Читать книгу The Passionate Year - James Hilton - Страница 20

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The immediate result of the incident was an invitation to dine at the Head's a few days later. "It was very—um, yes—thoughtful and considerate of you, Mr. Speed," said the Head, mumblingly. "My daughter—a heedless child—just like her to omit the—um—precaution of taking some—um, yes—protection against any possible change in the weather."

"I was rather in the same boat myself, sir," said Speed, laughing. "The thunderstorm was quite unexpected."

"Um yes, quite so. Quite so." The Head paused and added, with apparent inconsequence: "My daughter is quite a child, Mr. Speed—loves to gather flowers—um—botany, you know, and—um—so forth."

Speed said: "Yes, I have noticed it."

Dinner at the Head's house was less formal than on the previous occasion. It was a Monday evening and Clare Harrington was there. Afterwards in the drawing-room Speed played a few Chopin studies and Mazurkas. He did not attempt to get into separate conversation with Miss Ervine; he chatted amiably with the Head while the two girls gossiped by themselves. And at ten o'clock, pleading work to do before bed, he arose to go, leaving the girls to make their own arrangements. Miss Ervine said good-bye to him with a shyness in which he thought he detected a touch of wistfulness.

When he got up to his own room he thought about her for a long while. He tried to settle down to an hour or so of marking books, but found it impossible. In the end he went downstairs and let himself outside into the school grounds by his own private key. It was a glorious night of starshine, and all the roofs were pale with the brightness of it. Wafts of perfume from the flowers and shrubbery of the Head's garden accosted him gently as he turned the corner by the chapel and into the winding tree-hidden path that circumvented the entire grounds of Millstead. It was on such a night that his heart's core was always touched; for it seemed to him that then the strange spirit of the place was most alive, and that it came everywhere to meet him with open arms, drenching all his life in wild and unspeakable loveliness. Oh, how happy he was, and how hard it was to make others realise his happiness! In the Common-Room his happiness had become proverbial, and even amongst the boys, always quicker to notice unhappy than happy looks, his beaming smile and firm, kindling enthusiasm had earned him the nickname of "Smiler."

He sat down for a moment on the lowest tier of the pavilion seats, those seats where generations of Millsteadians had hurriedly prepared themselves for the fray of school and house matches. Now the spot was splendidly silent, with the cricket-pitch looming away mistily in front, and far behind, over the tips of the high trees, the winking lights of the still noisy dormitories. He watched a bat flitting haphazardly about the pillars of the pavilion stand. He could see, very faintly in the paleness, the score of that afternoon's match displayed on the indicator. Old Millstead parish bells, far away in the town, commenced the chiming of eleven.

He felt then, as he had never felt before he came to Millstead, that the world was full, brimming full, of wonderful majestic beauty, and that now, as the scented air swirled round him in slow magnificent eddies, it was searching for something, searching with passionate and infinite desire for something that eluded it always. He could not understand or analyse all that he felt, but sometimes lately a deep shaft of ultimate feeling would seem to grip him round the body and send the tears swimming into his eyes, as if for one glorious moment he had seen and heard something of another world. It came suddenly to him now, as he sat on the pavilion seats with the silver starshine above him and the air full of the smells of earth and flowers; it seemed to him that something mighty must be abroad in the world, that all this tremulous loveliness could not live without a meaning, that he was on the verge of some strange and magic revelation.

Clear as bells on the silent air came the sound of girls' voices. He heard a rich, tolling "Good night, Clare!" Then silence again, silence in which he seemed to know more things than he had ever known before.