In his own heart he had to admit that it was true. He had given up being kind. He was hard, ruthless, unmerciful, and God knew why, perhaps. Yet it was all outside, he hoped. Surely he was not hard through and through; surely the old Speed who was kind and gentle and whom everybody liked, surely this old self of his was still there, underneath the hardness that had come upon him lately!
He said bitterly: "Yes, I'm getting hard, Helen. It's true. And I don't know the reason."
She supplied the answer instantly. "It's because of me," she said quietly. "I'm making you hard. I'm no good for you. You ought to have married somebody else."
"No, no!" he protested, vehemently. Then the old routine of argument, protest, persuasion, and reconciliation took place again.
III
He made up his mind that he would crush the hardness in him, that he would be the old Speed once more. All his troubles, so it seemed to him, were the result of being no longer the old Speed. If he could only bring to life again that old self, perhaps, after sufficient penance, he could start afresh. He could start afresh with Lavery's, he could start afresh with Helen; most of all perhaps, he could start afresh with himself. He would be kind. He would be the secret, inward man he wanted to be, and not the half-bullying, half-cowardly fellow that was the outside of him. He prayed, if he had ever prayed in his life, that he might accomplish the resuscitation.
It was a dark sombrely windy evening in February; a Sunday evening. He had gone into chapel with all his newly-made desires and determinations fresh upon him; he was longing for the quiet calm of the chapel service that he might cement, so to say, his desires and resolutions into a sufficiently-welded programme of conduct that should be put into operation immediately. Raggs was playing the organ, so that he was able to sit undisturbed in the Masters' pew. The night was magnificently stormy; the wind shrieked continually around the chapel walls and roof; sometimes he could hear the big elm trees creaking in the Head's garden. The preacher was the Dean of some-where-or-other; but Speed did not listen to a word of his sermon, excellent though it might have been. He was too busy registering decisions.
The next day he apologized to Burton, rather curtly, because he knew not any other way. The old man was mollified. Speed did not know what to say to him after he had apologized; in the end half-a-sovereign passed between them.
Then he summoned the whole House and announced equally curtly that he wished to apologize for attempting to break a recognised House custom. "I've called you all together just to make a short announcement. When I stopped the basement hockey I was unaware that it had been a custom in Lavery's for a long while. In those circumstances I shall allow it to go on, and I apologize for the mistake. The punishments for those who took part are remitted. That's all. You may go now."
With Helen it was not so easy.