THE PASSIONATE
YEAR
BY
JAMES HILTON
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1924
CONTENTS
The Summer Term
The Winter Term
Christmas At Beachings Over
The Lent Term
BOOK I
THE SUMMER TERM
CHAPTER ONE
I
"Ah, um yes, Mr. Speed, is it not?... Welcome, sir! Welcome toMillstead!" Kenneth Speed gripped the other's hand and smiled. He was atall passably good-looking fellow in his early twenties, bright-eyed andbrown-haired. At the moment he was feeling somewhat nervous, and alwayswhen he felt nervous he did things vigorously, as if to obscure hissecret trepidation. Therefore when he took hold of the soft moist handthat was offered him he grasped it in such a way that its possessorwinced and gave a perceptible gasp.
"Delighted to meet you, sir," said the young man, briskly, and hisvoice, like his action, was especially vigorous because of nervousness.It was not nervousness of interviewing a future employer, or ofreceiving social initiation into a new world; still less was it due toany consciousness of personal inferiority; it was an intellectualnervousness, based on an acute realisation of the exact moment when lifeturns a fresh corner which may or may not lead into a blind alley. Andas Kenneth Speed felt the touch of this clammy elderly hand, heexperienced a sudden eager desire to run away, out of the dark study andthrough the streets to the railway-station whence he had come. Absurdand ignoble desire, he told himself, shrugging his shoulders slightly asif to shake off an unpleasant sensation. He saw the pastkaleidoscopically, the future as a mere vague following-up of theimmediate present. A month ago he had been a resident undergraduate atCambridge. Now he was Kenneth Speed, B.A., Arts' Master at MillsteadSchool. The transformation seemed to him for the time being all that wasin life.
It was a dull glowering day towards the end of April, most appropriatelymelancholy for the beginning of term. It was one of those days when thesun had been bright very early, and by ten o'clock the sky dappled withwhite clouds; by noon the whiteness had dulled and spread to leadenpatches of grey; now, at mid-afternoon, a cold wintry wind rolled themheavily across the sky and piled them on to the deep gloom of thehorizon. The Headmaster's study, lit from three small windows throughwhich the daylight, filtered by the thick spring foliage of lime trees,struggled meagrely, was darker even than usual, and Speed, peeringaround with hesitant inquisitive eyes, received no more than a confusedimpression of dreariness. He could see the clerical collar of the manopposite gleaming like a bar of ivory against an ebony background.
The voice, almost as soft and clammy as the hand, went on: "I hope youwill be very comfortable here, Mr. Speed. We are—um yes—anold foundation, and we hav