The passionate year

by James Hilton

IV

"Mr. Speed!" she said, full of compassion. A tiny lamp in the corridor illumined his bandaged head as he walked in. "What on earth has happened to you? Can you walk up all right?"

"Yes," he answered, with even a slight laugh. The very presence of her gave him reassurance. He strode up the steps into the sitting-room and stood in front of the fire. She followed him and stared at him for a moment without speaking. Then she said, almost unconcernedly: "Now you mustn't tell me anything till you've been examined. That looks rather a deep cut. Now sit down in that chair and let me attend to you. Don't talk."

He obeyed her, with a feeling in his heart of ridiculously childish happiness. He remembered when Helen had once bade him not talk, and how the demand had then irritated him. Curious that Clare could even copy Helen exactly and yet be tremendously, vitally different!

She unwound the bandage, washed the cut, and bandaged it up again in a clean and workmanlike manner. The deftness of her fingers fascinated him; he gazed on them as they moved about over his face; he luxuriated amongst them, as it were.

At the finish of the operation she gave that sharp instant laugh which, even after hearing it only a few times, he had somehow thought characteristic of her. "You needn't worry," she said quietly, and in the half-mocking tone that was even more characteristic of her than her laugh. "You're not going to die. Did you think you were? Now tell me how it happened."

"You'll smile when I tell you. I was taking prep, and they ragged me. Somebody switched off the lights and somebody else must have thrown a book at me. That's all."

"That's all? It's enough, isn't it? And what made you think I should smile at such an affair?"

"I don't know. In a certain sense it's, perhaps, a little funny.... D'you know, lately I've had a perfectly overwhelming desire to laugh at things that other people wouldn't see anything funny in. The other night Helen told me not to talk to her because she couldn't believe a word I said, but she didn't mind if I kissed her. I laughed at that—I couldn't help it. And now, when I think of an hour ago with all the noise and commotion and flash-lights and stink-bombs and showers of ink—oh, God, it was damned funny!"

He burst into gusts of tempestuous, half-hysterical laughter.

"Stop laughing!" she ordered. She added quietly: "Yes, you look as if you've been in an ink-storm—it's all over your coat and collar. What made them rag you?"

"They hate me."

"Why?"

He pondered, made suddenly serious, and then said: "God knows."

She did not answer for some time. Then she suddenly went over to the china cupboard and began taking out crockery. Once again his eyes had something to rivet themselves upon; this time her small, immensely capable hands as she busied herself with the coffee-pot. "And you thought I should find it amusing?" she said, moving about the whole time. As she continued with the preparations she kept up a running conversation. "Well, I don't find it amusing. I think it's very serious. You came here last summer term and at first you were well liked, fairly successful, and happy. Now, two terms later, you're apparently detested, unsuccessful, and—well, not so happy as you were, eh? What's been the cause of it all? You say God knows. Well, if He does know, He won't tell you, so you may as well try to find out for yourself."

And she went on: "I don't want to rub it in. Forgive me if I am doing so."

Something in the calm kindliness of her voice made him suddenly bury his head in his hands and begin to sob. He gasped, brokenly: "All right.... Clare.... But the future.... Oh, God—is it all black? ... What—what can I do, Clare?"

She replied, immensely practical: "You must control yourself. You're hysterical—laughing one minute and crying the next. Coffee will be ready in a while—it'll quiet your nerves. And the future will be all right if only you won't be as big a fool as you have been."

Then he smiled. "You do tell me off, don't you?" he said.

"No more than you need.... But we're talking too much. I don't want you to talk a lot—not just yet. Sit still while I play the piano to you."

She played some not very well-known composition of Bach, and though when she began he was all impatience to talk to her, he found himself later on becoming tranquil, perfectly content to listen to her as long as she cared to go on. She played quite well, and with just that robust unsentimentality which Bach required. He wondered if she had been clever enough to know that her playing would tranquillise him.

When she had finished, the coffee was ready and they had a cosy little armchair snack intermingled with conversation that reminded him of his Cambridge days. He would have been perfectly happy if he had not been burdened with such secrets. He wanted to tell her everything—to show her all his life. And yet whenever he strove to begin the confession she twisted the conversation very deftly out of his reach.

At last he said: "I've got whole heaps to tell you, Clare. Why don't you let me begin?"

She looked ever so slightly uncomfortable.

"Do you really want to begin?"

"Yes."

"Begin then."

But it was not so easy for him to begin after her straightforward order to do so. She kept her brown eyes fixed unswervingly on him the whole time, as if defying him to tell anything but the utterest truth. He paused, stammered, and then laughed uncomfortably.

"There's a lot to tell you, and it's not easy."

"Then don't trouble. I'm not asking you to."

"But I want to."

She said, averting her eyes from him for a moment: "It's not really that you want to begin yourself, it's that you want me to begin, isn't it?"

Then he said: "Yes, I wanted you to begin if you would. I wanted you to ask me a question you used to ask me?"

"What's that?"

"Whether I'm happy ... or not. I always used to say yes, and since that answer has become untrue you've never asked me the question."

"Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue."

"You knew? You knew! Tell me, what did you know? What do you know now?"

She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: "My dear man, I know. I understand you. Haven't you found out that? I know, I've known for a long time that you haven't been happy."

Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost wildly, in his eagerness: "Helen and I—we don't get on well together." Then he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare's eternally calm eyes. "She doesn't understand me—in fact—I don't really think we either of us understand the other."

"No?" she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied: "I think that perhaps explains—chiefly—why I am unhappy. We—Helen and I—we don't know quite what—what to do with each other. Do you know what I mean? We don't exactly quarrel. It's more that we try so hard to be kind that—that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other.... Oh, not actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way.... Oh, Clare, Clare, the truth of it is, I can't bear her, and she can't bear me!"

"Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?"

"Oh, yes, she loves me."

"And you love her?"

He looked her straight in the eyes and slowly shook his head.

"I used to. But I don't now. It's awful—awful—but it's the honest truth."

It seemed to him that his confession had reached the vital crest and that all else would be easy and natural now that he had achieved thus far. He went on: "Clare, I've tried to make myself think I love her. I've tried all methods to be happy with her. I've given in to her in little matters and big matters to try to make her happy, I've isolated myself from other people just to please her, I've offered anything—everything to give her the chance of making me love her as I used to! But it's not been a bit of use."

"Of course it hasn't."

"Why of course?"

"Because you can't love anybody by trying. Any more than you can stop loving anybody by trying... Do you know, I've never met anybody who's enraged me as much as you have."

"Enraged you?"

"Yes. What right have I to be enraged with you, you'll say, but never mind that. I've been enraged with you because you've been such a continual disappointment ever since I've known you. This is a time for straight talking, isn't it? So don't be offended. When you first came to Millstead you were just a jolly schoolboy—nothing more, though you probably thought you were—you were brimful of schoolboyish ideals and schoolboyish enthusiasms. Weren't you? Nobody could help liking you—you were so—so nice—nice is the word, isn't it?"

"You're mocking me."

"Not at all. I mean it. You were nice, and I liked you very much. Compared with the average fussily jaded Master at a public-school you were all that was clean and hopeful and energetic. I wondered what would become of you. I wondered whether you'd become a sarcastic devil like Ransome, a vulgar little counter-jumper like Pritchard, or a beefy, fighting parson like Clanwell. I knew that whatever happened you wouldn't stay long as you were. But I never thought that you'd become what you are. Good God, man, you are a failure, aren't you?"

"What's the good of rubbing it in?"

"This much good—that I want you to be quite certain of the depth you've fallen to. A man of your sort soon forgets his mistakes. That's why he makes so many of them twice over."

"Well—admitting that I am a failure, what then? What advice have you to offer me?"

"I advise you to leave Millstead."

"When?"

"At the end of the term."

"And where shall I go?"

"Anywhere except to another school."

"What shall I do?"

"Anything except repeat your mistakes."

"And Helen?"

"Take her with you."

"But she is one of my mistakes."

"I know that. But you've got to put up with it."

"And if I can't?"

"Then I don't know."

He suddenly plunged his head into his hands and was silent. Her ruthless summing-up of the situation calmed him, made him ready for the future, but filled that future with a dreariness that was awful to contemplate.

After a while he rose, saying: "Well, I suppose you're right. I'll go back now. God knows what'll happen to me between now and the end of term. But I guess I'll manage somehow. Anyway, I'm much obliged for your first-aid. Good-bye—don't trouble to let me out—I know how the door works."

"I want to lock up after you're gone," she said.

In the dark lobby the sudden terror of what he had done fell on him like a crushing weight. He had told Clare that he did not love Helen. And then, following upon that, came a new and more urgent terror—he had not told Clare that it was she whom he loved. What was the use of telling her the one secret without the other?—Perhaps he would never see Clare again. This might be his last chance. If he did not take it or make it the torture of his self-reproaching would be unendurable.

"You came without any coat and hat," she observed. "Let me lend you my raincoat—it's no different from a man's."

He perceived instantly that if he borrowed it he would have an excuse for visiting her again in order to return it. And perhaps then, more easily than now, he could tell her the secret that was almost bursting his heart.

"Thanks," he said, gratefully, and as she helped him into the coat she said: "Ask the boy to bring it back here when he calls for the orders in the morning."

He could have cried at her saying that. The terror came on him feverishly, intolerably, the terror of leaving her, of living the rest of life without a sight or a knowledge of her. He could not bear it; the longing was too great—he could not put it away from him. And she was near him for the last time, her hands upon his arms as she helped him into the coat. She did not want him to call again. It was quite plain.

He had to speak.

He said, almost at the front door: "Clare, do you know the real reason why I don't love Helen any more?"

He thought he heard her catch her breath sharply. Then, after a pause, she said rather curtly: "Yes, of course I do. Don't tell me."

"What!" In the darkness he was suddenly alive. "What! You know! You know the real reason! You don't! You think you do, but you don't! I'll warrant you don't! You don't know everything!"

And the calm voice answered: "I know everything about you."

"You don't know that I love you!" (There! It was spoken now; a great weight was taken off his heart, no matter whether she should be annoyed or not! His heart beat wildly in exultation at having thrown off its secret at long last.)

She answered: "Yes, I know that. But I didn't want you to tell me."

And he was amazed. His mind, half stupefied, accepted her knowledge of his love for her almost as if it were a confession of her returned love for him. It was as if the door were suddenly opened to everything he had not dared to think of hitherto. He knew then that his mind was full of dreaming of her, wild, passionate, tumultuous dreaming, dreaming that lured him to the edge of wonderland and precarious adventure. But this dreaming was unique in his experience; no slothful half-pathetic basking in the fluency of his imagination, no easy inclination to people a world with his own fancies rather than bridge the gulf that separated himself from the true objectiveness of others; this was something new and immense, a hungering of his soul for reality, a stirring of the depths in him, a monstrous leaping renewal of his youth. No longer was his imagination content to describe futile, sensual curves within the abyss of his own self, returning cloyingly to its starting-point; it soared now, embarked on a new quest, took leave of self entirely, drew him, invisibly and incalculably, he knew not where. He knew not where, but he knew with whom.... This strange, magnetic power that she possessed over him drew him not merely to herself, but to the very fountain of life; she was life, and he had never known life before. The reach of his soul to hers was the kindling touch of two immensities, something at once frantic and serene, simple and subtle, solemn and yet deep with immeasurable heart-stirring laughter.

He said, half inarticulate: "What, Clare! You know that I love you?"

"Of course I do."

(Great God, what was this thrill that was coming over him, this tremendous, invincible longing, this molten restlessness, this yearning for zest in life, for action, starry enthusiasm, resistless plunging movement!)

"And you don't mind?"

"I do mind. That's why I didn't want you to tell me.

"But what difference has telling you made, if you knew already?"

"No difference to me. But it will to you. You'll love me more now that you know I know."

"Shall I?" His query was like a child's.

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I know. That's all."

They were standing there together in the dark lobby. His heart was wildly beating, and hers—he wondered if it were as calm as her voice. And then all suddenly he felt her arms upon him, and she, Clare—Clare!—the reticent, always controlled Clare!—was crying, actually crying in his arms that stupidly, clumsily held her. And Clare's voice, unlike anything that it had ever been in his hearing before, was talking—talking and crying at once—accomplishing the most curious and un-Clare-like feats.

"Oh, my dear, dear man—why did you tell me? Why did you make everything so hard for me and yourself?—Oh, God—let me be weak for just one little minute—only one little minute!—I love you, Kenneth Speed, just as you love me—we fit, don't we, as if the world had been made for us as well as we for ourselves! Oh, what a man I could have made of you, and what a woman you could have made of me! Dearest, I'm so sorry.... When you've gone I shall curse myself for all this.... Oh, my dear, my dear...." She sobbed passionately against his breast, and then, suddenly escaping from his arms, began to speak in a voice more like her usual one. "You must go now. There's nothing we can do. Please, please go now. No, no—don't kiss me.... Just go.... And let's forgive each other for this scene.... Go, please go.... Good-night.... No, I won't listen to you.... I want you to go.... Good night.... You haven't said a word, I know, and I don't want you to. There's nothing to say at all. Good night.... Good night...."

He found himself outside in High Street as in some strange incomprehensible dream....

CHAPTER FIVE
I

All the way back to Millstead joy was raging in his heart, trampling down all his woes and defying him to be miserable. Nothing in the world—not his unhappiness with Helen, or the hatred that Millstead had for him, or the perfidy of his own soul—could drive out that crowning, overmastering triumph—the knowledge that Clare loved him. For the moment he saw no difficulties, no dangers, no future that he could not easily bear. Even if he were never to see Clare again, he felt that the knowledge that she loved him would be an adequate solace to his mind for ever. He was happy—deliriously, eternally happy. Helen's silences, the school's ragging, the Head's sinister coldness, were bereft of all their powers to hurt him; he had a secret armour, proof against all assault. It seemed to him that he could understand how the early Christians, fortified by some such inward armour, had walked calm-eyed and happy into the arena of lions.

He did not go straight back to the school, but took a detour along the Deepersdale road; he wanted to think, and hug his happiness, and eventually calm it before seeing Helen. Then he wondered what sort of an explanation he should give her of his absence; for, of course, she would have received by this time full accounts of the ragging. In the end he decided that he had better pretend to have been knocked a little silly by the blow on his head and to have taken a walk into the country without any proper consciousness of what he was doing.

He returned to Lavery's about eleven o'clock, admitting himself by his own private key. In the corridor leading to his own rooms, Helen suddenly ran into his arms imploring him to tell her if he was hurt, where he had been, what had happened, and so on.

He said, speaking as though he had hardly recovered full possession of his senses: "I—I don't know.... Something hit me.... I think I've been walking about for a long time.... I'm all right now, though."

Her hands were feeling the bandages round his head.

"Who bandaged you?"

"I—I don't—I don't know." (After all, 'I don't know' was always a safe answer.)

She led him into the red-tinted drawing-room. As he entered it he suddenly felt the onrush of depression, as if, once within these four walls, half the strength of his armour would be gone.

"We must have Howard to see you to-morrow morning," she said, her voice trembling. "It was absolutely disgraceful! I could hear them from here—I wondered whatever was happening." And she added, with just the suspicion of tartness: "I'd no idea you'd ever let them rag you like that."

"Let them rag me?" he exclaimed. Then, remembering his part, he stammered: "I—I don't know what—what happened. Something—somebody perhaps—hit me, I think—that was all. It wasn't—it wasn't the ragging. I could have—managed that."

Suddenly she said: "Whose mackintosh is that you're wearing?"

The tone of her voice was sharp, acrid, almost venomous.

He started, felt himself blushing, but hoped that in the reddish glow it would not be observed. "I—I don't know," he stammered, still playing for safety.

"You don't know?—Then we'll find out if we can. Perhaps there's a name inside it."

She helped him off with it, and he, hoping devoutly that there might not be a name inside it, watched her fascinatedly. He saw her examine the inside of the collar and then throw the coat on the floor.

"So you've been there again," was all that she said. Once again he replied, maddeningly: "I—I don't know."

She almost screamed at him: "Don't keep telling me you don't know! You're not ill—there's nothing the matter with you at all—you're just pretending! You couldn't keep order in the Big Hall, so you ran away like a great coward and went to that woman! Did you or didn't you? Answer me!"

Never before, he reflected, had she quarrelled so shrilly and rancorously; hitherto she had been restrained and rather pathetic, but now she was shouting at him like a fishwife. It was a common domestic bicker; the sort of thing that gets a good laugh on the music-hall stage. No dignity in it—just sordid heaped-up abuse. "Great coward"—"That woman"—!

He dropped his lost-memory pose, careless, now, whether she found out or not.

"I did go to Clare," he said, curtly. "And that's Clare's raincoat. Also Clare bandaged me—rather well, you must admit. Also, I've drunk Clare's coffee and warmed myself at Clare's fire. Is there any other confession you'd like to wring out of me?"

"Is there indeed? You know that best yourself."

"Perhaps you think I've been flirting with Clare?"

(As he said it he thought: Good God, why am I saying such things? It's only making the position worse for us both.)

"I've no doubt she would if you'd given her half a chance."

The bitterness of her increased his own.

"Or is it that I would if she'd given me half a chance? Are you quite sure which?"

"I'm sure of nothing where either of you are concerned. As for Clare, she's been a traitor. Right from the time of first meeting you she's played a double game, deceiving me and yourself as well. She's ruined our lives together, she's spoilt our happiness and she won't be satisfied till she's wrecked us both completely. I detest her—I loathe her—I loathe her more than I've ever loathed anybody in the world. Thank God I know her now—at least I shall never trust her any more. And if you do, perhaps some day you'll pay as I've paid. Do you think she's playing straight with you any more than she has with me? Do you think you can trust her? Are you taken in?"

The note of savage scorn in her voice made him reply coldly: "You've no cause to talk about taking people in. If ever I've been taken in, as you call it, it was by you, not by Clare!"

He saw her go suddenly white. He was half-sorry he had dealt her the blow, but as she went on to speak, her words, fiercer than ever now, stung him into gladness.

"All right! Trust her and pay for it! I could tell you things if I wished—but I'm not such a traitor to her as she's been to me. I could tell you things that would make you gasp, you wretched little fool!"

"They wouldn't make me gasp; they'd make me call you a damned liar. Helen, I can understand you hating Clare; I can understand, in a sense, the charge of traitor that you bring against her; but when you hint all sorts of awful secrets about her I just think what a petty, spiteful heart you must have! You ruin your own case by actions like that. They sicken me."

"Very well, let them sicken you. You'll not be more sickened than I am. But perhaps you think I can't do more than hint. I can and I will, since you drive me to it. Next time you pay your evening visits to Clare ask her what she thinks of Pritchard!"

"Pritchard! Pritchard!—What's he got to do with it?"

"Ask Clare."

"Why should I ask her?"

"Because, maybe, on the spur of the moment she wouldn't be able to think of any satisfactory lie to tell you."

He felt anger rising up within him. He detested Pritchard, and the mention of his name in connection with Clare infuriated him. Moreover, his mind, always quick to entertain suspicion, pictured all manner of disturbing fancies, even though his reason rejected them absolutely. He trusted Clare; he would believe no evil of her. And yet, the mere thought of it was a disturbing one.

"I wouldn't insult her by letting her think I listened to such gossip," he said, rather weakly.

There followed a longish pause; he thinking of what she had said and trying to rid himself of the discomfort of associating Pritchard with Clare, and she watching him, mockingly, as if conscious that her words had taken root in his mind.

Then she went on: "So now you can suspect somebody else instead of me. And while we're on the subject of Pritchard let me tell you something else."

"Tell me!" The mere thought that there was anything else to tell in which Pritchard was concerned was sufficient to give his voice a note of peremptory harshness.

"I'm going to leave you."

"So you've said before."

"This time I mean it."

"Well?"

"And you can divorce me."

He stamped his foot with irritation. "Don't be ridiculous, Helen. A divorce is absolutely out of the question."

"Why? Do you think we can go on like this any longer?"

"That's not the point. The point is that nothing in the circumstances provides any grounds for a divorce."

"So that we've got to go on like this then, eh?"

"Not like this, I hope. I still hope—that some day—"

She interrupted him angrily. "You still hope! How many more secret visits to Clare do you think you'll make,—how many more damnable lies do you think you'll need to tell me—before you leave off still hoping? You hateful little hypocrite! Why don't you be frank with me and yourself and acknowledge that you love Clare? Why don't you run off with her like a man?"

He said: "So you think that's what a man would do, eh?"

"Yes."

"One sort of a man, perhaps. Only I'm not that sort."

"I wish you were."

"Possibly. I also wish that you were another sort of woman, but it's rather pointless wishing, isn't it?"

"Everything is rather pointless that has to do with you and me."

Suddenly he said: "Look here, Helen. Let's stop this talk. Just listen a minute while I try to tell you how I'm situated. You and I are married—"

"Really?"

"Oh, for God's sake, don't be stupid about it! We're married, and we've got to put up with it for better, for worse. I visit Clare in an entirely friendly way, though you mayn't believe it, and your suspicions of me are altogether unfounded. All the same, I'm prepared to give up her friendship, if that helps you at all. I'm prepared to leave Millstead with you, get a job somewhere else, and start life afresh. We have been happy together, and I daresay in time we shall manage to be happy again. We'd emigrate, if you liked. And the baby—our baby—our baby that is to be—"

She suddenly rushed up to him with her arms raised and struck him with both fists on his mouth. "Oh, for Christ's sake, stop that sort of talk! I could kill you when you try to lull me into happiness with those sticky, little sentimental words! Our baby! Good God, am I to be made to submit to you because of that? And all the time you talk of it you're thinking of another woman! You're not livable with! Something's happened to you that's made you cruel and hateful—you're not the man that I married or that I ever would have married. I loathe and detest you—you're rotten—rotten to the very root!"

He said, idly: "Do you think so?"

She replied, more restrainedly: "I've never met anybody who's altered so much as you have in the last six months. You've sunk lower and lower—in every way, until now—everybody hates you. You're simply a ruin."

Still quietly he said: "Yes, that's true." And then watching to see the effect that his words had upon her, he added: "Clare said so."

"What!" she screamed, frenzied again. "Yes, she knows! She knows how she's ruined you! She knows better than anybody! And she taunted you with it! How I loathe her!"

"And me too, eh?"

She made no answer.

Then, more quietly than ever, he said: "Yes, Clare knows what a failure I've been and how low I've sunk. But she doesn't think it's due to her, and neither do I."

He would not say more than that. He wondered if she would perceive the subtle innuendo which he half-meant and half did not mean; which he would not absolutely deny, and yet would not positively affirm; which he was prepared to hint, but only vaguely, because he was not perfectly sure himself.

Whether or not she did perceive it he was not able to discover. She was silent for some while and then said: "Well, I repeat what I said—I'm going to leave you so that you can get a divorce."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"You can leave me if you wish, but I shall not get a divorce."

"Why not?"

"Because for one thing I shan't be able to."

"And why do you think you won't?"

"Because," he replied, coldly, "the law will not give me my freedom merely because we have lived a cat-and-dog life together. The law requires that you should not only leave me, but that you should run away with another man and commit misconduct with him."

She nodded. "Yes, and that is what I propose to do."

"What!"

A curious silence ensued. He was utterly astounded, horrified, by her announcement; she was smiling at him, mocking his astonishment. He shouted at her, fiercely: "What's that!"

She said: "I intend to do what you said."

"What's that! You what?"

"I intend to do what you said. I shall run away with another man and commit misconduct with him!"

"God!" he exclaimed, clenching his teeth, and stamping the floor. "It's absurd. You can't. You wouldn't dare. Oh, it's impossible. Besides—good God, think of the scandals! Surely I haven't driven you to that! Who would you run away with?" His anger began to conquer his astonishment. "You little fool, Helen, you can't do it! I forbid you! Oh, Lord, what a mess we're in! Tell me, who's the man you're thinking of! I demand to know. Who is he? Give me his name!"

And she said, cuttingly: "Pritchard."

On top of his boiling fury she added: "We've talked it over and he's quite agreed to—to oblige me in the matter, so you see I really do mean things this time, darling Kenneth!"

And she laughed at him.