The Passionate Year (8 page)

And Speed answered, with an embarrassment that was ridiculously
schoolboyish: “Indeed, sir?—Indeed?”

Speech Day at Millstead.

Speed sat shyly on his chair on the platform, wrapping his gown round him
nervously, and gazing, every now and then, at the fashionably-dressed throng
that crowded the Big Hall to its utmost capacity. It was a day of ordeals,
but his own chief ordeal was safely past; the school-choir had grappled quite
creditably with Stanford’s
Te Deum
at the chapel service that morning.
He was feeling very happy, even amidst his nervousness. His eyes wandered to
the end of the front row of the auditorium, where Helen Ervine and Clare
Harrington sat together. They were gossiping and laughing.

The Chairman, Sir Henry Briggs, rose to introduce the principal guest,
Lord Portway. Lord Portway, so said Sir Henry Briggs, needed no introduction.
Lord Portway…

Speed listened dreamfully.

Then Lord Portway. Lord Portway confessed himself to be a poor speaker,
but hoped that it would not always be those with a glib tongue that got on in
the world. (Laughter and cheers.) When he (Lord Portway) was at school he was
ashamed to say that he never received a single prize. (More laughter.) He
hoped that all the boys of Millstead, whether they had prizes or not, would
remember that it wasn’t always the prize-winners at school who did best in
the battle of life. (Hear, hear.) He would just like to give them all a word
or two of advice. Be thorough. (Cheers.) Brilliance wasn’t everything. If he
were engaging an employee and he had the choice of two men, one brilliant and
the other thorough, he should choose the thorough one. He was certain that
some, at least, of those Millstead boys who had won no prizes would do great
things and become famous in after-life…

Speed watched Doctor Ervine’s face; saw the firm mouth expand, from time
to time, into a mirthless automatic smile whenever the audience was stirred
to laughter. And Mrs. Ervine fidgeted with her dress and glanced about her
with nervously sparkling eyes.

Finally, said Lord Portway, he would like to ask the Headmaster to grant
the boys of Millstead a whole holiday…(Cheers, deafening and
continuous.)

It was, of course, the universal custom that Speech Day should be followed
by a week-end’s holiday in which those boys who lived within easy reach might
go home. Many boys had already made their arrangements and chosen their
trains, but, respecting the theory that the holiday depended on Lord
Portway’s asking for it, they cheered as if he had conferred an inestimable
boon upon them.

The Head, raising his hand when the clamour had lasted a sufficient time,
announced: “My Lord, I have—um—great pleasure in granting your
request.”

More deafening cheers. The Masters round about Speed, witnesses of this
little farce for a number of successive years varying from one to thirty,
smiled and whispered together condescendingly.

Sir Henry Briggs, thick-voiced and ponderous. “I—I call upon the
Headmaster…”

Doctor Ervine rose, cleared his throat, and began: “My
Lord—um—and Ladies and Gentlemen.” A certain sage—he would
leave it to his sixth-form boys to give the gentleman’s
name—(Laughter)—had declared that that nation was happy which had
no history. It had often occurred to him that the remark could be neatly and
appositely adapted to a public-school—happy was that public-school year
about which, on Speech Day, the Headmaster could find very little to say.
(Laughter.) Certainly it was true of this particular year. It had been a very
happy one, a very successful one, and really, there was not much else to say.
One or two things, however, he would like to mention especially. First, in
the world of Sport. He put Sport first merely because alphabetically it came
before Work. (Laughter.) Millstead had had a very successful football and
hockey season, and only that week at cricket they had defeated Selhurst.
(Cheers)…In the world of scholarship the year had also been successful, no
fewer than thirty-eight Millsteadians having passed the Lower Certificate
Examination of the Oxford and Cambridge Board. (Cheers.) One of the
sixth-form boys, A. V. Cobham, had obtained an exhibition at Magdalen
College, Cambridge. (Cheers.) H. O. Catterwall, who left some years back, had
been appointed Deputy Revenue Commissioner for the district
of—um—Bhungi-Bhoolu. (Cheers.) Two boys, R. Heming and B. Shales,
had obtained distinctions at London University. (Cheers)…Of the Masters,
all he could say was that he could not believe that any Headmaster in the
country was supported by a staff more loyal and efficient. (Cheers.) They had
to welcome one addition—he might say, although he (the addition) had
only been at Millstead a few weeks—a very valued addition—to the
school staff. That was Mr. Speed. (Loud cheers.) Mr. Speed was very young,
and youth, as they all knew, was very enthusiastic. (Cheers and laughter.) In
fact, although Mr. Speed had been at Millstead such a short time, he had
already earned and deserved the name of the School Enthusiast. (Laughter.) He
had had a very kind letter from Mr. Speed’s father, Sir Charles
Speed—(pause)—regretting his inability, owing to a previously
contracted engagement, to be present at the Speech Day celebrations, and he
(the Head) was particularly sorry he could not come because it would have
done him good, he felt sure, to see how universally popular at Millstead was
his enthusiastic son. (Cheers and laughter.) He hoped Millstead would have
the benefit of Mr. Speed’s gifts and personality for many, many years to
come. (Loud cheers)…He must not conclude without some reference to the sad
blow that had struck the school only a week or so before. He alluded to the
lamented passing-away of Sir Huntly Polk, for many years Chairman on the
Governing Board…

Speed heard no more. He felt himself beginning to burn all over; he put
one hand to his cheek in a vague and instinctive gesture of self-protection.
Of course, behind his embarrassment he was pleased, rapturously pleased; but
at first his predominant emotion was surprise. It had never occurred to him
that the Head would mention him in speech, or that he would invite his father
to the Speech Day ceremonies. Then, as he heard the cheering of the boys at
the mention of his name, emotion swallowed his surprise and everything became
a blur.

After the ceremony he met the two girls outside the Big Hall. Clare said:
“Poor man—you looked
so
uncomfortable while everybody was
cheering you! But really, you know, it
is
nice to be praised, isn’t
it?”

And Helen, speaking softly so that no one else should hear, whispered: “I
daresay I can get free about nine o’clock to-night. We can go for a walk eh,
Kenneth?—Nine o’clock by the pavilion steps, then.”

Her voice, muffled and yet eager, trembled like the note of a bell on a
windy day.

Speed whispered, joyously: “Righto, Helen, I’ll be there.”

To such a pitch had their relationship developed as a result of
music-lessons and book-lendings and casual encounters. And now they were
living the most exquisite of all moments, when each could guess but could not
be quite certain of the other’s love. Day had followed day, each one more
tremulously beautiful than the one before, each one more exquisitely near to
something whose beauty was too keen and blinding to be studied; each day the
light in their eyes had grown brighter, fiercer, more bursting from within.
But now, as they met and separated in the laughing crowd that squirmed its
way down the steps of the Big Hall, some subtle telepathy between their minds
told them that never again would they shrink from the vivid joy of
confession. To-night…thought Speed, as he went up to his room and slipped
off his cap and gown. And the same wild ecstasy of anticipation was in
Helen’s mind as she walked with Clare across the lawns to the Head’s
house.

That night the moon was full and high; the leaden roofs and
cupola of the pavilion gleamed like silver plaques; and all the cricket-pitch
was covered with a thin, white, motionless tide into which the oblong shadows
pushed out like the black piers of a jetty. Millstead was silent and serene.
A third of its inhabitants had departed by the evening trains; perhaps
another third was with its parents in the lounges of the town hotels; the
remainder, reacting from the day’s excitement and sobered by the unaccustomed
sparseness of the population, was more silent than usual. Lights gleamed in
the dormitories and basement bathrooms, but there was an absence of stir,
rather than of sound, which gave to the whole place a curious aspect of
forlornness; no sudden boisterous shout sent its message spinning along the
corridor and out of some wide-open window into the night. It was a world of
dreams and spells, and to Speed, standing in the jet-black shadow of the
pavilion steps, it seemed that sight and sound were almost one; that he could
hear moonlight humming everywhere around him, and see the tremor in the sky
as the nine o’clock chiming fell from the chapel belfry.

She came to him like a shy wraith, resolving out of the haze of moonbeams.
The bright gold of her hair, drenched now in silver, had turned to a glossy
blackness that had in it some subtle and unearthly colour that could be
touched rather than seen; Speed felt his fingers tingle as at a new
sensation. Something richly and manifestly different was abroad in the world,
something different from what had ever been there before; the grey shining
pools of her eyes were like pictures in a trance. He knew, strangely and
intimately, that he loved her and that she loved him, that there was
exquisite sweetness in everything that could happen to them, that all the
world was wonderfully in time and tune with their own blindfold yet
miraculously self-guiding inclinations. Tears, lovely in moonlight, shone in
her clear eyes, eyes that were deep and dark under the night sky; he put his
arm around her and touched his cheek with hers. It was as if his body began
to dissolve at that first ineffable thrill; he trembled vitally; then, after
a pause of magic, kissed her dark, wet, offering lips, not with passion, but
with all the wistful gentleness of the night itself, as if he were afraid
that she might fly away, moth-like, from a rough touch. The moonlight, sight
and sound fused into one, throbbed in his eyes-and ears; his heart, beating
quickly, hammered, it seemed, against the stars. It was the most exquisite
and tremulous revelation of heaven, heaven that knew neither bound nor
end.

“Wonderful child!” he whispered.

She replied, in a voice deep as the diapason note of an organ: “
Am
I wonderful?”

“
You
are,” she said, after a pause.

He nodded.

“
I
?” He smiled, caressing her hair. “I feel—I feel, Helen, as
if nothing in the world had ever happened to me until this night! Nothing at
all!”

“
I
do,” she whispered.

“As if—as if nothing in the world had ever happened to anybody until
now.”

“You love me?”

“Yes, Kenneth.”

“I love you.”

“I’m—I’m—I’m glad.”

They stood together for a long while with the moonlight on their faces,
watching and thinking and dreaming and wondering. The ten o’clock chimes
littered the air with their mingled pathos and cheer; the hour had been like
the dissolving moment of a dream.

As they entered the shadows of the high trees and came in sight of
Milner’s, a tall cliff of winking yellow windows, they stopped and kissed
again, a shade more passionately than before.

“But oh,” she exclaimed as they separated in the shadow of the Head’s
gateway, “I
wish
I was clever! I wish I was as clever as you! I’m not,
Kenneth, and you mustn’t think I am. I’m—I’m
stupid
, compared
with you. And yet”—her voice kindled with a strange thrill—“and
yet you say I’m wonderful!
Wonderful
!—
Am
I?—Really
wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” he whispered, fervently.

She cried, softly but with passion: “Oh, I’m glad—glad—I’m
glad. It’s—it’s glorious to—to think that you think that. But oh,
Kenneth, Kenneth, don’t find out that I’m not.” She added, very softly and
almost as if reassuring herself of something: “I—I love you
very
—very much.”

They could not tear themselves away from each other. The lights in the
dormitories winked out one by one; the quarter-chimes sprinkled their music
on the moon-white lawns; yet still, fearful to separate, they whispered
amidst the shadows. Millstead, towering on all sides of them vast and
radiant, bathed them in her own deep passionless tranquillity; Millstead, a
little forlorn that night, yet ever a mighty parent, serenely watchful over
her children.

He decided that night that he would write a story about
Millstead; that he would do for Millstead what other people had already done
for Eton and Harrow and Rugby. He would put down all the magic that he had
seen and felt; he would transfer to paper the subtle enchantment of the
golden summer days, the moonlit nights, the steamy warmth of the bathrooms,
the shouting in the dormitories, the buzz of movement and conversation in the
dining-hall, the cool gloom of the chapel—everything that came
effortlessly into his mind whenever he thought of Millstead. All the beauty
and emotion and rapture that he had seen and felt must not, he determined, be
locked inside him: it clamoured to be set free, to flow strongly yet
purposefully in the channel of some mighty undertaking.

Clanwell asked him in to coffee that night: from half-past ten till
half-past eleven Speed lounged in one of Clanwell’s easy chairs and found a
great difficulty in paying attention to what Clanwell was saying. In the end
his thoughts burst, as it were, their barriers: he said: “D’you know,
Clanwell, I’ve had an idea—some time, you know—to write a tale
about Millstead?”