The Passionate Year (28 page)

“Who was it that laughed then?”

No answer.

Then, amidst the silence, another laugh, a comic, lugubriously pitched
laugh that echoed weirdly up to the vaulted roof.

He was white now—quite white with passion. “Was that you,
Slingsby?”

A smart spot! It
was
Slingsby, and Slingsby, recognising the rules
of civilised warfare even against Speed, replied, rather sheepishly: “Yes,
sir.”

“A thousand lines and detention for a week!”

The school gasped a little, for the punishment was sufficiently enormous.
Evidently Speed was not to be trifled with. There followed a strained silence
for over ten minutes, and at last Speed went back to his official desk
feeling that the worst was over and that he had successfully quelled the
rebellion.

Then, quite suddenly, the whole building was plunged into darkness.

He rose instantly shouting: “Who tampered with those switches?”

He had hardly finished his query when pandemonium began. Desk-lids fell;
electric torches prodded their rays upon scenes of wild confusion; a splash
of ink fell on his neck as he stood; voices shrieked at him on all sides.
“Who had a fight with Burton?” “Hit one your own size.” “Oh, Kenneth, meet me
at the pavilion steps!” “Three cheers for the housemaster who knocked the
porter down!” He heard them all. Somebody called, sincerely and without
irony: “Three cheers for old Burton!”—and these were lustily given.
Somebody grabbed hold of him by the leg; he kicked out vigorously, careless
in his fury what harm he did. The sickly odour of sulphuretted hydrogen began
to pervade the atmosphere.

He heard somebody shriek out: “Not so much noise, boys—the Head’ll
come in!” And an answer came: “Well, he won’t mind much.”

He stood there in the darkness for what seemed an age. He was petrified,
not with fear, but with a strange mingling of fury and loathing: He tried to
speak, and found he had no voice; nor, anyhow, could he have made himself
heard above the din.

Something hit him a terrific blow on the forehead. He was dazed. He
staggered back, feeling for his senses. He wondered vaguely who had hit him
and what he had been hit with. Probably a heavy book…The pain seemed
momentarily to quench his anger, so that he thought: This is not ordinary
“ragging.” They hate me. They detest me. They want to hurt me if they
can…He felt no anger for them now, only the dreadfulness of being hated so
much by so many people at once.

He must escape somehow. They might kill him in the dark there if they
found him He suddenly made his decision and plunged headlong down the centre
aisle towards the door. How many boys he knocked down or trampled on or
struck with his swinging arms as he rushed past he never knew, but in another
moment he was outside, with the cool air of the cloisters tingling across his
bruised head and the pandemonium in the Hall sounding suddenly distant in his
ears.

In the cloisters he met the Head, walking quickly along with gown flying
in the wind.

In front of Speed he stopped, breathless and panting.
“Um—um—what is the matter, Mr. Speed? Such
an—um—terrible noise—I could—um—hear it at my
dinner-table—and-um—yourself—what has happened to you? Are
you ill? Your head is covered with—um—blood…What is all the
commotion about?”

Speed said, with crisp clearness: “Go up into the Hall and find out.”

And he rushed away from the Head, through the echoing cloisters, and into
Lavery’s. He washed here, in the public basins, and tied a handkerchief round
the cut on his forehead. He did not disturb Helen, but left his gown on one
of the hooks in the cloak-room and went out again into the dark and
sheltering night, hatless and coatless, and with fever in his heart. The
night was bitterly cold, but he did not feel it; he went into the town by
devious ways, anxious to avoid being seen; when he was about half-way the
parish clock chimed eight. He felt his head; his handkerchief was already
damp on the outside; it must have been a deep cut.

“Mr. Speed!” she said, full of compassion. A tiny lamp in
the corridor illumined his bandaged head as he walked in. “What on earth has
happened to you? Can you walk up all right?”

“Yes,” he answered, with even a slight laugh. The very presence of her
gave him reassurance. He strode up the steps into the sitting-room and stood
in front of the fire. She followed him and stared at him for a moment without
speaking. Then she said, almost unconcernedly: “Now you mustn’t tell me
anything till you’ve been examined. That looks rather a deep cut. Now sit
down in that chair and let me attend to you. Don’t talk.”

He obeyed her, with a feeling in his heart of ridiculously childish
happiness. He remembered when Helen had once bade him not talk, and how the
demand had then irritated him. Curious that Clare could even copy Helen
exactly and yet be tremendously, vitally different!

She unwound the bandage, washed the cut, and bandaged it up again in a
clean and workmanlike manner. The deftness of her fingers fascinated him; he
gazed on them as they moved about over his face; he luxuriated amongst them,
as it were.

At the finish of the operation she gave that sharp instant laugh which,
‘even after hearing it only a few times, he had somehow thought
characteristic of her. “You needn’t worry,” she said quietly, and in the
half-mocking tone that was even more characteristic of her than her laugh.
“You’re not going to die. Did you think you were? Now tell me how it
happened.”

“You’ll smile when I tell you. I was taking prep, and they ragged me.
Somebody switched off the lights and somebody else must have thrown a book at
me. That’s all.”

“That’s all? It’s enough, isn’t it? And what made you think I should smile
at such an affair?”

“I don’t know. In a certain sense it’s perhaps a little funny…D’you
know, lately I’ve had a perfectly overwhelming desire to laugh at things that
other people wouldn’t see anything funny in. The other night Helen told me
not to talk to her because she couldn’t believe a word I said, but she didn’t
mind if I kissed her. I laughed at that—I couldn’t help it. And now,
when I think of an hour ago with all the noise and commotion and flash-lights
and stink-bombs and showers of ink—oh, God, it was damned funny!”

He burst into gusts of tempestuous, half-hysterical laughter.

“Stop laughing!” she ordered. She added quietly: “Yes, you look as if
you’ve been in an ink-storm—it’s all over your coat and collar. What
made them rag you?”

“They hate me.”

“Why?”

He pondered, made suddenly serious, and then said: “God knows.”

She did not answer for some time. Then she suddenly went over to the china
cupboard and began taking out crockery. Once again his eyes had something to
rivet themselves upon; this time her small, immensely capable hands as she
busied herself with the coffee-pot. “And you thought I should find it
amusing?” she said, moving about the whole time. As she continued with the
preparations she kept up a running conversation. “Well, I
don’t
find
it amusing. I think it’s very serious. You came here last summer term and at
first you were well liked, fairly successful, and happy. Now, two terms
later, you’re apparently detested, unsuccessful, and—well, not so happy
as you were, eh? What’s been the cause of it all? You say God knows. Well, if
He does know, He won’t tell you, so you may as well try to find out for
yourself.”

And she went on: “I don’t want to rub it in. Forgive me if I am doing
so.”

Something in the calm kindliness of her voice made him suddenly bury his
head in his hands and begin to sob. He gasped, brokenly: “All
right…Clare…But the future…Oh, God—is it
all
black?…What—
what
can I do, Clare?”

She replied, immensely practical: “You must control yourself. You’re
hysterical-laughing one minute and crying the next. Coffee will be ready in a
while-it’ll quiet your nerves. And the future will be all right if only you
won’t be as big a fool as you have been.”

Then he smiled. “You
do
tell me off, don’t you?” he said.

“No more than you need…But we’re talking too much. I don’t want you to
talk a lot—not just yet. Sit still while I play the piano to you.”

She played some not very well-known composition of Bach, and though when
she began he was all impatience to talk to her, he found himself later on
becoming tranquil, perfectly content to listen to her as long as she cared to
go on. She played quite well, and with just that robust unsentimentality
which Bach required. He wondered if she had been clever enough to know that
her playing would tranquillise him.

When she had finished, the coffee was ready and they had a cosy little
armchair snack intermingled with conversation that reminded him of his
Cambridge days. He would have been perfectly happy if he had not been
burdened with such secrets. He wanted to tell her everything—to show
her all his life. And yet whenever he strove to begin the confession she
twisted the conversation very deftly out of his reach.

At last he said: “I’ve got whole heaps to tell you, Clare. Why don’t you
let me begin?”

She looked ever so slightly uncomfortable.

“Do you
really
want to begin?”

“Yes.”

“Begin then.”

But it was not so easy for him to begin after her straightforward order to
do so. She kept her brown eyes fixed unswervingly on him the whole time, as
if defying him to tell anything but the utterest truth. He paused, stammered,
and then laughed uncomfortably.

“There’s a lot to tell you, and it’s not easy.”

“Then don’t trouble. I’m not asking you to.”

“But I want to.”

She said, averting her eyes from him for a moment: “It’s not really that
you want to begin yourself, it’s that you want
me
to begin, isn’t
it?”

Then he said: “Yes, I wanted you to begin if you would. I wanted you to
ask me a question you used to ask me?”

“What’s that?”

“Whether I’m happy…or not. I always used to say yes, and since that
answer has become untrue you’ve never asked me the question.”

“Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue.”

“You knew? You
knew
! Tell me, what did you know? What do yon know
now?”

She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: “My dear man,
I
know
. I understand you. Haven’t you found out that? I know, I’ve
known for a long time that you haven’t been happy.”

Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost
wildly, in his eagerness: “Helen and I-we don’t get on well together.” Then
he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to
panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare’s eternally calm eyes. “She
doesn’t understand me-in fact—I don’t really think we either of us
understand the other.”

“No?” she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied:
“I think that perhaps explains—chiefly-why I am unhappy. We—Helen
and I—we don’t know quite what—what to do with each other. Do you
know what I mean? We don’t exactly quarrel. It’s more that we try so hard to
be kind that—that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other…Oh, not
actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way…Oh, Clare, Clare,
the truth of it is, I can’t bear her, and she can’t bear me!”

“Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?”

“Oh, yes, she loves me.”

“And you love her?”

He looked her straight in the eyes and slowly shook his head.

“I used to. But I don’t now. It’s awful—awful but it’s the honest
truth.”

It seemed to him that his confession had reached the vital crest and that
all else would be easy and natural now that he had achieved thus far. He went
on: “Clare, I’ve tried to make myself think I love her. I’ve tried all
methods to be happy with her. I’ve given in to her in little matters and big
matters to try to make her happy, I’ve isolated myself from other people just
to please her, I’ve offered
anything—everything
to give her the
chance of making me love her as I used to! But it’s not been a bit of
use.”

“Of course it hasn’t.”

“Why of course?”

“Because you can’t love anybody by trying. Any more than you can stop
loving anybody by trying…Do you know, I’ve never met anybody who’s enraged
me as much as you have.”

“Enraged you?”

“Yes. What right have I to be enraged with you, you’ll say, but never mind
that. I’ve been enraged with you because you’ve been such a continual
disappointment ever since I’ve known you. This is a time for straight
talking, isn’t it? So don’t be offended. When you first came to Millstead you
were just a jolly schoolboy—nothing more, though you probably thought
you were—you were brimful of schoolboyish ideals and schoolboyish
enthusiasms. Weren’t you? Nobody could help liking you-you were so—so
nice—nice
is the word, isn’t it?”

“You’re mocking me.”

“Not at all. I mean it. You
were
nice, and I liked you very much.
Compared with the average fussily jaded Master at a public-school you were
all that was clean and hopeful and energetic. I wondered what would become of
you. I wondered whether you’d become a sarcastic devil like Ransome, a vulgar
little counter-jumper like Pritchard, or a beefy, fighting parson like
Clanwell. I knew that whatever happened you wouldn’t stay long as you were.
But I never thought that you’d become what you are. Good God, man, you
are
a failure, aren’t you?”

“What’s the good of rubbing it in?”

“This much good—that I want you to be quite certain of the depth
you’ve fallen to. A man of your sort soon forgets his mistakes. That’s why he
makes so many of them twice over.”

“Well-admitting that I am a failure, what then? What advice have you to
offer me?”