The Passionate Year by James Hilton Read Free Book Online

was nearer to her now and recognised her immediately.
She was dressed in a loose-fitting and rather dilapidated frock which the
downpour of rain had already made to cling to the soft curves of her body;
round her throat, tightly twined, was a. striped scarf which Speed, quick to
like or to dislike what he saw, decided was absolutely and garishly ugly. And
yet immediately he felt a swift tightening of his affection for her, for
Millstead was like that, full of stark uglinesses that were beautiful by
their intimacy…She saw him and stopped. Details of her at that moment
encumbered his memory ever afterwards. She was about twenty yards from him
and he could see a most tremendous wrist-watch that she wore—an
ordinary pocket watch clamped on to a strap. And from the outside pocket of
her dress there protruded the chromatic cover of a threepenny novelette. (Had
she read it? Was she going to read it? Did she like it? he wondered swiftly.)
She still carried that bunch of grasses, now rather soiled and bedraggled,
tightly in her hand. He imagined, in the curiously vivid way that was so easy
to him, the damp feel of her palm; the heat and perspiration of it: somehow
this again, a symbol of secret and bodily intimacy, renewed in him that
sudden kindling affection for her.
    He called out to her: “Miss Ervine!”
    She answered, a little shyly: “Oh, how are you, Mr. Speed?”
    “Rather wet just at present,” he replied, striding over the tufts of thick
grass towards her. “And you appear to be even wetter than I am. I’m afraid
we’re in for a severe thunderstorm.”
    “Oh well, I don’t mind thunderstorms.”
    “You ought to mind getting wet.” He paused, uncertain what to say next.
Then instinct made him suddenly begin to talk to her as he might have done to
a small child. “My dear young lady, you don’t suppose I’m going to leave you
here to get drenched to the skin, do you?”
    She shrugged her shoulders and said: “I don’t know what you’re going to
do.”
    “Have you had anything to eat?”
    “I don’t want anything.”
    “Well, I suggest that we get into the village as quick as we can and stay
there till the rain stops. I was also going to suggest that we spent the time
in having lunch, but as you don’t want anything, we needn’t.”
    “But I don’t want to wait in the village, Mr. Speed. I was just going to
start for home when it came on to rain.”
    Speed said: “Very well, if you want to get home you must let me take you.
You’re not going to walk home through a thunderstorm. We’ll have a cab or
something.”
    “And do you really think you’ll get a cab in Par-minters?”
    He answered: “I always have a good try to get anything I want to.”
    For all her protests she came with him down the meadow and out into the
sodden lane. As they passed the gate the first flash of lightning lit up the
sky, followed five seconds after by a crash of thunder.
    “There!” he exclaimed triumphantly, as if the thunder and lightning
somehow strengthened his position with her: “You wouldn’t like to walk to
Millstead through that, would you?”
    She shrugged her shoulders and looked at him as if she hated his
interference yet found it irresistible.
VI
    It was altogether by good luck that he did get a cab in the
village; a Millstead cab had brought some people into Parminters and was just
setting back empty on the return journey when Speed met it in the narrow
lane. Once again, this time as he opened the cab-door and handed her inside,
he gave her that look of triumph, though he was well aware of the luck that
he had had. Inside on the black leather cushions he placed in a conspicuously
‘central position his hat and his bundle of essays, and, himself occupying
one corner, invited her to take the other. All the time the driver was
bustling round lifting the bicycle on to the roof and tying it securely down,
Speed sat in his corner, damp to the skin, watching her