The Passionate Year Read Free Page A

of black and grey.
    She said, in voice that though sharp was not unpretty: “I’m delighted to
meet you, Mr. Speed. You must make yourself at home here, you know.”
    The Head murmured: “Um, yes, most certainly. At home—um, yes…Now
let me introduce you to my daughter…Helen, this is—um—Mr.
Speed.” A girl was staring at him, and he did not then notice much more than
the extreme size and brightness of her blue eyes; that, and some
astonishingly vague quality that cannot be more simply described than as a
sense of continually restrained movement, so that, looking with his mind’s
eye at everybody else in the world, he saw them suddenly grown old and
decrepit. Her bright golden hair hung down her back in a rebellious cascade;
that, however, gave no clue to her age. The curious serene look in her eyes
was a woman’s (her mother’s, no doubt), while the pretty half-mocking curve
of her lips was still that of a young and fantastically mischievous child. In
reality she was twenty, though she looked both older and younger.
    She said, in a voice so deep and sombre that Speed recoiled suddenly as
though faced with something uncanny: “How are you, Mr. Speed?”
    He bowed to her and said, gallantly: “Delighted to be in Millstead, Miss
Ervine.”
    The Head murmured semi-consciously: “Um, yes, delightful
place—especially in summer weather—trees, you
know—beautiful to sit out on the cricket ground—um, yes, very,
very beautiful indeed…”
    Potter opened the door to announce that dinner was served.
VI
    As Mrs. Ervine and the girl preceded them out of the room
Speed heard the latter say: “Clare’s not come yet, mother.” Mrs. Ervine
replied, a trifle acidly: “Well, my dear, we can’t wait for her. I suppose
she knew it was at seven…”
    The Head, taking Speed by the arm with an air of ponderous intimacy, was
saying: “Don’t know whether you’ve a good reading voice, Speed. If so, we
must have you for the lessons in morning chapel.”
    Speed was mumbling something appropriate and the Head was piloting him
into the dining-room when Potter appeared again, accompanied by a dark-haired
girl, short in stature and rather pale-complexioned. She seemed quite
unconcerned as she caught up the tail end of the procession into the
dining-room and remarked casually: “How are you, Doctor Ervine?—So
sorry I’m a trifle late. Friday, you know—rather a busy day for the
shop.”
    The Head looked momentarily nonplussed, then smiled and said: “Oh, not at
all…not at all…I must introduce you to our new recruit—Mr.
Speed…This is Miss Harrington, a friend of my daughter’s. She—um,
yes, she manages—most successfully, I may
say—the—er—the bookshop down in the town. Bookshop, you
know.”
    He said that with the air of implying: Bookshops are not ordinary
shops.
    Speed bowed; the Head went on boomingly: “And she is, I think I may
venture to say, my daughter’s greatest friend. Eh?”
    He addressed the monosyllable to the girl with a touch of shrewdness: she
replied quietly: “I don’t know.” The three words were spoken in that rare
tone in which they simply mean nothing but literally what they say.
    In the dining-room they sat in the following formation: Dr. and Mrs.
Ervine at the head and foot respectively; Helen and Clare together at one
side and Speed opposite them at the other. The dining-room was a cold
forlorn-looking apartment in which the dim incandescent light seemed to
accomplish little more than to cast a dull glitter of obscurity on the
oil-paintings that hung, ever so slightly askew, on the walls. A peculiar
incongruity in it struck Speed at once, though the same might never have
occurred to anybody else: the minute salt and pepper-boxes on the table
possessed a pretty feminine daintiness which harmonised ill with the huge
mahogany sideboard. The latter reminded Speed of the boardroom of a City
banking-house. It was as if, he thought,