Book III — The Lent Term
Chapter One I
“The worst term uv the three, sir, that’s my opinion,” said Burton, pulling the curtains across the window at dusk.
“What makes you think that?” asked Speed, forcing himself to be affable.
“Well, you see, sir, the winter term—or, prop’ly speakin’, sir, I should say the Michaelmas term—isn’t so bad because there’s the Christmas ’olidays to look forward to. But the Lent Term always seems to me to be ten times worse, because there’s nothin’ at the end of it to look forward to. Is there now, sir?”
“There’s the Easter holidays and the spring weather.”
Burton grinned. “That’s if you’re an optimist, sir.”
He was an old man, deeply attached to the school and very reliable, but prone to take odd liberties on the strength of age and service. Speed always felt that in Burton’s eyes he was a youngster, hardly less a youngster than one of the prefects, and that Burton considered himself as the central planet of Lavery’s round which Speed revolved as merely a satellite. The situation had amused him until now; but on this afternoon of the return from Beachings Over a whole crowd of sinister suspicions assailed him. In Burton’s attitude he seemed to detect a certain carefully-veiled mockery; was it possible that Burton knew or guessed the secret of his appointment to Lavery’s? Was it also possible that Burton had pierced through his marriage with Helen and had seen the sinister scheme behind it?
He stared hard at Burton. The man was old in a rather theatrical way; he clumped about exactly like the faithful retainer in the old-fashioned melodrama; if you addressed him he would turn round, put one hand to his ear, to leer at you, and say grotesquely: “Sir?” He was the terror of all the housemaids, the pet of all the Junior boys, and a sort of communal butler and valet to the prefects. And, beyond all doubt, he was one of the sights of Lavery’s. For the moment Speed detested him.
“I say, Burton.”
The turn, the hand to ear, the leer, and the grotesque interrogative: “Sir?”
“How long have you been at Millstead?”
“Fifty-one year, sir, come next July. I started when I was fourteen year old, sir, peelin’ potaties in the old kitchins that used to be underneath Milner’s. I come to Lavery’s when I was twenty-four as underporter. I remember old Mr. Hardacre that wuz ’ousemaster before Mr. Lavery, Sir. Mr. Lavery was ’ousemaster for thirty-eight year, sir, an’ a very great friend of mine. He came to see me only larst Toosday, sir, a-knockin’ at the pantry door just like an old pal o’ mine might. He wuz wantin’ to know ’ow the old place was gettin’ on.”
Speed’s glance hardened. He could imagine Lavery and Burton having a malicious conversation about himself.
Burton went on, grinning: “He was arskin’ after you, Mr. Speed. I told ’im you wuz away spendin’ the Christmas with Sir Charles and Lady Speed. An’ I told him you wuz doin’ very well an’ bein’ very popular, if you’ll pard’n the liberty I took.”
“Oh, certainly,” said Speed, rather coldly.
When Burton had gone out he poked up the fire and pondered. Now that he was back at Millstead he wished he had stayed longer in Beachings Over. Millstead was absolutely a dead place in vacation time, and in the Christmas vacation nothing more dreary and uniformly depressing had ever come within his experience. Dr. and Mrs. Ervine, so Potter informed him, had gone to town for a few days and would not be back until after the New Year. None of the other housemasters was in residence. The huge empty footer pitches, hardly convalescent after the frays of the past term, were being marked off for hockey by the groundsman; the chapel was undergoing a slothful scrubbing by a platoon of chattering charwomen; the music-rooms were closed; the school organ was in the hands of the repairers; the clock in the chapel belfry had stopped, apparently because it was nobody’s business to wind it up during vacation-time.
Perhaps it would freeze enough for skating on Dinglay Fen, was his most rapturous hope. Helen was shopping in the village, and he expected her back very soon. It was nearly dark now, but the groundsman was still busy. There was something exquisitely forlorn in that patient transference from cricket to footer, from footer to hockey, and then from hockey to cricket again, which marked the passage of the years at Millstead. He wondered how long it would all last. He wondered what sort of an upheaval would be required to change it. Would famine or pestilence or war or revolution be enough?
Helen came in. It was curious that his suspicion of her, at first admitted to be without confirmation, had now become almost a certainty; so that he no longer felt inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, or even that there was any doubt whose benefit he could give her.
While they were having tea he suddenly decided that he would go out that evening alone and walk himself into a better humour. A half-whimsical consciousness of his own condition made him rather more kind to her; he felt sorry for anybody who had to put up with him in his present mood. He said: “I think I’ll have a walk after tea, Helen. I’ll be back about eight. It’ll do me good to take some exercise.”
She gave him a sudden, swift, challenging look, and he could see exactly what was in her eyes. She thought he was going to see Clare.
The thought had not been in his mind before. But now he was at the mercy of it; it invaded him; after all, why shouldn’t he visit Clare? Furthermore, what right had Helen to stop him? He put on his hat and coat in secret tingling excitement; he would go down into the village and visit Clare. Curious that he hadn’t thought of it before! Helen had simply no right to object. And as he turned his mind to all the suspicions that had so lately crowded into it, he felt that he was abundantly justified in visiting a friend of his, even if his wife were foolishly jealous of her.
“Back about eight,” he repeated, as he opened the door to go out. Somehow, he wanted to kiss her. He had always kissed her before going out from Lavery’s. But now, since she made no reply to his remark, presumably she did not expect it.