VI
Those crowded winter nights of rehearsals for the concert were full of incident for Speed. As soon as the school had finished preparation in the Big Hall, the piano was uncovered and pushed into the middle of the platform; the violinists and 'cellists began to tune up; the choir assembled with much noise and a disposition to regard rehearsals as a boisterous form of entertainment; lastly, the visitors from the town appeared, adapting themselves condescendingly to the rollicking atmosphere.
Speed discovered Clare to be a rather good violinist. She played quietly and accurately, with an absence (rare in good violinists) of superfluous emotion. Once she said to Speed, referring to one of the other imported violinists: "Listen! This Mozart's only a decorative frieze, and that man's playing it as if it were the whole gateway to the temple of Eros." Speed, who liked architectural similes himself, nodded appreciatively. Clare went on: "I always want to laugh at emotion in the wrong place. Violinists who are too fond of the mute, for instance." Speed said, laughing: "Yes, and organists who are too fond of the vox humana." To which Clare added: "And don't forget to mention the audiences that are too fond of both. It's their fault principally."
At ten o'clock, when rehearsals were over, Speed accompanied Clare home to the shop in High Street. There was something in those walks which crept over him like a slow fascination, so that after the first few occasions he found himself sitting at the piano during the rehearsal with everything in his mind subordinate to the tingling anticipation of the stroll afterwards. When they left the Big Hall and descended the steps into the cool dusk of the cloisters, his spirits rose as with wine; and when from the cloisters they turned into the crisp-cold night, crunching softly over the frosted quadrangle and shivering joyously in the first keen lash of the wind, he could have scampered for sheer happiness like a schoolboy granted an unexpected holiday. Sometimes the moon was white on roofs and roadways; sometimes the sky was densely black; sometimes it was raining and Millstead High Street was no more than a vista of pavements with the yellow lamplight shining on the pools in them: once, at least, it was snowing soft, dancing flakes that covered the ground inches deep as they walked. But whatever the world was like on those evenings on which Speed accompanied Clare, one thing was common to them all: an atmosphere of robust companionship, impervious to all things else. The gales that romped and frolicked over the fenlands were no more vigorous and coldly sweet than something that romped and frolicked in Speed's inmost soul.
Once they were discussing the things that they hated most of all. "I hate myself more than anything else—sometimes," said Speed.
Clare said: "And I hate people who think that a thing's bound to be sordid because it's real: people who think a thing's beautiful merely because it's hazy and doesn't mean anything. I'm afraid I hate Mendelssohn."
Speed said: "Mendelssohn? Why, that was what Helen used to be keen on, wasn't it?—last term, don't you remember?"
A curious silence supervened.
Clare said, after a pause: "Yes, I believe it was."