Chapter FOUR: I

The first thing that Clare Harrington said to him when they met a few days later in Millstead High Street was: "Oh, congratulations, Mr. Speed!"

"Congratulations?" he echoed. "What for?"

She replied quietly: "Helen has told me."

He began to blush, and to hold his breath in an endeavour to prevent his cheeks from reddening to an extent that, so he felt, would be observed by passers-by. "Oh!" he gasped, with a half-embarrassed smile. Then, after a pause, he queried: "What has she told you?"

And Clare answered: "That you are going to marry her."

"Ah!" he exclaimed involuntarily, and he saw her eyes focussed on him strangely. A slow sensation of warmth began to envelop him; joy rose round him like a tide as he realised all the pivotal significance of what Clare had said. He was going to marry Helen!--Strange that, even amidst his most secret raptures, he had hardly dared to think of that! He had dreamed exquisite and fragile dreams of her, dreams in which she was too fairy-like and ethereal for marriage; doubtless, after some while, his ambitions would have crystallised normally, but up to the present they had no anchorage on earth at all. And to think that she had travelled in mind and intention more swiftly and further than he, to think that she had dared to deduce the final and ultimate reality, gave him, along with a surging overmastering joy, just a faint tinge of disappointment as well. But the joy, deepening and spreading, soon blotted out everything else: he sought Clare's hand and gripped it triumphantly. Tears were in his eyes and emotion clutching at his voice as he said: "I'm--I'm glad--she's told you. It's--it's fine, isn't it?--Don't you think we shall be--happy?"

"You ought to be," said Clare.

He struggled with the press of feeling for a moment and then said: "Oh, let's go into Mason's and have a cup of coffee or something. I want to talk to you."

So they sat for a quarter of an hour at a little green-tiled table in Mason's highly respectable café. The room was over the shop, and besides affording from the window a panoramic view of the High Street, contained a small fire-grate, a framed picture of the interior of Mason's Hygienic Bakery, and a large ginger-and-white cat with kittens. Altogether it was a most secluded and comfortable rendezvous.

All the while that they conversed he was but slowly sizing up the situation and experiencing little alternating wafts of disappointment and exhilaration. Disappointment, perhaps, that he had not been left the bewitching task of bringing Helen's mind, along with his own, out of the clouds and mists of dreams; exhilaration also, because her mind, womanishly direct, had evidently not needed such guidance.

He talked rhapsodically to Clare; lashed himself, as it were, into a state of emotional fervour. He seemed eager to anticipate everything that anybody could possibly say to Helen's disadvantage, and to explain away the whole; it was as if he were championing Helen against subtle and inevitable disparagements. Once or twice he seemed to realise this, and to realise that he was defending where there was no attack, and then he stopped, looked confused, and waited for Clare to say something. Clare, as a matter of fact, said very little, and when she spoke Speed took hardly any notice, except, perhaps, to allow her words to suggest to him some fresh rhapsodical outbreak. He said, in a sudden outpouring: "Of course I know she's only a child. That's the wonderful charm of her--part of the wonderful charm, at any rate. Some people might say she wasn't clever, but she is _really_, you know. I admit she doesn't show up very well in company, but that's because she's nervous. I'm nervous and I don't show up well. She's got an acute little brain, though. You should hear the things she says sometimes. Simple little things, some people might think, but really, when you think about them, they're clever. Of course, she hasn't been educated up to a good many things, but then, if she had been, she wouldn't have kept her child-like simplicity, would she?--She's very quick at picking things up, and I'm lending her heaps of books. It's the most beautiful job in the world, being teacher to her. I'm rapturously happy about it and so is she. I could never stand these empty-headed society kind of women who can jabber superficially in drawing-rooms about every subject under the sun, and really, you know, haven't got an original idea in their heads. Helen has the most wonderful and child-like originality, you know. You've noticed it yourself, I daresay. Haven't you noticed it?--Yes, I'm sure you must have. And to think that she really does want to marry me!"

"Why shouldn't she want to marry you?" interjected Clare, but that was one of the remarks of which he took little notice. He went on eagerly: "I don't know what the Head will think when he gets to know about it. Most probably he'll be fearfully annoyed. Clanwell warned me the other night. Apparently--" a faint touch of bitterness came into his voice--"apparently it isn't the thing to treat your Headmaster's daughter with anything but the most distant reserve."

"Another question," said Clare shrewdly, "is what your people will think about it."

"My people," he replied, again with the note of bitterness in his voice, "will probably do what they have always done whenever I have proposed taking any fresh step in life."

"I can guess what that is. They oppose you, eh?"

"Oh, not absolutely that. They recognise my right to do what I want, but they think I'm a fool, all the same. They don't quarrel with me. They just go on wishing I was like my elder brother."

"What is he?"

"He works in my father's office in town. My father, you know--" he became suddenly confidential in tone--"is a rather typical sort of business-man. Materialist outlook--wanted me to manage a soap-works. We never got on absolutely well together. When I told him I was going to get a mastership at a public school he thought I was mad."

"And what will he think when you tell him you are going to marry the Headmaster's daughter?"

He looked at her curiously, for the first time intent upon her personally, for something in the way she had uttered that last question set up in him the suspicion that she was laughing at him. A careful scrutiny of her features, however, revealed no confirmation: he looked away again, shrugged his shoulders, and said: "Probably he'll think I'm madder than ever."

She gave him a curious glance with uptilted lips which he could not properly interpret. "Anyway," she said, quietly, "I shouldn't tell him that Helen's a child."

"Why not?"

Clare gave him again that curious, uninterpretable glance. "Because she isn't, that's all."

He was recovering from his surprise and was about to say something when she interrupted him with, perhaps, the first touch of animation that had so far distinguished her side of the conversation. "I told you," she said, "on the first night of term that you didn't understand Helen. And still you don't. If you did, you'd know that she was a woman, not a child at all."

"I wish you'd explain a little--"

"It doesn't need any explanation. You either know it or don't know it. Apparently you _don't_ know it.... And now, Mr. Speed, I'm afraid I'll have to go--I can't leave the boy to manage the shop by himself all morning."

Speed had the sensation that she was slightly out of patience with him.

II

Clare brought him to earth; his dreams crumpled when he was with her; his emotional outlook sagged, as it were, with the perhaps imagined pricklings of her shrewdness. He hated her, ever so slightly, because he felt sometimes between her and himself a subtle and secret hostility, a hostility in which, because of her cool imperturbability, she had all the advantage. But when he was not with her his imagination soared and flamed up higher than ever; it was a fire that Clare's temperament could only make sulky. Those final weeks of the summer term were glorious beyond words. He took Clanwell's advice to the extent of not meeting Helen on the school premises, but hardly a day passed without some wonderful and secret assignation; the two of them would arrange afternoon excursions together, picnics, at Parminters, strolls along the Millstead road at dusk. It was all deeply and inexpressibly lovely. He told her a great many of his own dreams and ambitions, making her share them with him; she kindled aptly to his own enthusiasms, readily as a child might have done. For he was certain that Clare was wrong in that: Helen was only a child. To marry her seemed a thing of almost unearthly delicacy; he found himself pitying her sometimes because of the future. Above all, that she should wish to marry him, that her love should be capable of such a solemn and ineffable desire, seemed to him nearly a miracle. "Fragile little thing!" he said to her once, as he kissed her--"I'm almost afraid of breaking you!"--She answered, in that wistful childlike voice that was perhaps incongruously sombre in tone: "_Am_ I fragile?"

Once, towards dusk, they met the Head along the Millstead road. He raised his hat and passed them, muttering: "Taking an--um--stroll, Helen--um--beautiful evening--um, yes--good evening, Mr. Speed!"

He wore the air of being marvellously discreet.

III

Conversation at dinner in the Masters' Common-Room turned one evening upon Harrington. "Old Harrington's pretty bad again," Pritchard had said. "I heard in the town to-day that he'd had another stroke."

Speed, curiously startled by the utterance of the name, exclaimed "What, the Harringtons who keep the bookshop?--I didn't know he was ill."

"Been ill ever since I can remember," replied Pritchard, laconically.

Then Speed remembered something that the Head had once told him about Harrington being a littérateur and and an author of books on ethics.

"I never met him," he said, tentatively, seeking to guide the conversation into a discussion of the man.

Pritchard, ever ready to follow up a lead given to him, remarked: "You missed something, then. He was quite a character. Used to teach here once, you know."

"Really?"

"Used to _try_ to, anyway, when they'd let him. Couldn't keep any sort of discipline. During his first prep they poured ink down his neck."

"Pritchard needn't talk," interposed Clanwell, laughing. "During _his_ first prep they mixed carbide and water under his chair." The rest of the Common-Room, among whom Pritchard was no favourite, joined in the laughter. Then Clanwell took up the thread, kinder in his narrative than Pritchard had been. "I liked Harrington. He was a good sort, but he wasn't made for a schoolmaster. I told him so, and after his breakdown he took my advice and left the profession."

"Breakdown?" said Speed. "He had a breakdown then?"

"Yes, his wife died when his daughter was born. He never told us anything about it. One morning he collapsed over a four _alpha_ English form. I was next door. I was used to a row, but the terrible pandemonium made me wonder if anything had happened. I went in and found the little devils giving him sportive first-aid. They'd half undressed him. My word!--I picked out those that were in my house and gave them a tidy thrashing. Don't you remember, Lavery?"

"I remember," said the indolent Lavery, "you trying to persuade me to do the same with my little lot."

"But Harrington?" queried Speed, anxious that the conversation should not be diverted into other channels.

"Oh, well," resumed Clanwell, "he left Millstead and took to--shall we call it literature?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?--" Clanwell laughed. "D'you mean to tell me you haven't heard of Samuel Harrington, author of the famous 'Helping-Hand-Books'?"

"I haven't."

"Then I must lend you one or two of them. They'll do you good. Lavery and I attribute our remarkable success in life to our careful study of them, don't we, Lavery?"

"Do we, Clanwell?"

Ransome, wizened and Voltairish, and agreeable company when stirred to anecdote, began: "Ah! 'How to be Powerful' was the best, though I think 'How to Become a Dominating Personality' was pretty good. The drollest of all was 'How to Meet Difficulties.' Speed has a treat in store if he hasn't read them. They're all in the school-library. The fellow used to send the Head free autographed copies of each one of them as it appeared."

Ransome, rarely beguiled into conversation, always secured a respectful audience. After a silence he went on: "I used to know old Harrington pretty well after he took to--writing. He once told me the entire circumstances of his début into the literary profession. It was rather droll."

Ransome paused, and Speed said: "I'd like to hear it."

A murmur of assent followed from the rest, and Ransome, not without pleasure at the flattery of his being eagerly listened to, crumbled a piece of bread by his plate and resumed. "He told me that one morning after he'd left Millstead he was feeling especially miserable and having a breakfast of tea and dry bread. So he said, anyway. Remember that, at that time, he had a baby to look after. The postman brought him, that morning, a letter from an old school friend of his, a rector in Somerset, asking him if he would care to earn half-a-guinea by writing for him an address on 'Self-Control' for the Young Women's Sunshine Club at Little Pelthing, Somerset. I remember the name of the club and the village because I remember they struck me as being rather droll at the time. Harrington said the letter, or part of it, went something like this: I have just become the proud father of a most wonderful little baby boy, and you can imagine how infernally busy as well as infernally happy I am. Could you oblige me with an address on 'Self-Control'?--You were always rather good at dashing off essays when we were at school. The address should have a strong moral flavour and should last from half-an-hour to forty minutes.' ... Well, Harrington sat down to write that address on 'Self-Control.' He told me that he knew all that anybody need know about self-control, because he was using prodigious quantities of it all the time he was writing. Anyway, it was a fine address. The Reverend Henry Beauchamp Northcroft--another name droll enough to be remembered--delivered it to the united assembly of the Little Pelthing Young Women's Sunshine Club, and everybody said it was the finest and most inspiring address they had ever heard from his lips. It glowed, as it were, from within; it radiated hope; it held a wonderful and sublime message for mankind. And, in addition, it lasted from half-an-hour to forty minutes. Nor was this all. A wealthy and philanthropic lady in the Reverend Henry Beauchamp Northcroft's congregation--Harrington _did_ tell me her name, but I suspect it was not droll enough for me to remember it--suggested that, at her expense, the address should be printed and published in pamphlet form. With Harrington's consent this was done, and, so he told me, no fewer than twenty-five thousand copies of 'Self-Control' were despatched to various centres in England, America, the Colonies, and on board His Majesty's ships."

"Do you believe all this?" exclaimed Clanwell, laughing, to the Common-Room in general.

"Whether you believe it or not," replied Ransome, severely, "it's sufficiently droll for it to be worth hearing. And a large part of it is true, at any rate."

"Go on then," said Clanwell.

Ransome (spreading himself out luxuriously), went on: "It seemed to Harrington that having, to put it vulgarly, scored a fine though anonymous bull's-eye with 'Self-Control,' he might, with profit, attempt to do similar business on his own account. Accordingly, he wrote a collection of some half-dozen didactic essays on such subjects as 'Immortality,' 'Health and Wealth,' 'The Art of Happiness,' and so on, and sent them to a well-known publisher of works on religion and ethics. This fellow, after a most unethical delay of several months, returned them with his curt regrets and the information that such stuff was a drug on the publishing market. Then Harrington, nothing in the least daunted, sent them straightway off again to a publisher of sensational novels. This last gentleman, he was a gentleman, for he replied almost immediately, agreeing to publish if Mr. Harrington would--I'm quoting hazily from the letter which Harrington showed me--if he would 'undertake to supply a further eighteen essays to make up a book of the customary eighty-thousand-word length.'--'You have a distinct vein of humour,' wrote Mr. Potts, of Larraby and Potts, Limited--that was the firm--'and we think your work would be very saleable if you would throw off what appears to be a feeling of restraint.'--So I guess Harrington just threw off this feeling of restraint, whatever exactly it was, and began on those eighteen essays.... I hope this tale isn't boring you."

"Not at all!"--"Go on!"--came the chorus. Ransome smiled.

"There isn't much to go on to. The book of essays was called 'Sky-Signs,' and it was reviewed rather pleasantly in some of the papers. Then followed 'About It and About,' a further bundle of didactic essays, which ran into five editions in six months. And then 'Through my Lattice Window,' which was the sort of book you were not ashamed to take into the pew with you and read during the offertory, provided, of course, that it was handsomely bound in black morocco. And lastly came the Helping-Hand-Books, which Mr. Speed must read if he is to consider his education complete. That's all. The story's over."

After the first buzz of comment Speed said: "I suppose he made plenty of money out of that sort of thing?"

Ransome replied: "Yes, he made it and then he lost it. He dabbled in finance and had a geometrical theory about the rise and fall of rubber shares. Then he got plentifully in debt and when his health began to give way he took the bookshop because he thought it would be an easy way to earn money. He'd have lost on that if his daughter hadn't been a born business-woman."

"But surely," said Clanwell, "the money kept on trickling in from his books?"

Ransome shook his head. "No, because he'd sold the copyrights for cash down. He was a child in finance. But all the same he knew how to make money. For that you should refer to his book, 'How to be Successful,' _passim_. It's full of excellent fatherly advice."

Ransome added, with a hardly perceptible smile: "There's also a chapter about Courtship and Marriage. You might find it interesting, Mr. Speed."

Speed blushed furiously.

Afterwards, strolling over to the House with Clanwell, Speed said: "I say, was that long yarn Ransome told about Harrington true, do you think?" Clanwell replied: "Well, it may have been. You can never be quite certain with Ransome, though. But he does know how to tell a story, doesn't he?" Speed agreed.

Late that night the news percolated, somehow or other, that old Harrington was dead.

IV

Curious, perhaps, that Speed, who had never even seen the man, and whose knowledge of him was derived almost solely from Ransome's "droll" story, should experience a sensation of personal loss! Yet it was so, mysteriously and unaccountably: the old man's death took his mind further away from Millstead than anything had been able to do for some time. The following morning he met Helen in the lane outside the school and his first remark to her was: "I say, have you heard about old Harrington?"

Helen said: "Yes, isn't it terrible?--I'm so sorry for Clare--I went down to see her last night. Poor Clare!"

He saw tears in her eyes, and at this revelation of her abounding pity and warm-heartedness, his love for her welled up afresh, so that in a few seconds his soul was wholly in Millstead again. "You look tired, Helen," he said, taking her by the arm and looking down into her eyes.

Then she burst into tears.

"I'm all right," she said, between gulps of sobbing. "It's so sad, though, isn't it?--Death always frightens me. Oh, I'm so sorry for Clare. Poor darling Clare! ... Oh, Kenneth--I _was_ miserable last night when I came home. I didn't know what to do, I was so miserable. I--I _did_ want to see you, and I--I walked along the garden underneath Clanwell's room and I heard your voice in there."

He said, clasping her arm tightly: "Yes, I went to Clanwell for coffee after prep."

She went on pathetically: "You sounded so happy--I heard you laughing. Oh, it was terrible to hear you laughing when I was miserable!"

"Poor little child!"--He bent down suddenly and kissed her eyes. "What a sad and forlorn little girl you are this morning!--Don't you guess why I'm so happy nowadays?"

"Why are you?"

He said, very slowly and beautifully: "Because of you. Because you have made my life utterly and wonderfully different. Because all the beauty in the world reminds me of you. When I wake up in the morning with the sun on my face I want to roar with laughter--I don't know why, except that I'm so happy."

She smiled gratefully and looked up into his face with large, tender eyes. "Sometimes," she said, "beauty makes me want to cry, not to laugh. Last night, in the garden, everything was so lovely, and yet so sad. Don't you think beautiful things are sad sometimes?"--She paused and went on, with less excitement: "When I went in, about ten o'clock, I was so miserable I went in the dining-room to be alone. I was crying and father came in."

"Well?" he whispered, eagerly.

"He wanted to know what was the matter."

"And you told him about Clare's father, I suppose?"

"No," she answered. "Don't be angry," she pleaded, laying a hand on his arm. "I don't know what made me do it--I suppose it was instinct. Anyway, you were going to, soon, even if I hadn't. I--I told father about--us!"

"You did?"

"Yes. Don't be angry with me."

"My darling, I'm not angry with you. What did he say?"

She came so close to him that he could feel her body trembling with emotion. "He didn't mind," she whispered. "He didn't mind at all. Kenneth, aren't you glad?--Isn't it fine of him?"

"Glorious!" he answered, taking a deep breath. Again the tide of joy seemed to engulf him, joy immense and stupefying. He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her had he not seen people coming along the lane. "It's wonderful, Helen!" he whispered. Then some secondary thought seemed to strike him suddenly: he said: "But why were you miserable a little while ago? Didn't the good news make you feel happy?"

She answered, still with a touch of sadness: "I didn't know whether you would think it was good news."--"Helen!" he exclaimed, remonstratively, clasping her tightly to him: she went on, smiling at him: "Yes, it's silly of me, isn't it?--But Kenneth, Kenneth, I don't know how it is, I'm never quite certain of you--there's always a funny sort of fear in my mind! I know it's silly. I can't help it, though. Perhaps it will all be different some day."

"Some day!" he echoed, gazing into her uplifted eyes.

A vision, secret and excruciatingly lovely, filled their eyes for a moment. He knew then that to marry her had become his blinding and passionate ambition.

V

The _Millstead and District Advertiser_ had a long and sympathetic appreciation of the late Mr. Samuel Harrington in its first July issue. The Helping-Hand-Books were described as "pleasant little homilies written with much charm and humour." Speed took one or two of them out of the School Library and read them.

About a week after the funeral he called at the shop, ostensibly to buy a book, but really to offer his condolences. He had been meaning to go, for several days in succession, but a curious dread of an interview with Clare had operated each time for postponement. Nor could he understand this dread. He tried to analyse it, to discover behind it any conceivable reason or motive; but the search was in vain. He was forced to suppose, vaguely, that the cause of it was that slight but noticeable temperamental hostility between himself and Clare which always resulted in a clouding over of his dreams.

It was a chilly day for July; there was no sun, and the gas was actually lit in the shop when he called. The boy, a smart under-sized youngster, was there to serve him, but he asked for Miss Harrington. She must have heard his voice, for she appeared almost straightway, dressed neatly and soberly in black, and greeted him with a quite brisk: "Good afternoon, Mr. Speed!"

He shook hands with her gravely and began to stammer: "I should have called before, Miss Harrington, to offer you my sincerest sympathies, but--"

She held up her hand in an odd little gesture of reproof and said interrupting him: "Please don't. If you want a chat come into the back room. Thomas can attend to the shop."

He accepted her invitation almost mechanically. It was a small room, full of businesslike litter such as is usual in the back rooms of shops, but a piano and bookcase gave it a touch of individuality. As she pointed him to a seat she said: "Don't think me rude, but this is the place for conversation. The shop is for buying things. You'll know in future, won't you?"

He nodded somewhat vaguely. He could not determine what exactly was astounding in her, and yet he realised that the whole effect of her was somehow astounding. More than ever was he conscious of the subtle hostility, by no means amounting to unfriendliness, but perhaps importing into her regard for him a tinge of contempt.

"Do you know," he said, approaching the subject very deliberately, "that until a very short time ago I knew nothing at all about Mr. Harrington? You never told me."

"Why should I?" She was on her guard in an instant.

He went on: "You may think me sincere or not as you choose, but I should like to have met him."

"He had a dislike of being met."

She said that with a touch of almost vicious asperity.

He went on, far less daunted by her rudeness than he would have been if she had given way to emotion of any kind: "Anyway I have got to know him as well as I can by reading his books."

"What a way to get to know him!" she exclaimed, contemptuously. She looked him sternly in the face and said: "Be frank, Mr. Speed, and admit that you found my father's books the most infantile trash you ever read in your life!"

"Miss Harrington!" he exclaimed, protesting. She rose, stood over him menacingly, and cried: "You have your chance to be frank, mind!"

He looked at her, tried to frame some polite reply, and found himself saying astonishingly: "Well, to be perfectly candid, that was rather my opinion."

"And mine," she added quietly.

She was calm in an instant. She looked at him almost sympathetically for a moment, and with a sudden gesture of satisfaction sat down in a chair opposite to his. "I'm glad you were frank with me, Mr. Speed," she said. "I can talk to anybody who's frank with me. It's your nature to confide in anybody who gives you the least encouragement, but it's not mine. I'm rather reticent. I remember once you talked to me a lot about your own people. Perhaps you thought it strange of me not to reciprocate."

"No, I never thought of it then."

"You didn't?--Well, I thought perhaps you might have done. Now that you've shown yourself candid I can tell you very briefly the sort of man my father was. He was a very dear old hypocrite, and I was very fond of him. He didn't feel half the things he said in his books, though I think he was honest enough to try to. He found a good thing and he stuck to it. After all, writing books was only his trade, and a man oughtn't to be judged entirely by what he's forced to do in order to make a living."

He stared at her half-incredulously. She was astounding him more than ever. She went on, with a curious smile: "He was fifty-seven years old. When he died he was half-way through his eleventh book. It was to have been called 'How to Live to Three-Score-Years-and-Ten.' All about eating nuts and keeping the bedroom windows open at nights, you know."

He wondered if he were expected to laugh.

He stammered, after a bewildered pause: "How is all this going to effect you?--Will you leave Millstead?"

She replied, with a touch in her voice of what he thought might have been mockery: "My father foresaw the plight I might be in some day and thoughtfully left me his counsel on the subject. Perhaps you'd like me to read it?"

She went over to the bookcase and took down an edition-de-luxe copy of one of the Helping-Hand-Books.

"Here it is--'How to Meet Difficulties'--Page 38--I'll read the passage--it's only a short one. 'How is it that the greatest and noblest of men and women are those against whom Fate has set her most tremendous obstacles?--Simply that it is good for a man or a woman to fight, good to find paths fraught with dire perils and difficulties galore, good to accept the ringing challenge of the gods! Nay, I would almost go so far as to say: lucky is that boy or girl who is cast, forlorn and parentless upon the world at a tender age, for if there be greatness in him or her at all, it will be forced to show itself as surely as the warm suns of May compel each flower to put forth her bravest splendour!' ... So now you know, Mr. Speed!"

She had read the passage as if declaiming to an audience. It was quite a typical extract from the works of the late Mr. Harrington: such phrases as 'dire perils,' 'difficulties galore,' and 'ringing challenge of the gods' contained all that was most truly characteristic of the prose style of the Helping-Hand-Books.

Speed said, rather coldly: "Do you know what one would wonder, hearing you talk like this?"

"What?"

"One would wonder if you had any heart at all."

Again the curious look came into her eyes and the note of asperity into her voice. "If I had, do you think I would let you see it, Mr. Speed?" she said.

They stared at each other almost defiantly for a moment; then, as if by mutual consent, allowed the conversation to wander into unimportant gossip about Millstead. Nor from those placid channels did it afterwards stray away. Hostility of a kind persisted between them more patently than ever; yet, in a curiously instinctive way, they shook hands when they separated as if they were staunch friends.

As he stepped out into High Street the thought of Helen came to him as a shaft of sunlight round the edges of a dark cloud.

VI

Term finished in a scurry of House-matches and examinations. School House won the cricket trophy and there was a celebratory dinner at which Speed accompanied songs and made a nervously witty speech and was vociferously applauded. "We all know we're the best House," said Clanwell, emphatically, "and what we've got to do is just to prove to other people that we are." Speed said: "I've only been in School House a term, but it's been long enough time for me to be glad I'm where I am and not in any other House." (Cheers.) Amidst such jingoist insincerities a very pleasant evening romped its way to a close. The following day, the last day of term, was nearly as full of new experiences as had been the first day. School House yard was full of boxes and trunks waiting to be collected by the railway carriers, and in amongst it all, small boys wandered forlornly, secretly happy yet weak with the cumulative passion of anticipation. In the evening there was the farewell dinner in the dining-hall, the distribution of the terminal magazine, and the end-of-term concert, this last concluding with the Millstead School-Song, the work of an uninspired composer in one of his most uninspired moments. Then, towards ten o'clock in the evening, a short service in chapel, followed by a "rag" on the school quadrangle, brought the long last day to a close. Cheers were shouted for the Masters, for Doctor and Mrs. Ervine, for those leaving, and (facetiously) for the school porter. That night there was singing and rowdyism in the dormitories, but Speed did not interfere.

He was ecstatically happy. His first term had been a triumph. And, fittingly enough, it had ended with the greatest triumph of all. Ever since Helen had told him of her confession to her father, Speed had been making up his mind to visit the Head and formally put the matter before him. That night, the last night of the summer term, after the service in chapel, when the term, so far as the Head was concerned with it, was finished. Speed had tapped at the door of the Head's study.

Once again the sight of that study, yellowly luminous in the incandescent glow, set up in him a sensation of sinister attraction, as if the room were full of melancholy ghosts. The Head was still in his surplice, swirling his arms about the writing-table in an endeavour to find some mislaid paper. The rows upon rows of shining leather-bound volumes, somebody on the Synoptic Gospels, somebody else's New Testament Commentary, seemed to surround him and enfold him like a protective rampart. The cool air of the summer night floated in through the slit of open window and blew the gas-light fitfully high and low. Speed thought, as he entered the room and saw the Head's shining bald head bowed over the writing-table: Here you have been for goodness knows how many years and terms, and now has come the end of another one. Don't you feel any emotion in it at all?--You are getting to be an old man: can you bear to think of the day you first entered this old room and placed those books on the shelves instead of those that belonged to your predecessor?--Can you bear to think of all the generations that have passed by, all the boys, now men, who have stared at you inside this very room, while time, which bore them away in a happy tide, has left you for ever stranded?--Why I, even I, can feel, after the first term, something of that poignant melancholy which, if I were in your place, would overwhelm me. Don't you--can't you--feel anything at all--

The Head looked up, observed Speed, and said: "Um, yes--pleased to see you, Mr. Speed--have you come to say good-bye--catching an early train to-morrow, perhaps--um, yes--eh?"

"No, sir. I wanted to speak to you on a private matter. Can you spare me a few moments?"

"Oh yes, most certainly. Not perhaps the--um--usual time for seeing me, but still--that is no matter. I shall be--um--happy to talk with you, Mr. Speed."

Speed cleared his throat, shifted from one foot to another, and began, rather loudly, as always when he was nervous: "Miss Ervine, sir, I believe, spoke to you some while ago about--about herself and me, sir."

The Head placed the tips of his fingers together and leaned back in his chair.

"That is so, Mr. Speed."

"I--I have been meaning to come and see you about it for some time. I hope--I hope you didn't think there was anything underhand in my not seeing you?"

The Head temporised suavely: "Well--um, yes--perhaps my curiosity did not go so--um--so far as that. When you return to your room, Mr. Speed, you will find there an--um--a note from me, requesting you to see me to-morrow morning. I take it you have not seen that note?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Ah, I see. I supposed when you entered that you were catching an early train in the morning and were--um--purposing to see me to-night instead.... No matter. You will understand why I wished to see you, no doubt."

"Possibly the same reason that I wished to see you."

"Ah, yes--possibly. Possibly. You have been--um--quite--um--speedy--in--um--pressing forward your suit with my daughter. Um, yes--_very_ speedy, I think.... Speedy--Ha--Ha--um, yes--the play upon words was quite accidental, I assure you."

Speed, with a wan smile, declared: "I daresay I am to blame for not having mentioned it to you before now. I decided--I scarcely know why--to wait until term was over.... I--I love your daughter, and I believe she loves me. That's all there is to say, I think."

"Indeed, Mr. Speed?--It must be a very--um--simple matter then."

Speed laughed, recovering his assurance now that he had made his principal statement. "I am aware that there are complexities, sir."

The Head played an imaginary tune on his desk with his outstretched fingers. "You must--u--listen to me for a little while, Mr. Speed. We like you very much--I will begin, perhaps unwisely, by telling you that. You have been all that we could have desired during this last term--given--um--every satisfaction, indeed. Naturally, I think too of my daughter's feelings. She is, as you say, extremely--um--fond of you, and on you depends to a quite considerable extent her--um--happiness. We could not therefore, my wife and I, refuse to give the matter our very careful consideration. Now I must--um--cross-examine you a little. You wish to marry my daughter, is that not so?"

"Yes."

"When?"

The Head flung out the question with disconcerting suddenness.

Speed, momentarily unbalanced, paused, recovered himself, and said wisely: "When I can afford to, sir. As soon as I can afford to. You know my salary and prospects, sir, and are the best judge of how soon I shall be able to give your daughter the comforts to which she has been accustomed."

"A clever reply, Mr. Speed. Um, yes--extremely clever. I gather that you are quite convinced that you will be happy with my daughter?"

"I am quite convinced, sir."

"Then money is the only difficulty. What a troublesome thing money is, Mr. Speed!--May I ask you whether you have yet consulted your own parents on the matter?"

"I have not done so yet. I wanted your reply first."

"I see. And what--um--do you anticipate will be _their_ reply?"

Speed was silent for a moment and then said: "I cannot pretend that I think they will be enthusiastic. They have never agreed with my actions. But they have the sense to realise that I am old enough to do as I choose, especially in such a matter as marriage. They certainly wouldn't quarrel with me over it."

The Head stared fixedly at Speed for some while; then, with a soft, crooning tone, began to speak. "Well, you know, Mr. Speed, you are very young--only twenty-two, I believe."--(Speed interjected: "Twenty-three next month, sir.")--The Head proceeded: "Twenty-three then. It's--um--it's rather young for marriage. However, I am--um, yes--inclined to agree with Professor Potts that one of the--um--curses of our modern civilisation is that it pushes the--um--marriageable age too late for the educated man." (And who the devil, thought Speed, is Professor Potts?)... "Now it so happens, Mr. Speed, that this little problem of ours can be settled in a way which is satisfactory to myself and to the school, and which I think will be equally satisfactory to yourself and my daughter. I don't know whether you know that Lavery leaves this term?"

"I didn't know, sir."

"He has reached the--um--the retiring age. As perhaps you know, Mr. Speed, Lavery belonged to the--um--old school. In many ways, I think, the old methods were best, but, of course, one has to keep up with the times. I am quite certain that the Governors will look favourably on a very much younger man to be--um--Lavery's successor. It would also bean advantage if he were married."

"Married!" echoed Speed.

"Yes. Married house masters are always preferred.... Then, again, Mr. Speed, we should want a public-school man.... Of course, Lavery's is a large House and the position is not one to be--um--lightly undertaken. And, of course, it is for the Governors to decide, in the last resort. But if you think about it, Mr. Speed, and if you favour the idea, it will probably occur to you that you stand a rather good chance. Of course it requires thinking over a great deal. Um, yes--decide nothing in a hurry...."

Speed's mind, hazily receiving the gist of what the Head was saying, began to execute a wild pirouette. He heard the Head's voice droning on, but he did not properly hear anything more that was said. He heard in snatches: "Of course you would have to take up your new duties in--um, yes--September.... And for that purpose you would get married during the vacation.... A great chance for you, Mr. Speed ... the Governors ... very greatly impressed with you at Speech Day.... You would like Lavery's .... an excellent House.... Plenty of time to think it over, you know.... Um, yes--plenty of time.... When did you say you were going home?"

Speed recovered himself so far as to answer: "Tuesday, sir."

"Um, yes--delightful, that is--you will be able to dine with us to-morrow night then, no doubt?--Curious place, Millstead, when everybody has gone away... Um, yes--extremely delightful... Think it over very carefully, Mr. Speed ... we dine at seven-thirty during the vacations, remember.... Good night, then, Mr. Speed.... Um, yes--Good night!"

Speed staggered out as if intoxicated.

VII

That was why, hearing the singing and shouting in the dormitories that night, Speed did not interfere. With happiness surging all around him how could he have the heart to curtail the happiness of others?--About half-past ten he went round distributing journey-money, and to each dormitory in turn he said farewell and wished a pleasant vacation. The juniors were scampering over one another's beds and pelting one another with pillows. Speed said merely: "If I were you fellows, I should get to sleep pretty soon: Hartopp will ring the bells at six, you know."

Then he went back into his own room, his room that would not be his any more, for next term he would be in Lavery's. Noisy and insincere as had been his protestations at the House Dinner about the superiority of School House over any other, there was yet a sense in which he felt deeply sorry to leave the place where he had been so happy and successful. He looked back in memory to that first evening of term, and remembered his first impression of the room assigned to him; then it had seemed to him lonely, forlorn, even a little dingy. Hardly a trace of that earliest aspect remained with it now. At eleven o'clock on the last night of term it glowed with the warmth of a friendly heart; it held out loving arms that made Speed, even amidst his joy, piteously sorry to leave it. The empty firegrate, in which he had never seen a fire, lured him with the vision of all the cosy winter nights that he had missed.

Outside it was moonlight again, as when, a month before, he had waited by the pavilion steps on the evening of the Speech Day. From his open lattice-window he could see the silver tide lapping against the walls and trees, the pale sea of the pitch on which there would be no more cricket, the roof and turret of the pavilion gleaming with liquid radiance. All was soft and silent, glossy beneath the high moon. It was as if everything had endured agelessly, as if the passing of a term were no more than the half-heard tick of a clock in the life of Millstead.

Leaning out of the window he heard a voice, boyish and sudden, in the junior dormitory below.

"I say, Bennett, are you going by the 8:22?"

An answer came indistinguishably, and then the curt command of the prefect imposing silence, silence which, reigned over by the moon and the sky of stars, lasted through the short summer night until dawn.