Chapter Four I
The torture of his soul went on. He lost grip of his House; he was unpopular now, and he knew it. Smallwood and other influential members of the school openly cut him in the street. A great silence (so he often imagined, but it could not have been really so) fell upon the Masters’ Common-Room whenever he entered it. Pritchard, so he heard, was in the habit of making cheap jokes against him with his class. Even Clanwell took him aside one evening and asked him why he had dropped the habit of coming up to coffee. “Why don’t you come up for a chat sometime?” he asked, and from the queer look in his eyes Speed knew well enough what the chat was likely to be about. “Oh, I’m busy,” he excused himself. He added: “Perhaps I’ll drop in sometime, though.” “Yes, do,” said Clanwell encouragingly. But Speed never did.
Then one morning Speed was summoned into the dark study. The Head smiled and invited him to sit down. He even said, with ominous hospitality: “Have a cigarette—um, no?” and pushed the cigarette-box an inch or so away from him. Then he went on, unbuttoning the top button of his clerical coat: “I hope—um—you will not think me—um—impertinent—if I mention a matter which has—um—which has not reached my ears—um—through an official channel. You had, I—um—I believe,—an—um—altercation with one of the house-porters the other day. Am I—am I right?”
“Yes, quite right.”
“Well, now, Mr. Speed—such—um—affairs are rather undignified, don’t you think? I’m not—um—apportioning blame—oh, no, not in any way, but I do—um, yes—I most certainly do think that a housemaster should avoid such incidents if he can possibly do so. No—um—no personal reflection on you at all, Mr. Speed—merely my advice to you, as a somewhat elderly man to an—um, yes—to a friend. Yes, a friend. Perhaps I might add more—um—significantly—to an—um—son-in-law.”
He smiled a wide, sly smile. Speed clenched his hands on his knees. The dark study grew almost intolerable. He felt he would like to take Ervine’s mottled neck in his hands and wring it—carefully and calculatingly....
When he was outside the room, in the darkness between the inner and the outer doors, his resentment rose to fever-pitch. He stopped, battling with it, half inclined to re-enter the study and make a scene, yet realising with the sane part of him that he could not better his position by so doing. Merely as an outlet for tempestuous indignation, however, the idea of returning to the fray attracted him, and he paused in the darkness, arguing with himself. Then all at once his attention was rivetted by the sound, sharp and clear, of Mrs. Ervine’s voice. She had entered the study from the other door, and he heard soft steps treading across the carpet. “Did you tell him?” he heard her say. And the Head’s voice boomed back: “Yes, my dear. Um yes—I told him.”
A grim, cautious smile crept over Speed’s mouth. He put his ear to the hinge of the inner door and listened desperately.
He heard again the voice of Mrs. Ervine. “Did you tell him he might have to quit Lavery’s at the end of the term?”
“I—um—well—I didn’t exactly put it to him—so—um—so definitely. It seemed to me there was no—um—no necessity. He may be all right, even yet, you know.
“He won’t. He’s too young. And he’s lost too much ground already.”
“I always thought he was too—um—too youthful, my dear. But you overruled my——”
“Well, and you know why I did, don’t you? Oh, I’ve no patience with you. Nothing’s done unless I do it.”
“My dear, I—um—I assure you——”
He heard footsteps approaching along the outside corridor and feared that it might be people coming to see the Head. In that case they would pull open the outer door and find him eavesdropping. That would never do. He quietly pushed the outer door and emerged into the corridor. A small boy, seeing him, asked timidly: “Is the Head in, sir?” Speed replied grimly: “Yes, he’s in, but he’s busy at present.”
After all, he had heard enough. Behind the Head, ponderous and archaic, stood now the sinister figure of Mrs. Ervine, mistress of malevolent intrigue. In a curious half-humorous, half-contemptuous sense, he felt sorry for the Head. Poor devil!—everlastingly chained to Millstead, always working the solemn, rhythmic treadmill, with a wife beside him as sharp as a knife-edge.... Speed walked across to Lavery’s, pale-faced and smiling.