The passionate year

by James Hilton

III

Then slowly there grew in him again the thought of Clare. It was as if, as soon as he gained strength at all, that strength should bring with it turmoil and desire, so that the only peace that he could ever hope for was the joyless peace of exhaustion. The sharp sea-salt winds that brought him health and vigour brought him also passion, passion that racked and tortured him into weakness again.

He wished a thousand times that he had not burned Clare's letter. He felt sure that somewhere in it there must have been a touch of verbal ambiguity or subtlety that would have given him some message of hope; he could not believe that she had sent him merely a letter of dismissal. In one sense, he was glad that he had burned the letter, for the impossibility of recovering it made it easier for him to suppose whatever he wished about it. And whatever he wished was really only one wish in the world, a wish of one word: Clare. He wanted her, her company, her voice, her movements around him, the sight of her, her quaint perplexing soul that so fitted in with his own, her baffling mysterious understandings of him that nobody else had ever had at all. He wanted her as a sick man longs for health; as if he had a divine right to her, and as if the withholding of her from him gave him a surging grudge against the world.

One dreary interval between tea at the hotel and dinner he wrote to her. He wrote in a mood in which he cared not if his writing angered her or not; her silence, if she did not reply, would be his answer. And if she did not reply, he vowed solemnly to himself that he would never write to her again, that he would put her out of his life and spend his energies in forgetting her.

He wrote:—

"DEAR CLARE—I destroyed your letter, and I can't quite remember whether it forbade me to reply or not. Anyhow, that's only my excuse for it. I'm having a dreadfully dull time at Seacliffe—we're the only visitors at the hotel and, so far as I can see, the only visitors in Seacliffe at all. I'm not exactly enjoying it, but I daresay it's doing me good. Thanks ever so much for your advice—I mean to profit by it—most of it, at any rate. But mayn't I write to you—even if you don't write to me? I do want to, especially now. May I!—Yours, KENNETH SPEED."

No answer to that. For nearly a week he scanned the rack in the entrance-hall, hoping to see his own name typewritten on an envelope, for he guessed that even if she did reply she would take that precaution. But in vain his hurried and anxious returns from the cliff-walks; no letter was there. And at last, tortured to despair, he wrote again.

"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 you 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.