III
There came the concert in the first week of December. No one, not even those of the Common-Room who were least cordially disposed to him, could deny that Speed had worked indefatigably and that his efforts deserved success. Yet the success, merited though it was, was hardly likely to increase his popularity among those inclined to be jealous of him.
Briskly energetic and full of high spirits throughout all the rehearsals, and most energetic of all on the actual evening of the performance, he yet felt, when all was over and he knew that the affair had been a success, the onrush of a wave of acute depression. He had, no doubt, been working too hard, and this was the natural reaction of nerves. It was a cold night with hardly any wind, and during the evening a thick fog had drifted up from the fenlands, so that there was much excited talk among the visitors about the difficulties of getting to their homes. Nothing was to be seen more than five or six yards ahead, and there was the prospect that as the night advanced the fog would become worse. The Millstead boys, enjoying the novelty, were scampering across the forbidden quadrangle, revelling in the delightful risk of being caught and in the still more delightful possibility of knocking over, by accident, some one or other of the Masters. Speed, standing on the top step of the flight leading down from the Big Hall, gazed into the dense inky-black cloisters where two faint pin-pricks of light indicated lamps no more than a few yards away. He felt acutely miserable, and he could not think why. In a way, he was sorry that the bustle of rehearsals, to which he had become quite accustomed, was all finished with; but surely that was hardly a sufficient reason for feeling miserable? Hearing the boyish cries from across the quadrangle he suddenly felt that he was old, and that he wished he were young again, as young as the youngest of the boys at Millstead.
Since the quarrel about Smallwood he and Helen had got on tolerably well together. She had not asked Smallwood in to tea again, and he judged that she did not intend to, though to save her dignity she would still persist in her right to do so whenever she wished. The arrangement was quite satisfactory to him. But, despite the settlement of that affair, their relationship had suddenly become a thing of fierce, alternating contrasts. They were either terrifically happy or else desperately miserable. The atmosphere, when he came into Lavery's after an absence of even a quarter of an hour, might either be dull and glowering or else radiant with joy. He could never guess which it would be, and he could never discover reasons for whichever atmosphere he encountered. But invariably he was forced into responding; if Helen were moody and silent he also remained quiet, even if his inclinations were to go to the piano and sing comic songs. And if Helen were bright and joyful he forced himself to boisterousness, no matter what press of gravity was upon him. He sometimes found himself stopping short on his own threshold, frightened to enter lest Helen's mood, vastly different from his own, might drag him up or down too disconcertingly. Even their times of happiness, more wonderful now than ever, were drug-like in possessing after-effects which projected themselves backward in a tide of sweet melancholy that suffused everything. He knew that he loved her more passionately than ever, and he knew also that the beauty of it was mysteriously impregnated with sadness.
She stole up to him now in the fog, dainty and pretty in her heavy fur cloak. She put a hand on his sleeve; evidently this was one of her happy moods.
"Oh, Kenneth—what a fog! Aren't you glad everything's all over? It went off wonderfully, didn't it? Do you think the Rayners will be able to get home all right—they live out at Deepersdale, you know?"
Replying to the last of her queries, he said: "Oh yes, I don't think it's quite bad enough to stop them altogether."
Then after a pause she went on: "Clare's just putting her things on and I told her to meet you here. You'll see her home, won't you?"
He wondered in a vague kind of way why Helen was so desperately anxious that he should take Clare on her way home, but he was far too exhausted mentally to give the matter sustained excogitation. It seemed to him that Helen suddenly vanished, that he waited hours in the fog, and that Clare appeared mysteriously by his side, speaking to him in a voice that was full of sharp, recuperative magic. "My dear man, aren't you going to put your coat on?" Then he deliberately laughed and said: "Heavens, yes, I'd forgotten—just a minute if you don't mind waiting!"
He groped his way back into the hall and to the alcove where he had laid his coat and hat. The yellow light blurred his eyes with a film of half-blindness; phantasies of doubt and dread enveloped him; he felt, with that almost barometric instinct that he possessed, that things momentous and incalculable were looming in the future. This Millstead that had seemed to him so bright and lovely was now heavy with dark mysterious menace; as he walked back across the hall through the long avenues of disturbed chairs it occurred to him suddenly that perhaps this foreboding that was hovering about him was not mental at all, but physical; that he had overworked himself and was going to be ill. Perhaps, even, he was ill already. He had a curious desire that someone should confirm him in this supposition; when Clare, meeting him at the doorway, said: "You're looking thoroughly tired out Mr. Speed," he smiled and answered, with a touch of thankfulness: "I'm feeling, perhaps, a little that way."
"Then," said Clare, immediately, "please don't trouble to see me home. I can quite easily find my own way, I assure you. You go back to Lavery's and get straight off to bed."
The thought, thus presented to him, of foregoing this walk into the town with her, sent a sharp flush into his cheeks and pulled down the hovering gloom almost on to his eyes; he knew then, more acutely than he had ever guessed before, that he was desiring Clare's company in a way that was a good deal more than casual. The realisation surprised him just a little at first, and then surprised him a great deal because at first it had surprised him only a little.
"I'd rather come with you if you don't mind," he said. "The walk will do me good."
"What, this weather!" she exclaimed softly, and then laughed a sharp, instant laugh.
That laugh galvanised him into determination. "I'm coming anyway," he said quietly, and took her arm and led her away into the fog.
Out in the high road it was blacker and denser; the school railings, dripping with grimy moisture, provided the only sure clue to position. Half, at least, of Speed's energies were devoted to the task of not losing the way; with the other half he was unable to carry out much of the strange programme of conversation that had been gathering in his mind. For many days past he had been accumulating a store of things to say to her upon this memorable walk which, so far as he could judge, was bound to be the last; now, with the opportunity arrived, he said hardly anything at all. She chattered to him about music and Millstead and odd topics of slight importance; she pressed her scarf to her lips and the words came out curiously muffled and deep-toned, with the air of having incalculable issues depending on them. But he hardly answered her at all. And at last they reached Harrington's shop in the High Street, and she shook hands with him and told him to get back as quickly as he could and be off to bed. "And don't work so hard," were her last words to him, "or you'll be ill."
Thicker and blacker than ever was the fog on the way back to the school, and somehow, through what error he never discovered, he lost himself amongst the narrow, old fashioned streets in the centre of the town. He wandered about, as it seemed to him, for hours, creeping along walls and hoping to meet some passer-by who could direct him. Once he heard Millstead Parish Church beginning the chime of midnight, but it was from the direction he least expected. At last, after devious manœuvring, he discovered himself again on the main road up to the School, and this time with great care he managed to keep to the route. As he entered the main gateway he heard the school clock sounding the three-quarters. A quarter to one! All was silent at Lavery's. He rang the bell timorously. After a pause he heard footsteps approaching on the other side, but they seemed to him light and airy; the bolts were pushed back, not with Burton's customary noise, but softly, almost frightenedly.
He could see that it was Helen standing there in the porch, not Burton. She flashed an electric torch in his face and then at his feet so that he should see the step.
She said: "Come in quickly—don't let the fog in. You're awfully late, aren't you? I told Burton to go to bed. I didn't know you were going to stay at Clare's."
He answered: "I didn't stay at Clare's. I got lost in the fog on the way back."
"Lost!" she echoed, walking ahead of him down the corridor towards his sitting-room. The word echoed weirdly in the silence. "Lost, were you?—So that's why you were late?"
"That's why," he said.
He followed her into the tiny lamp-lit room, full of firelight that was somehow melancholy and not cheerful.