The passionate year

by James Hilton

Doctor Ervine rose, cleared his throat, and began: "My Lord,—um—and Ladies and Gentlemen—." A certain sage—he would leave it to his sixth-form boys to give the gentleman's name—(Laughter)—had declared that that nation was happy which had no history. It had often occurred to him that the remark could be neatly and appositely adapted to a public-school—happy was that public-school year about which, on Speech Day, the Headmaster could find very little to say. (Laughter.) Certainly it was true of this particular year. It had been a very happy one, a very successful one, and really, there was not much else to say. One or two things, however, he would like to mention especially. First, in the world of Sport. He put Sport first merely because alphabetically it came before Work. (Laughter.) Millstead had had a very successful football and hockey season, and only that week at cricket they had defeated Selhurst. (Cheers).... In the world of scholarship the year had also been successful, no fewer than thirty-eight Millsteadians having passed the Lower Certificate Examination of the Oxford and Cambridge Board. (Cheers.) One of the sixth-form boys, A. V. Cobham, had obtained an exhibition at Magdalen College, Cambridge. (Cheers.) H. O. Catterwall, who left some years back, had been appointed Deputy Revenue Commissioner for the district of—um—Bhungi-Bhoolu. (Cheers.) Two boys, R. Heming and B. Shales, had obtained distinctions at London University. (Cheers.).... Of the Masters, all he could say was that he could not believe that any Headmaster in the country was supported by a staff more loyal and efficient. (Cheers.) They had to welcome one addition,—he might say, although he (the addition) had only been at Millstead a few weeks—a very valued addition—to the school staff. That was Mr. Speed. (Loud cheers). Mr. Speed was very young, and youth, as they all knew, was very enthusiastic. (Cheers and laughter.) In fact, although Mr. Speed had been at Millstead such a short time, he had already earned and deserved the name of the School Enthusiast. (Laughter.) He had had a very kind letter from Mr. Speed's father, Sir Charles Speed—(pause)—regretting his inability, owing to a previously contracted engagement, to be present at the Speech Day celebrations, and he (the Head) was particularly sorry he could not come because it would have done him good, he felt sure, to see how universally popular at Millstead was his enthusiastic son. (Cheers and laughter.) He hoped Millstead would have the benefit of Mr. Speed's gifts and personality for many, many years to come. (Loud cheers.).... He must not conclude without some reference to the sad blow that had struck the school only a week or so before. He alluded to the lamented passing-away of Sir Huntly Polk, for many years Chairman on the Governing Board....

Speed heard no more. He felt himself beginning to burn all over; he put one hand to his cheek in a vague and instinctive gesture of self-protection. Of course, behind his embarrassment he was pleased, rapturously pleased; but at first his predominant emotion was surprise. It had never occurred to him that the Head would mention him in a speech, or that he would invite his father to the Speech Day ceremonies. Then, as he heard the cheering of the boys at the mention of his name, emotion swallowed his surprise and everything became a blur.

After the ceremony he met the two girls outside the Big Hall. Clare said: "Poor man—you looked so uncomfortable while everybody was cheering you! But really, you know, it is nice to be praised, isn't it?"

And Helen, speaking softly so that no one else should hear, whispered: "I daresay I can get free about nine o'clock to-night. We can go for a walk, eh, Kenneth?—Nine o'clock by the pavilion steps, then."

Her voice, muffled and yet eager, trembled like the note of a bell on a windy day.

Speed whispered, joyously: "Righto, Helen, I'll be there."

To such a pitch had their relationship developed as a result of music-lessons and book-lendings and casual encounters. And now they were living the most exquisite of all moments, when each could guess but could not be quite certain of the other's love. Day had followed day, each one more tremulously beautiful than the one before, each one more exquisitely near to something whose beauty was too keen and blinding to be studied; each day the light in their eyes had grown brighter, fiercer, more bursting from within. But now, as they met and separated in the laughing crowd that squirmed its way down the steps of the Big Hall, some subtle telepathy between their minds told them that never again would they shrink from the vivid joy of confession. To-night ... thought Speed, as he went up to his room and slipped off his cap and gown. And the same wild ecstasy of anticipation was in Helen's mind as she walked with Clare across the lawns to the Head's house.

V

That night the moon was full and high; the leaden roofs and cupola of the pavilion gleamed like silver plaques; and all the cricket-pitch was covered with a thin, white, motionless tide into which the oblong shadows pushed out like the black piers of a jetty. Millstead was silent and serene. A third of its inhabitants had departed by the evening trains; perhaps another third was with its parents in the lounges of the town hotels; the remainder, reacting from the day's excitement and sobered by the unaccustomed sparseness of the population, was more silent than usual. Lights gleamed in the dormitories and basement bathrooms, but there was an absence of stir, rather than of sound, which gave to the whole place a curious aspect of forlornness; no sudden boisterous shout sent its message spinning along the corridor and out of some wide-open window into the night. It was a world of dreams and spells, and to Speed, standing in the jet-black shadow of the pavilion steps, it seemed that sight and sound were almost one; that he could hear moonlight humming everywhere around him, and see the tremor in the sky as the nine o'clock chiming fell from the chapel belfry.

She came to him like a shy wraith, resolving out of the haze of moonbeams. The bright gold of her hair, drenched now in silver, had turned to a glossy blackness that had in it some subtle and unearthly colour that could be touched rather than seen; Speed felt his fingers tingle as at a new sensation. Something richly and manifestly different was abroad in the world, something different from what had ever been there before; the grey shining pools of her eyes were like pictures in a trance. He knew, strangely and intimately, that he loved her and that she loved him, that there was exquisite sweetness in everything that could happen to them, that all the world was wonderfully in time and tune with their own blind-fold yet miraculously self-guiding inclinations. Tears, lovely in moonlight, shone in her clear eyes, eyes that were deep and dark under the night sky; he put his arm around her and touched his cheek with hers. It was as if his body began to dissolve at that first ineffable thrill; he trembled vitally; then, after a pause of magic, kissed her dark, wet, offering lips, not with passion, but with all the wistful gentleness of the night itself, as if he were afraid that she might fly away, mothlike, from a rough touch. The moonlight, sight and sound fused into one, throbbed in his eyes and ears; his heart, beating quickly, hammered, it seemed, against the stars. It was the most exquisite and tremulous revelation of heaven, heaven that knew neither bound nor end.