Chapter FOUR: I

He was in bed for three days with a temperature (but nothing more serious); Howard, the School doctor, chaffed him unmercifully. "You're a lucky man. Speed, to be ill in bed with Mrs. Speed to nurse you! Better than being up in the Sick-room, isn't it?" Once the idea occurred to Speed that he might be sickening for some infectious complaint, in which case he would be taken away and isolated in the Sanatorium. When he half-hinted the possibility of this to Howard, the latter said, laughing loudly: "You needn't worry, Speed. I know you don't want to lose your pretty little nurse, do you? I understand you, young man--I was your age once, you know."

But the strange thing was that what Howard supposed Speed didn't want was just what he did want. He wanted to lose Helen for a little while. Not because he didn't love her. Not because of any reason which he could dare to offer himself. Merely, he would admit, a whimsical desire to be without her for a short time; it would, he thought, clutching hold of the excuse, save her the work of attending to him. He could hardly understand himself. But the fact was, Helen saddened him. It was difficult to explain in detail; but there was a kind of aura of melancholy which seemed to follow her about wherever she went. In the short winter afternoons he lay awake watching her, listening to the distant cheering on the footer pitches, sniffing the aroma of tea that she was preparing for him; it was all so delicious and cosy, and yet, in a curious, blinding way, it was all so sad. He felt he should slide into madness if he were condemned to live all his days like these, with warm fires and twilit meals and Helen always about him in attendance. He could not understand why it was that though he loved her so dearly yet he should not be perfectly happy with her.

How strange it was to lie there all day listening to all the sounds of Millstead! He heard the School-bell ringing the end of every period, the shouts of the boys at call-over, the hymns in the chapel--(his Senior organ-pupil was deputising for him)--Burton locking up at night, the murmur of gramophones in the prefects' studies; and everything, it seemed to him, was full of this same rich sadness. Then he reasoned with himself; the sadness must be a part of him, since he saw and felt it in so many things and places. It was unfair to blame Helen. Poor Helen, how kind she was to him, and how unkindly he treated her in return! Sometimes he imagined himself a blackguard and a cad, wrecking the happiness of the woman who would sacrifice everything for his sake. Once (it was nearly dark, but the lamp had not yet been lit) he called her to him and said, brokenly: "Helen, darling--Helen, I'm so sorry." "Sorry for what, Kenneth?" she enquired naturally. And he thought and pondered and could only add: "I don't know--nothing in particular. I'm just sorry, that's all." And once also he lashed himself into a fervour of promises. "I _will_ be kind to you, Helen, dearest. We _will_ be friends, we two. There's nothing that anybody shall have of me that you shan't have also. I _do_ want you to be happy, Helen." And she _was_ happy, then, happy and miserable at the same time; crying for joy at the beautiful sadness of it all.

Those long days and nights! The wind howled up from the fenlands and whiffed through the ivy on the walls; the skies were grey and desolate, the quadrangle a waste of dingy green. It was the time of the terminal House-Matches, and when Milner's beat School House in the Semi-Final the cheering throng passed right under Speed's window, yelling at the tops of their voices and swinging deafening rattles. In a few days Milner's would play Lavery's in the Final, and he hoped to be up by then and able to watch it.

Of course, he had visitors. Clanwell came and gave him endless chatter about the House-Matches; a few of the less influential prefects paid him a perfunctory visit of condolence and hoped he would soon be all right again. And then Doctor and Mrs. Ervine. "Howard tells me it is nothing--um--to be--um, er, perturbed about. Just, to use an--um--colloquialism, run down, eh, Speed? The strain of the--um--concert must have been quite--um--considerable. By the way, Speed, I ought to congratulate you--the whole evening passed in the most--um, yes--the most satisfactory manner." And Mrs. Ervine said, in her rather tart way: "It's quite a mercy they only come once a year, or we should all be dead very soon, I think."

And Clare.

Helen had kept her promise. She had written to Clare asking her to tea on a certain afternoon, and she had also contrived that when Clare came she should be transacting important and rather lengthy business with the Matron. The result was that Speed, now in his sitting-room though still not allowed out of doors, was there alone to welcome her.

He had got into such a curious state of excitement as the time neared for her arrival that when she did come he was almost speechless. She smiled and shook hands with him and said, immediately: "I'm so sorry to hear you haven't been very well. I feel partly responsible, since I dragged you all that way in the fog the other night. But I'm not going to waste too much pity on you, because I think you waste quite enough on yourself, don't you?"

He laughed weakly and said that perhaps he did.

Then there was a long pause which she broke by saying suddenly: "What's the matter with you?"

"Matter with me? Oh, nothing serious--only a chill----"

"That's not what I mean. I want to know what's the matter with you that makes you look at me as you were doing just then."

"I--I--I didn't know I was. I--I----"

He stopped. What on earth were they going to talk about? And what was this look that he had been giving her? He felt his cheeks burning; a fire rising up all around him and bathing his body in warmth.

She said, obviously with the desire to change the subject: "What are you and Helen going to do at Christmas?"

Pulling himself together with an effort, he replied: "Well, we're not certain yet. My--er--my people have asked us down to their place."

"And of course you'll go."

"I'm not certain."

"But why not?"

He paused. "Well, you see--in a way, it's a private reason. I mean----"

"Oh, well, if it's a private reason, you certainly mustn't tell me. Let's change the subject again. How are the House-Matches going?"

"Look here, I didn't mean to be rude. And I do want to tell you, as it happens. In fact, I wouldn't mind your advice if you'd give it me. Will you?"

"Better put the case before me first."

"Well, you see, it's like this." He was so desperately and unaccountably nervous that he found himself plunging into the midst of his story almost before he realised what he was doing. "You see, my people were in Australia for a holiday when I married Helen. I had to marry her quickly, you remember, because of taking this housemastership. And I don't think they quite liked me marrying somebody they'd never seen."

"Perfectly natural on their part, my dear man. You may as well admit that much of their case to start with."

"Yes, I suppose it is rather natural. But you don't know what my people are like. I don't think they'll care for Helen very much. And Helen is bound to be nervous at meeting them. I expect we should have a pretty miserable Christmas if we went."

"I should think in your present mood you'd have a pretty miserable Christmas whatever you did. And since you asked for my advice I'll give it you. Buck yourself up; don't let your imagination carry you away; and take Helen to see your people. After all, she's perfectly presentable, and since you've married her there's nothing to be gained by keeping her out of their sight, is there? Don't think I'm callous and unfeeling because I take a more practical view of things than you do. I'm a practical person, you see, Mr. Speed, and if I had married you I should insist on being taken to see your people at the earliest possible opportunity."

"Why?"

"Because," she answered, "I should be anxious for them to see what an excellent choice you'd made!"

That was thoughtlessly said and thoughtfully heard. After a pause Speed said, curiously: "That brings one to the question--supposing I had married you, should I have made an excellent choice?"

With a touch of surprise and coldness she replied: "That wasn't in my mind, Mr. Speed. You evidently misunderstood me."

And at this point Helen came into the room.

II

During that strange twilight hour while the three of them were tea-drinking and conducting a rather limp conversation about local matters, Speed came suddenly to the decision that he would not see Clare again. Partly, perhaps, because her last remark just before Helen entered had hurt him; he felt that she had deliberately led him into a position from which she could and did administer a stinging snub. But chiefly his decision was due to a careful and pitiful observation of Helen; he saw her in a dazzling white light of admiration, for she was deliberately (he could see) torturing herself to please him. She was acutely jealous of Clare, and yet, because she thought he liked Clare, she was willing to give her open hospitality and encouragement, despite the stab that every word and gesture must mean to her. It reminded him of Hans Andersen's story about the mermaid who danced to please her lover-prince even though each step cost her agonies. The pathos of it, made more apparent to him by the literary comparison, overwhelmed him into a blind fervour of resolution: he would do everything in his power to bring happiness to one who was capable of such love and such nobility. And as Helen thus swung into the focus of his heroine-worship, so Clare, without his realising it, took up in his mind the other inevitable position in the triangle; she was something, at least, of the adventuress, scheming to lure his affections away from his brave little wife. The fact that he was not conscious of this conventional outlook upon the situation prevented his reason from assuring him that Clare, so far from scheming to lure his affections from Helen, had just snubbed him unmercifully for a remark which any capable adventuress would have rejoiced over.

Anyway, he decided there and then, he would put a stop to this tangled and uncomfortable situation. And after tea, when Helen, on a pretext which he knew quite well to be a fabrication, left him alone again with Clare, he could think of no better method of procedure than a straightforward request.

So he summed up the necessary determination to begin: "Miss Harrington, I hope you won't be offended at what I'm going to say----"

Whereat she interrupted: "Oh, I don't often take offence at what people _say_. So please don't be frightened."

"You see ..." He paused, watching her. He noticed, curiously enough for the first time, that she was--well, not perhaps pretty, but certainly--in a way--attractive. In the firelight especially, she seemed to have the most searching and diabolically disturbing eyes. They made him nervous. At last he continued: "You see, I'm in somewhat of a dilemma. A quandary, as it were. In fact--in fact I----"

"Supposing we use our ordinary English language and say that you're in a mess, eh? 'Quandary'! 'Dilemma'!" She laughed with slight contempt.

"I don't--I don't quite see the point of--of your--objection," he said, staring at her with a certain puzzled ruefulness. "What has my choice of a word got to do with it?"

"To do with what?" she replied, instantly.

"With what--with what we're going to talk about."

"Since I haven't the faintest idea what we're going to talk about, how can I say?"

"Look here!" He got up out of his chair and stood with his back to the fire. He kept a fretful silence for a moment and then said, with a sharp burst of exasperation: "Look here, I don't know what you're driving at! I only know that you're being most infernally rude!"

"Don't forget that a moment ago you were asking me not to take offence."

"You're damned clever, aren't you?" he almost snarled.

That was all he could think of in the way of an answer to her. He stood there swaying lightly in front of the fire, nursing, as it were, his angry bafflement.

"Thank you," she replied. "I regard that as a very high tribute. And I'm nearly as pleased at one other thing--I seem to have shaken you partly out of your delightful and infuriating urbanity.... But now, we're not here to compliment each other. You've got something you want to say to me, haven't you?"

He stared at her severely and said: "Yes, I have. I want to ask you not to come here any more."

"Why?" She shot the word out at him almost before he had finished speaking.

"Because I don't wish you to."

"You forget that I come at Helen's invitation, not at yours."

"I see I shall have to tell you the real reason, then. I would have preferred not to have done. My wife is jealous of you."

He expected her to show great surprise, but the surprise was his when she replied almost casually: "Oh yes, she was jealous of _you_ once--that first evening we met at the Head's house--do you remember?"

No, he did not remember. At least, he did now that she called it to his memory, but he had not remembered until then. Curious ...

He was half-disappointed that she was so calm and unconcerned about it all. He had anticipated some sort of a scene, either of surprise, remorse, indignation, or sympathy. Instead of which she just said "Oh, yes," and indulged in some perfectly irrelevant reminiscence. Well, not perhaps irrelevant, but certainly inappropriate in the circumstances.

"You see," he went on, hating her blindly because she was so serene; "you see she generously invites you here, because she thinks I like you to come. Well, of course, I do, but then, I don't want to make it hard for her. You understand what I mean? I think it is very generous of her to--to act as she does."

"I think it is very foolish unless she has the idea that in time she can conquer her jealousy.... But I quite understand, Mr. Speed. I won't come any more."

"I hope you don't think----"

"Fortunately I have other things to think about. I assure you I'm not troubling at all. Even loss of friendship----"

"But," he interrupted eagerly, "surely it's not going to mean that, Miss Harrington? Just because you don't come here doesn't mean that you and I----"

She laughed in his face as she replied, cutting short his remarks: "My dear Mr. Speed, you are too much of an egoist. It wasn't your friendship I was thinking about--it was Helen's. You forget that I've been Helen's friend for ten years.... Well, good-bye...."

The last straw! He shook hands with her stiffly.

When she had gone his face grew hard and solemn, and he clenched his fists as he stood again with his back to the fire. He felt--the word _came_ to his mind was a staggering inevitability--he felt _dead_. Absolutely dead. And all because she had gone and he knew that she would not come again.

III

Those were the dark days of the winter term, when Burton came round the dormitories at half-past seven in the mornings and lit all the flaring gas-jets. There was a cold spell at the beginning of December when it was great fun to have to smash the film of ice on the top of the water in the water-jugs, and one afternoon the school got an extra half-holiday to go skating on one of the neighbouring fens that had been flooded and frozen over. Now Speed could skate very well, even to the point of figure-skating and a few easy tricks, and he took a very simple and human delight in exhibiting his prowess before the Millstead boys. He possessed a good deal of that very charming boyish pride in athletic achievement which is so often mistaken for modesty, and there was no doubt that the reports of his accomplishments on the wide expanse of Dinglay Fen gave a considerable fillip to his popularity in the school.

A popularity, by the way, which was otherwise very distinctly on the wane. He knew it, felt it as anyone might have felt it, and perhaps, additionally, as only he in all the world could feel it; it was the dark spectre in his life. He loved success; he was prepared to fight the sternest of battles provided they were victories on the road of progress; but to see his power slipping from him elusively and without commotion of any kind, was the sort of thing his soul was not made to endure. Fears grew up in him and exaggerated reality. He imagined all kinds of schemes and conspiracies against him in his own House. The enigma of the Head became suddenly resolved into a sinister hostility to himself. If a boy passed him in the road with a touch of the cap and a "Good morning" he would ask himself whether the words contained any ominous subtlety of meaning. And when, on rare occasions, he dined in the Masters' Common-Room he could be seen to feel hostility rising in clouds all about him, hostility that would not speak or act, that was waiting mute for the signal to uprise.

He was glad that the term was nearly over, not, he told himself, because he was unhappy at Millstead, but because he needed a holiday after the hard work of his first term of housemastership. The next term, he decided, would be easier; and the term after that easier still, and so on, until a time would come when his work at Millstead would be exactly the ideal combination of activity and comfort. Moreover, the next term he would not see Clare at all. He had made up his mind about that It would be easier to see her not at all than to see her only a little. And with the absolute snapping of his relations with her would come that which he desired most in all the world; happiness with Helen. He wanted to be happy with Helen. He wanted to love her passionately, just as he wanted to hate Clare passionately. For it was Clare who had caused all the trouble. He hugged the comfortable thought to himself; it was Clare, and Clare only, who had so far disturbed the serenity of his world. Without Clare his world would have been calm and unruffled, a paradise of contentment and love of Helen.

Well, next term, anyway, his world should be without Clare.

IV

On the day that term ended he felt quite boyish and cheerful. For during that final week he and Helen had been, he considered, perfectly happy; moreover, she had agreed to go with him to his parents for Christmas, and though the visit would, in some sense, be an ordeal, the anticipation of it was distinctly pleasant. Somehow--he would not analyse his sensation exactly--somehow he wanted to leave the creeper-hung rooms at Lavery's and charge full tilt into the world outside; it was as if Lavery's contained something morbidly beautiful that he loved achingly, but desired to leave in order that he might return to love it more and again. When he saw the railway vans being loaded up with luggage in the courtyard he felt himself tingling with excitement, just as if he were a schoolboy and this the close of his first miserable term. Miserable! Well, yes, looking back upon it he could agree that in a certain way it had been miserable, and in another way it had been splendid, rapturous, and lovely. It had been full, brimming full, of _feelings_. The feelings had whirled tirelessly about him in the dark drawing-room, had wrapped him amidst themselves, had tossed him high and low to the most dizzy heights and the most submerged depths; and now, aching from it all, he was not sorry to leave for a short while this world of pressing, congesting sensation.

He even caught himself looking forward to his visit to his parents, a thing he had hardly ever done before. For his parents were, he had always considered, "impossible" parents, good and generous enough in their way, but "impossible" from his point of view. They were--he hesitated to use the word "vulgar," because that word implied so many things that they certainly were not--he would use instead the rather less insulting word "materialist." They lived in a world that was full of "things"--soap-factories and cars and Turkey carpets and gramophones and tennis-courts. Moreover, they were almost disgustingly wealthy, and their wealth had followed him doggedly about wherever he had tried to escape from it. They had regarded his taking a post in a public-school as a kind of eccentric wild oats, and did not doubt that, sooner or later, he would come to his senses and prefer one or other of the various well-paid business posts that Sir Charles Speed could get for him. Oh, yes, undoubtedly they were impossible people. And yet their very impossibility would be a relief from the tensely charged atmosphere of Lavery's.

On the train he chatted gaily to Helen and gave her some indication of the sort of people his parents were. "You mustn't be nervous of them," he warned her. "They've pots of money, but they're not people to get nervous about. Dad's all right if you stick up for yourself in front of him, and mother's nice to everybody whether she likes them or not. So you'll be quite safe ... and if it freezes there'll be ice on the Marshpond...."

At the thought of this last possibility his face kindled with anticipation. "Cold, Helen?" he queried, and when she replied "Yes, rather," he said jubilantly: "I shouldn't be surprised if it's started to freeze already."

Then for many minutes he gazed out through the carriage window at the pleasant monotony of the Essex countryside, and in a short while he felt her head against his shoulder. She was sleeping. "I do love her!" he thought triumphantly, giving her a side-glance. And then the sight of a pond with a thin coating of ice gave him another sort of triumph.

INTERLUDE

CHRISTMAS AT BEACHINGS OVER

I

"BEACHINGS OVER, near Framlingay, Essex. Tel. Framlingay 32. Stations: Framlingay 2½ miles; Pumphrey Bassett 3 miles."

So ran the inscription on Lady Speed's opulent bluish notepaper. The house was an old one, unobtrusively modernised, with about a half-mile of upland carriage-drive leading to the portico. As Helen saw it from the window of the closed Daimler that had met them at Framlingay station, her admiration secured momentary advantage of her nervousness.

In another moment Speed was introducing her to his mother.

Lady Speed was undoubtedly a fine woman. "Fine" was exactly the right word for her, for she was just a little too elderly to be called beautiful and perhaps too tall ever to have been called pretty. Though she was upright and clear-skinned and finely-featured, and although the two decades of her married life had seemed to leave very little conspicuous impression on her, yet there was a sense, perhaps, in which she looked her age; it might have been guessed rightly as between forty and fifty. She had blue eyes of that distinctively English hue that might almost be the result of gazing continually upon miles and miles of rolling English landscape; and her nose, still attractively _retroussé_, though without a great deal of the pertness it must have had in her youth, held just enough of patricianly bearing to enable her to manage competently the twenty odd domestics whose labours combined to make Beachings Over habitable.

She kissed Helen warmly. "My dear, I'm so pleased to meet you. But you'll have to rough it along with us, you know--I'm afraid we don't live at all in style. We're just ordinary country folks, that's all.... And when you've had your lunch and got refreshed I must take you over the house and show you everything...."

Speed laughed and said: "Mother always tells visitors that they've got to rough it. But there's nothing to rough. I wonder what she'd say if she had to live three months at Lavery's."

"Lavery's?" said Lady Speed, uncomprehendingly.

"Lavery's is the name of my House at Millstead. I was made housemaster of it at the beginning of the term." He spoke a little proudly.

"Oh, yes, I seem to know the name. I believe your father was mentioning something about it to me once, but I hardly remember--"

"But how on earth did he know anything about it? I never wrote telling him."

"Well, I expect he heard it from somebody.... I really couldn't tell you exactly.... I've had a most awful morning before you came--had to dismiss one of the maids--she'd stolen a thermos-flask. So ungrateful of her, because I'd have given it to her if she'd only asked me for it. One of my best maids, she was."

After lunch Richard arrived. Richard was Speed's younger brother, on vacation from school; a pleasant-faced, rather ordinary youngster, obviously prepared to enter the soap-boiling industry as soon as he left school. In the afternoon Richard conducted the pair of them round the grounds and outbuildings, showing them the new Italian garden and the pergola and the new sunken lawn and the clock-tower built over the garage and the new gas-engine to work the electric light plant and the new pavilion alongside the rubble tennis courts and the new wing of the servants' quarters that "dad" was "throwing out" from the end of the old coach-house. Then, when they returned indoors, Lady Speed was ready to conduct them over the interior and show them the panelled bed-rooms and the lacquered cabinets in the music-room and the bathroom with a solid silver bath and the gramophone worked by electricity and the wonderful old-fashioned bureau that somebody had offered to buy off "dad" for fifteen hundred guineas.

"Visitors always have to go through it," said Speed, when his mother had left them. "Personally I'm never the least bit impressed, and I can't understand anyone else being it."

Helen answered, rather doubtfully: "But it's a lovely house, Kenneth, isn't it? I'd no idea your people were like this."

"Like what?"

"So--so well-off."

"Oh, then the display _has_ impressed you?" He laughed and said, quietly: "I'd rather have our own little place at Lavery's, wouldn't you?"

While he was saying it he felt: Yes, I'd rather have it, no doubt, but to be there now would make me utterly miserable.

She replied softly: "Yes, because it's our own."

He pondered a moment and then said: "Yes, I suppose that's one of the reasons why _I_ would."

After a pleasant tea in the library he took Helen into the music-room, where he played Chopin diligently for half-an-hour and then, by special request of Richard, ran over some of the latest revue songs. Towards seven o'clock Lady Speed sailed in to remind Richard that it was getting near dinner-time. "I wish you'd run upstairs and change your clothes, dear--you know father doesn't like you to come in to dinner in tweeds.... You know," she went on, turning to Helen, "Charles isn't a bit fussy--none of us trouble to really _dress_ for dinner, except when we're in town--only--only you have to put a limit somewhere, haven't you?"

As the hour for dinner approached it seemed as if a certain mysteriously incalculable imminence were in the air, as if the whole world of Beachings Over were steeling itself in readiness for some searching and stupendous test of its worth. It was, indeed, ten minutes past eight when the sound of a motor-horn was heard in the far distance. "That's Edwards," cried Lady Speed, apprehensively. "He always sounds his horn to let us know.... Now, Dick dear, don't let him know we've been waiting for him--you know how he hates to think he's late...."

And in another moment a gruff voice in the hall could be heard dismissing the chauffeur with instructions for the morrow. "Ten-thirty sharp, Edwards. The Daimler if it's wet. Gotter go over and see Woffenheimer."

And in yet another moment Lady Speed was rushing forward with an eager, wifely kiss. "You aren't late, Charles. All the clocks are a little fast.... Kenneth has come ... and this ..." she spoke a trifle nervously ... "this is Helen...."

Sir Charles distributed a gruff nod to the assembly, afterwards holding out his hand to be shaken. "Ahdedoo, Kenneth, my lad.... How are you? Still kicking eh? ... Ahdedoo, Helen ... don't mind me calling you Helen, do you? Well, Richard, my lad...."

A bald-headed, moustached, white-spatted, morning-coated man, Sir Charles Speed.

Dinner opened in an atmosphere of gloomy silence. Lady Speed kept inaugurating conversations that petered out into a stillness that was broken only by Sir Charles' morose ingurgitation of soup. Something was obviously amiss with him. Over the _entrée_ it came out.

"Had to sack one of the foremen to-day."

Lady Speed looked up with an appropriate gesture of horror and indignation. "And I had to dismiss one of my maids too! What a curious coincidence! How ungrateful people are!"

"Sneaking timber out of the woodyard," continued Sir Charles, apparently without the least interest in his wife's adventure with the maid.

But with the trouble of the sacked foreman off his chest Sir Charles seemed considerably relieved, though his gloom returned when Richard had the misfortune to refer to one of the "fellows" at his school as "no class at all--an absolute outsider." "See here, my lad," exclaimed Sir Charles, holding up his fork with a peach on the end of it, "don't you ever let me hear you talking _that_ sort of nonsense! Don't you forget that _I_ started life as an office-boy cleaning out ink-wells!" Richard flushed deeply and Lady Speed looked rather uncomfortable. "Don't you forget it," added Sir Charles, mouthing characteristically, and it was clear that he was speaking principally for the benefit of Helen. "I don't want people to think I am what I'm not. If I hadn't been lucky--and--and" he seemed to experience a difficulty in choosing the right adjective--"and _smart_--_smart_, mind--I might have been still cleaning out ink-wells. See?" He filled up his glass with port and for a moment there was sultry silence again. Eventually, he licked his lips and broke it. "You know," turning to address Kenneth, "it's all this education that's at the root of the trouble. Makes the workers too big for their shoes, as often as not.... Mind you, I'm a democrat, I am. Can't abide snobbery at any price. But I don't believe in all this education business. I paid for you at Cambridge and what's it done for you? You go an' get a job in some stuffy little school or other--salary about two hundred a year--and God knows how long you'd stay there without a promotion if I hadn't given somebody the tip to shove you up!"

"What's that?" Kenneth exclaimed, almost under his breath.

Sir Charles appeared not to have heard the interruption. He went on, warming to his subject and addressing an imaginary disputant: "No, sir, I do _not_ believe in what is termed Education in this country. It don't help a man to rise if he hasn't got it in him.... Why, look at _me_! _I_ got on without education. Don't you suppose other lads, if they're smart enough, can do the same? Don't you think I'm an example of what a man can become when he's had no education?"

The younger Speed nodded. The argument was irrefutable.

II

After dinner Speed managed to get his father alone in the library. "I want to know," he said, quietly, "what you meant when you said something about giving somebody the tip to shove me up. I want to know exactly, mind."

Sir Charles waved his arm across a table.

"Don't you talk to me like that, my lad. I'm too old for you to cross-examine. I'm willin' to tell you anythin' you like, only I won't be bullied into it. So now you know. Light yourself a cigar an', for God's sake, sit down and look comfortable."

"Perhaps I could look it if I felt it."

"Your own fault if you don't feel it. Damned ingratitude, I call it. Sit down. I shan't answer a question till you're sitting down and smoking as if you was a friend of mine an' not a damned commercial traveller."

Speed decided that he had better humour him; he sat down and toyed with a cigar. "Now, if you'll please tell me."

"What is it you want me to tell you?" grunted Sir Charles.

"I want you to tell me what you meant by saying that you gave somebody a tip to shove me up?"

"Well, my lad, you don't want to stay an assistant-master all your life, do you?"

"That's not the point. I want to know what you did."

"Why, I did the usual thing that I'd always do to help somebody I'm interested in."

"What's that?"

"Well, you know. Pull a few wires.... Man like me has a few wires he can pull. I know people, you see--and if I just mention a little thing--well, they generally remember it all right."

And he spread himself luxuriously in the arm-chair and actually smiled!

The other flushed hotly. "I see. May I ask whose help you solicited on my behalf?"

"Don't talk like a melodrama, my lad. I'm your best friend if you only knew it. What is it you want to know now?"

"I want to know whose help you asked for?"

"Well, I had a little conversation with Lord Portway. And I had five minutes' chat over the telephone with old Ervine. Don't you see--" he leaned forward with a touch of pleading in his voice--"don't you see that I want you to _get_ on? I've always wanted you to do well in the world. Your brother's doing well and there's not a prouder father in England to-day than I am of him. And when young Richard leaves school I hope he'll get on well too. Now, you're a bit different. Dunno why you are, but you are, an' I've always recognised it. You can't say I've ever tried to force you to anythin' you didn't want, can you? You wanted to go to the 'varsity--well, I don't believe it's a good thing for a young man to waste his years till he's twenty-two--nevertheless it was your choice, an' I let you do it. I paid for you, I gave you as much money as you wanted, an' I didn't complain. Well, then you wanted to be a Master in a school. You got yourself the job without even consulting me about it, but did I complain? No, I let you go your own way. I let you do what I considered an absolutely damsilly thing. Still, I thought, if you're going to be a teacher you may as well have ambitions an' rise to the top of the profession. So I thought I'd just put in a word for you. That was all. I want you to _get on_, my lad, no matter what line you're in. I've always bin as ambitious for you as I have bin for myself."

The other said: "I can see you meant well."

"_Meant_ well? And is it extraordinary that I should mean well to my own son? Then, there's another thing. You go and get married. Well, I don't mind that. I believe in marriage. I was married myself when I was nineteen an' I've never once regretted it: But you go an' get married all of a hurry while I'm travellin' the other side o' the world, an' you don't even send me so much as a bit o' weddin'-cake! I don't say: is it _fair_? I just say: is it _natural_? I come home to England to find a letter tellin' me you've married the Headmaster's daughter!"

"Well, why shouldn't I?"

"I'm not sayin' you shouldn't, my lad. I'm not a snob, an' I don't care who you marry s'long as she's as good as you are. I don't want you to marry a duchess. I don't even care if the girl you marry hasn't a cent. See--I don't mind if she's a dustman's daughter, s'long--s'long, mind, as she's your equal! That's all. Now you understand me. _Do_ you?"

"I think I understand you."

"Good. Now have some more port. An' while you're spendin' Christmas with us, for God's sake, have a good time and give the girl a good time, too. Is she fond of theatres?"

"I--I don't know--well--she might be--"

"Well, you can have the closed Daimler any night you like to take you into town and bring you back. And if she's fond of motorin' you can have the Sunbeam durin' the daytime. Remember that. I want you to have a dam' good time.... Dam' good.... See? Now have some more port before we join your mother...."

"No thanks. I should be drunk if I had any more."

"Nonsense, my lad. Port won' make you drunk. Dam' good port, isn' it? ... Wouldn' make you drunk, though.... Don' talk dam' nonsense to me...."

He was slightly drunk himself.

III

That interview with his father had a disturbing effect upon Speed. He had expected a row in which his father would endeavour to tyrannise over him, instead of which Sir Charles, if there had been any argument at all, had certainly got the better of it. In a sort of way it did seem rather unfair to have married without letting his parents know a word about it beforehand. But, of course, there had been good reasons. First, the housemastership. He couldn't have been given Lavery's unless he had married. Ervine had stressed very strongly the desirability of married housemasters. And it had therefore been necessary to do everything rather hurriedly in order to be able to begin at Lavery's in the September.

It was when he reflected that, but for his father's intervention, he would probably never have been offered Lavery's that he felt the keenest feeling of unrest. The more he thought about it the more manifestly certain incidents in the past became explainable to him. The hostility of the Common-Room for instance. Did they guess the sort of "wire-pulling" that had been going on? Probably they did not know anything definitely, but wasn't it likely that they would conclude that such a startling appointment must have been the result of some ulterior intrigue? And wasn't it natural that they should be jealous of him?

He hated Ervine because, behind all the man's kindness to him, he saw now merely the ignoble desire to placate influence. Ervine had done it all to please his father. It was galling to think that that adulatory speech on the Prize-Day, which had given him such real and genuine pleasure, had been dictated merely by a willingness to serve the whim of an important man. It was galling to think that Lord Portway's smiles and words of commendation had been similarly motivated. It was galling to think that, however reticent he was about being the son of Sir Charles Speed, the relationship seemed fated to project itself into his career in the most unfortunate and detestable of ways.

Then he thought of Helen. Her motives, of all, were pure and untainted; she shared neither her father's sycophancy nor his own father's unscrupulousness. She had married him for no other reason than that she loved him. And in the midst of the haze of indecent revelations that seemed to be enveloping him, her love for him and his for her brightened like stars when the night deepens.

And then, slowly and subtly at first, came even the suspicion of her. Was it possible that she had been the dupe of her father? Was it possible that Ervine very neatly and cleverly had Sir Charles hoist with his own petard, making the young housemaster of Lavery's at the same time his own son-in-law? And if so, had Helen played up to the game? The thought tortured him evilly. He felt it to be such an ignoble one that he must never breathe it to Helen, lest it should be utterly untrue. Yet to keep it to himself was not the best way of getting rid of it. It grew within him like a cancer; it filled all the unoccupied niches of his mind; it made him sick with apprehension.

And then, at last, on Christmas Eve he was cruel to her. There had been a large party at Beachings Over and she had been very shy and nervous all the evening. And now, after midnight, when they had gone up to their bedroom, he said, furiously: "What was the matter with you all to-night?"

She said: "Nothing."

He said: "Funny reason for not speaking a word all the evening. Whatever must people have thought of you?"

"I don't know. I told you I should be nervous. I can't help it. You shouldn't have brought me if you hadn't been prepared for it."

"You might have at least said you'd got a headache and gone off to bed."

She said, frightenedly: "Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, what's the matter--why are you talking to me like this?"

"I hope I'm not being unfair," he replied, imperturbably.

She flung herself on the bed and began to sob.

He went on unfastening his dress tie and thinking: She married me because my father has money. She married me because her father told her to. She schemed to get me. The housemastership was a plant to get me married to her before I knew whether I really wanted her or not.

He was carefully silent the whole rest of the night, though it was hard to lie awake and hear her sobbing.

IV

The next evening, Christmas Day, there was another party. She looked rather pale and unhappy, but he saw she was trying to be lively. He felt acutely sorry for her, and yet, whenever he felt in the mood to relent, he fortified his mind by thinking of her duplicity. He thought of other things besides her duplicity. He thought of her stupidity. Why was she so stupid? Why had he married a woman who couldn't gossip at a small Christmas party without being nervous? Why had he married a woman who never spoke at table unless she were spoken to? Other women said the silliest things and they sounded ordinary; Helen, forcing herself in sheer desperation to do so, occasionally said the most ordinary things and they sounded silly. If she ventured on any deliberate remark the atmosphere was always as if the whole world had stopped moving in order to see her make a fool of herself; what she said was probably no more foolish than what anybody else might have said, yet somehow it seemed outlined against the rest of the conversation as a piece of stark, unmitigated lunacy. Speed found himself holding his breath when she began to speak.

After the rest of the party had gone away he went: into the library for a cigarette. Helen had gone up to bed; it was past two o'clock, but he felt very wakeful and disturbed. The morning-room adjoined the library, and as he sat smoking by the remains of the fire, he heard conversation. He heard his father's gruff voice saying: "God knows, Fanny, I don't."

A remark apposite to a great many subjects, he reflected, with a half-smile. He had no intention to eavesdrop, but he did not see why he should move away merely because they were talking so loudly about some probably unimportant topic that their voices carried into the next room.

Then he heard his mother say: "I think she means well, Charles. Probably she's not used to the kind of life here."

His father replied: "Oh, I could tell if it was just that. What I think is that she's a silly little empty-headed piece of goods, an' I'd like to know what the devil that fool of a boy sees in her!"

The blood rushed to his cheeks and temples; he gripped the arms of his chair, listening intently now to every word, with no thought of the right or wrong of it.

The conversation went on.

"She's more intelligent when you get her alone, Charles. And I'm rather afraid you frighten her too."

"Frighten her be damned. If she'd any guts in her she'd like me. The right sort of women always do like me."

"Perhaps she does like you. That wouldn't stop her from being frightened of you, would it? I'm frightened of you myself, sometimes."

"Don't say damsilly things to me, Fanny. All I say is, I'm not a snob, an' I've always felt I'd let all my lads choose for themselves absolutely in a matter like marriage. But I've always hoped and trusted that they'd marry somebody worth marryin'. I told the boy the other night--if he'd married a dustman's daughter I'd have welcomed her if she'd been pretty or clever or smart or something or other about her."

"But Charles, she _is_ pretty."

"Think so? Not my style, anyway. An' what's prettiness when there's nothing else? I like a girl with her wits about her, smart business-like sort o' girl, pretty if you like--all the better if she is--but a girl that needn't depend on her looks. Why, I'd rather the lad have married my typist than that silly little thing! Fact, I've a few factory girls I'd rather have had for a daughter-in-law than the one I've got!"

"Well, it's no good troubling about it, Charles. He's done it now, and if he can put up with her I think we ought to. She's fond enough of him, I should think."

"Good God, she ought to be! Probably she's got enough sense to know what's a bargain, anyway."

"I think you're a bit too severe, Charles. After all, we've only seen her for a week."

"Well, Fanny, answer me a straight question--are you really pleased with her?"

"No, I can't say I am, but I realise we've got to make the best of her. After all, men do make silly mistakes, don't they?"

"Over women they do, that's a fact.... You know, it's just struck me--that old chap Ervine's played a dam' smart game."

"What do you mean?"

"I bet he put her on to it. I thought I was getting somethin' out of him when I had that talk over the 'phone, but I'll acknowledge he's gone one better on me. Smart man, Ervine. I like a smart man, even if it's me he puts it across. I like him better than his daughter."

"I should hate him. I think the whole business is dreadful. Perfectly dreadful.... Did you tell Rogers he could go to bed? ... I said breakfast at nine-thirty ... yes, ten if you like ..."

The voices trailed off into the distance.

V

He crept up the stairs carefully, trying not to let them creak. At the landing outside his room he paused, looking out of the window. It was a night full of beautiful moonlight, and on the new clock-tower over the garage the weather-vane glinted like a silver arrow. Snow lay in patches against the walls, and the pools amidst the cobble-stones in the courtyard were filmed over with thin ice. As he looked out upon the scene the clock chimed the quarter.

He took a few paces back and turned the handle of the door. He felt frightened to enter. What should he say to her? Would she be in bed and asleep? Would she be pretending to be asleep? Should he say nothing at all, but wait till morning, when he had thought it all over?

He switched on the light and saw that she was in bed. He saw her golden hair straggling forlornly over the pillow. Something in that touched him, and suspicion, always on guard against the softness of his heart, struck at him with a sudden stab. She had plotted. She was a schemer. The forlorn spread of her hair over the pillow was part of the duplicity of her.

He hardened. He said, very quietly and calmly: "Are you awake, Helen?"

The hair moved and shook itself. "Kenneth!"

"I want to speak to you."

"What is it, Kenneth?"

"Did you--?--Look here--" He paused. How could he put it to her? If he said straight out: "Did you plot with your father to marry me?" she would, of course, say no. He must be careful. He must try to trap her without her being aware.

"Look here--did you know that it was due to my father's influence that I got Lavery's?"

"No, was it? It was good of your father to help you, wasn't it?"

Stupid little fool! he thought. (Good God, that was nearly what his father had said she was!)

He said: "He meant it kindly, no doubt. But you didn't know?"

"How should I know?"

"I thought perhaps your father might have told you."

"I was never interested in his business."

Pause. A sudden sharp wave of irritation made him continue:

"I say, Helen, you might remember whom you're talking to when you're at dinner. The Lord Randolph you were saying the uncomplimentary things about happens to be the cousin of the lady sitting on your left."

"Really? Oh, I'm so sorry, Kenneth. I didn't know. D'you think she'd be offended?"

"I shouldn't think she'd trouble very much about your opinion, but the publicity which you gave to it would probably annoy her a little."

She suddenly hid her head in her arms and burst into tears.

"Oh, Kenneth--let's go away to-morrow! Let's go back to Millstead! Oh, I can't bear this any more--I've been miserable ever since I came. I told you it would all go wrong, Kenneth!--Kenneth, I _have_ tried, but it's no good--I can't be happy!--Take me away to-morrow, Kenneth. Kenneth, if you don't I shall run away myself--I simply can't bear any more of it. You've hated me ever since you came here, because I don't make you feel proud of me. Oh, I _wish_ I did--I _do_ wish I could! But I've tried so many times--I've made myself sick with trying--and now that I know it's no good, let me go back to Millstead where I can give up trying for a while. Kenneth, be kind to me--I can't help it--I can't help not being all that you want me to be!"

She held out her arms for him to have taken hold of, but he stood aside.

"I think perhaps a return to Millstead would be the best thing we could do," he said, calmly. "We certainly don't seem to be having a very exhilarating time here.... Breakfast is at ten, I think. That means that the car can take us down to catch the 11.50.... I'd better 'phone Burton in the morning, then he can air the place for us. Would you like to dine at School to-morrow? I was thinking that probably your father would invite us if he knew we were coming back so soon?"

It was in his mind that perhaps he could scheme some trap at the Head's dinner-table that would enmesh them both.

She said drearily: "Oh, I don't mind, Kenneth. Just whatever you want."

"Very well," he replied, and said no more.

He lay awake until he fancied it must be almost dawn, and all the time he was acutely miserable. He was so achingly sorry for her, and yet the suspicion in his mind fortified him against all kindly impulses. He felt that he would never again weakly give way to her, because the thought of her duplicity would give him strength, strength even against her tears and misery. And yet there was one thing the thought of her duplicity did not give him; it did not give him peace. It made him bitter, unrestful, angry with the world.

And he decided, just before he went to sleep, that these new circumstances that had arisen justified him in taking what attitude he liked towards Clare. If he wanted to see her he would see her. He would no longer make sacrifices of his friends for Helen's sake.