III
Vague years seemed to pass by, and then out of the abyss came the voice of the Head booming: "Um, yes, Mr. Speed ... I think, in the circumstances, you had better—um, yes, take a holiday at the seaside.... You are very clearly in a highly dangerous—um—nervous state ... and I will gladly release you from the rest of your term's duties.... No doubt a rest will effect a great and rapid improvement.... My wife recommends Seacliffe—a pleasant little watering-place—um, yes, extremely so.... As for the incidents during preparation last evening, I think we need not—um—discuss them at present.... Oh yes, most certainly—as soon as convenient—in fact, an early train to-morrow morning would not incommode us.... I—um, yes—I hope the rest will benefit you ... oh yes, I hope so extremely...."
And he added: "Helen is—um—a good nurse."
Then something else of no particular importance, and then: "I shall put Mr.—um—Pritchard in charge of—um—Lavery's while you are absent, so you need not—um—worry about your House...."
Speed said, conquering himself enough to smile: "Oh, no, I shan't worry. I shan't worry about anything."
"Um—no, I hope not. I—I hope not.... My wife and I—um—we both hope that you will not—um—worry...."
Then Speed noticed, with childish curiosity, that the Head was attired in a sky-blue dressing-gown and pink-striped pyjamas....
Where was he, by the way? He looked round and saw a tiny gas-jet burning on a wall bracket; near him was a bed ... Pritchard's bed, of course. But why was the Head in Pritchard's bedroom, and why was Clanwell there as well?
Clanwell said sepulchrally: "Take things easy, old man. I thought something like this would happen. You've been overdoing it."
"Overdoing what?" said Speed.
"Everything," replied Clanwell.
The clock on the dressing-table showed exactly midnight.
"Good-bye," said Speed.
Clanwell said: "I'm coming over with you to Lavery's."
The Head departed, booming his farewell. "Good night.... My—um—my best wishes, Speed ... um, yes—most certainly.... Good night."
Then Pritchard said: "Perhaps I can sleep again now. Enough to give me a breakdown, I should think. Good-night, Speed. And good luck. I wish they'd give me a holiday at Seacliffe.... Good night, Clanwell."
As they trod over the soft turf of the quadrangle they heard old Millstead bells calling the hour of midnight.
Speed said: "Clanwell, do you remember I once told you I could write a novel about Millstead?"
"Yes, I remember it."
"Well, I might have done it then. But I couldn't now. When I first came here Millstead was so big and enveloping—it nearly swallowed me up. But now—it's all gone. I might be living in a slum tenement for all it means to me. Where's it all gone to?"
"You're ill, Speed. It'll come back when you're better."
"Yes, but when shall I be better?"
"When you've been away and had a rest."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. You don't suppose you're dying, do you?"
"No. But there are times when I could suppose I'm dead."
"Nonsense, man. You're too morbid. Why don't you go for a sea voyage? Pull yourself together, man, and don't brood."
Clanwell added: "I'm damned sorry for you—what can I do? Would you like me to come in Lavery's with you for a while? You're not nervous of being alone, are you?"
"Oh no. And besides, I shan't be alone. My wife's there."
"Of course, of course. Stupid of me. I was for the moment forgetting—forgetting—"
"That I was married, eh?"
"No, no, not exactly—I had just forgotten—well, you know how even the most obvious things sometimes slip the memory.... Well, here you are. Have you the key? And you'll be all right, eh? Sure? Well, now, take a long rest and get better, won't you? Good night—Good night—sure you're all right? Good night!"
Clanwell raced back across the turf to his own House and Speed admitted himself to Lavery's and sauntered slowly down the corridor to his room.
Helen was sitting in front of the fire, perfectly still and quiet.
He said: "Helen!"
"Well!" She spoke without the slightest movement of her head or body.
"We've got to go away from Millstead."
He wondered how she would take it. It never occurred to him that she was prepared. She answered: "Yes. Mother's been over here to tell me all about it. We're going to Seacliffe in the morning. Catching the 9.5. What were you doing in Pritchard's bedroom?"
"Didn't they tell you?" he enquired sarcastically.
"How could they? They didn't know. They found you fainting across the bed, and Pritchard said he woke up and found you staring at him."
"And you can't guess why I went there?"
"I suppose you wanted to ask him if it were true that he and I were going away together."
"No, not quite. I wanted to murder him so that it could never be true."
"What!"
"Yes. What I said."
She made no answer, and after a long pause he said: "You're not in love with Pritchard, are you?"
She replied sorrowfully: "Not a little bit. In fact, I rather dislike him. You're the only person I love."
"When you're not hating me, eh?"
"Yes, that's right. When I'm not hating you."
Then after a second long pause he suddenly decided to make one last effort for the tranquillising of the future.
"Helen," he began pleadingly, "Can't you stop hating me? Is it too late to begin everything afresh? Can't we——"
Then he stopped. All the eloquence went out of him suddenly, like the air out of a suddenly pricked balloon. His brain refused to frame the sentences of promise and supplication that he had intended. His brain was tired—utterly tired. He felt he did not care whether Helen stayed with him or not, whether she ran away with Pritchard or not, whether his own relationship with her improved, worsened, or ceased altogether, whether anything in the world happened or did not happen. All he wanted was peace—peace from the eternal torment of his mind.
She suddenly put her arms round him and kissed him passionately. "We will begin again, Kenneth," she said eagerly. "We will be happy again, won't we? Oh yes, I know we will. When we get to Seacliffe we'll have a second honeymoon together, what do you think, darling?"
"Rather," he replied, with simulated enthusiasm. In reality he felt sick—physically sick. Something in the word "honeymoon" set his nerves on edge. Poor little darling Helen—why on earth had he ever married such a creature? They would never be happy together, he was quite certain of that. And yet ... well, anyway, they had to make the best of it. He smiled at her and returned her kisses, and then suggested packing the trunk in readiness for the morning.
CHAPTER SIX
I
In the morning there arrived a letter from Clare. He guessed it from the postmark, and was glad that she had the tact to type the address on the envelope. When he tore it open he saw that the letter was also typewritten, and signed merely "C. H.", so that he was able to read it at the breakfast-table without any fears of Helen guessing. It was a curious sensation, that of reading a letter from Clare with Helen so near to him, and so unsuspecting.
It ran:—
"DEAR KENNETH SPEED—As I told you last night I feel thoroughly disgusted with myself—I knew I should. I'm very sorry I acted as I did, though of course everything I said was true. If you take my advice you'll take Helen right away and never come near Millstead any more. Begin life with her afresh, and don't expect it to be too easy. As for me—you'd better forget if you can. We mustn't ever see each other again, and I think we had better not write, either. I really mean that and I hope you won't send me any awfully pathetic reply as it will only make things more awkward than they are. There was a time when you thought I was hard-hearted; you must try and think so again, because I really don't want to have anything more to do with you. It sounds brutal, but it isn't, really. You have still time to make your life a success, and the only way to do it in the present circumstances is to keep away from my evil influence. So good-bye and good luck. Yours—C.H."—"P.S. If you ever do return to Millstead you won't find me there."
He was so furious that he tore the letter up and flung it into the fire.
"What is it?" enquired Helen.
He forced himself to reply: "Oh, only a tradesman's letter."
She answered, with vague sympathy: "Everybody's being perfectly horrid, aren't they?"
"Oh, I don't care," he replied, shrugging his shoulders and eating vigorously. "I don't care a damn for the lot of them."
She looked at him in thoughtful silence.
Towards the end of the meal he had begun to wonder if it had been Clare's object to put him in just that mood of fierce aggressiveness and truculence. He wished he had not thrown the letter into the fire. He would like to have re-read it, and to have studied the phrasing with a view to more accurate interpretation.
That was about seven-thirty in the morning. The bells were just beginning to ring in the dormitories and the floors above to creak with the beginnings of movement. It was a dull morning in early March, cold, but not freezing; the sky was full of mist and clouds, and very likely it would rain later. As he looked out of the window, for what might be the last time in his life, he realised that he was leaving Millstead without a pang. It astonished him a little. There was nothing in the place that he still cared for. All his dreams were in ruins, all his hopes shattered, all his enthusiasms burned away; he could look out upon Millstead, that had once contained them all, without love and without malice. It was nothing to him now; a mere box of bricks teeming with strangers. Even the terror of it had vanished; it stirred him to no emotion at all. He could leave it as casually as he could a railway station at which he had stopped en route.
And when he tried, just by way of experiment, to resuscitate for a moment some of the feelings he had once had, he was conscious only of immense mental strain, for something inside him that was sterile and that ached intolerably. He remembered how, on the moonlight nights of his first term, his eyes would fill with tears as he saw the great window-lit blocks of Milner's and Lavery's rising into the pale night. He remembered it without passion and without understanding. He was so different now from what he had been then. He was older now; he was tired; his emotions had been wrung dry; some of him was a little withered.
An hour later he left Millstead quite undramatically by the 9.5. The taxi came to the door of Lavery's at ten minutes to nine, while the school was in morning chapel; as he rode away and out of the main gates he could hear, faintly above the purr of the motor, the drone of two hundred voices making the responses in the psalms. It did not bring to his heart a single pang or to his eye a single tear. Helen sat beside him and she, too, was unmoved; but she had never cared for Millstead. She was telling him about Seacliffe.
As the taxi bounded into the station yard she said: "Oh, Kenneth, did you leave anything for Burton?"
"No," he answered, curtly.
"You ought to have done," she said.
That ended their conversation till they were in the train.
As he looked out of the window at the dull, bleak fen country he wondered how he could ever have thought it beautiful. Mile after mile of bare, grey-green fields, ditches of tangled reeds, forlorn villages, trees that stood solitary in the midst of great plains. He saw every now and then the long, flat road along which he had cycled many times to Pangbourne. And in a little while Pangbourne itself came into view, with its huge dominating cathedral round which he had been wont formerly to conduct little enthusiastic parties of Millsteadians; Pangbourne had seemed to him so pretty and sunlit in those days, but now all was dull and dreary, and the mist was creeping up in swathes from the fenlands. Pangbourne station...
Again he wished that he had not burnt Clare's letter.
At noon he was at Seacliffe, booking accommodation at the Beach Hotel.