. I paid for you at Cambridge
and what’s it done for you? You go an’ get a job in some stuffy little school
or other—salary about two hundred a year—and God knows how long
you’d stay there without a promotion if I hadn’t given somebody the tip to
shove you up!”

“What’s that?” Kenneth exclaimed, almost under his breath.

Sir Charles appeared not to have heard the interruption. He went on,
warming to his subject and addressing an imaginary disputant: “No, sir, I do
not
believe in what is termed Education in this country. It don’t help
a man to rise if he hasn’t got it in him…Why, look at
me
! I got on
without education. Don’t you suppose other lads, if they’re smart enough, can
do the same? Don’t you think I’m an example of what a man can become when
he’s had no education?”

The younger Speed nodded. The argument was irrefutable.

After dinner Speed managed to get his father alone in the
library. “I want to know,” he said, quietly, “what you meant when you said
something about giving somebody the tip to shove me up. I want to know
exactly, mind.”

Sir Charles waved his arm across a table.

“Don’t you talk to me like that, my lad. I’m too old for you to
cross-examine I’m willin’ to tell you anythin’ you like, only I won’t be
bullied into it. So now you know. Light yourself a cigar an’, for God’s sake,
sit down and look comfortable.”

“Perhaps I could look it if I felt it.”

“Your own fault if you don’t feel it. Damned ingratitude, I call it. Sit
down. I shan’t answer a question till you’re sitting down and smoking as if
you was a friend of mine an’ not a damned commercial traveller.”

Speed decided that he had better humour him; he sat down and toyed with a
cigar. “Now, if you’ll please tell me.”

“What is it you want me to tell you?” grunted Sir Charles.

“I want you to tell me what you meant by saying that you gave somebody a
tip to shove me up?”

“Well, my lad, you don’t want to stay an assistant-master all your life,
do you?”

“That’s not the point. I want to know what you did.”

“Why, I did the usual thing that I’d always do to help somebody I’m
interested in.”

“What’s that?”

“Well,
you
know. Pull a few wires…Man like me has a few wires he
can pull. I
know
people, you see—and if I just mention a little
thing—well, they generally remember it all right.”

And he spread himself luxuriously in the arm-chair and actually
smiled!

The other flushed hotly. “I see. May I ask whose help you solicited on my
behalf?”

“Don’t talk like a melodrama, my lad. I’m your best friend if you only
knew it. What is it you want to know now?”

“I want to know whose help you asked for?”

“Well, I had a little conversation with Lord Port-way. And I had five
minutes’ chat over the telephone with old Ervine. Don’t you see “—he
leaned forward with a touch of pleading in his voice—“don’t you see
that I want you to
get
on? I’ve always wanted you to do well in the
world. Your brother’s doing well and there’s not a prouder father in England
to-day than I am of him. And when young Richard leaves school I hope he’ll
get on well too. Now, you’re a bit different. Dunno why you are, but you are,
an’ I’ve always recognised it. You can’t say I’ve ever tried to force you to
anythin’ you didn’t want, can you? You wanted to go to the
‘varsity—well, I don’t believe it’s a good thing for a young man to
waste his years till he’s twenty-two—nevertheless it was your choice,
an’ I let you do it. I paid for you, I gave you as much money as you wanted,
an’ I didn’t complain. Well, then you wanted to be a Master in a school. You
got yourself the job without even consulting me about it, but did I complain?
No, I let you go your own way. I let you do what I considered an absolutely
damsilly thing. Still, I thought, if you’re going to be a teacher you may as
well have ambitions an’ rise to the top of the profession. So I thought I’d
just put in a word for you. That was all. I want you to
get on
, my
lad, no matter what line you’re in. I’ve always bin as ambitious for you as I
have bin for myself.”

The other said: “I can see you meant well.”

“
Meant well
? And is it extraordinary that I should mean well to my
own son? Then, there’s another thing. You go and get married. Well, I don’t
mind that. I believe in marriage. I was married myself when I was nineteen
an’ I’ve never once regretted it. But you go an’ get married all of a hurry
while I’m travellin’ the other side o’ the world, an’ you don’t even send me
so much as a bit o’ weddin’-cake! I don’t say: is it
fair
? I just say:
is it
natural
? I come home to England to find a letter tellin’ me
you’ve married the Headmaster’s daughter!”

“Well, why shouldn’t I?”

“I’m not sayin’ you shouldn’t, my lad. I’m not a snob, an’ I don’t care
who you marry s’long as she’s as good as you are. I don’t want you to marry a
duchess. I don’t even care if the girl you marry hasn’t a cent. See—I
don’t mind if she’s a dustman’s daughter, s’long—s’long, mind, as she’s
your equal! That’s all. Now you understand me.
Do
you?”

“I think I understand you.”

“Good. Now have some more port. An’ while you’re spendin’ Christmas with
us, for God’s sake, have a good time and give the girl a good time, too. Is
she fond of theatres?”

“I—I don’t know—well—she might be—”

“Well, you can have the closed Daimler any night you like to take you into
town and bring you back. And if she’s fond of motorin’ you can have the
Sunbeam durin’ the daytime. Remember that. I want you to have a dam’ good
time…Dam’ good…See? Now have some more port before we join your
mother…”

“No thanks. I should be drunk if I had any more.”

“Nonsense, my lad. Port won’ make you drunk. Dam’ good port, isn’
it?…Wouldn’ make you drunk, though…Don’ talk dam’ nonsense to me…”

He was slightly drunk himself.

That interview with his father had a disturbing effect upon
Speed. He had expected a row in which his father would endeavour to tyrannise
over him, instead of which Sir Charles, if there had been any argument at
all, had certainly got the better of it. In a sort of way it did seem rather
unfair to have married without letting his parents know a word about it
beforehand. But, of course, there had been good reasons. First, the
housemastership. He couldn’t have been given Lavery’s unless he had married.
Ervine had stressed very strongly the desirability of married housemasters.
And it had therefore been necessary to do everything rather hurriedly in
order to be able to begin at Lavery’s in the September.

It was when he reflected that, but for his father’s intervention, he would
probably never have been offered Lavery’s that he felt the keenest feeling of
unrest. The more he thought about it the more manifestly certain incidents in
the past became explainable to him. The hostility of the Common-Room for
instance. Did they guess the sort of “wire-pulling” that had been going on?
Probably they did not know anything definitely, but wasn’t it likely that
they would conclude that such a startling appointment must have been the
result of some ulterior intrigue? And wasn’t it natural that they should be
jealous of him?

He hated Ervine because, behind all the man’s kindness to him, he saw now
merely the ignoble desire to placate influence. Ervine had done it all to
please his father. It was galling to think that that adulatory speech on the
Prize-Day, which had given him such real and genuine pleasure, had been
dictated merely by a willingness to serve the whim of an important man. It
was galling to think that Lord Portway’s smiles and words of commendation had
been similarly motivated. It was galling to think that, however reticent he
was about being the son of Sir Charles Speed, the relationship seemed fated
to project itself into his career in the most unfortunate and detestable of
ways.

Then he thought of Helen. Her motives, of all, were pure and untainted;
she shared neither her father’s sycophancy nor his own father’s
unscrupulousness. She had married him for no other reason than that she loved
him. And in the midst of the haze of indecent revelations that seemed to be
enveloping him, her love for him and his for her brightened like stars when
the night deepens.

And then, slowly and subtly at first, came even the suspicion of her. Was
it possible that she had been the dupe of her father? Was it possible that
Ervine very neatly and cleverly had Sir Charles hoist with his own petard,
making the young housemaster of Lavery’s at the same time his own son-in-law?
And if so, had Helen played up to the game? The thought tortured him evilly.
He felt it to be such an ignoble one that he must never breathe it to Helen,
lest it should be utterly untrue. Yet to keep it to himself was not the best
way of getting rid of it. It grew within him like a cancer; it filled all the
unoccupied niches of his mind; it made him sick with apprehension.

And then, at last, on Christmas Eve he was cruel to her. There had been a
large party at Beachings Over and she had been very shy and nervous all the
evening. And now, after midnight, when they had gone up to their bedroom, he
said, furiously: “What was the matter with you all to-night?”

She said: “Nothing.”

He said: “Funny reason for not speaking a word all the evening. Whatever
must people have thought of you?”

“I don’t know. I told you I should be nervous. I can’t help it. You
shouldn’t have brought me if you hadn’t been prepared for it.”

“You might have at least said you’d got a headache and gone off to
bed.”

She said, frightenedly: “Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, what’s the
matter—
why
are you talking to me like this?”

“I hope I’m not being unfair,” he replied, imperturbably.

She flung herself on the bed and began to sob.

He went on unfastening his dress tie and thinking: She married me because
my father has money. She married me because her father told her to. She
schemed to get me. The housemastership was a plant to get me married to her
before I knew whether I really wanted her or not.

He was carefully silent the whole rest of the night, though it was hard to
lie awake and hear her sobbing.

The next evening, Christmas Day, there was another party.
She looked rather pale and unhappy, but he saw she was trying to be lively.
He felt acutely sorry for her, and yet, whenever he felt in the mood to
relent, he fortified his mind by thinking of her duplicity. He thought of
other things besides her duplicity. He thought of her stupidity. Why was she
so stupid? Why had he married a woman who couldn’t gossip at a small
Christmas party without being nervous? Why had he married a woman who never
spoke at table unless she were spoken to? Other women said the silliest
things and they sounded ordinary; Helen, forcing herself in sheer desperation
to do so, occasionally said the most ordinary things and they sounded silly.
If she ventured on any deliberate remark the atmosphere was always as if the
whole world had stopped moving in order to see her make a fool of herself;
what she said was probably no more foolish than what anybody else might have
said, yet somehow it seemed outlined against the rest of the conversation as
a piece of stark, unmitigated lunacy. Speed found himself holding his breath
when she began to speak.