Читать книгу The Passionate Year - James Hilton - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Conversation ambled on, drearily and with infinite labour, until half-past nine, when Clare arose and said she must go. Helen then rose also and said she would go with Clare a part of the way into the town, but Mrs. Ervine objected because Helen had a cold. Clare said: "Oh, don't trouble, Helen, I can easily go alone—I'm used to it, you know, and there's a bright moon."

Speed, feeling that a show of gallantry would bring to an end an evening that had just begun to get on his nerves a little, said: "Suppose I see you home, Miss Harrington. I've got to go down to the general post office to post a letter, and I can quite easily accompany you as far as the High Street."

"There's no need to," said Clare. "And I hope you're not inventing that letter you have to post."

"I assure you I'm not," Speed answered, and he pulled out of his pocket a letter home that he had written up in his room that afternoon.

Clare laughed.

In the dimly-lit hall, after he had bidden good night to Doctor and Mrs. Ervine, he found an opportunity of speaking a few words to Helen alone. She was waiting at the door to have a few final words with Clare, and before Clare appeared Speed came up to her and began speaking.

He said: "Miss Ervine, please forgive me for having been the means of making you feel uncomfortable this evening. I had no idea you were nervous, or I shouldn't have dreamed of asking you to play. I know what nervousness is, because I'm nervous myself."

She gave him a half-frightened look and replied: "Oh, it's all right, Mr. Speed. It wasn't your fault. And anyhow it didn't matter."

She seemed only half interested. It was Clare she was waiting for, and when Clare appeared she left Speed by the door and the two girls conversed a moment in whispers. They kissed and said good night.

As Potter appeared mysteriously from nowhere and, after handing Speed his hat and gloves, opened the front-door with massive dignity, Helen threw her hands up as if to embrace the chill night air and exclaimed: "Oh, what a lovely moon! I wish I was coming with you, Clare!"

There was a strange bewildering pathos in her voice.

Over the heavy trees and the long black pillars of shadow the windows of the dormitories shone like yellow gems, piercing the night with radiance and making a pattern of intricate beauty on the path that led to the Headmaster's gate. Sounds, mysteriously clear, fell from everywhere upon the two of them as they crossed the soft lawn and came in view of the huge block of Milner's, all its windows lit and all its rooms alive with commotion. They could hear the clatter of jugs in their basins, the sudden chorus of boyish derision, the strident cry that pierced the night like a rocket, the dull incessant murmur of miscellaneous sounds, the clap of hands, the faint jabber of a muffled gramophone. Millstead was most impressive at this hour, for it was the hour when she seemed most of all immense and vital, a body palpitating with warmth and energy, a mighty organism which would swallow the small and would sway even the greatest of men. Tears, bred of a curious undercurrent of emotion, came into Speed's eyes as he realised that he was now part of the marvelously contrived machine.

Out in the lane the moon was white along one side of the road-way, and here the lights of Millstead pierced through the foliage like so many bright stars. Speed walked with Clare in silence for some way. He had nothing particular to say; he had suggested accompanying her home partly from mere perfunctory politeness, but chiefly because he longed for a walk in the cool night air away from the stuffiness of the Head's drawing-room.

When they had been walking some moments Clare said: "I wish you hadn't come with me, Mr. Speed."

He answered, a trifle vacantly: "Why do you?"

"Because it will make Helen jealous."

He became as if suddenly galvanised into attention. "What! Jealous! Jealous!—Of whom?—Of what?—Of you having me to take you home?"

Clare shook her head. "Oh, no. Of you having me to take home."

He thought a moment and then said: "What, really?—Do you mean to tell me that—"

"Yes," she interrupted. "And of course you don't understand it, do you?—Men never understand Helen."

"And why don't they?"

"Because Helen doesn't like men, and men can never understand that."

He rejoined, heavily despondent: "Then I expect she dislikes me venomously enough. For it was I who asked her to play the piano, wasn't it?"

"She wouldn't dislike you any more for that," replied Clare. "But let's not discuss her. I hate gossiping about my friends."

They chattered intermittently and inconsequently about books after that, and at the corner of High Street she insisted on his leaving her and proceeding to the general post office by the shortest route.