IV
On the day that term ended he felt quite boyish and cheerful. For during that final week he and Helen had been, he considered, perfectly happy; moreover, she had agreed to go with him to his parents for Christmas, and though the visit would, in some sense, be an ordeal, the anticipation of it was distinctly pleasant. Somehow—he would not analyse his sensation exactly—somehow he wanted to leave the creeper-hung rooms at Lavery's and charge full tilt into the world outside; it was as if Lavery's contained something morbidly beautiful that he loved achingly, but desired to leave in order that he might return to love it more and again. When he saw the railway vans being loaded up with luggage in the courtyard he felt himself tingling with excitement, just as if he were a schoolboy and this the close of his first miserable term. Miserable! Well, yes, looking back upon it he could agree that in a certain way it had been miserable, and in another way it had been splendid, rapturous, and lovely. It had been full, brimming full, of feelings. The feelings had whirled tirelessly about him in the dark drawing-room, had wrapped him amidst themselves, had tossed him high and low to the most dizzy heights and the most submerged depths; and now, aching from it all, he was not sorry to leave for a short while this world of pressing, congesting sensation.
He even caught himself looking forward to his visit to his parents, a thing he had hardly ever done before. For his parents were, he had always considered, "impossible" parents, good and generous enough in their way, but "impossible" from his point of view. They were—he hesitated to use the word "vulgar," because that word implied so many things that they certainly were not—he would use instead the rather less insulting word "materialist." They lived in a world that was full of "things"—soap-factories and cars and Turkey carpets and gramophones and tennis-courts. Moreover, they were almost disgustingly wealthy, and their wealth had followed him doggedly about wherever he had tried to escape from it. They had regarded his taking a post in a public-school as a kind of eccentric wild oats, and did not doubt that, sooner or later, he would come to his senses and prefer one or other of the various well-paid business posts that Sir Charles Speed could get for him. Oh, yes, undoubtedly they were impossible people. And yet their very impossibility would be a relief from the tensely charged atmosphere of Lavery's.
On the train he chatted gaily to Helen and gave her some indication of the sort of people his parents were. "You mustn't be nervous of them," he warned her. "They've pots of money, but they're not people to get nervous about. Dad's all right if you stick up for yourself in front of him, and mother's nice to everybody whether she likes them or not. So you'll be quite safe ... and if it freezes there'll be ice on the Marshpond...."
At the thought of this last possibility his face kindled with anticipation. "Cold, Helen?" he queried, and when she replied "Yes, rather," he said jubilantly: "I shouldn't be surprised if it's started to freeze already."
Then for many minutes he gazed out through the carriage window at the pleasant monotony of the Essex countryside, and in a short while he felt her head against his shoulder. She was sleeping. "I do love her!" he thought triumphantly, giving her a side-glance. And then the sight of a pond with a thin coating of ice gave him another sort of triumph.