CHAPTER TWO
I
One dark dusk in November that was full of wind and fine rain Speed stood up at his drawing-room window to pull down the blind. But before doing so he gazed out at the dreary twilight and saw the bare trees black and terrible beyond the quadrangle and the winking lights of Milner's across the way. He had seen all of it so many times before, had lived amongst it, so it now seemed to him, for ages; yet to-night there was something in it that he had never seen before: a sort of sadness that was abroad in the world. He heard the wind screaming through the sodden trees and the branches creaking, the rain drops splashing on the ivy underneath the window: it seemed to him that Millstead was full that night of beautiful sorrow, and that it came over the dark quadrangle to him with open arms, drenching all Lavery's in wild and forlorn pathos.
He let the blind fall gently in front of his rapt eyes while the yellow lamplight took on a richer, serener tinge. Those few weeks of occupation had made the room quite different; its walls were now crowded with prints and etchings; there was a sideboard, dull-glowing and huge for the size of the room, on which silver and pewter and cut glass glinted in tranquillity. Across one corner a baby-grand piano sprawled its sleek body like a drowsily basking sea-lion, and opposite, in the wall at right angles to the window, a large fire lulled itself into red contentment with flames that had hardly breath for an instant's flicker. But Speed left the window and stirred the coals into yellow riot that lit his face with tingling, delicious half-tones. In the firelight he seemed very tall and young-looking, with dark-brown, straggling hair, brown, eager eyes that were almost black, and a queer, sad-lipped mouth that looked for the present as if it would laugh and cry in the same way. A leather-seated stool stood by the fireside, and he dragged it in front of the open flames and sat with his chin resting solemnly on his slim, long-fingered hands.
It was a Wednesday and Helen had gone with her mother to visit some friends in the town and would not be back until, perhaps, dinner-time. It was almost four o'clock, and that hour, or at any rate, a few seconds or minutes afterwards, three youngsters would be coming to tea. Their names were Felling, Fyfield, and Graham. All were Juniors, as it happened, and they would be frightfully nervous, and assuredly would not know when to depart.
Speed, liking them well enough, but feeling morbid for some reason or other, pictured them plastering their hair down and scrambling into their Sunday jackets in readiness for the ordeal. Poor little kids! he thought, and he almost longed to rush into the cold dormitories where they were preparing themselves and say: "Look here, Felling, Fyfield and Graham—you needn't come to tea with me this afternoon—you're excused!"
The hour of four boomed into the wind and rain outside. Speed looked round to see if Burton had set the correct number of cups, saucers and plates, and had obtained a sufficient quantity of cake and fancy pastry from the tuck-shop. After all, he ought to offer them some compensation for having to come to tea with him.
Tap at the door. "Come in.... Ah, that you, Felling ... and you, Graham.... I expect Fyfield will be here in a minute.... Sit down, will you? ... Take that easy-chair, Felling.... Isn't it depressing weather? ... I suppose you saw the game against Oversham? That last try of Marshall's was a particularly fine one, I thought.... Come in.... Ah, here you are, Fyfield: now we can get busy with the tea, can't we? ... How's the Junior Debating Society going, Fyfield?" (Fyfield was secretary of it.) "I must come round to one of your meetings, if you'll promise to do exactly as you would if I weren't there.... Come in.... You might bring me some more hot water, Burton.... By the way, Graham, congratulations on last Saturday's match: I didn't see it, but I'm told you did rather well."
And so on. They were nice boys, all three of them, but they were nervous. They answered in monosyllables or else embarked upon tortuous sentences which became finally embedded in meringues and chocolate éclairs. Felling, in particular, was overawed, for he was a new boy that term and had only just emerged from six weeks in the sanatorium with whooping-cough. Virtually, this was his first week at school.
In the midst of the ponderously jocular, artificially sustained conversation a knock came on the door. Speed shouted out "Come in," as usual. The door opened and somebody came in. Speed could not see who it was. He thought it must be a boy and turned back the red lampshade so that the rays, nakedly yellow, glanced upwards. Then he saw.
Clare!