There was a note in those last three words of sudden harshness, a faint note, it is true, but one that Speed, acutely perceptive of such subtleties, was quick to hear and notice. He looked at the Head and once again, it seemed to him, the Head was as he had seen him that afternoon in the dark study, a flash of malevolent sharpness in his eyes, a menacing slope in his huge low-hanging nose. The room seemed to grow darker and the atmosphere more tense; he saw the girl leave the settee and walk to the piano. She sat on the stool for a moment with her hands poised hesitatingly over the keyboard; then, suddenly, and at a furious rate, she plunged into the opening bars of the Spring Song. Speed had never heard it played at such an alarming rate. Five or six bars from the beginning she stopped all at once, lingered a moment with her hands over the keys, and then left the stool and almost ran the intervening yards to the settee. She said, with deep passion: "I can't—I don't remember it."
Clare said protectingly: "Never mind, Helen. It doesn't matter."
Speed said: "No, of course not. It's awfully hard to remember music—at least, I always find it so."
And the Head, all his harshness gone and placidity restored in its place, murmured. "Hard—um yes—very hard. I don't know how people manage it at all. Oh, very difficult, don't you think so, Lydia?"
"Difficult if you're nervous," replied Mrs. Ervine, with her own peculiar note of acidity.
VIII
Conversation ambled on, drearily and with infinite labour, until half-past nine, when Clare arose and said she must go. Helen then rose also and said she would go with Clare a part of the way into the town, but Mrs. Ervine objected because Helen had a cold. Clare said: "Oh, don't trouble, Helen, I can easily go alone—I'm used to it, you know, and there's a bright moon."
Speed, feeling that a show of gallantry would bring to an end an evening that had just begun to get on his nerves a little, said: "Suppose I see you home, Miss Harrington. I've got to go down to the general post-office to post a letter, and I can quite easily accompany you as far as the High Street."
"There's no need to," said Clare. "And I hope you're not inventing that letter you have to post."
"I assure you I'm not," Speed answered, and he pulled out of his pocket a letter home that he had written up in his room that afternoon.