The Passionate Year (29 page)

“I advise you to leave Millstead.”

“When?”

“At the end of the term.”

“And where shall I go?”

“Anywhere except to another school.”

“What shall I do?”

“Anything except repeat your mistakes.”

“And Helen?”

“Take her with you.”

“But she
is
one of my mistakes.”

“I know that. But you’ve got to put up with it.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then I don’t know.”

He suddenly plunged his head into his hands and was silent. Her ruthless
summing-up of the situation calmed him, made him ready for the future, but
filled that future with a dreariness that was awful to contemplate.

After a while he rose, saying: “Well, I suppose you’re right. I’ll go back
now. God knows what’ll happen to me between now and the end of term. But I
guess I’ll manage somehow. Anyway, I’m much obliged for your first-aid.
Good-bye—don’t trouble to let me out—I know how the door
works.”

“I want to lock up after you’re gone,” she said,

In the dark lobby the sudden terror of what he had done fell on him like a
crushing weight. He had told Clare that he did not love Helen. And then,
following upon that, came a new and more urgent terror—he had not told
Clare that it was she whom he loved. What was the use of telling her the one
secret without the other?—Perhaps he would never see Clare again. This
might be his last chance. If he did not take it or make it the torture of his
self-reproaching would be unendurable.

“You came without any coat and hat,” she observed. “Let me lend you my
raincoat—it’s no different from a man’s.”

He perceived instantly that if he borrowed it he would have an excuse for
visiting her again in order to return it. And perhaps then, more easily than
now, he could tell her the secret that was almost bursting his heart.
“Thanks,” he said, gratefully, and as she helped him into the coat she said:
“Ask the boy to bring it back here when he calls for the orders in the
morning.”

He could have cried at her saying that. The terror came on him feverishly,
intolerably, the terror of leaving her, of living the rest of life without a
sight or a knowledge of her. He could not bear it; the longing was too
great—he could not put it away from him. And she was near him for the
last time, her hands upon his arms as she helped him into the coat. She did
not want him to call again. It was quite plain.

He had to speak.

He said, almost at the front door: “Clare, do you know the real reason why
I don’t love Helen any more?”

He thought he heard her catch her breath sharply. Then, after a pause, she
said rather curtly: “Yes, of course I do. Don’t tell me.”

“What!” In the darkness he was suddenly alive.

“
What!
You know! You know the real reason! You
don’t
! You
think you do, but you don’t! warrant you don’t! You don’t know
everything!”

And the calm voice answered: “I know everything about you.”

“You don’t know that I love you!” (
There
! It was spoken now; a
great weight was taken off his heart, no matter whether she should be annoyed
or not! His heart beat wildly in exultation at having thrown off its secret
at long last.)

She answered: “Yes, I know that. But I didn’t want you to tell me.”

And he was amazed. His mind, half stupefied, accepted her knowledge of his
love for her almost as if it were a confession of her returned love for him.
It was as if the door were suddenly opened to everything he had not dared to
think of hitherto. He knew then that his mind was full of dreaming of her,
wild, passionate tumultuous dreaming, dreaming that lured him to the edge of
wonderland and precarious adventure. But this dreaming was unique in his
experience; no slothful half-pathetic basking in the fluency of his
imagination, no easy inclination to people a world with his own fancies
rather than bridge the gulf that separated himself from the true
objectiveness of others; this was something new and immense, a hungering of
his soul for reality, a stirring of the depths in him, a monstrous leaping
renewal of his youth. No longer was his imagination content to describe
futile, sensual curves within the abyss of his own self, returning cloyingly
to its starting-point; it soared now, embarked on a new quest, took leave of
self entirely, drew him, invisibly and incalculably, he knew not where. He
knew not where, but he knew with whom…This strange, magnetic power that she
possessed over him drew him not merely to herself, but to the very fountain
of life; she
was
life, and he had never known life before. The reach
of his soul to hers was the kindling touch of two immensities, something at
once frantic and serene, simple and subtle, solemn and yet deep with
immeasurable heart-stirring laughter.

He said, half inarticulate: “What, Clare! You know that I love you?”

“Of course I do.”

(Great God, what
was
this thrill that was coming over him, this
tremendous, invincible longing, this molten restlessness, this yearning for
zest in life, for action, starry enthusiasm, resistless plunging
movement!)

“And you don’t mind?”

“I
do
mind. That’s why I didn’t want you to tell me.”

“But what difference has telling you made, if you knew already?”

“No difference to me. But it will to you. You’ll love me more now that you
know I know.”

“Shall I?” His query was like a child’s.

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. That’s all.”

They were standing there together in the dark lobby.

His heart was wildly beating, and hers—he wondered if it were as
calm as her voice. And then all suddenly he felt her arms upon him, and she,
Clare—Clare!—the reticent, always controlled Clare!—was
crying, actually crying in his arms that stupidly, clumsily held her. And
Clare’s voice, unlike anything that it had ever been in his hearing before,
was talking—talking and crying at once—accomplishing the most
curious and un-Clarelike feats.

“Oh, my dear,
dear
man—why did you tell me? Why did you make
everything so hard for me and yourself?—Oh, God—let me be weak
for just one little minute—only one little minute!-I love you, Kenneth
Speed, just as you love me—we fit, don’t we, as if the world had been
made for us as well as we for ourselves! Oh, what a man
I
could have
made of you, and what a woman
you
could have made of me! Dearest, I’m
so sorry…When you’ve gone I shall curse myself for all this…Oh, my dear,
my dear…” She sobbed passionately against his breast, and then, suddenly
escaping from his arms, began to speak in a voice more like her usual one.
“You must go now. There’s nothing we can do. Please,
please
go now.
No, no—don’t kiss me…Just go…And let’s forgive each other for this
scene…Go, please go…Good night…No, I won’t listen to you…I want you
to go…Good night…You haven’t said a word, I know, and I don’t want you
to. There’s nothing to say at all. Good night…Good night…”

He found himself outside in. High Street as in some strange
incomprehensible dream…

All the way back to Millstead joy was raging in his heart,
trampling down all his woes and defying him to be miserable. Nothing in the
world-not his unhappiness with Helen, or the hatred that Millstead had for
him, or the perfidy of his own soul—could drive out that crowning,
overmastering triumph—the knowledge that Clare loved him For the moment
he saw no difficulties, no dangers, no future that he could not easily bear.
Even if he were never to see Clare again, he felt that the knowledge that she
loved him would be an adequate solace to his mind for ever. He was
happy—deliriously, eternally happy. Helen’s silences, the school’s
ragging, the Head’s sinister coldness, were bereft of all their powers to
hurt him; he had a secret armour, proof against all assault. It seemed to him
that he could understand how the early Christians, fortified by some such
inward armour, had walked calm-eyed and happy into the arena of lions.

He did not go straight back to the school, but took a detour along the
Deepersdale road; he wanted to think, and hug his happiness, and eventually
calm it before seeing Helen. Then he wondered what sort of an explanation he
should give her of his absence; for, of course, she would have received by
this time full accounts of the ragging. In the end he decided that he had
better pretend to have been knocked a little silly by the blow on his head
and to have taken a walk into the country without any proper consciousness of
what he was doing.

He returned to Lavery’s about eleven o’clock, admitting, himself by his
own private key. In the corridor leading to his own rooms, Helen suddenly ran
into his arms imploring him to tell her if he was hurt, where he had been,
what had happened, and so on.

He said, speaking as though he had hardly recovered full possession of his
senses: “I-I don’t know…Something hit me…I think I’ve been walking about
for a long time…I’m all right now, though.”

Her hands were feeling the bandages round his head.

“Who bandaged you?”

“I—I don’t—I don’t know.” (After all, ‘I don’t know’ was
always a safe answer.)

She led him into the red-tinted drawing-room. As he entered it he suddenly
felt the onrush of depression, as if, once within these four walls, half the
strength of his armour would be gone.

“We must have Howard to see you to-morrow morning,” she said, her voice
trembling. “It was absolutely disgraceful! I could hear them from
here—I wondered whatever was happening.” And she added, with just the
suspicion of tartness: “I’d no idea you’d ever let them rag you like
that.”

“
Let
them rag me?” he exclaimed. Then, remembering his part, he
stammered: “I—I don’t know what—what happened.
Something—somebody perhaps—hit me, I think—that was all. It
wasn’t—it wasn’t the ragging. I could have—managed that.”

Suddenly she said: “Whose mackintosh is that you’re wearing?”

The tone of her voice was sharp, acrid, almost venomous.

He started, felt himself blushing, but hoped that in the reddish glow it
would not be observed. “I—I don’t know,” he stammered, still playing
for safety.

“You don’t know?—Then we’ll find out if we can. Perhaps there’s a
name inside it.”

She helped him off with it, and he, hoping devoutly that there might not
be a name inside it, watched her fascinatedly. He saw her examine the inside
of the collar and then throw the coat on the floor.

“So you’ve been there again,” was all that she said.

Once again he replied, maddeningly: “I—I don’t know.”

She almost screamed at him: “Don’t keep telling me you don’t know! You’re
not ill—there’s nothing the matter with you at all—you’re just
pretending! You couldn’t keep order in the Big Hall, so you ran away like a
great coward and went to
that
woman! Did you or didn’t you? Answer
me!”

Never before, he reflected, had she quarrelled so shrilly and rancorously;
hitherto she had been restrained and rather pathetic, but now she was
shouting at him like a fishwife. It was a common domestic bicker; the sort of
thing that gets a good laugh on the music-hall stage. No dignity in
it—just sordid heaped-up abuse. “Great coward”—”
That
woman”—!

He dropped his lost-memory pose, careless, now, whether she found out or
not.

“I
did
go to Clare,” he said, curtly. “And that’s Clare’s raincoat.
Also Clare bandaged me—rather well, you must admit. Also, I’ve drunk
Clare’s coffee and warmed myself at Clare’s fire. Is there any other
confession you’d like to wring out of me?”

“Is there indeed? You know that best yourself.”

“Perhaps you think I’ve been flirting with Clare?”

(As he said it he thought: Good God, why am I saying such things? It’s
only making the position worse for us both.)

“I’ve no doubt she would if you’d given her half a chance.”

The bitterness of her increased his own.

“Or is it that I would if she’d given me half a chance? Are you
quite
sure which?”

“I’m sure of nothing where either of you are concerned. As for Clare,
she’s been a traitor. Right from the time of first meeting you she’s played a
double game, deceiving me and yourself as well. She’s ruined our lives
together, she’s spoilt our happiness and she won’t be satisfied till she’s
wrecked us both completely. I detest her—I loathe her—I loathe
her more than I’ve ever loathed anybody in the world. Thank God I know her
now
—at least I shall never trust her any more. And if
you
do, perhaps some day you’ll pay as I’ve paid. Do you think she’s playing
straight with you any more than she has with me? Do you think
you
can
trust her? Are you taken in?”

The note of savage scorn in her voice made him reply coldly: “You’ve no
cause to talk about taking people in. If ever I’ve been taken in, as you call
it, it was by you, not by Clare!”

He saw her go suddenly white. He was half-sorry he had dealt her the blow,
but as she went on to speak, her words, fiercer than ever now, stung him into
gladness.

“All right! Trust her and pay for it! I could tell you things if I
wished—but I’m not such a traitor to her as she’s been to me. I could
tell you things that would make you gasp, you wretched little fool!”

“They wouldn’t make me gasp; they’d make me call you a damned liar. Helen,
I can understand you hating Clare; I can understand, in a sense, the charge
of traitor that you bring against her; but when you hint all sorts of awful
secrets about her I just think what a petty, spiteful heart you must have!
You ruin your own case by actions like that. They sicken me.”

“Very well, let them sicken you. You’ll not be more sickened than I am.
But perhaps you think I can’t do more than hint. I can and I will, since you
drive me to it. Next time you pay your evening visits to Clare ask her what
she thinks of Pritchard!”