The Passionate Year (32 page)

“DEAR CLARE—You haven’t answered my letter. I
did
think you would, and now I’m a prey to all sorts of awful and, no
doubt, quite ridiculous fears. And I’m going to ask you again, half-believing
that you didn’t receive my last letter—may I write to you? May I write
to you whenever I want? I can’t have your company, I know—surely you
haven’t the heart to deny me the friendship I can get by writing to you? You
needn’t answer: I promise I will never ask for an answer. I don’t care if the
letters I write offend you or not; there is only one case in which I should
like you to be good enough to reply to me and tell me not to write again. And
that is if you were beginning to forget me—if letters from me were
beginning to be a bore to you.
Please
, therefore, let me
write.—Yours, KENNETH SPEED.”

To that there came a reply by return of post:

“MY DEAR KENNETH SPEED,—I think correspondence
between us is both unwise and unnecessary, but I don’t see how I can prevent
you from writing if you wish to. And you need not fear that I shall forget
you.—CLARE.”

He replied, immediately, and with his soul tingling with the renewal of
happiness:

“DEAR CLARE,—Thank God you can’t stop me from
writing, and thank God you know you can’t. I don’t feel unhappy now that I
can write to you, now that I know you will read what I write. I feel so
unreticent where you are concerned-I want you to
understand
, and I
don’t really care, when you have understood, whether you condemn or not. This
is going (perhaps) to be a longish letter; I’m alone in the lounge of this
entirely God-forsaken hotel—Helen is putting on a frock for dinner, and
I’ve got a quarter-of-an-hour for you.
“This is what I’ve found out since I’ve come to Seacliffe. I’ve found out the
true position of you and me. You’ve sunk far deeper into my soul than I have
ever guessed, and I don’t honestly know how on earth I’m to get rid of you!
For the last ten days I’ve been fighting hard to drive you away, but I’m
afraid I’ve been defeated. You’re there still, securely entrenched as ever,
and you simply won’t budge. The only times I don’t think of you are the times
when I’m too utterly tired out to think of anything or anybody. Worse still,
the stronger I get the more I want you. Why can’t I stop it? You yourself
said during our memorable interview after the ‘rag’ that it wasn’t a bit of
good trying to stop loving somebody. So
you
know, as well as
me—am I to conclude that, you Hound of Heaven?
“But you can’t get rid of me, I hope, any more than I can of you. You may go
to the uttermost ends of the earth, but it won’t matter. I shall still have
you, I shall always bore you—in fact, I’ve got you now, haven’t I?
Don’t we belong to each other in spite of ourselves?
“I tell you, I’ve tried to drive you out of my mind. And I really think I
might succeed better if I didn’t try. Therefore, I shan’t try any more. How
can you deliberately try to forget anybody? The mere deliberation of the
effort rivets them more and more eternally on your memory!
“Helen and I are getting on moderately well. We don’t quarrel. We exchange
remarks about the weather, and we discuss trashy novels which we both have
read, and we take long and uninteresting walks along the cliffs and admire
the same views, over and over again. Helen thinks the rest must be doing me a
lot of good. Oh my dear,
dear
Clare, am I wicked because I sit down
here and write to you these pleading, treacherous letters, while my wife
dresses herself upstairs without a thought that I am so engaged? Am I really
full of sin? I know if I put my case before ninety-nine out of a hundred men
and women what answer I should receive. But are you the hundredth? I don’t
care if you are or not; if this is wickedness, I clasp it as dearly as if it
were not. I just can’t help it. I lie awake at nights trying to think nice,
husbandly things about Helen, and just when I think I’ve got really
interested in her I find it’s you I’ve really been thinking about and not
Helen at all.
“There must be some wonderful and curious bond between us, some sort of
invisible elastic. It wouldn’t ever break, no matter how far apart we went,
but when it’s stretched it hurts, hurts us both, I hope, equally. Is it
really courage to go on hurting ourselves like this? What is the good of it?
Supposing—I only say supposing—supposing we let go, let the
elastic slacken, followed our heart’s desire, what then? Who would suffer?
Helen, I suppose. Poor Helen!—I mustn’t let her suffer like that, must
I?
“It wasn’t real love that I ever had for her; it was just mere physical
infatuation. And now that’s gone, all that’s left is just dreadful
pity—oh, pity that will not let me go! And yet what good is
pity—the sort of pity that I have for her?
“Ever since I first knew you, you have been creeping into my heart ever so
slowly and steadily, and I, because I never guessed what was happening, have
yielded myself to you utterly. In fact, I am a man possessed by a
devil—a good little devil—yet—-“

He looked round and saw Helen standing by the side of him. He had not
heard her approach. She might have been there some while, he reflected. Had
she been looking over his shoulder? Did she know to whom was the letter he
was writing?

He started, and instinctively covered as much of the writing as he could
with the sleeve of his jacket.

“I didn’t know you still wrote to Clare,” she said, quietly.

“Who said I did?” he parried, with instant truculence.

“You’re writing to her now.”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind how I know. Answer me: you are, aren’t you?”

“I refuse to answer such a question. Surely I haven’t to tell you of every
letter I write. If you’ve been spying over my shoulder it’s your own fault.
How would you like me to read all the letters
you
write?”

“I wouldn’t mind in the least, Kenneth, if I thought you didn’t trust
me.”

“Well, I do trust you, you see, and even if I didn’t I shouldn’t attempt
such an unheard-of liberty. And if you can’t trust me without censoring my
correspondence, I’m afraid you’ll have to go on mistrusting me.”

“I don’t want to censor your correspondence. I only want you to answer me
a straight question: is that a letter to Clare that you’re writing?”

“It’s a most improper question, and I refuse to answer it.”

“Very well…I think it’s time for dinner; hadn’t you better finish the
letter afterwards? Unless, of course, it’s very important.”

During dinner she said: “I don’t feel like staying in from now until
bedtime. You’ll want to finish your letter, of course, so I think, if you
don’t mind, I’ll go to the local kinema.”

“You can’t go alone, can you?”

“There’s nobody can very easily stop me, is there? You don’t want to come
with me, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid I don’t care for kinemas much. Isn’t there a theatre
somewhere?”

“No. Only a kinema. I looked in the
Seacliffe Gazette
. In the
summer there are Pierrots on the sands, of course.”

“So you want to go alone to the kinema?”

“Yes.”

“All right. But I’ll meet you when it’s over. Half-past ten, I
suppose?”

“Probably about then. You don’t mind me leaving you for a few hours, do
you?”

“Oh, not at all. I hope you have a good time. I’m sure I can quite
understand you being bored with Seacliffe. It’s the deadest hole I’ve ever
struck.”

“But it’s doing you good, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, I daresay it is in
that
way.”

She added, after a pause: “When you get back to the lounge you’ll wonder
where you put your half-written letter.”

“What do you mean?” He suddenly felt in his inside coat-pocket.
“Why—where is it? I thought I put it in my pocket. Who’s got it? Have
you
?”

“Yes. You thought you put it in your pocket, I know. But you didn’t. You
left it on the writing-table and I picked it up when you weren’t
looking.”

“Then you
have
got it?”

“Yes, I have got it.”

He went red with rage. “Helen, I don’t want to make a scene in front of
the servants, but I insist on you giving up to me that letter. You’ve
absolutely no right to it, and I demand that you give it me immediately.”

“You shall have it after I’ve read it.”

“Good God, Helen, don’t play the fool with me! I want it now, this minute!
Understand, I mean it! I want it now!”

“And I shan’t give it to you.”

He suddenly looked round the room. There was nobody there; the waitress
was away; the two of them were quite alone. He rose out of his chair and with
a second cautious glance round him went over to her and seized her by the
neck with one hand while with the other he felt in her corsage for the
letter. He knew that was where she would have put it. The very surprise of
his movement made it successful. In another moment he had the letter in his
hand. He stood above her, grim and angry, flaunting the letter high above her
head. She made an upward spring for his hand, and he, startled by her quick
retaliation, crumpled the letter into a heap and flung it into the fire at
the side of the room. Then they both stared at each other in silence.

“So it’s come to that,” she said, her face very white. She placed her hand
to her breast and said: “By the way, you’ve hurt me.”

He replied: “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t intend to. I simply wanted
to get the letter, that’s all.”

“All right,” she answered. “I’ll excuse yon for hurting me.”

Then the waitress entered with the sweet and their conversation was
abruptly interrupted.

After dinner he went back into the lounge and took up an illustrated
paper. Somehow, he did not feel inclined to try to rewrite the letter to
Clare. And in any case, he could not have remembered more than bits of it; it
would have to be a fresh letter if he wrote at all.

Helen came downstairs to him with hat and coat on ready for outdoors.

“Good-bye,” she said, “I’m going.”

He said: “Hadn’t I better take you down to the place? I don’t mind a bit
of a walk, you know.”

She answered: “Oh, no, don’t bother. It’s not far. You get on with your
letter-writing.”

Then she paused almost at the door of the lounge, and said, coming back to
him suddenly: “Kiss me before I go, Kenneth.”

He kissed her. Then she smiled and went out. An hour later he started
another letter to Clare.

“MY DEAR,
dear
CLARE,:I’m so pleased it has not all
come to an end!…All those hours we spent together, all the work we have
shared, all our joy and laughter and sympathy together—it could not
have counted for nothing, could it? We dare not have put an end to it; we
should fear being haunted all our lives. We…”

Then the tired feeling came on him, and he no longer wanted to write, not
even to Clare. He put the hardly-begun letter in his pocket—carefully,
this time—and took up the illustrated paper again. He half wished he
had gone with Helen to the kinema…A quarter to ten…It would soon be time
for him to stroll out and meet her.

Walking along the promenade to the beach kinema he solemnly
reviewed his life. He saw kaleidoscopically his childhood days at Beachings
Over, then the interludes at Harrow and Cambridge, and then the sudden
tremendous plunge—Millstead! It seemed to him that ever since that
glowering April afternoon when he had first stepped into Ervine’s dark study,
events had been shaping themselves relentlessly to his ruin. He could see
himself as a mere automaton, moved upon by the calm accurate fingers of fate.
His meeting with Helen, his love of her and hers for him, their marriage,
their slow infinitely wearisome estrangement—all seemed as if it had
been planned with sinister deliberation. Only one section of his life had
been dominated by his own free will, and that was the part of it that had to
do with Clare. He pondered over the subtle differentiation, and decided at
last that it was invalid, and that fate had operated at least as much with
Clare as with Helen. And yet, for all that, the distinction remained in his
mind. His life with Helen seemed to press him down, to cramp him in a narrow
groove, to deprive him of all self-determination; it was, only when he came
to Clare that he was free again and could do as he liked. Surely it was he
himself, and not fate, that drew him joyously to Clare.

The mist that had hovered over Seacliffe all day was now magically lifted,
and out of a clear sky there shone a moon with the slightest of yellow haloes
encircling it. The promenade was nearly deserted, and in all the tall cliff
of boarding-houses along the Marine Parade there was hardly a window with a
light in it. The solitary redness of the lamp on the end of the pier sent a
soft shimmer over the intervening water; the sea, at almost high tide, was
quite calm. Hardly a murmur of the waves reached his ears as he strolled
briskly along, but that was because they were right up against the stone wall
of the promenade and had no beach of pebbles to be noisy with. He leaned over
the railings and saw the water immediately beneath him, silvered in
moonlight. Seacliffe was beautiful now…Then he looked ahead and saw the
garish illuminations of the solitary picture-palace that Seacliffe possessed,
and he wondered how Helen or anybody could prefer a kinema entertainment to
the glory of the night outside. And yet, he reflected, the glory of the night
was a subjective business; it required a certain mood; whereas the kinema
created its own mood, asking and requiring nothing. Poor Helen! Why should
pity for her have overwhelmed him suddenly at that moment? He did not love
her, not the least fraction; yet he would have died for her if such had need
to be. If she were in danger he would not stay to think; he would risk life
or limb for her sake without a premonitory thought. He almost longed for the
opportunity to sacrifice himself for her in some such way. He felt he owed it
to her. But there was one sacrifice that was
too
hard—he could
not live with her in contentment, giving up Clare. He knew he couldn’t. He
saw quite clearly in the future the day when he would leave Helen and go to
Clare. Not fate this time, but the hungering desire of his heart, that would
not let him rest.